Posted To: MBS Commentary
Richmond Fed President Tom Barkin had the mic this morning at the NC Chamber of Commerce and one of his comments does a good job of capturing the essence of a very hot topic. In not so many words, Barkin said lower wage employees have increased aspirations for what they need to go back to work. In other words, we’re all still waiting to see what the labor market looks like when we can no longer lean on enhanced unemployment benefits as an explanation for what is still a very big chasm between pre-covid labor metrics and the current reality. While we wait, markets seem disinclined to make any big bets. In fact, the consolidation range seen so far in 2021 has been far narrower than we were prepared for based on the last major period of consolidation in late 2019 (something we referred to…(read more)
