Podcast appearances and mentions of sarah wolfe

Welcome to the Engineering Influence podcast, where we delve into the complexities and opportunities in today's economic landscape. Hosted by Diana O' Lare, Director of Market Intelligence for the American Council of Engineering Companies, this episode is part of our new series, The Market Edge. We are joined by Sarah Wolfe, a Senior Economist and Strategist at Morgan Stanley Wealth Management. With a wealth of experience and insights, Sarah discusses pivotal topics such as tariffs, inflation, immigration, and their impact on various sectors including construction and manufacturing. Gain an understanding of the possible recession implications and how firms can navigate these challenges. Dive in to explore the broader economic effects of current policies, potential positive catalysts like tax negotiations, and the global trade dynamics affecting engineering firms. Don't miss this insightful conversation aimed at empowering engineering businesses to adapt and grow in an ever-changing market.

Greg Daco, chief economist at EY, says the economic numbers are strong, but the high level of uncertainty has it nearing a tipping point and making recession more likely. He sees the potential for consumer issues and a recession risking, and says there is a real -- but modest -- chance of stagflation putting the Federal Reserve in a real policy bind. Sarah Wolfe, senior economist and strategist for thematic and macro investing at Morgan Stanley Wealth Management, talks about what other economists are thinking, as she highlights the March Economic Policy Survey, released today by the National Association for Business Economics.  David Trainer of New Constructs revisits Carvana, a stock which has defied gravity for over a year; he says it can't shake its status as a zombie stock headed for a massive decline. John Barr, portfolio manager for the Needham Funds, discusses his aggressive growth strategy.  

Jenny Bloody Valentine is This Week's Guest on The LFC Podcast. Listen as we discuss her last LFC Bouts against Sarah Wolfe & Bella Ink, Her Match With Leela Feist For Infamous Sports Entertainment, And So Much More. Jennifer Thomas IG: www.instagram.com/wrestlejenniferthomas/ Jennifer Thomas Twitter: twitter.com/RealJenThomas Session Girls IG: www.instagram.com/officialsessiongirls/?hl=en Session Girls Twitter:x.com/Sessiongirls Infamous Sports Entertainment Twitter: x.com/KarmaKlubLV Infamous Sports Entertainment IG:www.instagram.com/infamoussportsen…GVpMTJwYw%3D%3D# LFC Website: www.lfcfights.com LFC Twitter: mobile.twitter.com/lfc_fights LFC IG: instagram.com/fights_lfc?igsh... LFC Tiktok: www.tiktok.com/@lfcfights LFC FB: www.facebook.com/LingerieFightingOfficial LFC Youtube: www.youtube.com/c/LingerieFightingChampionships

Our US Consumer Economist Sarah Wolfe lays out the impact of the Federal Reserve's rate cut on labor market and consumers, including which goods could see a rise in spending over the next year.----- Transcript -----Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Sarah Wolfe, from the Morgan Stanley US Economics Team. Today, a look at what the Fed cut means for US consumers. It's Thursday, September 26, at 2 PM in Slovenia. Earlier this week, you heard Mike Wilson and Seth Carpenter talk about the Fed cut and its impact on markets and central banks around the world. But what does it actually mean for US consumers and their wallets? Will it make it easier to pay off credit card debt and secure mortgages? We explore these questions in this episode. Looking back to last week, the FOMC cut rates by a larger chunk than many anticipated as risks from inflation have come down significantly while labor market risks have risen. Now, with inflation wrangled in, it's time to start reducing the restrictiveness of policy to prevent a rise in the unemployment rate and a slump in economic growth. In fact, my colleague Mike Wilson believes the US labor data will be the most important factor driving US equities for the next three to six months. Despite potential risks, the current state of the U.S. labor market is still solid and that's where the Fed wants it to stay. The health of the labor market, in my opinion, is best reflected in the health of consumer spending. If we look at this quarter, we're tracking over 3 per cent growth in real consumption, which is a strong run rate for consumption by all measures. And if we look at how the whole year has been tracking, we've only seen a very modest slowdown in real consumer spending from 2.7 per cent last year to 2.5 per cent today. For a bit of perspective, if we go back to 2018 and 2019, when rates were much lower than they are today, and we had a tight labor market, consumption was running closer to 2 to 2.3 per cent. So we can definitively say, consumption is pretty solid today. What is most notable, however, is the slowdown in nominal consumption which takes into account unit growth and pricing. This has slowed much more notably this year from 5.6 per cent last year to 4.9 per cent today. It's reflected by the significant progress we've seen in inflation this year across goods and services, despite solid unit growth – as reflected by stronger real consumer spending. Our US Economics team has been stressing that the fundamentals that drive consumption – which are labor income, wealth, and credit – would be cooler this year but still support healthy spending. When it comes to consumption, in my opinion, I think what matters most is labor income. A slowdown in job growth has stoked fears of slower consumer spending, but if you look at aggregate labor income growth and household wealth, across both equities and real estate, those factors remain solid. So, then we ask ourselves, what has driven more of the slowdown in consumer spending this past year?And with that, let's go back to interest rates. Rates have been high, and credit conditions have been tight – undeniably restraining consumer spending. Elevated interest rates have pushed banks to pull back on lending and have curbed household demand for credit. As a result, if you look at consumer loan growth from banks, it's fallen from about 12 per cent in 2022 to 7 per cent last year, and just 3 per cent in the first half of this year. Tight credit is dampening consumption. When interest rates are high, people buy less -- especially on credit. And this is a key principle of monetary policy and it's used to lower inflation. But it can have adverse effects. The brunt of the pain has been borne by the lowest-income households which rely heavily on revolving credit for basic spending needs and more easily max out on their credit limits and fall delinquent. As such, as the Fed begins to lower interest rates, the rates charged on consumer loan products have started to moderate. And with a lag, we expect credit conditions to ease up as well, allowing households across the income distribution to begin to access more credit. We should first see a rebound in durable goods spending – like home furnishing, electronics, appliances, and autos. And then that should all be further supported by more activity in the housing market. While interest rates are on their way down, they are still relatively elevated, which means the rebound in consumption will take time. The good news, however, is that we do think we are moving through the bottom for durable goods consumption – with pricing for goods likely to stabilize next year and unit growth to pick back up.Thank you for listening. If you enjoy the show, please leave us a review wherever you listen and share Thoughts on the Market with a friend or colleague today.

With tax season underway, our U.S. economist explains what the average refund will look like and how people are likely to spend it.----- Transcript -----Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Sarah Wolfe, from the Morgan Stanley US Economics Team. Along with my colleagues bringing you a variety of perspectives, today I'll talk about the US federal tax refunds season. It's March 5, at 10 AM in New York. The IRS began accepting tax returns for the 2023 tax year on January 29, 2024. This is about a week later than when they started accepting tax returns in 2023. As a result, the number of refunds and the total amount of refunds issued by the end of February is about 12 per cent below where they were at the same time last year. However, if we look at the average refund amount that households are getting in the third and fourth week of the tax refund season, they are about in line with the prior year. As such, we expect that total refunds will ramp up to an average amount similar to last year; so that's about $3100 per person. While data show that refunds can fluctuate notably on a weekly and daily basis, total tax refunds through the end of February ran about in line compared to the same period over the past five years. Let's remember though that they're not going to be as high as 2022 when refunds were much larger due to COVID-related stimulus programs. So, we can compare it to the past five years apart from 2022.February through April remains the period where most tax refunds are received and spent, with the greatest impact on consumer spending in March. Our own AlphaWise survey of household intentions around the refunds reveals that households typically spend about a third of their refunds on everyday purchases – such as grocery, gas, apparel. Another third goes toward paying off debt, and the remaining third into savings. Last year, higher inflation pushed more households to use their refunds on everyday purchases. This year, it is likely that everyday purchases will remain a top priority, but we do think that more refunds will go in towards paying off debt than last year. There's a couple of reasons why we think this. First, there was an expiration of the student loan moratorium at the end of 2023. This is affecting millions of student loan borrowers and putting more pressure on their debt service obligations. And then we're also seeing rising credit card and consumer loan delinquencies, which reveal pressure to pay down debt. If we look at spending intentions by income group, upper income households are more likely to save any tax refund they may get or spend it on home improvement and vacations. So, a bit more on the discretionary side.When we think about tax liabilities instead of refunds, anomalous factors make this year's tax season a poor comparison to last year – because last year several states got an extended deadline due to natural disasters. A delayed Tax Day largely impacts filers who have a tax liability or a complicated financial situation and prefer to file later. This has larger implications for the fiscal deficit since delayed tax remittances caused a larger deficit in the third quarter of 2023, and then it narrowed in the fourth quarter when remittances came in. But in terms of refunds and consumer spending, filers who expect refunds tend to file early and on time. An extension of the deadline has very little impact on this group of consumers.All in all, based on early data, we think that total tax refunds this year will be similar to last year, though higher than pre-COVID years due to inflation. Barring factors that can lead to a significant shift of the filing deadline, we should see a more normal timeline for tax remittances, but it is still important to track closely how the tax season evolves.Thank you for listening. If you enjoy the show, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and share Thoughts on the Market with a friend or colleague today.

