Edward Conard

Top Ten New York Times Bestselling Author

  • “Unintended Consequences is far smarter and more thought-provoking than most economics written for the general public” - Greg Mankiw, Harvard University, Former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors
  • “…a must-read for serious students of economic policy.” - Glenn Hubbard, Dean, Columbia Business School, and former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers
  • “…reminds us that inequality sends a signal of what society lacks most, in America’s case, entrepreneurship and risk taking.” - Lawrence Lindsey, CEO, The Lindsey Group, former Director of the National Economic Council
  • “…a very valuable contribution.” - Larry Summers, former Secretary of the Treasury and director of the National Economic Council, president emeritus, Harvard University
  • “Unintended Consequences should be read by anyone who takes for granted the superiority of progressive taxation and has not thought carefully about the trade-offs involved.” - The New Republic
  • “…challenges misconceptions that distort our economic debates.” - Arthur Brooks, President of the American Enterprise Institute
  • “…challenges misconceptions that distort our economic debates.” - Arthur Brooks, President of the American Enterprise Institute
  • “…serious thinking for serious thinkers. …a thought-provoking blueprint for growing middle- and working-class incomes.” - Mitt Romney, former Governor of Massachusetts
  • “Unintended Consequences provides a provocative interpretation of the causes of the global financial crisis and the policies needed to return to rapid growth. Whether you agree or not, this analysis is well worth reading.” - Nouriel Roubini, New York University; Chairman, Roubini Global Economics
  • “…reminds us that inequality sends a signal of what society lacks most, in America’s case, entrepreneurship and risk taking.” - Lawrence Lindsey, CEO, The Lindsey Group, former Director of the National Economic Council
  • “…a comprehensive explanation of the modern economy.” - Julian Robertson, Founder, Tiger Management
  • “Unintended Consequences is full of substance, it is one of the must-read books of the year, and once I finish it I will be giving it a second read through right away.” - Tyler Cowen, Professor, George Mason University
Upside of Inequality Oxford Unintended Consequences

Macro Roundup


Friday, April 10, 2026

AI Summary. Survey data show that after 2020 self-reported happiness fell across groups, compressing pre-existing differences — the black-white gap narrowed from 14 points to 6 — while the marital happiness premium of more than 30 points survived intact. Confidence in major public and private institutions declined nearly across the board, with double-digit drops common and losses spanning all parties and ideologies.

Sam Peltzman University of Chicago
Date Posted:

Peltzman documents a dramatic drop in US self-reported happiness in 2020, much of which persisted through 2024. Only those who are married maintain positive net happiness. A correlate is loss of faith in institutions, which “spared no party or ideology.”

How did happiness gaps and institutional confidence shift after 2020?

Core argument: The black-white happiness gap narrowed from 14 points before 2020 to 6 points after, part of a common pattern of post-Covid compression in pre-existing group differences.

Before 2020 there was a large black-white happiness differential, which had been narrowing gradually. This process accelerates after 2020 – from a 14-point difference before (light blue) to 6 points after 2020 (light red). Compression of pre-Covid differences [not limited to race] is a common pattern. Marital status is a glaring exception. There is no post-Covid compression at all. This large marital premium – upwards of 30 points – is a durable feature of all pre-2020 data, not just the 2010s. And this premium survives the post-Covid shock wholly intact (Figure 3 in gallery). Many aspects of family, social and political life were disrupted by the Covid pandemic. Perhaps the happiness crash is just one part, or a summary for, this wider disruption. I ask if other broad attitudinal measures also suffered Covid shocks. Table 5 focuses on institutions. It shows a striking, nearly across the board, post-Covid decline in confidence in significant public and private institutions. Here double-digit declines are common. The happiness crash spared no ideology or party (black bars).

Takeaways by Macro Roundup® AI

  1. The black-white happiness gap narrowed from 14 points before 2020 to 6 points after, part of a common pattern of post-Covid compression in pre-existing group differences.
  2. Marital status is the exception to post-Covid compression, with a marital happiness premium upwards of 30 points that is a durable feature of all pre-2020 data and survives the post-Covid shock intact.
  3. Confidence in significant public and private institutions fell nearly across the board after Covid, with double-digit declines common, and the happiness crash spared no ideology or party.

