Stephanie Roth

Yeah, I mean, and the wealth effect has been really important for the past couple years, partially just because it has broadened out beyond just the very wealthy.

This is a consumer where younger people are involved in equities, more people, even though they don't have the lion's share of the equities, they are still more invested than many years past.

So it's helping a big part of America, of course, not that bottom of the K, which just continues.

Yeah, Conference Board was weaker.

Umich was stronger.

I think the net of the two is a consumer that feels bad about the price level in the economy, which is something that cannot be changed easily by any means.

But they're largely employed, and they don't like the policy uncertainty.

So they continue to spend because most of them are employed and continue to make decent wage gains.

They also have the benefit from that wealth effect.

But when you ask them, how do you feel about the economy, it's perhaps not great.

Yeah, I think that's part of it.

And also concerned about the future prospects because we all know AI is going to have important impacts on the labor market.

You continue to see headlines about job cuts.

The thing is that this part of the year there is often headlines about job cuts and everybody gets scared in January about the labor market because they see all these headlines and then it proves to be not such a big problem.

Yeah, if you start to shift towards 5%, then the dynamics... Good round number, 5%.

Good round number, 5%.

No, I don't think so either.

Yeah, it structurally shifted down over time, in which case...

Because the labor market dynamics have changed materially.

What keeps us in full employment today is not the same as what we were.