As grocery and dining costs continue to increase, our analysts break down how this has affected consumers and when food prices may stabilize.----- Transcript -----Sarah Wolfe: Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Sarah Wolfe from the US economics team.Simeon Gutman: And I'm Simeon Gutman; Hardlines, Broadlines, and Food Retail Analyst.Sarah Wolfe: Today on the podcast, we'll discuss what's happening with food prices and how that's affecting the US consumer. It's Tuesday, February 27th at 10am in New York.It was almost exactly a year ago when I came on this podcast to talk about why eggs cost so much at the start of 2023. Here we are. It's a year later and food in the US still costs more. The overall inflation basket and personal consumption expenditures inflation was 2.6 per cent year over year in December; but dining out prices are still up 5.2 per cent. I'd like to admit that grocery prices are a little bit better. They're just a tad over 1 per cent. So we've seen a little bit more disinflation there. But overall food is still up and it's still expensive.Simeon, can you give us a little bit more color on what's actually going on here?Simeon Gutman: Yeah, so food prices measured by the CPI, as you mentioned, up about a per cent. The good news, Sarah, is that your eggs are actually deflating by about 30 per cent at the moment; so maybe you can buy a couple more eggs. But in general, we're following this descent that we started -- about almost two years ago where food prices were up double digits. A year ago, we were up mid single digits. And now we're down to this one per cent level. Looks like they're gonna hold. But so prices are coming in; but not necessarily deflating, but dis-inflating.Sarah Wolfe: Can you help me understand that a little bit better? You mentioned that some commodity prices are coming down, like food prices. So why is overall inflation for food still rising? And dining out, grocery stores, both of them are still seeing price increases.Simeon Gutman: Well, commodity prices, which is the most visible input to a lot of food items -- that's coming down in a lot of cases, and I'll mention some that haven't. But there's many other components into food pricing, besides the pure commodity. That's labor; you have freight; you have transportation. Those costs -- there's still some inflation running through the system -- and those costs make up a decent chunk of the total product costs. And that's why we're still seeing prices higher year over year on average for the entire group of products.Sarah Wolfe: How are grocery sales actually performing though? Are we seeing demand destruction from the higher pricing? Or has unit growth actually been holding up well?Simeon Gutman: First of all, total grocery sales are just slightly negative. We saw a little ray of hope in January, positive for the month; but likely driven by some stocking up ahead of weather events that happened in the country. So we were barely positive. It looked like we were getting out of the negative territory; but the first few weeks of February, we're back into the negative territory. Negative one, negative two per cent.Units are negative. Negative three to four per cent. If we look at CPI as sort of a proxy for the product categories that are doing better than others: dairy and fruit units, those are up mid to high single digits. And as I mentioned, we're seeing egg prices down significantly. We're also seeing a lot of deflation with fish and seafood as well as meat.So, and if you use that as a way to think about the various product categories that consumers are demanding, but overall industry sales are flat to slightly negative; and we think this negative cadence continues going forward.Sarah, let me turn it to you. You monitor the U. S. consumer closely. How big a bite of the US wallet is food right now? Groceries, eating out at restaurants, etc., and how does that compare to prior periods?Sarah Wolfe: Let's start high level with essential spending, which I consider to be groceries, energy and shelter. That typically averages about 40 per cent of household disposable income pre-COVID. And now if you add on all the price increases we've seen across all three categories, it's an additional 5 per cent of disposable income today.And this matters a lot when you're a lower income household and already over 90 per cent of your disposable income was going towards these essential categories pre-COVID. If I look at grocery prices alone, they're up 20 per cent on average since the start of the pandemic. And prior to COVID on a per household basis, they were spending $4,600 a year on groceries. And now that's $5,700 a year. More than a thousand dollars more each year on groceries.The last time we saw such extreme food inflation was the 1980s. Granted, I have to mention that we've also seen a really notable rise in disposable income too. So if you look at grocery spending as a share of disposable income, it's only marginally higher than it was pre-COVID. It was six and a half per cent, now it's seven per cent.What's really driving higher wallet share towards food is this dining out category -- and it's a price and unit story. On the pricing side, we have high labor costs, high food prices still. And on the unit side, there's still a much more notable preference to dine out to enjoy services.And so you mentioned that unit growth has been a lot weaker for groceries. That's not what we're seeing in the dining out space. And overall, it's been driving total food spend as a share of disposable income to high since the early 1990s.Simeon Gutman: So food spending is up a lot. But the situation is somewhat confusing. You have US inflation data and forecasts seem to be suggesting that food prices should be coming down. That doesn't seem to be happening. We're still looking for inflation. Can you talk about the macro factors behind these persistently high food prices?Sarah Wolfe: So as you mentioned, we have seen disinflation, right? So grocery prices are down from 12 per cent year over year in the summer of 2022 to about 1.5 per cent today. Dining out is down from 8 per cent to about 5 per cent. So there's a bit of progress on inflation growth. But price levels are not coming down. They're still rising and that definitely does not feel good to households.The reason we're still seeing a rise in prices, as you've mentioned, are supply chain disruptions, there was an avian flu, and we see very high labor costs. Some of the forward-looking indicators are pointing to more progress on inflation for food, so we know that labor costs are starting to moderate as supply demand imbalances in the labor market are getting a bit better. We know that supply chain disruptions have been unwinding. But all these things together are not pointing to price deflation. Only disinflation. So growth, but at a slower pace.Simeon Gutman: Yeah, so some of this backdrop continues. When can the US consumer expect some kind of relief, and then what data and indicators are you watching closely?Sarah Wolfe: Unfortunately, prices are still going up in our forecast, but they're going to stabilize around one to one and a half per cent year over year for grocery. So kind of where we are right now, that's what we expect for the next year and a half or so. But the price levels are going to remain elevated.As I mentioned in the last response. We know we're watching the supply chain indicators to see if commodity prices start to come up again. If freight costs start to come up again because of geopolitical tensions. We're not seeing any notable rise there yet but we're watching it very closely. And we're also watching what happens with the labor market. Do we continue to see slack in the labor market that'll bring down wages and bring down labor costs? Or do we continue to run a very tight labor market.Simeon, thanks for taking the time to talk.Simeon Gutman: Great speaking with you, Sarah.Sarah Wolfe: And thanks for listening. If you enjoy Thoughts on the Market, please leave us a review on Apple podcasts and share the podcast with a friend or colleague today.

Despite a likely softening of the labor market, U.S. consumer spending should remain healthy for 2024.----- Transcript -----Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Sarah Wolfe from the US Economics Team. Along with my colleagues bringing you a variety of perspectives; today I'll give you an update on the US consumer. It's Monday, February 12, at 10 AM in New York.Lately, there's been a lot of mixed data on the health of the US consumer. We saw a very strong holiday spending in November and December; very strong jobs reports in recent months. But we're forecasting somewhat softer data in January for retail sales. And we know that delinquencies have been rising for households.When we look towards the rest of 2024, we're still expecting a healthy US consumer based on three key factors. The first is the labor market. Obviously, the labor market has been holding up very well and we've actually been seeing a reacceleration in payrolls in the last few months. What this means is that real disposable income has been stronger, and it's going to remain solid in our forecast horizon. We do overall expect some cooling in disposable income though, as the labor market softens. Overall, this is the most important thing though for consumer spending. If people have jobs, they spend money.The second is interest rates. This has actually been one of the key calls for why we did not expect the US consumer to be in a recession two and half years ago, when the Fed started raising interest rates. There's a substantial amount of fixed rate debt, and as a result less sensitivity to debt service obligations. We estimate that 90 per cent of household debt is locked in at a fixed rate. So over the last couple of years, as the Fed has been raising interest rates, we've seen just that: less sensitivity to higher interest rates. Right now, debt service costs are still below their 2019 levels. We're expecting to see a little upward pressure here over the course of this year – as rates are higher for longer, as housing activity picks up a bit; but we expect there will be a cap on it.The last thing is what's happening on the wealth side. We've seen a 50 percent accumulation in real estate wealth since the start of the pandemic. And we're expecting to see very little deterioration in housing wealth this year. So people are still feeling pretty good; still have a lot of home equity in their homes. So overall, good for consumer spending. Good for household sentiment.So to sum it up, this year, we're seeing a slowing in the US consumer, but still relatively strong. And the fundamentals are still looking good.Thanks for listening. If you enjoy the show, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and share Thoughts on the Market with a friend or colleague today.

For 23 January 2024, Tuesday of week 3 in Ordinary Time, based on Mark 3:31-35 (Photo by Sarah Wolfe on Unsplash)

Third-quarter consumer spending was strong, but a growing gap between middle- and higher-income consumers may affect the holiday shopping season.----- Transcript -----Michelle Weaver: Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Michelle Weaver from the Morgan Stanley U.S Equity Strategy Team. Sarah Wolfe: And I'm Sarah Wolfe and the U.S Economics Team. Michelle Weaver: On this special episode of the podcast, we wanted to give you an update on the U.S. consumer and a preview of our holiday spending expectations this year. It's Tuesday, November 21st at 10 a.m. in New York. Michelle Weaver: Sarah, recent data releases and your modeling suggests that U.S. consumer spending will begin to slow more meaningfully in 2024 and 2025. And you've argued that the slowdown in consumption is driven by a cooling labor market which weighs on real disposable income and elevated rates, putting further pressure on debt service costs. Given all this, would you say that the U.S. consumer is still healthy as we approach the holiday season and the end of the year? Sarah Wolfe: You're exactly right. Consumer spending in the third quarter was very strong, and we know that there's going to be some more of that underlying momentum pulled into the fourth quarter, which includes holiday shopping season. Just last week, we got the October retail sales report, which did show a notable deceleration in consumer spending from the third quarter into the fourth quarter, but still positive retail sales. There are a few reasons, however, that, you know, we take pause at saying that the holiday shopping season is going to be very strong. The first is that there is this growing discrepancy between the health of a struggling lower middle income household versus the solid higher income household. The second is the expiration of the student loan forbearance. We know that about half of borrowers have started making payments as of October. And the third is the wallet shift away from goods and toward services that will impact the type of holiday spending. I would like to hone in on this discrepancy between the health of the lower middle income household and higher income households. We've highlighted that lower middle income households have been pulling back more in discretionary and they've been trading down as they're disproportionately being hit by tighter lending standards, higher inflation, higher debt service costs. And that's likely going to reflect the type of holiday spending that we see this year. In particular, higher income households have just more buying power, they're more willing to spend on experiences. And so we could just see that holiday shopping that's more skewed towards higher income spenders and that's more experience oriented will be the winners of this holiday shopping season. Michelle Weaver: What specific trends have you seen in U.S. consumer spending in the third quarter? And what do you expect for the final quarter of this year? Sarah Wolfe: Consumer spending in the third quarter was really strong because the labor market largely was very resilient, and as a result, we saw that there was just more momentum for goods and services spending, so both reaccelerated into the third quarter. However, what we could see is that there still is this clear preference shift on experiences over goods in particular accommodations, travel, etc. And so I think that's going to feed through into the type of holiday shopping that we see this year. Michelle Weaver: And I know that during Covid, consumers were able to save a lot more money than usual. How are these excess savings balances looking now and what do you expect going forward? Sarah Wolfe: We estimate that about 40% of the excess savings stockpile has been spent down, so there's still a pretty hefty 60% of excess savings sitting among households. However, we do not expect much more drawdown in excess savings across 2024. The reason is that our work shows that the excess savings stockpile is increasingly being held by the highest income households. They, first of all, have a lower propensity to consume out of savings, but more importantly, they had been willing to spend down their excess savings over the past two years. But that was to fuel their pent up demand for the services, economy recovery. And now that we've seen a full recovery on that side of the economy, there's really just less desire, less willingness to spend out of excess savings. Further, we're seeing that there's been an increasing movement from liquid to less liquid assets. So more and more of that savings is not just sitting in cash under the bed and so it's less likely to make its way into consumer spending. Michelle, based on your recent survey work in collaboration with U.S. Equity Analyst, what are you seeing in terms of holiday spending intentions for U.S. consumers this year compared to last year? Michelle Weaver: So the majority of holiday shoppers are planning to keep their holiday budgets roughly the same this year. And this means that retailers will be competing for a similarly sized budget pool versus last year and have to offer competitive prices to get shoppers to choose their products. As consumers seek out deals and discounts, they're also likely to stagger their purchases throughout the holiday season. Sarah Wolfe: Can we dig a little bit more into what people plan to spend their money on for the holiday season? I talked about how we're seeing this clear preference away from goods and towards services in the economic data. Is that where you're hearing in the survey data about holiday spending intentions? Michelle Weaver: Definitely, the services over goods shift that's been playing out since the end of the pandemic is likely to remain relevant this holiday shopping season. Our analysts are expecting weaker results in goods oriented industries like clothing and apparel, toys and electronics, while airlines remain the one bright spot, with consumers continuing to prioritize holiday travel. The biggest spending declines are expected to come in luxury goods, sports equipment, home and kitchen products and electronics. Sarah Wolfe: And let's talk about e-commerce. I just feel like the promotions for online sales have just gotten earlier and earlier every year. How big is e-commerce going to be for this holiday shopping season? Michelle Weaver: Overall, the share of expected holiday spending is evenly split between in-store and online platforms. Lower income consumers expect to shop slightly more in store, though, while upper income consumers have a higher share allocated to online shopping. For e-commerce more broadly, the industry has decelerated since the summer, setting up for a slower holiday. Sarah, you've been following the disinflationary cycle that's been underway, mainly driven by core goods deflation and disinflation in housing Consumer Price Index. October's CPI came in below expectations. Is this a relief for the consumer wallet and where do you expect inflation to trend from here? Sarah Wolfe: This is definitely a relief for consumers. We're seeing that as inflation continues to step down with a tight labor market, real wages are rising and this is really a silver lining for households for next year. In particular, if you look at real wages, they were -3% year-over-year across 2022. I mean, deeply negative, really stripping away consumer buying power. And then if you look at today, because of all the progress we've got in inflation without a hit to the labor market, real wages are now up. And we're expecting that real wages will continue to rise into 2024 as inflationary pressures abate and the labor market remains resilient. Michelle Weaver: Sarah, thanks for taking the time to talk. Sarah Wolfe: It was great speaking with you, Michelle. Michelle Weaver: And thanks for listening. If you enjoy Thoughts on the Market, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and share the podcast with a friend or colleague today.