Related Articles:

  • Rising Young Worker Despair in the United States — In the United States, mental despair once peaked in middle age but now declines steadily with age, a shift the authors attribute to rising despair among workers under 40. The hump-shaped age pattern persists among those unemployed or unable to work, while it remains flat for homemakers, students, and retirees.
  • US College Students’ Well-Being — A study of US college students finds moderate-to-severe depression reported by 26% of students at one elite institution, 22% reporting moderate-to-severe anxiety and 10% contemplating suicide. Poorer mental health is associated with being female, little exercise, low grades, and financial aid; financial stress is associated with higher suicidal thoughts.
  • Teens Used To Be Happier. What Changed? — The share of US high school seniors describing themselves as "very happy" peaked at 24.8% and remained around 24.4% before falling to 11.4% at its low, recovering only to 12.7%, well below the 17.9% recorded before the pandemic. The decline coincided with smartphones and social media becoming pervasive.

AI Summary. 49% of 30-year-old US women had given birth to at least one child in 2024, down from 63% a decade earlier and 69% two decades earlier, while 88% of 45-year-old women were mothers, up from 84%. Demographers say fertility is unlikely to fully catch up to earlier decades' levels because conceiving becomes harder at older ages.

Claire Cain Miller New York Times
Date Posted:

Btw 1980 and 2000, US completed fertility fell from > 3 children per woman to < 2. As of 2024, 88% of 45-year-old women were mothers – up from 84% in 2004. Birth timing is delayed relative to 2000, but completed fertility has been ~ stable since 1995.

Does delayed childbearing still lead most women to become mothers?

Core argument: In 2024, 49% of women aged 30 had given birth to at least one child, down from 63% a decade earlier and 69% two decades earlier.

In 2024, the most recent year for which there is this data, 49% of women who were 30 had given birth to at least one child. By comparison, 63% of women who were 30 just a decade ago had had a child, and 69% of those who were 30 two decades ago. Yet today’s 45-year-olds, who are nearing the end of their childbearing years, are more likely to be mothers than women who were that age two decades ago. As of 2024, 88% of 45-year-old women were mothers, up from 84% in 2004. The question is whether the young women who aren’t having children now will eventually have them. If they follow the pattern of today’s 45-year-olds, the vast majority of them will. And surveys indicate that most of them want to. Still, demographers say it’s unlikely that fertility will fully catch up to the level of earlier decades. Women who plan to have children at older ages may not be able to, or may have fewer children than they planned, because it becomes harder to get pregnant.

Takeaways by Macro Roundup® AI

  1. In 2024, 49% of women aged 30 had given birth to at least one child, down from 63% a decade earlier and 69% two decades earlier.
  2. As of 2024, 88% of 45-year-old women were mothers, up from 84% in 2004.
  3. Demographers say fertility is unlikely to fully catch up to earlier decades' levels, because women who plan to have children at older ages may not be able to or may have fewer than planned.

Related Articles:

  • Why the U.S. Fertility Rate Has Hit a Record Low — Provisional data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention put the U.S. general fertility rate at a record low of 53.1 births per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44, with childbearing shifting toward older women. The total number of births held at roughly 3.6m for a sixth straight year.
  • The US Has One of the Highest Fertility Rates Among Peer Countries — The tempo-adjusted fertility rate, which accounts for shifts in the timing of births, shows the US rate falling since roughly 2009-10 and dropping below the 2.1 births-per-woman replacement level around 2017, reaching 1.82 in 2022. The US decline is less severe than in many peer countries.
  • The Eldest Millennials Had the Same Fertility as the Youngest Baby Boomers — Completed fertility for US women aged 41–44 has been stable for more than two decades, with the large decline having occurred earlier; among those with at least one native-born parent it averaged 1.88 children versus 1.87. What changed is timing: 30-year-old women averaged 1.34 children versus 0.98.

AI Summary. Slowing net immigration could cut US labor force growth so much that the breakeven pace of job creation falls to nearly zero — under 10,000 jobs a month — far below any point in the past 65 years. Monthly payroll declines as large as 100,000 would then not be unusual even with output at potential.

