Poorer by the hour, richer by the payroll
American employers added 165,000 jobs in October, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Friday.
Economy
Oil fell. The Fed's problem didn't
Oil fell by more than 7 per cent on Monday, its sharpest one-day drop in months, after Tehran said contacts with Washington aimed at ending the eight-month conflict were continuing.
India's inflation jump has a freight problem
India's consumer prices rose 5.54 per cent in the year to September, up from 4.83 per cent in August, according to provisional figures published by the Ministry of Statistics on October 12.
Gasoline did most of September's inflation
American consumer prices rose 0.6 per cent in September, after 0.4 per cent in August, and 3.7 per cent from a year earlier, up from 3.4 per cent in August.
The Fed gets two signals, and they disagree
For a week at the start of October the bond market was sure of one thing: the Federal Reserve would raise interest rates again this month.
The Fed hikes, and its chair skips the dot plot
The Federal Open Market Committee raised the federal funds rate by 25 basis points to 3.75–4.00 per cent on 18 September.
The rate hike the Fed can't avoid
The benchmark 10-year US Treasury yield rose to 4.954 per cent on 11 September after a very weak Treasury debt buyback showed that liquidity in the bond market is thinning as inflation refuses to fade.
Special Report
Labor Day: Hiring is strong enough to worry the Fed
The August employment report, landing just before Labor Day, showed an American jobs market in fine health.
Blowout jobs, tighter Fed
Non-farm payrolls for August came in far above every Wall Street forecast. The report showed an economy in no need of help, and it left little room for anyone still arguing that the Fed should ease.
Is the oil shock turning into wage inflation?
Headline consumer price inflation rose to 3.4 per cent in July, pushed up by hundred-dollar crude.
The market bets on a Warsh hike
The two-year Treasury yield rose to about 4.24 per cent on 21 August, as markets stopped pricing rate cuts from the Fed and started pricing a rise under its chairman, Kevin Warsh.
Three Fed officials want a hike
The Federal Open Market Committee voted 9–3 on 29 July to leave rates unchanged, and all three dissenters wanted an immediate rise of 25 basis points.
One tariff ends, another begins
The temporary 10 per cent tariffs imposed under Section 122 reached the end of their 150-day statutory life at midnight on 24 July, and at that moment the administration unveiled a tough new tariff regime under Section 301.
Is it oil or tariffs pushing prices up?
A new statistical breakdown of the mid-2026 rise in inflation takes up the question that divides the Federal Reserve.
The Fed's hawks start to multiply
The Federal Open Market Committee ended its June meeting with the federal funds rate unchanged at 3.50–3.75 per cent.
What does Warsh want?
Jerome Powell's term as Fed chairman formally ends in mid-May, and markets have turned their full attention to Kevin Warsh, who takes over.
The world is running down its oil reserves
The chief executive of Saudi Aramco told an energy conference in Riyadh on 11 May that the world is using up its emergency stocks of crude and refined products at a rate it cannot keep up.
Diesel prices are the warning sign
Wholesale diesel crack spreads have climbed steeply and without pause, and energy analysts and industrial economists think they matter more than the headline Brent price that most commentators watch.
Powell's final meeting
Jerome Powell chaired his last meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee on 28 April, closing an eight-year term that took in a pandemic, the worst inflation in decades and a run of trade wars.
The ceasefire that didn't open the strait
Hopes raised by the Middle East ceasefire were gone by 13 April. The United States Navy did not escort commercial tankers through the Strait of Hormuz.
Asia pays the most for Hormuz
China, India, Japan and South Korea take more than eighty per cent of the petroleum that passes through the Strait of Hormuz.
The Fed faces a war shock
The Federal Open Market Committee left the federal funds rate at 3.50–3.75 per cent at its March meeting.
Emergency oil can't fill the gap
The International Energy Agency's coordinated release of 400 million barrels of crude and refined products from strategic reserves was billed as a multilateral effort with no precedent.
How much will oil push up prices?
Brent crude is trading well above $100 a barrel for the first time since August 2022, and central bank economists are rushing to redo their estimates of how much will feed through into wider inflation.
The oil shock the world feared
Brent crude shot above $100 a barrel after war broke out in the Persian Gulf on 28 February.
Explainer
Who is Kevin Warsh?
On 30 January the White House nominated Kevin Warsh, a former Federal Reserve governor, to succeed Jerome Powell as Fed chairman.
The job market's confusing signals
The unemployment rate rose to 4.6 per cent in November, and the jobs report left economists' models in a muddle.
Special Report
Boxing Day: Holiday shopping with missing data
Shops opened for the Boxing Day sales at the end of a holiday season run almost entirely without official data.
The inflation data with a missing month
Headline inflation eased to 2.7 per cent year-on-year in November, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported.
Special Report
Christmas: The boom that arrived late
Wall Street got an early present this holiday season: a delayed government report showing third-quarter gross domestic product growing at 4.3 per cent.
A 4.3% boom, reported late
The US economy grew at an annualised 4.3 per cent in the third quarter, according to gross domestic product figures from the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
One cut, three dissents
The Federal Open Market Committee cut the federal funds target by 25 basis points to 3.50–3.75 per cent at its last meeting of 2025, and formally started $40 billion a month of Reserve Management Purchases.
QE by another name?
Eight days after quantitative tightening officially ended on 1 December, the Federal Reserve said it would buy $40 billion of Treasury bills a month under a permanent programme of 'Reserve Management Purchases' (RMPs).
One speech that flipped the Fed odds
A single speech by John Williams, president of the New York Fed, reset market expectations for Federal Reserve policy on 21 November.
The longest shutdown's lasting cost
The longest federal government shutdown in modern American history has ended after forty-three days.
The Fed stops shrinking its balance sheet
At its October meeting the Federal Open Market Committee cut interest rates by 25 basis points, as expected, taking the federal funds target to 3.75–4.00 per cent.
One inflation report in a data blackout
The federal government shutdown, now several weeks old, has halted most of the statistical agencies.
Flying blind: no jobs report
The first Friday of October came and went without an Employment Situation report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, one of the rare gaps of its kind in modern monetary history.
A shutdown would leave the Fed flying blind
Congress is heading for a 1 October funding deadline with no compromise in sight, and the Federal Reserve is bracing for the consequences.
The Fed cuts, cautiously
The Federal Open Market Committee cut the federal funds target by 25 basis points to a range of 4.00 to 4.25 per cent, the first move in a new easing cycle.
Trump's man joins the Fed
The Senate confirmed Stephen Miran to a vacant seat on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors on 15 September.
911,000 jobs that never existed
The Bureau of Labor Statistics said in its preliminary annual benchmark revision that payrolls in the twelve months to March 2025 had been overstated by 911,000 jobs.
Special Report
Anniversary: Three years, what we got right
This column was launched in September 2022, and three full years on it has checked its main macroeconomic calls against what actually happened.
Just 22,000 jobs
The US economy added just 22,000 non-farm jobs in August, and the unemployment rate rose to 4.3 per cent.
Special Report
Labor Day: Hiring has stalled
The American labour market reached Labor Day in an uncomfortable state, with hiring largely frozen but few large layoffs.
Trump moves to fire a Fed governor
On 25 August President Donald Trump moved to remove Lisa Cook, a Federal Reserve governor, before her term expires, and she has said she will fight the dismissal.
Powell opens the door to cuts
Jerome Powell used his annual speech at the Jackson Hole Economic Symposium to signal that the Federal Reserve is preparing to cut interest rates.
