Expect rate hikes to move quickly, Fed minutes say
Federal Reserve officials agreed at their last meeting that the central bank needed to move “expeditiously” to bring down the most rapid pace of inflation in 40 years, with most participants expecting as many as three half-a-percentage-point interest rate increases in the months ahead, minutes of the Fed's May meeting showed.
They also discussed the prospect of raising interest rates beyond the so-called neutral rate, at which they are neither supporting nor dampening the economy, to further slow economic growth as policymakers try to combat inflation.
The officials noted that inflationary pressures were evident in a broad array of goods and services, causing hardship for Americans by eroding their incomes and making it hard for businesses to plan for the future. They said that further supply chain disruptions from the Russian invasion of Ukraine and pandemic lockdowns in China also were threatening to push inflation higher.
Their discussion highlighted the urgency of the task ahead, with some officials emphasizing “that persistently high inflation heightened the risk that longer-term inflation expectations could become unanchored,” making it more difficult for the central bank to return inflation to the 2% annual average that the Fed aims for.
BofA, Apple announce more raises
Bank of America and Apple are boosting pay for thousands of U.S. employees.
BofA said last week it will increase wages for employees that earn less than $100,000 a year and adding reimbursements for a portion of electric-vehicle purchases.
Base salaries will climb as much as 7% for workers who have been with the company since 2021 or earlier, according to a memo seen by Bloomberg News. The size of the raises, which start at 3% and kick in next month, will be based on how many years each employee has worked there.
Bank of America also will reimburse $4,000 to employees who buy an electric vehicle, or $2,000 for a new lease, according to a separate memo.
Apple said Wednesday it is raising salaries for U.S. workers by 10% or more as it faces a tight labor market and the spread of unionization efforts across its retail stores.
The Cupertino-based company is expanding its overall compensation budget this year, hiking minimum hourly pay for its staff to at least $22, up 10% from last year. The move follows a pay bump in February after inflation woes and complaints from some staffers about working conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic.
U.S. companies are battling to retain employees in a tight job market, marked by a record number of open positions and historically low unemployment. Bank of America previously announced that its hourly minimum wage would increase to $22 from $21, another step toward its goal of reaching $25 an hour by 2025.
Many visit office just once a week
Nearly half of all office visits this year were once a week, a blow to bosses and civic leaders who want workers back at their desks more regularly.
In the four months before the pandemic hit, the share of once-a-week office visits was 21%, according to data from Basking. io, a workplace-occupancy analytics company. Globally, weekly visits of four to five days were about 20%, with North America and the Asia-Pacific region the highest at 26% each.
Organizations are grappling with how to bring workers into the office when COVID-19 variants continue to emerge and employees are reluctant to give up remote work.
Midweek is emerging as the popular choice to visit the office, according to the findings, with Tuesday the winner at 23% of the total office visits. Just 15% of visits came on Fridays.
And there's more bad news for returnto-office die-hards. It's not just office visits that are on the decline, but also the time spent there. Some 37% of office visits lasted less than six hours in the first four months of 2022, compared with 20% from October 2019 to February 2020.