Seth Murray and Ivan Vidangos Federal Reserve Board
Date Posted:

Slow population growth due to the decline in net immigration and an aging workforce suggest breakeven employment growth is now likely “near-zero,” which implies negative job growth will be almost as likely as positive job growth in any given month.

Does lower immigration push breakeven job growth to near zero?

Core argument: The rapid slowing of net immigration may cut labor force growth enough that the breakeven pace of job creation falls to nearly zero, requiring fewer than 10,000 new jobs per month in 2026.

The rapid slowing of net immigration may translate into such a large drop in labor force growth that the breakeven pace could fall to nearly zero, requiring less than 10,000 new jobs per month in 2026. This near-zero pace of breakeven job growth is substantially lower than at any point in the past 65 years. One important implication of a near-zero breakeven pace is that, even if the output of the U.S. economy (GDP) is growing at the same pace as potential output (potential GDP), employment growth in any given month is almost as likely to be negative as it is to be positive. Furthermore, these negative prints of job growth could be large in any given month. The gray shaded area in Figure 2 shows the 90-percent confidence interval of total employment growth based on the BLS's estimate of the standard error of monthly payroll employment growth from their establishment survey. This 90-percent confidence interval implies that it would not be unusual for there to be one or more months in 2026 with declines in total payroll employment as large as -100,000 jobs, even if economic output was growing at the rate of potential output growth.

Takeaways by Macro Roundup® AI

  1. The rapid slowing of net immigration may cut labor force growth enough that the breakeven pace of job creation falls to nearly zero, requiring fewer than 10,000 new jobs per month in 2026.
  2. A near-zero breakeven pace would be substantially lower than at any point in the past 65 years, and it implies that monthly employment growth is almost as likely to be negative as positive even when GDP grows at the rate of potential output.
  3. The 90-percent confidence interval derived from the BLS establishment survey's estimated standard error implies that monthly payroll declines as large as 100,000 jobs in 2026 would not be unusual even with output growing at the rate of potential output.

Related Articles:

  • Break-Even Employment Declines As Unauthorized Immigration Outflows Continue — Net outflows of unauthorized immigrants have lowered the break-even rate of U.S. payroll growth needed to hold the unemployment rate steady, so smaller job gains that once signalled economic slack are now consistent with a balanced labor market. Recent payroll growth has slightly exceeded that break-even rate on average.
  • Macroeconomic Implications Of Immigration Flows In 2025 And 2026: January 2026 Update — The authors estimate that job growth consistent with full employment was 20,000–50,000 a month in the second half of 2025, while reported nonfarm payroll growth averaged about 14,500 and unemployment rose 0.3 percentage points. They project immigration policy changes will keep potential employment growth low, reducing GDP growth by roughly 0.2 percentage points in 2025 and 0.1 in 2026.
  • What Sweeping Revisions and a Blowout Month Tell Us About the U.S. Job Market — Labor Department revisions lowered previously estimated job gains for the past two calendar years, cutting the combined net change in construction, manufacturing, and retail by 115,000 jobs. Healthcare added about 437,000 jobs and social assistance about 321,000 over 12 months, while all other private-sector jobs combined shrank.

AI Summary. The US Treasury and Federal Reserve convened Wall Street leaders over concerns that Anthropic's Mythos artificial intelligence model and similar systems could usher in an era of greater cyber risk. The meeting aimed to ensure banks are aware of the possible risks and are taking precautions to defend their systems.

Todd Gillespie, Katanga Johnson, Hannah Levitt, and Sridhar Natarajan Bloomberg
Date Posted:

The CEOs of the major American banks met with Scott Bessent and Jerome Powell this week to discuss managing the cybersecurity threat posed by Anthropic’s new Mythos model.

Do advanced AI models raise cybersecurity risks for banks?

Core argument: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell summoned Wall Street leaders to an urgent meeting at Treasury headquarters in Washington over concerns that Anthropic's latest artificial intelligence model will usher in an era of greater cyber risk.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell summoned Wall Street leaders to an urgent meeting on concerns that the latest artificial intelligence model from Anthropic will usher in an era of greater cyber risk. Bessent and Powell assembled the group at Treasury’s headquarters in Washington on Tuesday to make sure banks are aware of possible future risks raised by Anthropic’s Mythos and potential similar models, and are taking precautions to defend their systems, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified citing the private discussions.