Even with the possibility of a fourth-quarter slowdown in consumer spending, positive data across the board suggests the U.S. economy is still on track for a soft landing.----- Transcripts -----Ellen Zentner: Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Ellen Zentner, Morgan Stanley's Chief U.S. Economist. Sarah Wolfe: And I'm Sarah Wolfe, also on Morgan Stanley's U.S. Economics Team. Sarah Wolfe: And today on the podcast, we'll be discussing our updated U.S. economic outlook for the final quarter of 2023. It's Thursday, September 21, at 10 a.m. in New York. Sarah Wolfe: Ellen, since early 2022, you and our team have had a conviction that the U.S. economy would slow without a crash and experienced a soft landing. We maintained that view in our mid-year outlook four months ago, but we've recently revised it with an expectation for even stronger growth in the U.S.. Can you highlight some of the main drivers behind our team's more upbeat outlook? Ellen Zentner: Yes, so I think for me, the most exciting thing about the upward revisions we've made to GDP is that there's a real manufacturing renaissance going on in the U.S. and according to our equity analysts, it is durable and organic. So it's not just being driven by fiscal policy around the CHIPS Act and the IRA, but this is de-risking of supply chains, it's happening across semiconductors, our industrials teams have noted it, our construction teams and our LATAM teams around what's going on in terms of on-shoring, nearshoring with Mexico being the biggest beneficiary. So I think that's a really exciting development that is durable and then the consumer has been more resilient than expected. And I know that, Sara, you've been writing about Taylor Swift effect, Beyoncé effect, Barbenheime, you know, and it's just added to a very robust consumer this year than we had initially expected. Sarah Wolfe: Ellen, and what about inflation? What role does inflation continue to play at this point? Is the disinflationary process still underway and what are our expectations for the rest of this year and next? Ellen Zentner: Yes, So I think the disinflationary process has actually played out faster than expected. Well, let me say it's coming in line with our forecast, but much faster than, say, the Fed had expected. And we do expect that to continue. I think some of the concerns have been that the economy has been so strong this year and so would that interrupt that disinflationary process? And we don't think that's the case. The upward revisions that we've taken to GDP that reflect things like the manufacturing renaissance also come with stronger productivity, and they're not necessarily inflationary. But Sara, since your focus is on the U.S. consumer, let me turn it to you and ask you about oil prices. So oil prices have rallied here, you've spent a good deal of time looking at the impact that rising prices might have on real consumer spending, so how do you go about analyzing that? Sarah Wolfe: You're correct. Energy prices do impact consumer spending and in particular, when the price jumps are driven by supply side factor. So supply coming offline, that acts like a tax on households and we see a decline in real spending. We in particular see real spending impacted in the durable goods sector and in autos in particular. We have seen quite a rally recently in oil prices. It's definitely not to the extent of what we saw last year, but what we're going to be watching is how sustained the rally in oil prices are. The higher prices stay for longer, the more it impacts real consumer spending. Ellen Zentner: So retail sales have been strong, when are they going to be slowing? I mean we're going into the fourth quarter here, all on the consumer it looks like it's been stronger than expected. And I know this is sort of a maybe too broad of a question, but are consumers still in good health? Sarah Wolfe: As you mentioned earlier, consumer spending has been more resilient than expected. In part, it's been due to the fact that we've seen a full rebound in discretionary services spending, but it was not paired with a one for one payback in discretionary goods, which we've seen in the retail sales report, have held up better. And so while the consumer remains fairly healthy, we do expect to still see that pretty notable spending slowdown in the fourth quarter and part of that is being driven by the fundamentals. We have a cooling labor market, a rising savings rate, higher debt service obligations. But then as you also mentioned earlier, we had the roll off of some of these one off lifts like Barbenheimer, Beyoncé and Taylor Swift. Ellen Zentner: So why doesn't the consumer just fall off a cliff then? Sarah Wolfe: Because part of our big call for the soft landing is that the labor market is going to be relatively resilient. We do have jobs slowing, but we do not have a substantial rise in the unemployment rate because we think this labor hoarding thesis is going to help support the labor market. So at the end of the day, while there's pressure mounting on consumer wallets, if they have a job, they will continue to spend, though at a slower pace. Ellen Zentner: All right. So if labor income and healthy job growth is the key to consumer spending, you know, what are we telling investors about the UAW strike? Because that really muddies the picture for how strong the labor market is. Sarah Wolfe: The UAW strike is definitely worth watching, there's 146,000 union workers that work for the big three. At this point, the impacts should be fairly contained, we only have 13,000 workers on strike at three different plants. However, if we see a large-scale strike of all the union workers, that lasts for some time, I mean that's definitely going to take a hit to the labor market. It would be a one off hit because when the strikers come back, you see them re-added to payrolls. But it definitely will be a more sustained hit to economic activity and motor vehicle production. It's very hard to make up all the production that is lost when workers are on strike. So we're definitely watching this very closely and it's definitely a risk factor to economic growth in the fourth quarter. Ellen, I'm turning it back to you, with all these various factors in play has anything changed in our Fed path? Ellen Zentner: No, it hasn't. In fact, as the data comes in and what we're looking for ahead, it tells me even more so that the Fed is done here. So they're sitting on a federal funds rate of 5.25% to 5.50%, and there are a lot of pitfalls possibly ahead with the incoming data. So you have GDP benchmark revisions, which will be significant by our estimate, that are released on September 28th, so later this month. Two days later, government shutdown possible. You talked about the UAW strike that's gonna, again, muddy the picture for job gains. And so there's a lot on the horizon here. You know, in the environment of inflation falling and question mark around how much policy lags still have to come through, I think it's just a recipe for the Fed to go ahead and hold rates steady and so we think that they're done here. All right. So we'll leave it there. Sarah, thanks for taking the time to talk. Sarah Wolfe: As always, great speaking with you, Ellen. Ellen Zentner: And thanks for listening. If you enjoy Thoughts on the Market, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and share the podcast with a friend or colleague today.

Although back-to-school spending appears to be trending higher than in 2022, there are signs that U.S. consumers could feel pinched before the holiday season.----- Transcript -----Sarah Wolfe: Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Sarah Wolfe from Morgan Stanley's U.S. Economics Team. Simeon Gutman: And I'm Simeon Gutman, an Equity Analyst covering the U.S. Hard Lines, Broad Lines and Food Retail Industries. Sarah Wolfe: And on this special episode of the podcast, we'll focus on back to school shopping trends and what they suggest for the U.S. consumer outlook for the rest of the year. It's Friday, September 1st at 10 a.m. in New York. Simeon Gutman: Sarah, back to school shopping is in full swing as we go into the Labor Day weekend and end of the summer. As an economist who focuses on the U.S. consumer. I know you track it closely. Why is back to school shopping such an important indicator in general, and what is it suggesting about the overall health of the U.S. consumer? Sarah Wolfe: Back to school is a large shopping event across July and August each year, which is an event that is only as strong as the strength of the U.S. household. If households feel good about job prospects and inflation is not eating away at their buying power, you should see that reflected in back to school sales. If we go back to summer 2022, headline inflation was 8% going into back to school shopping, and there were lingering concerns about COVID disrupting school. In 2023, certain headwinds to the consumer are risks to spend, these include higher debt service costs, tighter lending standards and a student loan moratorium expiring in October, but a still strong labor market and abating inflationary pressures that have supported a recovery in real wages should outweigh the downside risk and lead to a moderate back to school spending year. So what does this all mean for what we're seeing in the data? Our early read on July back to school shopping and in-store sales is that they're going to be weaker than the historical average, however, August matters most. If we see August sales in line with the historical average, then back to school sales for 2023 on a year-over-year basis would be quite a bit stronger than 2022 still, but roughly in line with the historical run rate from 2011 to 2019. This jives with our early readings from our AlphaWise Consumer Poll survey that this year back to school shopping is looking stronger than last year, but it is not a blowout. Simeon Gutman: And how about end of year holiday spending? Is back to school a predictor of holiday spending trends? Sarah Wolfe: Back to school shopping is indeed a predictor of holiday shopping trends. However, the early read through to holiday shopping points to a holiday season that's actually weaker than 2022, but in line with the historical run rate as well. Total retail sales on a non seasonally adjusted basis across November and December have been 8% year-over-year from 2011 to 2019 in 2021, the growth was 33% and 2022 was 12%. This was due to stronger than usual demand for goods as a result of COVID and stimulus. So while the consumer remains relatively healthy and is spending more on back to school shopping than last year, it'll be tough to beat 2022 holiday shopping growth. The preliminary forecast for holiday shopping is to see growth in line with the historical run rate, but weaker than next year. We still get a couple more retail sales reports that are going to help us fine tune our holiday shopping forecast. Simeon, turning it over to you, what specific trends are you observing during this back to school shopping season? Simeon Gutman: So far, it's mixed. On the surface, it looks like the consumer is healthy. If we look at durable goods spending the last couple of months, we have June and now July, low 2% range. That's decent. But under the surface, it's a bit of a different story. If you look at the Q2 comps across the coverage universe, they were roughly flat. That's not a great indicator of spending. And we see a shift towards consumables and supplies and must haves. Consumers are not prioritizing discretionary items. Big ticket items are under pressure. The companies that are growing and doing well, they look like they're taking market share, there's a shift towards value, so discount stores, dollar stores, off price stores, and it looks like it's a story of product categories, beauty and auto parts. What we've seen specifically for back to school, July was a strong month, but there was potentially some pull forward from earlier in the season. August seems to be good, but may have slowed a little and we'll see about September. But consumers are definitely shopping more on occasion and it's been a little bit choppy. Sarah Wolfe: These are great insights, Simeon, on how consumer behavior is slowly evolving as the macro backdrop becomes a little bit tougher. You've also highlighted electronics as one particular area that appears most at risk. What exactly does that mean and what's driving it? Simeon Gutman: So we conducted an AlphaWise survey, that Morgan Stanley did about a month ago, that suggests electronics have the most risk. We had a net neutral spending intention from consumers year-over-year. In contrast to other categories, we asked about clothing and apparel had a 21% net positive spending intention while school supplies was also positive 12%. The largest public company in the electronics space, they posted a -6% same store sales number in their recent quarter on top of a pretty big negative number the prior year. So it underscores the survey. The only caveat, and maybe a silver lining is, there is chatter about units in electronics beginning to bottom, so there could be some silver lining. Sarah Wolfe: Finally, Simeon, if we were to widen the lens a bit, how have back to school shopping trends evolved over the last 5 to 10 years? And what is your longer term outlook for what lies ahead in terms of potential future trends? Simeon Gutman: Drum roll, please. Not much. It doesn't seem that we've gotten a big shift in spending. So we looked back over the last ten years at the percentage of spend that consumers have made over the July, August and September timeframe, which captures the back to school season. As a percentage of retail sales, it's surprisingly consistent in the 24 to 25% range. In this kind of COVID post-COVID era, we've seen it tick up a bit, but this makes sense because the consumer has shifted spend from services to goods. So it's run rating around 25%, but as we've seen reversion in other categories, we think this will moderate as well. So our future prediction would be consistent with the prior trend line; it doesn't seem to be trading off sales with other periods, including the holiday. The one trend we have seen is e-commerce penetration is rising, in this timeframe for both non store retailers and for physical retailers who have seen a higher mix of online sales. But as far as the future goes, we don't expect a big change. Sarah Wolfe: Simeon, thanks for taking the time to talk. Simeon Gutman: Great speaking with you, Sarah. Sarah Wolfe: And thanks for listening. If you enjoy Thoughts on the Market, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and share the podcast with a friend or colleague today.

