Americans are spending less time working than they did before the pandemic. That’s good for many of them, but it’s not necessarily great for the inflation-fighting Federal Reserve.
The average U.S. workweek has dropped by more than a half hour over the last three years, according to new research by former Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner Katharine Abraham and her University of Maryland colleague Lea Rendell. That’s enabled some Americans to emulate their European counterparts and spend more time on leisure and other activities.
But it’s also meant a shortfall of labor – equivalent to 2.4 million employees, according to the paper. That shortfall adds to pressures in a hot jobs market that Fed Chair Jerome Powell and his colleagues have been trying to cool, in an effort to bring down an inflation rate that’s more than double their 2% goal.