Takeaways by Macro Roundup® AI

  1. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell summoned Wall Street leaders to an urgent meeting at Treasury headquarters in Washington over concerns that Anthropic's latest artificial intelligence model will usher in an era of greater cyber risk.
  2. Bessent and Powell convened the bank leaders to ensure they are aware of possible future risks raised by Anthropic's Mythos and potential similar models, and are taking precautions to defend their systems.

Related Articles:

  • Anthropic Claims Its New A.I. Model, Mythos, Is a Cybersecurity ‘Reckoning’ — Anthropic says its Claude Mythos Preview model can autonomously conduct security research, including finding and exploiting previously unknown software flaws, often prompted by amateurs. The company claims the model has identified thousands of bugs across major operating systems and browsers, including a 27-year-old flaw in the OpenBSD operating system.
  • Anthropic and Alignment — Designating an AI company a supply-chain risk would be devastating because it depends on cloud hosting from Amazon, Microsoft, and Google, all of which hold US defense contracts, though such authority appears limited to work covered by US government contracts. The author argues governments have incentive to destroy any private firm that dictates terms to their military.
  • Clawed — The US Department of War threatened to designate the artificial intelligence company Anthropic as a supply-chain risk after it refused to accept the government's terms on how its technology may be deployed. The author argues this treats a domestic company like a foreign adversary for expressing different views and making its own decisions about the use of its property.

AI Summary. Elite artificial intelligence researchers have left US firms including Google DeepMind and OpenAI for Chinese companies such as ByteDance, Tencent, and Alibaba. Three China- and San Francisco-based headhunters say they relocated more than 30 US-based researchers to China over 12 months, up from low single digits the prior year.

Zijing Wu Financial Times
Date Posted:

Several high-profile AI researchers have left Google and OpenAI for Chinese firms in recent months. A Tsinghua University official said ~20% of engineering graduates apply to PhDs in the US, down from ~50% prior to the pandemic.

Is China drawing top AI researchers home from the US?

Core argument: Three AI-focused headhunters based in China and San Francisco say they helped hire and relocate more than 30 US-based researchers to China over the past 12 months, up from a low single-digit figure a year earlier.

Over the past 12 months, a wave of elite engineering and scientific talent has returned from the US to Chinese shores. Wu Yonghui, who gave up a senior role at Google DeepMind to lead ByteDance’s push into next-generation large language models, and Yao Shunyu, who left OpenAI to anchor Tencent’s AI development, have returned in the past year. Other returnees include Roger Jiang, a senior scientist who left OpenAI to found his own robotics start-up in Shenzhen, and Zhou Hao, a researcher Alibaba poached from Google DeepMind to refine models. Three AI-focused headhunters based in China and San Francisco say they helped hire and relocate more than 30 US-based researchers to China in the past 12 months, versus a low single-digit a year earlier.

Takeaways by Macro Roundup® AI

  1. Three AI-focused headhunters based in China and San Francisco say they helped hire and relocate more than 30 US-based researchers to China over the past 12 months, up from a low single-digit figure a year earlier.
  2. Wu Yonghui gave up a senior role at Google DeepMind to lead ByteDance's push into next-generation large language models, and Yao Shunyu left OpenAI to anchor Tencent's AI development.
  3. Roger Jiang, a senior scientist, left OpenAI to found a robotics start-up in Shenzhen, and Alibaba poached researcher Zhou Hao from Google DeepMind to refine models.

Related Articles:

  • China and the Future Of Science — China graduates about 5x as many medical and biomedical students as the US each year, 7x as many engineers, and nearly double the number of science and engineering PhDs, while one-sixth to one-fifth of US science and engineering graduates are themselves Chinese. One study found returning Chinese scientists lead-author 2.5x more papers than peers who stay in the US.
  • Litigation Nation, Engineering Empire — Regrouping US college majors to match Chinese disciplines yields a 2:1 ratio of science and engineering to humanities and social sciences, the same ratio as in China. The author argues America's building slowdown reflects structural economic shifts—urbanization reached 70% by 1960 and 85% by 2020, shifting needs toward maintenance—rather than a lawyerly culture.
  • The Global AI Talent Tracker 2.0 — The United States remains the leading destination for the world's most elite AI talent and hosts 60% of top AI institutions. China's share of top AI researchers working domestically rose from 29% in 2019 to 47% in 2022, and India retained one-fifth of its top AI researchers in 2022 versus nearly none in 2019.