With the moratorium on federal student loans ending soon, discretionary spending is likely to go down and delinquency is likely to rise as consumers face the end of a three-year reprieve.----- Transcript -----Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Sarah Wolfe from the U.S. Economics Team. Along with my colleagues, bringing you a variety of perspectives, today I'll be talking about the implications from the upcoming student loan restart. It's Tuesday, July 18th at 10 a.m. in New York. The more than three year long moratorium on federal student loans is ending soon, expected to resume on October 1st, impacting nearly 27 million borrowers who have federal student loans in forbearance, totaling a trillion dollars or $41,000 per borrower on average. We believe this will translate into a hit to disposable income and a moderate pullback in discretionary spending in the fourth quarter of this year and partially into the first quarter of 2024. Altogether, we estimate it could shave about ten basis points off of total year real PCE growth or seven basis points off GDP growth. But we think that this is likely an upper estimate for a few reasons. First of all, there's a 12 month grace period that will allow households to take the next year to start making payments without falling delinquent—so not everybody is going to start making payments in October—consumers can tap into their savings and there could be debt reprioritization. There's going to be varying impact across different demographics. We find that those aged 25 to 34 are most likely to hold student debt, But borrowers age 35 and older hold the largest debt balance in dollar terms and as a share of disposable income. We also find, based on geography, that southern states, including Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina, have the highest average student loan balance as a share of per capita disposable income while states in the Northeast, like Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Jersey and New Hampshire have the lowest. It's worth mentioning that this is more of a result of disposable income being lower in southern states than debt balances being higher. So how will this impact credit? My colleagues from the Morgan Stanley U.S. consumer finance team expect the combination of student loan payments starting in October with the absence of loan forgiveness to lead to potential delinquencies as consumers divert cash flow, servicing other forms of debt like credit card and autos, towards their student loans. This could accelerate delinquency rates which are now above 2019 levels and increasing at the fastest clip in 15 years. One thing we're keeping an eye on are the new Biden administration initiatives that could provide some relief for low and middle income consumers. For example, as I mentioned, a 12-month ramp up grace period for borrowers means they won't be penalized or moved into delinquency if they fail to pay over the next year, though interest does still accrue. Also, a new save income driven repayment option should fully go into effect as of July 2024, lowering payments owed by undergraduate borrowers if they adopt this new income driven repayment plan. Overall, we believe the student loan repayment restart will be a hit to spending and borrowing that will spill over into U.S. hard lines, so these are appliances and sports equipment, broad lines, which are companies that deal in high volume at the cheaper end of a product line, and food retail industries, though at varying degrees. Retailers with customer demographics skewed towards younger and lower income consumers that sell into more discretionary categories appear to be the most at risk. Furthermore, our soft lines retail—that is clothing—and brands team think companies with outsized exposure to luxury and men's apparel, denim and swim could see the biggest slump in demand from student loan repayment, whereas those with sports apparel and footwear exposure may be the most insulated. That said, the bottom line is that no retailer is free from exposure to all three key student loan holder demographics, which skew younger, less affluent and more urban. Thanks for listening. If you enjoy the show, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and share Thoughts on the Market with a friend or colleague today.

Original Release on June, 6th 2023: Consumers in the U.S. are largely returning to pre-COVID spending levels, but new behaviors related to travel, credit availability and inflation have emerged.----- Transcript -----Michelle Weaver: Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Michelle Weaver from the Morgan Stanley U.S. Equity Strategy Team. Sarah Wolfe: And I'm Sarah Wolfe from the U.S. Economics Team. Michelle Weaver: On this special episode of the podcast, we're taking a look at the state of the U.S. consumer as we approach the midyear mark. It's Tuesday, June 6th at 10 a.m. in New York. Michelle Weaver: In order to talk about where the consumer is right now, let's take it back two and a half years. It's January 2021, and households are slowly emerging from their COVID hibernations, but we're still months away from the broad distribution of the vaccine. Consumers are allocating 5% more of their wallet share to goods than before COVID, driving record consumption of electronics, home furnishings, sporting goods and recreational vehicles. All the things you needed to make staying at home a little bit better. Our U.S. economists at Morgan Stanley made a high conviction call in early 2021 that vaccine distribution would flip the script and drive a surge in services spending and a payback in goods spending. Sara, to what extent has this reversion played out and where do you think the U.S. consumer is now? Sarah Wolfe: The reversion is definitely played out, but there's been some big surprises. Basically, the spending pie has just been greater overall than expected, and that's thanks to unprecedented fiscal stimulus, excess savings and significant supply shortages. So we've not only seen a shift away from goods and toward services, but a much larger spending pie overall. The result has been a 13% surge in goods inflation over nearly three years, an acceleration in services inflation, and a return to pre-COVID spending habits that's much greater in real spending terms than in nominal terms. So if we look in the details, where has the payback been the largest? We've seen the biggest payback in home furnishing, home equipment, jewelry, watches, recreational vehicles, but we've seen the most robust recovery in discretionary services like dining out, going to a hotel, public transportation and recreational services. Michelle Weaver: Sara, has the recent turmoil in the banking sector affected the U.S. consumer and do you think there's a credit crunch going on right now? Sarah Wolfe: Bank funding costs have risen meaningfully and are expected to rise further, leading to tighter lending standards, slower loan growth and wider loan spreads. But let me be clear, this is not a credit crunch, nor do we expect it to be. We think about the pass through from tighter lending standards to the consumer to ways directly and indirectly. The direct channel is tighter lending standards for loans on consumer products, including credit cards and autos, and indirectly through tighter lending standards for businesses, which has knock-on effects for job growth. We've already seen the direct channel of consumer spending in the past year, as interest rates on new consumer loan products hit 20 to 30-year highs, raising overall debt service costs and forcing consumers to reduce purchases of interest sensitive goods. Dwindling supply of credit as banks tighten lending standards is also dampening consumption. Michelle Weaver: Great. And given that credit is getting a little bit tougher to come by, can you tell us what's happening with savings and what's happening with the labor market and labor income? Sarah Wolfe: This is very timely. Just a few days ago, we got a very strong jobs report for May. I think that this really supports our call for a soft landing, and even though consumers are increasingly worried about the economic outlook, about financial prospects, it's clear that we still have momentum in the economy and that the Fed can achieve its 2% inflation target without driving the unemployment rate significantly higher. We are seeing under the details that consumer spending is slowing, there's a pullback in discretionary happening, there's a bit of trade down behavior. But with the labor market remaining robust, it's going to keep spending afloat and prevent this hard landing scenario. Michelle, let me turn it to you now, let's drill down into some specifics. What are the latest spending trends around spending plans you're seeing in your consumer survey? Michelle Weaver: Sure. So consumers expect to pull back on spending for most categories that we asked them about over the next six months. And the only categories where they expect to spend more are necessities like groceries and household products. We also added two new questions to this round of the survey to figure out which discretionary categories are most at risk of a pullback in spending. We asked consumers to order categories based on spending priority and identify categories where they would pull back on spending if forced to reduce household expenses. We found that travel and live entertainment were most at risk of a pull back, and this isn't just a case of income groups having different attitudes towards spending, we saw similar prioritization across income cohorts. Sarah Wolfe: So you mentioned travel, travel's been in a boom state in the post-COVID world. But you're saying now that households are reporting that they would pull back if they needed to. Are we seeing that already? What do we expect for summer travel? What do we expect for the remainder of the year? Michelle Weaver: So the data I was just referencing was if you had to reduce your household expenses, how would you do it? And travel was identified there. So that's not a plan that's currently in place. But summer travel may be a bit softer this year versus last year. In our survey, we asked consumers if they're planning to travel more, the same amount or less than last summer, and we found that a greater proportion of consumers are planning to travel less this year. Budgets are also smaller for summer travel this year, with more than a third of consumers expecting to spend less. We're seeing a mixed picture from the company side. Airlines are seeing very strong results still, and Memorial Day weekend proved to be very strong.. But the data around hotels has started to weaken and the revenue per available room that hotels have been able to generate has been pretty choppy and forward bookings that hotels are seeing have actually been flat to down for the summer. Demand for resorts and economy hotels has fallen but demand for urban market hotels still remained very strong. Sarah, how does this deceleration, both services and goods growth play into your team's long standing argument for a soft landing for the economy? Sarah Wolfe: It's really the key to inflation coming down and avoiding a hard landing. With less pent up demand left for services spending and a strong labor market recovery, supply demand imbalances in the services sector are slowly resolving themselves. We estimate that there's a point three percentage point pass through from services wages to core core services inflation throughout any given year. Core core services, is services excluding housing inflation. So with compensation for services providing industries already decelerating for the past five quarters, we do expect the largest impact of core services inflation to occur in the back half of this year. So that's going to see a more meaningful step down in inflationary pressures later this year. This combined with a rising savings rate, so a shrinking spending pie, means that there's just going to be less demand for goods and services together this year. Altogether, it will enable the Fed to make progress towards its 2% inflation target without driving the economy into a recession. Michelle Weaver: Sarah, thank you for taking the time to talk. Sarah Wolfe: It was great speaking with you, Michelle. Michelle Weaver: And thanks for listening. If you enjoy Thoughts on the Market, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and share the podcast with a friend or colleague today.

