Job market elasticity is ‘debate among economists now:’ Strategist

Job market elasticity is ‘debate among economists now:’ Strategist

Questions on the elasticity of the labor market have arisen among economists in the aftermath of Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s speech at the Jackson Hole Symposium last Friday.

The S&P 500 and Nasdaq reached all-time highs after Powell announced that the Fed’s substantial further progress test for inflation had been satisfied. But economists have been mixed in their forecasts of how the market, and particularly the labor market, will perform in the coming months.

“I think the debate among economists now is ‘How elastic is that job market?’” Kathy Jones, Charles Schwab’s (SCHW) Chief Fixed Income Strategist said in an interview with Yahoo Finance Live. “Will people come back into the job market if there are jobs available and, kind of, temper some of the wage gains?”