Monday, April 13, 2026

AI Summary. Forward price-to-earnings ratios for the largest US information technology companies have compressed from 40x to 20x, returning to levels last seen before the artificial intelligence boom began.

Torsten Sløk Apollo
Date Posted:
Is Database:
Database

The forward P/E ratio of today’s 10 largest components of the S&P 500’s IT sector has halved from 40x to 20x, and is now back to its 2022 level, at the inception, of the AI boom.

Have tech valuations fallen back to pre-AI-boom levels?

Core argument: Forward P/E ratios for the 10 largest S&P 500 Information Technology components have compressed from 40x to 20x, returning to levels last seen before the AI boom began.

The chart compares the forward P/E ratios for the S&P 500 and [NVIDIA, Apple, Microsoft, Broadcom, Oracle, Micron, Palantir, AMD, Cisco, and Applied Materials, the 10 largest components of] the S&P 500 Information Technology sector. Tech valuations have compressed from 40x to 20x, and we are back at levels last seen before the AI boom began.

Takeaways by Macro Roundup® AI

  1. Forward P/E ratios for the 10 largest S&P 500 Information Technology components have compressed from 40x to 20x, returning to levels last seen before the AI boom began.
  2. NVIDIA, Apple, Microsoft, Broadcom, Oracle, Micron, Palantir, AMD, Cisco, and Applied Materials are the 10 largest components of the S&P 500 Information Technology sector, whose forward P/E ratios are compared with those of the S&P 500.

Related Articles:

  • One Hundred Years in the U.S. Stock Markets — Over a century, U.S. publicly traded stocks generated roughly $91tn in shareholder wealth enhancement, with returns strongly positively skewed and dominated by a relatively small number of high-performing firms. Because most possible outcomes fall below the mean in a skewed distribution, the authors argue financial planning should focus on median outcomes or the full distribution.
  • Chart of the Day: The Hateful Eight is 85% of S&P 500 Decline — Eight mega-cap technology companies — Microsoft, Nvidia, Google, Apple, Amazon, Meta, Tesla, and Oracle — account for 85% of the S&P 500's decline, subtracting roughly 576 index points, while the remaining ~490 companies collectively added about 100 points. Because of their outsized index weights, benchmark performance reflects a handful of firms rather than broad market breadth.
  • Chart of the Day: AI Capex, From Bonanza to Burden — Stock price reactions to large artificial intelligence capital spending announcements have shifted from rewarding to penalizing companies, with the valuation multiple markets assign to such spending collapsing and likely turning negative. Technology companies once valued for low debt and low capital intensity are now among the leaders in both.

AI Summary. Anthropic reports that its Mythos model has detected thousands of high-severity cyber vulnerabilities, including ones found by chaining multiple obscure software weaknesses, and that these hacking skills are emergent rather than a designed capability. Mythos completed a corporate network attack simulation estimated to take an expert over 10 hours, which no other frontier model had solved.

Michael Cembalest J.P. Morgan
Date Posted:

Anthropic’s Mythos has “superior” token efficiency to Anthropic’s prior models and is better at complex software engineering. However, Cembalest argues the potential cybersecurity concerns related to the model are real.

Can AI systems autonomously discover major cyber vulnerabilities without being designed to?

Core argument: Anthropic reports that Mythos has detected thousands of high-severity cyber vulnerabilities, some created by chaining together multiple obscure software weaknesses.

Anthropic reports that Mythos has detected thousands of high-severity cyber vulnerabilities, some of them created by chaining together multiple obscure software weaknesses. The remarkable part is that Mythos cyberhacking skills are “emergent” (the byproduct of other goals) since it wasn’t designed specifically for that purpose. In one instance, Mythos solved a corporate network attack simulation estimated to take an expert over 10 hours (no other frontier model had been able to do this), with Anthropic noting that Mythos can chain multiple separate vulnerabilities together to escape the “renderer sandbox” and “operating system sandbox” (security features that isolate JavaScript, HTML and CSS from the operating system, and protect the OS itself). The good news: in a properly configured sandbox with modern patches, Mythos was unable to find any novel exploits.