Consumers in the U.S. are largely returning to pre-COVID spending levels, but new behaviors related to travel, credit availability and inflation have emerged.----- Transcript -----Michelle Weaver: Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Michelle Weaver from the Morgan Stanley U.S. Equity Strategy Team. Sarah Wolfe: And I'm Sarah Wolfe from the U.S. Economics Team. Michelle Weaver: On this special episode of the podcast, we're taking a look at the state of the U.S. consumer as we approach the midyear mark. It's Tuesday, June 6th at 10 a.m. in New York. Michelle Weaver: In order to talk about where the consumer is right now, let's take it back two and a half years. It's January 2021, and households are slowly emerging from their COVID hibernations, but we're still months away from the broad distribution of the vaccine. Consumers are allocating 5% more of their wallet share to goods than before COVID, driving record consumption of electronics, home furnishings, sporting goods and recreational vehicles. All the things you needed to make staying at home a little bit better. Our U.S. economists at Morgan Stanley made a high conviction call in early 2021 that vaccine distribution would flip the script and drive a surge in services spending and a payback in goods spending. Sara, to what extent has this reversion played out and where do you think the U.S. consumer is now? Sarah Wolfe: The reversion is definitely played out, but there's been some big surprises. Basically, the spending pie has just been greater overall than expected, and that's thanks to unprecedented fiscal stimulus, excess savings and significant supply shortages. So we've not only seen a shift away from goods and toward services, but a much larger spending pie overall. The result has been a 13% surge in goods inflation over nearly three years, an acceleration in services inflation, and a return to pre-COVID spending habits that's much greater in real spending terms than in nominal terms. So if we look in the details, where has the payback been the largest? We've seen the biggest payback in home furnishing, home equipment, jewelry, watches, recreational vehicles, but we've seen the most robust recovery in discretionary services like dining out, going to a hotel, public transportation and recreational services. Michelle Weaver: Sara, has the recent turmoil in the banking sector affected the U.S. consumer and do you think there's a credit crunch going on right now? Sarah Wolfe: Bank funding costs have risen meaningfully and are expected to rise further, leading to tighter lending standards, slower loan growth and wider loan spreads. But let me be clear, this is not a credit crunch, nor do we expect it to be. We think about the pass through from tighter lending standards to the consumer to ways directly and indirectly. The direct channel is tighter lending standards for loans on consumer products, including credit cards and autos, and indirectly through tighter lending standards for businesses, which has knock-on effects for job growth. We've already seen the direct channel of consumer spending in the past year, as interest rates on new consumer loan products hit 20 to 30-year highs, raising overall debt service costs and forcing consumers to reduce purchases of interest sensitive goods. Dwindling supply of credit as banks tighten lending standards is also dampening consumption. Michelle Weaver: Great. And given that credit is getting a little bit tougher to come by, can you tell us what's happening with savings and what's happening with the labor market and labor income? Sarah Wolfe: This is very timely. Just a few days ago, we got a very strong jobs report for May. I think that this really supports our call for a soft landing, and even though consumers are increasingly worried about the economic outlook, about financial prospects, it's clear that we still have momentum in the economy and that the Fed can achieve its 2% inflation target without driving the unemployment rate significantly higher. We are seeing under the details that consumer spending is slowing, there's a pullback in discretionary happening, there's a bit of trade down behavior. But with the labor market remaining robust, it's going to keep spending afloat and prevent this hard landing scenario. Michelle, let me turn it to you now, let's drill down into some specifics. What are the latest spending trends around spending plans you're seeing in your consumer survey? Michelle Weaver: Sure. So consumers expect to pull back on spending for most categories that we asked them about over the next six months. And the only categories where they expect to spend more are necessities like groceries and household products. We also added two new questions to this round of the survey to figure out which discretionary categories are most at risk of a pullback in spending. We asked consumers to order categories based on spending priority and identify categories where they would pull back on spending if forced to reduce household expenses. We found that travel and live entertainment were most at risk of a pull back, and this isn't just a case of income groups having different attitudes towards spending, we saw similar prioritization across income cohorts. Sarah Wolfe: So you mentioned travel, travel's been in a boom state in the post-COVID world. But you're saying now that households are reporting that they would pull back if they needed to. Are we seeing that already? What do we expect for summer travel? What do we expect for the remainder of the year? Michelle Weaver: So the data I was just referencing was if you had to reduce your household expenses, how would you do it? And travel was identified there. So that's not a plan that's currently in place. But summer travel may be a bit softer this year versus last year. In our survey, we asked consumers if they're planning to travel more, the same amount or less than last summer, and we found that a greater proportion of consumers are planning to travel less this year. Budgets are also smaller for summer travel this year, with more than a third of consumers expecting to spend less. We're seeing a mixed picture from the company side. Airlines are seeing very strong results still, and Memorial Day weekend proved to be very strong.. But the data around hotels has started to weaken and the revenue per available room that hotels have been able to generate has been pretty choppy and forward bookings that hotels are seeing have actually been flat to down for the summer. Demand for resorts and economy hotels has fallen but demand for urban market hotels still remained very strong. Sarah, how does this deceleration, both services and goods growth play into your team's long standing argument for a soft landing for the economy? Sarah Wolfe: It's really the key to inflation coming down and avoiding a hard landing. With less pent up demand left for services spending and a strong labor market recovery, supply demand imbalances in the services sector are slowly resolving themselves. We estimate that there's a point three percentage point pass through from services wages to core core services inflation throughout any given year. Core core services, is services excluding housing inflation. So with compensation for services providing industries already decelerating for the past five quarters, we do expect the largest impact of core services inflation to occur in the back half of this year. So that's going to see a more meaningful step down in inflationary pressures later this year. This combined with a rising savings rate, so a shrinking spending pie, means that there's just going to be less demand for goods and services together this year. Altogether, it will enable the Fed to make progress towards its 2% inflation target without driving the economy into a recession. Michelle Weaver: Sarah, thank you for taking the time to talk. Sarah Wolfe: It was great speaking with you, Michelle. Michelle Weaver: And thanks for listening. If you enjoy Thoughts on the Market, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and share the podcast with a friend or colleague today.

For many people, one of the most challenging aspects of living with MS is living with uncertainty. Living with unanswerable questions like, "Is today the day I experience a relapse?" "Will my disability worsen?" "Will I be able to continue working?" "Will I be able to take care of my family?"    These are all very real questions, and while there may not be answers for them today, there are steps you can take and strategies you can adopt to ensure that you're managing and minimizing the uncertainty of living with MS. Joining me to talk about her journey as a mom living with MS and to share how she's learned to cope with the uncertainty of MS is MS advocate Sarah Wolfe. Also joining our conversation with specific strategies for living your best life despite the uncertainties of MS is Dr. Laura Hancock, a neuropsychologist at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. It's a big topic, and I'm devoting this entire MS Awareness Week episode of RealTalk MS to my conversation with Sarah Wolfe and Dr. Laura Hancock. We have a lot to talk about! Are you ready for RealTalk MS??! This Week: It's MS Awareness Week and we're talking about living with the uncertainty of MS  :22 MS advocate Sarah Wolfe and Neuropsychologist Dr. Laura Hancock discuss the many different facets of successfully living with the uncertainty of MS    3:38 Share this episode  39:55 Have you downloaded the free RealTalk MS app?  40:15 SHARE THIS EPISODE OF REALTALK MS Just copy this link & paste it into your text or email: https://realtalkms.com/289 ADD YOUR VOICE TO THE CONVERSATION I've always thought about the RealTalk MS podcast as a conversation. And this is your opportunity to join the conversation by sharing your feedback, questions, and suggestions for topics that we can discuss in future podcast episodes. Please shoot me an email or call the RealTalk MS Listener Hotline and share your thoughts! Email: jon@realtalkms.com Phone: (310) 526-2283 And don't forget to join us in the RealTalk MS Facebook group! LINKS If your podcast app doesn't allow you to click on these links, you'll find them in the show notes in the RealTalk MS app or at www.RealTalkMS.com Join the RealTalk MS Facebook Group https://facebook.com/groups/realtalkms Download the RealTalk MS App for iOS Devices https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/realtalk-ms/id1436917200 Download the RealTalk MS App for Android Deviceshttps://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=tv.wizzard.android.realtalk Give RealTalk MS a rating and review http://www.realtalkms.com/review Follow RealTalk MS on Twitter, @RealTalkMS_jon, and subscribe to our newsletter at our website, RealTalkMS.com. RealTalk MS Episode 289 Guests: Sarah Wolfe and Dr. Laura Hancock Tags: MS, MultipleSclerosis, MSResearch, MSSociety, RealTalkMS Privacy Policy

As the U.S. economy remains resilient in the face of continued rate hikes, investors may wonder if the Fed will re-accelerate their policy tightening or if cuts are on their way.----- Transcript -----Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Sarah Wolfe from the U.S. Economics Team. Along with my colleagues, bringing you a variety of perspectives, today I'll be talking about the economic response to the Fed's monetary tightening. It's Tuesday, February 28th, at 1 p.m. in New York. The Fed has been tightening monetary policy at the fastest rate in recent history. And yet the U.S. economy has been so remarkably resilient thus far that investors have begun to interpret this resilience as a sign that the economy has been less affected by monetary policy than initially expected. And so recession fears seem to have turned into fears of re acceleration. Of course, interest sensitive parts of the economy have largely reacted as expected to the Fed hiking interest rates. Housing activity responded immediately to higher interest rates, declining significantly more than in prior cycles and what our models would imply. Consumer spending on durable goods has dampened as well, which is also expected. And yet other factors have bolstered the economy, even in the face of higher rates. The labor market has shown more resilience since the start of the hiking cycle as companies caught up on significant staffing shortfalls. Households have spent out excess savings supporting spending, and consumers saw their spending power boosted by declining energy prices just as monetary tightening began. As these pillars of resilience fade over the coming months, an economic slowdown should become more apparent. Staffing levels are closing in on levels more consistent with the level of economic output, pointing to a weaker backdrop for job growth for the remainder of 2023 and 2024. Excess savings now look roughly normal for large parts of the population, and energy prices are unlikely to be a major boost for household spending in coming months. Residential investment and consumption growth should bottom in mid 2023, while business investment deteriorates throughout our forecast horizon. We expect growth will remain below potential until the end of 2024 as rates move back towards neutral. But even with more deceleration ahead, greater resilience so far is shifting out the policy path. We continue to expect the Fed to deliver a 25 basis point hike about its March and May meetings, bringing peak policy rates to 5 to 5.25%. However, with a less significant and delayed slowdown in the labor market, with a more moderate increase in the unemployment rate, the Fed's pace of monetary easing is likely to be slower, and the first rate cut is likely to occur later. We think the Fed will hold rates at these levels for a longer period rather than hike to a higher peak, as this carries less of a risk of over tightening. We now see the Fed delivering the first rate cut in March 2024 versus our previous estimate of December 2023, and cutting rates at a slower pace of 25 basis points each quarter next year. This brings the federal funds rate to 4.25% by the end of 2024. With rates well above neutral throughout the forecast horizon, growth remains below potential as well. As for the U.S. consumer, while excess savings boosted spending in 2022 despite rising interest rates, we expect consumers to return to saving more this year, which means a step down in spending. Thanks for listening. If you enjoy the show, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and share Thoughts on the Market with a friend or colleague today.

