The Economy

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Inflation rates around the world:

Argentina: 116%

Turkey: 38.2%

United Kingdom: 8.7%

Australia: 7%

Germany: 6.4%

South Africa: 6.3%

Netherlands: 5.7%

Mexico: 5.06%

France: 4.5%

Canada: 3.4%

United States: 2.97%

Every single Republican voted against the Inflation Reduction Act.

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Dow pops more than 300 points for 7th straight positive day, longest winning streak since 2021: Live updates

The Dow Jones Industrial Average was higher Tuesday as traders digested better-than-expected corporate earnings.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/07/17/stock-market-today-live-updates.html?

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🕶️ Surprise! Economy is better than we thought

Data: FactSet. Chart: Axios Visuals The Citi Economic Surprise Index — a quick-and-dirty snapshot of how the economy is faring against expectations — just hit its highest level in two years, Axios' Matt Phillips writes. Why it matters: Last week's great reports on weakening U.S. consumer inflation, slowing wholesale price increases, falling import prices and lower-than-expected claims for jobless benefits helped send the surprise index to the highest level in two years. Flashback: It was almost exactly a year ago that the index was blaring alarms that a sharp slowdown was coming, as the Fed aggressively raised rates while inflation stayed stubbornly high. Economists ratcheted up recession predictions. Now economists are backing off those calls.

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A ‘she-cession’ no more: After COVID dip, women’s employment hits all-time high

But many good-paying jobs are still mostly male, an ongoing challenge

https://floridaphoenix.com/2023/07/19/a-she-cession-no-more-after-covid-dip-womens-employment-hits-all-time-high/?

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Boom sweeps South, West

Data: Bureau of Labor Statistics. Map: Axios A manufacturing boom has swept across the country in President Biden's 2½ years in office, with the South and Mountain West — including several red states — enjoying especially strong growth, Axios' Hans Nichols writes. Why it matters: A healthy economy is the linchpin of Biden’s re-election strategy. What's happening: Biden's campaign aims to take credit for those new jobs, especially the union ones. Touting "Bidenomics" at Philly Shipyard on Thursday, Biden said he's spurred the creation of more manufacturing jobs "in two years than any president has created in a four-year term." Former President Trump also is making a play for the union vote — and trying to convince auto workers that Biden's focus on electric vehicles will translate into fewer factory jobs. He said in an "Agenda 47" video: "If you want to have an auto industry, you need to defeat Joe Biden." 🔎 Between the lines: Biden's challenge for 2024 is to draw a link between his three signature pieces of legislation — the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, the Inflation Reduction Act and the Chips and Science Act — and the country’s resurgence in manufacturing, where the average hourly pay is $32. He's competing with governors — Republicans and Democrats — who also can take credit for their state's growth. 🔭 Zoom out: The U.S. economy has defied expectations and continues to add jobs. Goldman Sachs economists have lowered the probability of a recession in the next 12 months to 20%, down from 30% last July. Still, polling shows deep dissatisfaction with Biden's handling of the economy. Anemic wage growth is partly to blame. With inflation cooling and wages growing, Biden's team hopes perceptions about the economy will improve. 📈 Top 10 winning states   Data: Bureau of Labor Statistics. Chart: Axios Visuals

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Visualized: The U.S. $20 Trillion Economy by State

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/us-economy-by-state/

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📈 Stock rally broadens

Data: FactSet. Chart: Axios Visuals It's not just tech: The S&P 500 ended last week up about 0.7%, led by health care, energy and financial shares, Axios' Matt Phillips writes. Why it matters: The broader gains are a good sign both for the economy and the durability of what increasingly looks like a real bull market.

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Morgan Stanley credits Bidenomics for ‘much stronger’ than expected GDP growth

WASHINGTON — Morgan Stanley is crediting President Joe Biden’s economic policies with driving an unexpected surge in the U.S. economy that is so significant that the bank was forced to make a “sizable upward revision” to its estimates for U.S. gross domestic product.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/07/21/bidenomics-spurred-stronger-gdp-growth-morgan-stanley.html?

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🕶️ Confidence soars across the board

Data: Morning Consult. Chart: Axios Visuals The rally in consumer sentiment — like the stock-market rally — is looking pretty broad, Axios business editor Kate Marino writes. Why it matters: The mood is rising across income groups, Morning Consult senior economist Jesse Wheeler tells us. What's happening: The upswing has been building all year as inflation cooled. Above, you see Morning Consult's index at its highest level since December 2021. The Conference Board's Consumer Confidence Index skyrocketed over the past two months, Axios Macro reports. The famed confidence survey from the University of Michigan is up 13% since June.