Takeaways by Macro Roundup® AI

  1. Anthropic reports that Mythos has detected thousands of high-severity cyber vulnerabilities, some created by chaining together multiple obscure software weaknesses.
  2. Mythos solved a corporate network attack simulation estimated to take an expert over 10 hours, which no other frontier model had been able to complete, according to Anthropic.
  3. Anthropic notes that Mythos can chain separate vulnerabilities to escape the renderer and operating system sandboxes, but found no novel exploits in a properly configured sandbox with modern patches.

Related Articles:

  • Anthropic Claims Its New A.I. Model, Mythos, Is a Cybersecurity ‘Reckoning’ — Anthropic says its Claude Mythos Preview model can autonomously conduct security research, including finding and exploiting previously unknown software flaws, often prompted by amateurs. The company claims the model has identified thousands of bugs across major operating systems and browsers, including a 27-year-old flaw in the OpenBSD operating system.
  • Anthropic Model Scare Sparks Urgent Bessent, Powell Warning to Bank CEOs — The US Treasury and Federal Reserve convened Wall Street leaders over concerns that Anthropic's Mythos artificial intelligence model and similar systems could usher in an era of greater cyber risk. The meeting aimed to ensure banks are aware of the possible risks and are taking precautions to defend their systems.
  • Does Gemini Show That Scaling Still Works? No. — The author argues that frontier model pre-training is becoming uneconomic, delivering only marginal capability gains for enormous spending on chips, power, and compute. Meaningful advances have shifted to post-training, inference-time compute, and tool-augmented reasoning rather than raw model size.

AI Summary. Output per hour in the US nonfarm business sector rose 2.1% last year and has averaged 2.1% annually over the past six years, up from 1.5% a year from 2007 to 2019. Over a recent 12-month span the labor force shrank by 554,000 amid immigration crackdowns and large-scale baby-boomer retirements.

Harriet Torry Wall Street Journal
Date Posted:
Is Database:
Database

American non-farm business productivity rose 2.1% in 2025, essentially at its annualized mean since Q4 2019 – compared to a 1.5% average between 2007 and 2019 – amidst the 2025 labor force falloff of 554,000, unprecedented in recent history.

Can the economy grow while the labor force shrinks?

Core argument: Output per hour in the U.S. nonfarm business sector rose 2.1% last year, according to the Labor Department, and has averaged 2.1% over the past six years, up from 1.5% a year over 2007–2019.

According to the Labor Department, output per hour in the nonfarm business sector rose 2.1% last year. Growth has also averaged 2.1% over the past six years, a pickup from the 1.5% a year average from 2007 to 2019. This comes amid a falloff, unprecedented in recent history, in labor-force and job growth. In the year through March, immigration crackdowns and continuing, large-scale retirements among the baby-boomer generation mean the labor force—people working or looking for a job— declined by 554,000.

Takeaways by Macro Roundup® AI

  1. Output per hour in the U.S. nonfarm business sector rose 2.1% last year, according to the Labor Department, and has averaged 2.1% over the past six years, up from 1.5% a year over 2007–2019.
  2. The U.S. labor force—people working or looking for work—declined by 554,000 in the year through March, amid immigration crackdowns and large-scale baby-boomer retirements.
  3. The pickup in U.S. productivity growth coincides with a falloff in labor-force and job growth that is unprecedented in recent history.

Related Articles:

  • Concentrated Growth: The Role Of The IT Sector — Since 1988, total factor productivity in the information technology sector has risen about 178%, versus about 12% across all non-IT sectors combined, while aggregate productivity rose about 40%. The IT sector accounts for roughly 45% of cumulative aggregate productivity growth, once sectoral linkages to downstream industries are weighted in.
  • Labor Force Growth, Breakeven Employment, and Potential GDP Growth — Slowing net immigration could cut US labor force growth so much that the breakeven pace of job creation falls to nearly zero — under 10,000 jobs a month — far below any point in the past 65 years. Monthly payroll declines as large as 100,000 would then not be unusual even with output at potential.
  • How Does Immigration Shape Average Labor Productivity? Evidence from the CPS — A worker-quality index built from US household survey data stayed within 1% of its starting level despite a shift toward more immigrant workers, while official nonfarm business productivity rose 8.2%. Lower predicted wages among Central American arrivals were offset by European and Asian immigrants, whose predicted wages exceed the US-born average by about 20%.