Though U.S. consumer spending was surprisingly robust in 2022, this poses both new and continuing challenges as households draw down their excess savings.----- Transcript -----Michelle Weaver: Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Michelle Weaver from the Morgan Stanley U.S. Equity Strategy Team. Sarah Wolfe: And I'm Sarah Wolfe from the U.S. Economics Team. Michelle Weaver: On this special episode of the podcast, we'll discuss how the U.S. consumer is faring. It's Tuesday, February 14th at 10 a.m. in New York. Michelle Weaver: The health of the consumer is critical for the equity market, and consumer spending last year helped companies continue to grow their earnings. Sarah, can you give us a snapshot of the overall health of the U.S. consumer right now? Do people still have plenty of savings, and what are you expecting around consumer savings for the rest of the year? Sarah Wolfe: The U.S. consumer was extraordinarily strong in 2022, despite negative real disposable income growth. For perspective, spending was about 3% growth year over year in 2022, and real disposable income was negative 6.5%. Part of that was inflation eroding all income gains, but it was also a tough year as we lapped fiscal stimulus from 2021. So what got consumers through negative 6.5% real income growth? It was this excess savings story. Consumers tapped their excess savings pretty significantly, and we estimate that the drawdown was roughly 30% from its peak. However, when we look into 2023, we don't think consumers are going to be tapping into their savings reserves quite as much. Michelle Weaver: It sounds like households draw down quite a bit of their excess saving. Is there any danger that they're going to run out? And if that's the case, when do you think that will play out? Sarah Wolfe: So we don't think 100% of excess savings are going to get spent ever. Remember, savings is not cash in your wallet, it's just anything that hasn't been spent. So some of these savings have moved into longer term investment vehicles as well. We think that an additional 15% will get spent in 2023, and 10% in 2024, after 30% drawdown last year. This slower drawdown in the excess savings will allow the savings rate to recover after sitting at a two decade low in 2022 at roughly 3%. But there are important divergences when you look at the distributional holding of excess savings. For example, the bottom 25% has drawn down over 50% of their excess savings, compared to 30% overall. And we believe they're on track to run their savings dry by 2Q 2023. Michelle Weaver: Great. And then income, of course, is another really important source of spending for consumers. And the January jobs report we got was a big surprise. And the labor market continues to be pretty resilient without any clear signs of stopping. I run a proprietary survey in conjunction with our Alphawise team, and in our most recent wave we found that despite the tech layoffs that have been all over the news, 31% of people are actually less worried about losing their job now versus a year ago. Can you tell me a little bit about what your team expects for the labor market in 2023? Sarah Wolfe: Well, the February jobs report was a whopper by any standard, 517,000 jobs and the unemployment rate hitting all time lows at 3.4%. However, I think it's important to put these numbers into a bit of context. We identified three temporary factors that boosted nonfarm payrolls in January and that we think are unlikely to persist in February. The first is weather. A warmer than usual January added about 130,000 jobs last month. The return of strike workers added 36,000 jobs and seasonal factors added 3 million jobs. Typically, we see the shedding of a lot of workers in January after the holidays, so leisure and hospitality, retail workers, transportation. But because we're dealing with significant labor shortages, and as a result companies are hoarding workers, we're seeing a lot fewer layoffs than we typically would given this time of the year and as a result, the seasonal factors are adding too many jobs right now. We expect the February print to be about 200,000, which is more in line with the trend that we had seen from July until December of 2022. We continue to expect job growth to slow this year, hitting a low of 50,000 jobs a month in mid 2023, pushing the unemployment rate up to about 3.9% by the end of this year. Michelle, you mentioned that you have an alphawise survey. Could you tell us a little bit more about what the survey's telling you about consumer spending plans? Michelle Weaver: Sure. So on this wave of the survey, we asked people to think about major purchases that they're planning on making over the next three months. And we defined a major purchase like a vehicle, large appliance or vacation. And we found that about a quarter of people are considering shifting to a cheaper alternative, while a third are expecting to delay the purchase altogether. We also asked several questions on everyday purchases, and our survey indicates that consumers are planning to spend less on more discretionary categories. So that would include tech products, electronics, clothing, alcohol and home improvement. Sarah Wolfe: Michelle, that makes a lot of sense, and it's great to see when the hard data matches the soft data. We've done a lot of modeling work on how higher interest rates impact consumer spending, and we see a similar response in those categories. In particular, consumers tend to pull back on durable goods consumption, including home furnishing, electronics and appliances and motor vehicles. We haven't really talked about the services side yet. There was a big travel boom, post-COVID, do we expect this to continue this year? Michelle Weaver: Stocks exposed to travel did really well post-COVID as people were excited to get out there and travel again. Last year, we saw international travel restrictions lifted, making it a big year for vacations. And so there is some reversion likely here. And our survey showed that consumers are less positive on travel spending this year versus last year, with 34% of people expecting to spend less on travel and only 23% expecting to spend more. Sarah Wolfe: That's a pretty big step down in spending intentions on travel that your survey work shows. It also looks like in the economic data that the strongest part of the services recovery is behind us. We saw 10% nominal spending growth on services in 2021 and 2022. So, it's no wonder that this should decelerate in 2023 as the labor market cools and we return back to normal spending behavior. Michelle Weaver: Finally, Sarah, let's talk about inflation. Inflation is something I've definitely felt a lot as a consumer. For example, when I go to the grocery store, egg prices seem to be out of control, but when I look at my energy bill, things seem to be getting a little bit better. Can you tell us what's going on here and what you expect on inflation for the rest of the year? Sarah Wolfe: Unfortunately, we don't have a lot of transparency on the future of food prices right now, but we have seen pretty remarkable progress in other components of inflation that were weighing on household wallets in 2022. The first and foremost being energy inflation, which has returned back to its pre-COVID levels. We've also seen nice progress on goods inflation, where price levels have been coming off, in particular on new and used motor vehicles. And then we are seeing a slowing among services prices as well. In fact, headline PCE inflation has moderated from 7% this past summer to 5% today. And while this is great progress, the job is not done yet. We think inflation does reach 2.5% by the end of 2023, but this is going to require more aggressive action by the Fed. We now have two more 25 basis point hikes from the Fed in March and in May, reaching a peak rate of 5.25%. And we think they're going to have to keep rates on hold at their peak through the end of the year in order to make sure that inflation is getting where it needs to be. Michelle Weaver: Sarah, thanks for taking the time to talk. Sarah Wolfe: It was great speaking with you, Michelle. Michelle Weaver: And thanks for listening. If you enjoy Thoughts on the Market, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and share the podcast with a friend or colleague today.

Shame, guilt, trauma…these are just some of the words that came up in my conversations for this show on women's relationship with money. Why IS that relationship so complicated? Two women with different money backgrounds, knowledge, and expectations, help me delve into that question.My first guest, Sarah Wolfe, grew up with little knowledge of how to handle money and a mother who told her she didn't really have to worry about it anyway. She just needed to find a guy who would. But that advice didn't work out so well. Kristine Beese is CEO of Untangle Money, which helps women plan, save, and spend. Her own life experience and years in the financial services industry taught her just how poorly it caters to women. Yet women tend to work less over a lifetime, earn less, and live longer than men - if anyone needs solid monetary advice, it's us.The final episode of The Broad Experience will be out in January. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

While the consumer has been a pillar of strength this year, continued high inflation, household debt and slowing payroll growth could pose challenges to consumer spending. ----- Transcript -----Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Sarah Wolfe from Morgan Stanley's U.S. Economics Team. Along with my colleagues, bringing you a variety of perspectives, today I will give you a year end 2022 update on the U.S. consumer with a bit of our outlook for 2023. It's Thursday, December 15th, at 10 a.m. in New York. So it's very clear the consumer has been a pillar of strength this year amid a very tough macro environment, but as rates keep rising and the labor market slows, consumers will likely need to find ways to cut costs. We are already seeing some weakness in subprime consumers and trade down among middle and higher income households. While the wallet shift away from goods and towards services is definitely playing out, we continue to see relatively more strength than expected from consumers across both categories. This is because households have lowered their savings rates significantly as they draw down excess savings. We do not expect a material drawdown in excess savings, however, into next year as savings dwindle. We are already seeing it this morning in the November retail sales data, where spending slowed down fairly dramatically across most goods categories. We're talking about home furnishing, electronics and appliances, sporting goods, motor vehicles. On the other hand, the one category of retail sales that reflects the services side of the economy, dining out, was very strong in the retail sales report and has continued to be very strong. Looking at the trends that will force consumers to spend less, rising interest rates are lifting the direct costs of new borrowing and slowly feeding through into higher overall debt service costs. For example, new car loan rates are at their highest level since 2010, mortgage rates are at 20 year highs, they've come off a little bit, and commercial bank interest rates on credit card plans are at 30 year highs. It takes time for new debt issued at higher rates to lift household debt service costs, especially as over 90% of outstanding household debt is locked in at a fixed rate. But it's happening. Looking at the data by household income shows more stress from higher rates among subprime borrowers. Credit card delinquencies are modestly below pre-COVID levels, but are accelerating at the fastest pace since the financial crisis. In the auto space, delinquencies across subprime auto ABS surpassed 2019 levels earlier this year and have stabilized at relatively high rates over the last six months. Lower income households are also most affected by the combination of higher interest rates and higher inflation. They rely more heavily on higher interest rate loan products and variable rate credit card lines. Consider this, the bottom 20% income quintile spend 94% of their disposable income on essential items, including food, energy and shelter. This compares to only 20% of disposable income for the top 20% income quintile. As such, higher inflation on essential items weighs more heavily on lower income households. Higher inflation is also pushing lower income households to buy fewer full price items and wait for promotions. They are also choosing smaller items, value packs, or less expensive brands. While price inflation has turned a corner, it's not enough to ease the pressure on consumers from elevated price levels, rising rates and additionally a decelerating labor market. We expect labor income growth to slow next year alongside a weakening labor market, troughing in mid 2023, in line with sharply slower payroll growth and softer wage gains. Wage pressures are coming off in industries that saw the largest wage gains over the past year due to labor shortages, including leisure and hospitality and wholesale trade. But for the moment, with jobs still growing, consumer spending remains positive as well. Together, our base case for real spending is a weak 1% year over year growth in 2023, down from 2.6% this year. In the end, the extent that consumers pull back spending will hinge on how the labor market fares. Thanks for listening. If you enjoy Thoughts on the Market, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and share the podcast with a friend or colleague today.

The White House recently announced a student loan forgiveness program, prompting questions about implementation, economic implications, and whether the program will have an impact on consumer spending. Sarah Wolfe of the U.S. Economics team and Arianna Salvatore of the U.S. Public Policy team discuss.----- Transcript -----Sarah Wolfe: Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Sarah Wolfe from Morgan Stanley's U.S. Economics Team. Ariana Salvatore: And I'm Ariana Salvatore from Morgan Stanley's U.S. Public Policy Research Team. Sarah Wolfe: And on this episode of the podcast, we'll focus on student loans, in particular the recent student loan forgiveness program, and we'll dig into the impact on consumers and the economy. It's Thursday, September 15th, at 12 p.m. in New York. Sarah Wolfe: So, Ariana, the White House recently announced plans to forgive individuals up to $20,000 in federal student loans and extend the moratorium on interest payments. However, there was some confusion earlier in the year as both President Biden and Speaker Pelosi expressed doubts about the president's authority to cancel student debt. So is this something that requires an act of Congress, or can the president really do it alone? Ariana Salvatore: As you mentioned, prior to the announcement, there was some unresolved questions out there surrounding the legality of canceling student debt. In revealing the program, the administration cited authority from a 2003 law called the 'Heroes Act' that gives the executive the power to reduce or eliminate student debt during a national emergency, “when significant actions with potentially far reaching consequences are often required”. That being said, don't expect it to go over quietly. Reporting indicates that some Republican attorneys general are looking to bring legal challenges to the plan, which could present a risk to execution. But let's put questions about implementation aside for a second. What does reduced student debt impact more, longer term planning or immediate spending? And how do you quantify the impact on consumer spending? Sarah Wolfe: Thanks, Ariana. I'd like to just take a step back for a second before I talk about the economic impact, just so we could size up the program a bit. We estimate that there's going to be $330 to $390 billion in debt directly forgiven as part of this program. However, we estimate that the fiscal multiplier is actually quite small. So every dollar of debt that's forgiven that's going to get spent and put back into the economy, is really estimated at only 0.1. This is really small when you consider the fiscal multiplier of the COVID stimulus programs. So for example, the stimulus checks, supplemental unemployment benefits, that had a fiscal multiplier of 0.5 to 0.9. So it was much larger. The reason for this is because our survey work shows that people who have their student debt forgiven don't actually change their immediate spending patterns. Instead, it really impacts longer term planning. We're talking about paying down other debts, planning for retirement, perhaps buying a house or having a child earlier, and so there's not really an immediate spending impact on the economy. What does have a larger fiscal multiplier is forbearance coming to an end. Prior to COVID, people were on average paying $260 a month in student loan payments. That's been on hold for two and a half years. So when that resumes again in January, it's likely going to be less than $260 a month because of the loan forgiveness and other measures passed by the White House to limit loan payments per month. However, that's an immediate impact to discretionary income, and as a result, we're going to see a lot of households adjust their spending in the near term to make these new loan payments. Arianna, speaking of student loan forbearance, which I mentioned is set to end at the end of this year after a number of extensions, the White House is hoping that forgiveness is going to kick in right when forbearance comes to an end. Can we actually count on the timing working out like this? Ariana Salvatore: So there's definitely a risk that the program is delayed because of normal implementation hurdles, right. Things like determining eligibility for cancellation among millions of borrowers. The Department of Education memo that was released following the announcement says that 8 million borrowers may be eligible to receive relief automatically because relevant income data is already available. However, the department is also in the process of creating an application so borrowers can apply for forgiveness on their own, but that hasn't gone live yet. The DOE said it would be ready no later than when the pause on federal student loan repayments expires at the end of this year. Unfortunately, there's no real way to know when exactly that will be. Sarah Wolfe: So let me just get this clear. The Department of Education only has the information on 8 million student loan borrowers right now. So they're going to need to gather the information for the remaining borrowers up to 43 million in order to start this forgiveness program. Ariana Salvatore: Yeah, exactly. And that's why we tend to see large scale government programs like this take a little bit of time to ramp up rollout and have impacts on the economy. So in the event that all of those eligible to take advantage of the forgiveness program actually do so, let's focus in on the macroeconomic impacts. In this high inflation environment, wouldn't student loan forgiveness also have an additional inflationary effect? Sarah Wolfe: Definitely at face value, student loan forgiveness is inflationary. However, as I mentioned earlier, because it doesn't impact near-term spending decisions and is more about longer term planning, the inflationary impact, I think, is less than people would think. It's estimated to only add 0.1 to 0.5 percentage points to inflation 12 months following the cancellation. However, the forbearance program, as I mentioned, since that's going to have more of an immediate impact on spending decisions, that's going to have a deflationary impact. And it's estimated that forbearance programs are going to shave 0.2 percentage points off inflation over the 12 months following forbearance starting again. And so if you think about forgiveness being inflationary and forbearance being disinflationary, it's likely that forbearance is going to outweigh some of the inflationary impact, if not all of it, from forgiveness. Ariana Salvatore: Okay, so bringing it back to a more micro level. Last question for you here, Sarah. What are the implications for consumer credit and consumer ABS? Sarah Wolfe: We think that student loan payments restarting in January pose quite a bit of risk to consumer credit quality. Although we're seeing consumer credit quality today is very healthy and delinquencies are low, we are starting to see delinquencies rise for subprime borrowers in recent months. Also, if we dig into the data and look at how student loan borrowers have been paying down their student loans over the last 2.5 years versus those who haven't been, the credit quality for those who have not been is much worse than those who have been. That leads us to believe that come January, when everybody needs to start paying down their student loans, that in particular these more subprime, lower income borrowers are really going to struggle and it's going to deteriorate credit quality. Sarah Wolfe: Well, Ariana, thanks for taking the time to talk. Ariana Salvatore: Great speaking with you, Sarah. Sarah Wolfe: And thanks for listening. If you enjoy Thoughts on the Market, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and share the podcast with a friend or colleague today.