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Federal Reserve raises rates for 11th time to fight inflation but gives no clear sign of next move

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Federal Reserve raised its key interest rate Wednesday for the 11th time in 17 months as part of its ongoing drive to curb inflation. But it provided little guidance about when — or whether — it might hike rates again.

https://apnews.com/article/federal-reserve-inflation-interest-rates-economy-jobs-47a78ceb285ac50217ef39e2441112ee?

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Gross Domestic Product, Second Quarter 2023 (Advance Estimate)

Real gross domestic product (GDP) increased at an annual rate of 2.4 percent in the second quarter of 2023 (table 1), according to the "advance" estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the first quarter, real GDP increased 2.0 percent.

https://www.bea.gov/news/2023/gross-domestic-product-second-quarter-2023-advance-estimate

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Yale Business Guru Gushes to MSNBC: Bidenomics Most Successful Intervention Since FDR’s New Deal

Yale Professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld praised President Joe Biden’s policies by arguing that it has been the most successful economic intervention since the New Deal.

https://www.mediaite.com/tv/yale-business-guru-gushes-to-msnbc-bidenomics-most-successful-intervention-since-fdrs-new-deal/?

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Key Fed inflation rate falls to lowest annual level in nearly 2 years

Inflation showed further signs of cooling in June, according to a gauge released Friday that the Federal Reserve follows closely.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/07/28/pce-inflation-june-2023-.html

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💸 Immune economy

The U.S. economy continues on its glide path to the elusive "soft landing," even in the face of 11 interest rate hikes and counting.

• That's in large part because we spent the 15 years before the rate hikes steadily deleveraging and ensuring that debtors couldn't easily fall victim to a credit crunch, Axios chief financial correspondent Felix Salmon writes.

Why it matters: Rate hikes in many other countries, especially the U.K., hurt most of the population rapidly, thanks to their high homeownership rate and how short-term their mortgages are.

The U.S. has positioned itself to withstand rate shocks much more easily.

• Household and corporate debt is mostly fixed-rate rather than floating-rate, meaning that debt payments don't immediately rise when rates go up.
• There's also less debt, overall, than there has been historically.

The bottom line: The good news is that the U.S. economy has shown that it can remain strong in the face of an ultra-aggressive rate-hiking cycle by the Fed.

• The bad news is that rates might have to remain high for some time before the Fed feels comfortable bringing them back down to a more neutral level.

Go deeper.

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🕶️ Spending still trending

Data: Bureau of Economic Analysis via FRED. Chart: Axios Visuals More evidence that the American consumer is in pretty good shape: Real personal spending — that is, adjusted for inflation — hit another new high in June, Axios business editor Kate Marino reports. Why it matters: If people are worried about losing their jobs, they tend to be a little more cautious about their spending. Instead, consumers are propelling the economy forward.

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🏭 Charted: America's factory rush

Data: U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. Chart: Axios Visuals U.S. business investment in factories increased 70% to $153 billion in the second quarter from the same period last year, Axios Markets' Matt Phillips writes from last week's GDP report. Why it matters: Much of the surge stems from the CHIPS and Science Act, as part of the manufacturing supercycle touched off by big spending bills.

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Fewer Americans got jobs in July than expected. But a steady market suggests US may avoid recession

WASHINGTON (AP) — The job market has cooled over the summer. But it’s still strong enough to defy predictions that higher interest rates would tip the United States into recession.

https://apnews.com/article/economy-jobs-inflation-federal-reserve-def1e5500e2852bf8ec3621b7270cd61

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📊 The labor market added 187,000 jobs in July and the unemployment rate fell to 3.5%. Employers have had to throttle back on new positions because there aren't enough workers to fill them. Keep reading.

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🦾 Midwest: America's robot capital

Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios

Iowa, Michigan, Kansas, Wisconsin and Minnesota are the top five states using robots in manufacturing, Axios global tech correspondent Ryan Heath writes from a new report by the National Bureau of Economic Research. Why it matters: Robots are fundamentally changing how economies operate, much like electricity and the internet. 🖼️ The big picture: The U.S. robot economy is "highly skewed" and split into three tiers, according to the report. Three-quarters of America's robots are clustered in just 10% of U.S. regions, while the bottom 50% have almost no robots. 🧠 What's happening: There's also a robot cluster effect. Companies are more likely to use robots if others nearby use them and if they're located in manufacturing hubs. That dynamic is driven partly by the presence of "robot integrators" — businesses that specialize in helping companies acquire and install robots.