AI Summary. Restaurant executives identify dishwashers as among their hardest positions to fill, with dishwasher pay averaging about $32,500 a year, in the bottom third of restaurant jobs according to jobs platform Indeed. Some high-end restaurants use service fees shared among hourly staff to lift dishwasher earnings and retain them.

Heather Haddon Wall Street Journal
Date Posted:

High churn among dishwashers is putting upward pressure on pay, with some high-end restaurants paying ~$70,000 annually relative to a ~$32,500 mean, and other restaurants investing in automation, such as $15,000 Japanese robotic dishwashers.

Can higher pay solve restaurants' hardest hiring problem?

Core argument: Dishwashers' pay averages roughly $32,500 a year, in the bottom third of restaurant jobs, according to jobs platform Indeed, even as they mop floors, take out the trash and are often the last to leave at night.

Rick Cardenas, CEO of Darden Restaurants, said dishwashers are his top employment concern. At New York City-based Union Square Hospitality Group, which operates Union Square Cafe and Gramercy Tavern, CEO Chip Wade agrees, with the company providing meals and family discounts to help keep its dishwashers. [Overall], dishwashers’ pay averages around $32,500 a year, ranking in the bottom third of restaurant jobs, according to jobs platform Indeed. [But] they are also essential workhorses, often the last to leave at night, after mopping floors and taking out the trash, [and high-end restaurants are facing pressure to raise their compensation]. Chicago-based John’s Food and Wine, which serves a $52 red snapper and an $83 steak, charges a 20% service fee across all orders, divided up among hourly staff. Last year, the restaurant’s dishwashers averaged earnings of $70,000 as a result. “They are highly valued and their value comes with being paid well,” said Tom Rogers, the restaurant’s co-owner. The restaurant has had two of its three dishwashers since around the time it opened two years ago.

Takeaways by Macro Roundup® AI

  1. Dishwashers' pay averages roughly $32,500 a year, in the bottom third of restaurant jobs, according to jobs platform Indeed, even as they mop floors, take out the trash and are often the last to leave at night.
  2. Chicago's John's Food and Wine charges a 20% service fee on all orders that is divided among hourly staff, and its dishwashers averaged $70,000 in earnings last year; two of its three dishwashers have stayed since it opened two years ago.
  3. Darden Restaurants CEO Rick Cardenas said dishwashers are his top employment concern, and Union Square Hospitality Group CEO Chip Wade agrees, with his company providing meals and family discounts to retain dishwashers.

Related Articles:

  • Minimum Wages and the Rise of the Robots — State-level measures of exposure to industrial robots show substantial geographic variation across the US, with the highest concentrations in the Southwest, Midwest, and Northwest and the lowest in the Mountain West, parts of the South, and northern regions. The authors find state robot exposure is positively correlated with state minimum wage increases.
  • Did California’s Fast Food Minimum Wage Reduce Employment? — The authors estimate that California's $20 fast food minimum wage, up from $16, raised fast food sector wages roughly 8% relative to the rest of the country while employment fell about 2.7% relative to fast food employment elsewhere in the US. Their median estimate implies 18,000 fewer California fast food jobs than otherwise.
  • AI and the Fable of the ATMs — Bank tellers per branch fell steadily as automated teller machines spread, and total teller employment held up only because banking deregulation drove a rise in branch numbers; teller jobs are down nearly 40% from their peak. The author argues invoking this case for AI requires identifying an equivalent offsetting source of labor demand.

AI Summary. Households in China with a son save more where local male-female ratios are skewed, while savings by households with a daughter show no such relationship; the authors estimate this competition in the marriage market accounts for more than half the rise in China's household saving rate from 1990 to 2007, contributing to excess saving and a larger current account surplus.