In Part 2, Join Pat Sprehe, Carolyn Woodard, and Sarah Wolfe for a review and discussion of basic IT management and the foundations of nonprofit IT support that all nonprofit organizations must invest in before moving on to implementing new or innovative IT.They share insights from over 20 years supporting nonprofits into when to take a chance and innovate, and when to invest in the IT basics first.For every success story you hear about an innovative new app or technique that a nonprofit used to change their sector, you probably know dozens of nonprofits with “big idea” tech projects that didn't deliver.  How can your leadership team tell the difference between an IT idea that your organization can support and one that will cause wide-reaching headaches? Is your nonprofit ready to innovate? Are you trying to cut corners where you shouldn't? When should you invest your resources first in getting your existing IT house in order and when should you go big? This webinar presents a framework to help identify when to take an IT chance, based on your nonprofit size, lifecycle stage, leadership, culture, cybersecurity needs, and existing IT status. Having served nonprofits exclusively for 20+ years, we also provide a checklist of basic IT must-haves that every nonprofit executive needs to know about, whether or not you plan on an innovative project.

Part 1: Join Pat Sprehe, Carolyn Woodard, and Sarah Wolfe for insights from over 20 years supporting nonprofits into when to take a chance and innovate, and when to invest in the IT basics first.For every success story you hear about an innovative new app or technique that a nonprofit used to change their sector, you probably know dozens of nonprofits with “big idea” tech projects that didn't deliver.  How can your leadership team tell the difference between an IT idea that your organization can support and one that will cause wide-reaching headaches? Is your nonprofit ready to innovate? Are you trying to cut corners where you shouldn't? When should you invest your resources first in getting your existing IT house in order and when should you go big? This webinar presents a framework to help identify when to take an IT chance, based on your nonprofit size, lifecycle stage, leadership, culture, cybersecurity needs, and existing IT status. Having served nonprofits exclusively for 20+ years, we also provide a checklist of basic IT must-haves that every nonprofit executive needs to know about, whether or not you plan on an innovative project.

Part 2 of a conversation from Sarah Wolfe and panelists presented at the NTEN NTC conference in March 2022. Centered around their diverse journeys to success, this session with four leaders celebrated bright spots of successful inclusion and cultivation of diversity in nonprofit technology, as well as sharing advice for the individual and the organization for thriving on the road ahead. Whether you come from an under-represented background, or want to do more at your nonprofit organization or tech company to support and include staff, this panel session was a vibrant discussion among women with a lot to say and share.What support has helped you get where you are today in nonprofit tech? What experiences have shaped your career? What have you had to overcome?Learn to listen! How can you be an ally? How can your workplace provide an environment where everyone thrives?This panel is an expansion on the previous conversation "Diverse Perspectives" with the same panelists, different anecdotes, and different audience questions. If you are interested in DEI and Justice in Nonprofit Tech, please join the conversation.Resources mentioned by the panelists:Onlinehttps://www.mentoring.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Why-Workplace-Mentoring-Matters-4.20.21.pdf ..We must create workplaces that are supportive of … growth as the next generation of leaders and innovators.More resources from MENTOR on race and cultural inclusion in the workplace here.https://nonprofitaf.com Questioning assumptions on traditional nonprofit practices.https://www.nonprofitlearninglab.org/dei Resources round-up, good place to start. Books: Dare to Lead by Brené Brown Innovating Leadership Co-creating Our Future by Maureen MetcalfStart Here – Master the Lifelong Habits of Wellbeing by Eric Langshur, Nate Klemp Ph.DBarking up the wrong tree, The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Success Is (Mostly) Wrong  by Eric BarkerPodcastsHBR Women at Work – especially episode called Leading with AuthenticityBrené Brown: Unlocking Us Podcast

Sarah Wolfe and panelists presented a conversation at the NTEN NTC conference in March 2022. Centered around their diverse journeys to success, this session with four leaders celebrated bright spots of successful inclusion and cultivation of diversity in nonprofit technology, as well as sharing advice for the individual and the organization for thriving on the road ahead. Whether you come from an under-represented background, or want to do more at your nonprofit organization or tech company to support and include staff, this panel session was a vibrant discussion among women with a lot to say and share.What support has helped you get where you are today in nonprofit tech? What experiences have shaped your career? What have you had to overcome?Learn to listen! How can you be an ally? How can your workplace provide an environment where everyone thrives?This panel is an expansion on the previous conversation "Diverse Perspectives" with the same panelists, different anecdotes, and different audience questions. If you are interested in DEI and Justice in Nonprofit Tech, please join the conversation.Resources mentioned by the panelists:Onlinehttps://www.mentoring.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Why-Workplace-Mentoring-Matters-4.20.21.pdf ..We must create workplaces that are supportive of … growth as the next generation of leaders and innovators.More resources from MENTOR on race and cultural inclusion in the workplace here.https://nonprofitaf.com Questioning assumptions on traditional nonprofit practices.https://www.nonprofitlearninglab.org/dei Resources round-up, good place to start. Books: Dare to Lead by Brené Brown Innovating Leadership Co-creating Our Future by Maureen MetcalfStart Here – Master the Lifelong Habits of Wellbeing by Eric Langshur, Nate Klemp Ph.DBarking up the wrong tree, The Surprising Science Behind Why Everything You Know About Success Is (Mostly) Wrong  by Eric BarkerPodcastsHBR Women at Work – especially episode called Leading with AuthenticityBrené Brown: Unlocking Us Podcast

Are you afraid to think about cybersecurity basics for your nonprofits needs? Are you an “accidental techie” – tasked with keeping the IT running at your nonprofit even though you don't *really have an IT background? *at allWondering where to start building a case for cybersecurity basics to your nonprofit executives and board?Join Community IT CTO Matt Eshleman and Sales Manager Sarah Wolfe in a new webinar presented at the 2022NTC Conference.Cybersecurity: “the measures taken to ensure an organization is protected against the criminal or unauthorized use of electronic data.” AKA “An accidental techie's biggest nightmare.”With all the million dollar attacks on nonprofits in the news – whether ransomware, internal data leaks, or wire fraud scams – cybersecurity can really give you bad dreams. And if you are unsure of the lingo or where to turn for help it can be daunting to even make a start.You know you need to put together a case to convince your executives and your board – but are there low-cost tools and preventative measures you can put in place quickly? What are the best practices when your organization is reluctant to invest in a strong cybersecurity stance?After this presentation on cybersecurity basics for nonprofits, “accidental techies” will feel confident in their knowledge of current cybersecurity trends and best practices, as well as language to use when seeking buy-in from leadership and/or staff.The presentationSummarizes the current and forecasted “threat landscape”Shares three key policies & procedures to roll out for basic peace of mindReviews persuasion points to make while requesting time and fundingAs with all our webinars, this presentation is appropriate for an audience of varied IT experience. Community IT and NTEN, the membership organization and sponsor of the NTC conference, are proudly vendor-agnostic and our webinars cover a range of topics and discussions. Webinars are never a sales pitch, always a way to share our knowledge with our community.NTC is the signature conference in Nonprofit Tech every year, hosted by NTEN. In 2022 it featured over 180 live, interactive, and thought-provoking sessions including this one; daily inspiring keynote speakers; and ways to connect, including opportunities for one-on-one connections, small group meetings, and sponsor conversations. In 2023 NTC plans to be in-person in Denver, in March.Presenters:A DC Area native, Sarah Wolfe joined Community IT Innovators in March 2018 as Account Associate before being promoted to Sales Manager. She is responsible for ensuring our partner organizations are receiving the right combination of IT support services to meet their organizational needs and goals. She is a founder of the internal BLM working group at Community IT. Prior to joining Community IT, Sarah was a science teacher at various schools in Maryland. She attended Oberlin College in Ohio, graduating in 2008 with a Bachelor of Arts in Biology, and took classes at UMCP for her teaching certification. As the Chief Technology Officer at Community IT, Matthew Eshleman is responsible for shaping Community IT's strategy around the technology platforms used by organizations to be secure and productive. While working full time at Community IT Matt received his MBA from the Carey School of Business at Johns Hopkins University. He now serves as CTO and Cybersecurity expert.He is the session designer and trainer for TechSoup's Digital Security and Cloud Security courses, our resident Cybersecurity expert, and  a frequent speaker on cybersecurity topics. In addition to numerous cybersecurity webinars for the Community IT monthly webinar series, he has also given cybersecurity talks at many organizations.

When Beatrice, her draglings, Tom, Talora, and a small herd of ponies confront Shakatala, he refuses to leave the ponies alone. Driven by anger and impatience to resume the quest to find her egg, Beatrice attacks Shakatala and a battle between dragons ensues. Fairies and Dragons, Ponies and Knights is an episodic story for humans of all ages! Each episode will be broadcast live to a virtual audience on Zoom featuring a special guest artist, and followed by the release of the episode as a podcast. FOR TICKETS TO THE LIVE SHOW - CLICK HEREJOIN US ON PATREON - CLICK HEREVISIT THE FADPAK STORE - CLICK HEREWe are thrilled to welcome Sarah Wolfe as our special guest artist for S2. Episode 4! Sarah makes amazing hand cut paper art and cards. You should definitely make sure to check out her Instagram (@wolfedenarts) page, and her ETSY store, where you can get her beautiful custom made cards. FOR SARAH'S FINAL ILLUSTRATION - CLICK HERE! FOR SARAH'S COLORING PAGE - CLICK HERE!Please join us on social media! If you have any questions or comments about this episode, or you would like to share your own artwork, feel free to post to any of our pages!FACEBOOKINSTAGRAM - @fad_pakTWITTER - @fad_pakTIKTOK - @fad_pakor email petrathedragon@gmail.com!Fairies and Dragons, Ponies and Knights is a Dirt Road Theater production, made in Northfield, VT. Performed by Maren Langdon Spillane Written by Dominic and Maren Langdon Spillane Original Music and Scoring by Nathan Leigh Story by Gracelyn, Oliver, and Dominic Spillane 

