… In 2015 and 2016, the United States saw a net international migration gain of more than 1 million people. It dipped to about 930,000 in 2017 and dropped to just over 700,000 in 2018. By 2020, the year of the pandemic’s arrival, it was under 500,000. And last year, […] Read more »
Public Opinion and the Election: the Economy
… The economy is the baseline issue in most national elections, midterm or presidential. This year provides no exception. Data from Gallup and other polls show that the economy — and inflation in particular — are Americans’ top concerns leading into the Nov. 8 midterm elections. We see this in […] Read more »
Changing fundamentals boost Democrats
Democrats’ electoral prospects improved in recent months as a function of several developments, including the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization abortion decision and Democratic legislative successes. Some have taken the improvement as a sign that “fundamentals” no longer count. A careful sifting of the evidence suggests, on […] Read more »
Inflation and Home Price Expectations Decline Further
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Center for Microeconomic Data today released the August 2022 Survey of Consumer Expectations, which shows that inflation expectations continued to decline across all horizons. Expectations about year-ahead price increases for gas also continued to decline, with households now expecting gas prices to be […] Read more »
Why labor unions are more popular than they’ve been in six decades
… Paradoxically, support for unions increases when unorganized workers feel economically secure — not when they would actually benefit most from joining a union. The explanation for the relationship is twofold: First, some scholarship suggests workers will blame a poor economy on union overreach. More fundamentally, economic insecurity, especially an […] Read more »
U.S. Economic Confidence Improving but Still Weak
Americans are significantly less negative in their evaluations of the U.S. economy than they were in July, with Gallup’s Economic Confidence Index improving from -51 to -39. The index recently hit a 13-year low of -58 in June, the worst since the Great Recession. Confidence has now returned to the […] Read more »