Chang Ma and Shang-Jin Wei National Bureau of Economic Research
Date Posted:
Is Database:
Database

A less-discussed structural factor behind China’s high saving and CA surplus is its skewed sex ratio. Excess marriageable men lead parents of sons to increase saving to boost marital prospects, explaining half of the rise in saving btw 1990 and 2007.

What drives China's current account surplus besides trade policy?

Core argument: The authors estimate that competitive saving driven by China's skewed male-female ratio in the youth cohort accounts for more than half of the increase in China's household saving rate between 1990 and 2007.

One motivation for personal or household saving is to raise one’s competitiveness in the dating and marriage market. This component of saving tends to rise with an increase in the imbalance of the male-female ratio in the marriage age cohort (in either direction). In China’s case, a rise in the male-female ratio in the youth cohort since the 1990s has translated into a powerful force to lift the household saving rate. As the marriage market becomes increasingly competitive for young men, parents with a son raise their saving to improve their son’s relative standing in the [marriage] market. A combination of having a son at home and living in a region with a skewed sex ratio greatly pushes up the household saving rate, [while] savings by households with a daughter are not systematically related to the local sex ratio. Across regions, the local sex ratio in the youth cohort strongly predicts the local household saving rate. Their estimates suggest that this mechanism accounts for more than half of the increase in China’s household saving rate between 1990 and 2007. This upward pressure on saving, combined with relatively stable investment demand, generates persistent excess saving and a higher current account surplus.

Takeaways by Macro Roundup® AI

  1. The authors estimate that competitive saving driven by China's skewed male-female ratio in the youth cohort accounts for more than half of the increase in China's household saving rate between 1990 and 2007.
  2. Chinese households with a son living in regions with skewed sex ratios show markedly higher saving rates, while saving by households with a daughter is not systematically related to the local sex ratio.
  3. The authors argue that upward pressure on Chinese household saving, combined with relatively stable investment demand, generates persistent excess saving and a higher current account surplus.

Related Articles:

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AI Summary. China recorded its first year-on-year increase in factory gate prices since 2022, and a former official of its top macroeconomic planning body warned that costs in energy-intensive sectors such as logistics, transportation, aviation, shipping and steel had jumped as much as 25%, eating into corporate profits and pressuring smaller companies.

Edward White Financial Times
Date Posted:

Factory gate prices in China recorded their first y/y increase since 2022, driven by supply chain disruptions from the Iran War. Gasoline prices are up 38% since the start of the war, and diesel has risen 41%.

Are rising factory gate prices squeezing China's industrial profits?

Core argument: China's domestic spot prices for some high-grade helium have surged 110% since the attacks on Iran began, while some lower-grade liquid helium prices are running 65% higher since the start of the year, according to Trivium China.

In March, China recorded its first year-on-year increase in factory gate prices since 2022. Peng Shaozong, a former official with the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), Beijing’s top macroeconomic planning body, cautioned in an unusually candid policy paper in late March that, amid a complex and severe external environment, China “must abandon wishful thinking” and start considering worst-case scenarios. Peng, who is now vice-president of the China Society for Economic Reform, warned that costs in energy-intensive sectors such as logistics, transportation, aviation, shipping and steel had jumped as much as 25%, eating into corporate profits and putting severe pressure on smaller companies. Analysts from Trivium China, a Beijing-based consultancy, said last week that domestic Chinese spot prices for some high-grade helium had surged 110% since the attacks on Iran were launched while prices for some lower-grade liquid helium were tracking 65% higher since the start of the year.

Takeaways by Macro Roundup® AI

  1. China's domestic spot prices for some high-grade helium have surged 110% since the attacks on Iran began, while some lower-grade liquid helium prices are running 65% higher since the start of the year, according to Trivium China.
  2. Peng Shaozong, a former NDRC official now vice-president of the China Society for Economic Reform, warned in a late-March policy paper that China "must abandon wishful thinking" and begin considering worst-case scenarios amid a complex and severe external environment.
  3. Peng Shaozong warned that costs in energy-intensive sectors including logistics, transportation, aviation, shipping and steel had jumped as much as 25%, eating into corporate profits and putting severe pressure on smaller companies.

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