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Second chance hiring could add $87 billion to the economy

JPMorgan Chase taps into new qualified talent, hiring 4,600 people with arrest or conviction records in 2022.

Here's why: 1 in 3 Americans has a record. Opening up economic opportunities to this talent pipeline strengthens communities and boosts the workforce.

Learn more.

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🕶️ Hot summer, cool inflation

Data: Bureau of Labor Statistics. Chart: Axios Visuals Prices rose 3.2% in the 12 months through July. A nearly 20% drop in gas prices led slower gains in food, shelter and vehicles, as we see in this chart from Axios Closer. Explore the data ... Go deeper with Axios' Neil Irwin and Courtenay Brown.

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Bidenomics Isn’t Working For Working People

Biden promised to build back better, but even as the economy recovers, workers are being left behind.

https://www.levernews.com/bidenomics-isnt-working-for-working-people/?

‘Bidenomics’ delivered a once-in-generation investment. It shows the pros and cons of policymaking

WASHINGTON (AP) — There are so many dots on the maps they blur into blobs — each one reflecting trillions of public and private dollars flowing in the U.S. this past year to build thousands of roads, bridges and manufacturing projects in communities large and small, in states red and blue.

https://apnews.com/article/biden-ira-congress-ev-bidenomics-4d1e74d2cf21326e8833885972ad2891?

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📈 Earnings drive new optimism

Data: FactSet. Graphic: Rahul Mukherjee/Axios Profits held up far better in Q2 than Wall Street had feared, Axios' Matt Phillips writes. Why it matters: Corporate America's resilient bottom line is another indication that the economy could pull off the much-ballyhooed soft landing. What's happening: The second quarter was a strong one for profits, with nearly 80% of S&P 500 companies reporting numbers that were better than analysts had forecast. Q2 2023 had the highest rate of companies beating expectations since Q3 2021, according to data provider Refinitiv. Target and Walmart closed out the weeks-long earnings extravaganza on an upbeat note, with both beating profit bogeys this week. Between the lines: While top line revenue growth has been a bit disappointing — mirroring a slowdown in inflation that made raising prices tougher — companies have been able preserve, and in some cases even fatten, profit margins. That's because the price pressures companies face from suppliers have fallen a lot faster than the prices they're charging customers. 💭 Matt's thought bubble: The single best summation of an earnings season is the way Wall Street analysts change their forecasts in response. You can see that after companies started reporting Q2 results, analysts sharply ratcheted up their expectations for the profits that these companies will earn over the next 12 months — just like they did during Q1 earnings season. In other words, analysts liked what they saw in the results — and what they heard from executives.

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📊 Rising economy not lifting Biden

Data: AP-NORC poll. Chart: Axios Visuals Job growth has stayed solid, with the unemployment rate at 3.5%. Inflation has slowed sharply over the past year to an annual 3.2%. But a stagnant 36% of U.S. adults approve of President Biden's handling of the economy, AP writes from a new poll by the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Why it matters: The improving economic outlook has done little to sway how people feel about Biden as he gears up for his 2024 reelection campaign — and travels the country touting "Bidenomics." 🔬 Zoom in: Younger Democrats are most critical of Biden, Axios' April Rubin notes. 52% of Democrats aged 18-44 approve of his handling of the economy, compared with 77% aged 45 and older. Flashback: Democrats and Republicans both liked Biden more when he first took office. In January 2021, his approval rating was 97% among Democrats, 23% among Republicans and 61% overall. Now, it's 76% among Democrats, 8% among Republicans and 42% overall. 🥊 Reality check: Democrats still say they'll support Biden in 2024 — even if they'd prefer someone else. Explore the data ...

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Hopeful signs of an economic ‘soft landing’ emerge in Jackson Hole as Fed meets with world watching

JACKSON HOLE, Wyoming (AP) — At the height of the post-pandemic economic recovery, Andy Parazette’s taco shop enjoyed such a crush of business that customers sometimes had to wait an hour for a burrito.

https://apnews.com/article/federal-reserve-economy-inflation-jackson-hole-rates-13e3afb31a777847bc6d6bd751b6ff96?