Part 2 - Join Sarah Wolfe, Stef Cruz, Angela Kim, and Sandy Martins for an honest discussion on creating inclusive workplaces and work practices in the nonprofit tech sector.We were really excited to present this group of amazing women working in various roles in nonprofit tech for a panel discussion of what it takes to thrive in nonprofit tech careers, and how you can create inclusion-focused workplaces in your organizations.What support has helped you get where you are today in nonprofit tech? What experiences have shaped your career? What have you had to overcome?Learn and listen! How can you be an ally? How can your workplace provide an environment where everyone thrives that helps your nonprofit mission take off and fly?As with all our webinars, this presentation is appropriate for an audience of varied experience.Presenters:Sarah Wolfe, Moderator A DC Area native, Sarah Wolfe joined Community IT Innovators in March 2018 as Account Associate before being promoted to Sales Manager. She is responsible for ensuring our partner organizations are receiving the right combination of IT support services to meet their organizational needs and goals. She is a founder of the internal BLM working group at Community IT.Stef Cruz Stef is a strategic communications professional with over 15 years' experience mobilizing millions of individuals to action across national social movements including the Women's March, Families Belong Together and the March for Our Lives.She was one of the first digital strategist on Capitol Hill as the Director of Digital Media for Congressman Sander Levin and the Ways and Means Committee. Worked in partnership with the Democratic task force to support and encourage Members of Congress and Committees to embrace digital and social media tools to share legislative updates and create online communities. Most recently, Stef served as the Vice President of Marketing and Digital at America's Promise Alliance. Angela Kim With 13+ years of experience in the private and nonprofit sectors, Angela Kim brings significant operations, project management, and business intelligence expertise to the philanthropic sector. She is driven by mission, impact, and helping nonprofits to do more social good across our communities. She has been Director of Finance and Operations at Academy of Hope Public Adult Charter School in DC for two years, arriving just as the pandemic was changing their campus-based learning model for good. She is a graduate of the Columbia University Nonprofit Management Masters program and has served on multiple nonprofit boards. Sandy Martins Sandy Martins serves as the Director of Information Technology at MENTOR. Raised in Boston by strong women, she's a proud first-generation Cape Verdean American. She's spent the last 16 years helping companies and organizations implement and improve business processes by managing complex, technology-driven projects while supporting their mission and strategic vision. Sandy has diverse expertise in the technology sector, including network technology, health IT, and software and application development. As the Director of IT, Sandy guides the internal technology committee to assess and recommend organization-wide technology improvements at MENTOR while fostering an environment of collaboration, continuous improvement, and learning. Additionally, Sandy manages the organization's roadmap of enterprise initiatives, ensuring a plan for growth in alignment with MENTOR's mission, vision, and values. Sandy, a life-long learner, holds a bachelor's degree in Computer Graphics and New Media from Johnson & Wales University (Providence, RI) and is on the path to complete her MBA program at Providence College in 2023.

Join Sarah Wolfe, Stef Cruz, Angela Kim, and Sandy Martins for an honest discussion on creating inclusive workplaces and work practices in the nonprofit tech sector.We were really excited to present this group of amazing women working in various roles in nonprofit tech for a panel discussion of what it takes to thrive in nonprofit tech careers, and how you can create inclusion-focused workplaces in your organizations.What support has helped you get where you are today in nonprofit tech? What experiences have shaped your career? What have you had to overcome?Learn and listen! How can you be an ally? How can your workplace provide an environment where everyone thrives that helps your nonprofit mission take off and fly?As with all our webinars, this presentation is appropriate for an audience of varied experience.Presenters:Sarah Wolfe, Moderator A DC Area native, Sarah Wolfe joined Community IT Innovators in March 2018 as Account Associate before being promoted to Sales Manager. She is responsible for ensuring our partner organizations are receiving the right combination of IT support services to meet their organizational needs and goals. She is a founder of the internal BLM working group at Community IT.Stef Cruz Stef is a strategic communications professional with over 15 years' experience mobilizing millions of individuals to action across national social movements including the Women's March, Families Belong Together and the March for Our Lives.She was one of the first digital strategist on Capitol Hill as the Director of Digital Media for Congressman Sander Levin and the Ways and Means Committee. Worked in partnership with the Democratic task force to support and encourage Members of Congress and Committees to embrace digital and social media tools to share legislative updates and create online communities. Most recently, Stef served as the Vice President of Marketing and Digital at America's Promise Alliance. Angela Kim With 13+ years of experience in the private and nonprofit sectors, Angela Kim brings significant operations, project management, and business intelligence expertise to the philanthropic sector. She is driven by mission, impact, and helping nonprofits to do more social good across our communities. She has been Director of Finance and Operations at Academy of Hope Public Adult Charter School in DC for two years, arriving just as the pandemic was changing their campus-based learning model for good. She is a graduate of the Columbia University Nonprofit Management Masters program and has served on multiple nonprofit boards. Sandy Martins Sandy Martins serves as the Director of Information Technology at MENTOR. Raised in Boston by strong women, she's a proud first-generation Cape Verdean American. She's spent the last 16 years helping companies and organizations implement and improve business processes by managing complex, technology-driven projects while supporting their mission and strategic vision. Sandy has diverse expertise in the technology sector, including network technology, health IT, and software and application development. As the Director of IT, Sandy guides the internal technology committee to assess and recommend organization-wide technology improvements at MENTOR while fostering an environment of collaboration, continuous improvement, and learning. Additionally, Sandy manages the organization's roadmap of enterprise initiatives, ensuring a plan for growth in alignment with MENTOR's mission, vision, and values. Sandy, a life-long learner, holds a bachelor's degree in Computer Graphics and New Media from Johnson & Wales University (Providence, RI) and is on the path to complete her MBA program at Providence College in 2023.

As inflation remains a focal point for the U.S. consumer, higher energy costs will dampen discretionary spending for some. But not all are impacted equally and there may be good news in this year's tax refunds and the labor market.-----Transcript-----Ellen Zentner: Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Ellen Zentner, Morgan Stanley's Chief U.S. Economist. Sarah Wolfe: And I'm Sarah Wolfe, also on Morgan Stanley's U.S. Economics Team. Ellen Zentner: And today on the podcast, we'll be discussing the outlook for the U.S. consumer during this year's tax season and after, as inflation remains in the driver's seat and new geopolitical realities raise further concerns. It's Thursday, March 10th, at 9:00 a.m. in New York. Sarah Wolfe: So, Ellen, I know you want to get into the U.S. consumer, but before we dig in, I think it would be useful to hear your view on the overall U.S. economy, especially given the new geopolitical challenges. Ellen Zentner: So, I think it's helpful to think about a rule of thumb for the effects of oil on overall GDP. For every 10% sustained increase in oil prices, it shaves off about one tenth on GDP growth. And so when we take into account the rise in energy prices that we've seen thus far, we took down our growth forecast for GDP this year by three tenths and shaved off an additional tenth when looking further out into 2023. Now, one thing that I think is important for the U.S. outlook versus European and U.K. colleagues is that energy prices are a much bigger factor in an economy like Europe's, and the U.K.'s where they're much more reliant on outside sources, where in the US we've become much more energy independent over the past decade. But I think where I step into your world, Sarah, as we think about higher oil prices, then translate into higher gasoline prices, which hits consumers in their pocketbook. So Sarah, that's a great segue to you on the U.S. consumer because this has been one of your focuses on the team. Consumers don't like higher prices. And, you know, we've been seeing this big divergence between sentiment and confidence. So why aren't those measures moving exactly hand in hand if inflation is the biggest concern there? Sarah Wolfe: Definitely. There's a lot of focus on consumer confidence, which comes from the Conference Board and consumer sentiment, which comes from University of Michigan. Both have been trending down, but there's been a record divergence between the two, where Conference Board is sitting about 48 points higher than sentiment. And inflation plays a huge role in this. So just getting down to the methodology of the surveys, the reason there's been such a divergence is because Conference Board places more of a focus on labor market conditions, whereas University of Michigan sentiment focuses more on inflation expectations. And so when you're in an environment like today, where the unemployment is very low, the labor market is very tight, that's very good for income that gets reflected through the confidence surveys. But at the same time, inflation is extremely high, which erodes real income, and that's getting reflected more in the sentiment survey. So, we are seeing this large divergence between the surveys and they're telling us different things, but I think both are very important to take into account. Ellen Zentner: So let me dig into inflation a little bit further then specifically and how it affects you when you're thinking about our consumer spending outlook. I mean, some of the changes that we've made to CPI forecast, you know, talk us through that and how you're building that into your estimates for the consumer. Sarah Wolfe: So we recently raised our headline forecast for CPI, or Consumer Price Index, inflation for the end of this year by 40 basis points to 4.4%. And we've also lowered our forecasts for real Personal Consumption Expenditure, or PCE, but only about 10 basis points this year to around 2.8%. And the reason that it's not a one for one pass through is, first of all, we're tracking the first quarter spending so much higher than what we had expected, so overall, even though higher gasoline prices will likely hit spending a bit more in the second quarter of 2022, we are already tracking this year much stronger. So on net, the impacts a bit smaller. Also, just because gasoline prices are going up doesn't mean that people spend less. Actually, overall, it tends to mean that people just increase their spending pool. So you have income constrained households at the lower end of the income spectrum, they're gonna pull back their spending on non-gasoline, non-utility expenditures, but on the other end, middle higher income households will just increase their spending pool, you know, gasoline prices go up so they're just going to be spending a bit more. It doesn't necessarily mean that consumption is going to be lower. If anything, it could add more upside risk to consumer spending.Ellen Zentner: You know, this is where economists can always sound a bit dispassionate because we oftentimes look at things in the aggregate and you've been writing about, how different income levels deal with higher gas prices. Talk about some of the work that you've put out with the retail teams that might be affected by that lower income consumer pulling back. Sarah Wolfe: Yeah. So just to start off with when we look at what this is going to cost households at higher gas prices, we estimate that on an annualized basis, it's going to cost households roughly $1600 dollars more on gasoline and utilities a year. So that's if higher prices that are where they are today last for the entire year. In terms of the hit by income group that could raise spending on energy by about 2% of disposable income for the highest income group, but by about 7% for the lowest income group, so that basically can equate to a 7% hit on non-gasoline and utility spending for lower income households. And so that feeds through mostly into discretionary spending for the lowest income group. And we did work with our retail teams describing this and talking about how very strong job growth and positive real wages are a tailwind for lower end consumers. But it's not enough to outpace the headwinds of stimulus rolling off on top of higher energy prices, which act as a tax to households. Ellen Zentner: Yeah, so it'll be a little bit more of a struggle for them until we get some alleviation from this price burden. I want to walk you through, though something else that we're in the midst of now. Tax refund season is upon us, and I think the refund season started a few weeks ago. And so, you track this on a weekly basis once those tax refunds start getting sent out, where are we tracking? Sarah Wolfe: Yeah, so you are right, refund season started in late January, and it's going to end in mid-April, so it's about a month earlier than last year. There's also a lot more going on with tax refunds because of all the COVID emergency programs. There's a lot more refund programs that lower middle income households could file for. You had the child tax credit, you have childcare refunds, elderly care refunds, so there was a lot of uncertainty on how refunds were going to come in this year. Through the week ending February 25th, the average refund size was roughly $3500 dollars per person, which is well above the average refund amount during the same week in previous years. So it's about $1500 higher than in 2020 and about $800 to $900 than 2019. So it's really quite significantly higher, and I think this is really important because when we talk about the low end consumer it could really provide this extra cushion that they need. We're already seeing in the auto sub-prime space and credit sub-prime space that delinquencies are starting to pick up. But I do think that this tax refund season could really help alleviate some of these pressures and bring delinquencies back down as more refunds get distributed. Ellen Zentner: So if I tie a bow around all of this, we still have a constructive outlook on the consumer. You've written about excess savings, you're now tracking the tax refund season, at the end of the day, right, you've talked about how the fundamentals drive the consumer and the fundamentals are income and strong labor market. We've got above average job gains, we've got above average wage growth, that creates this income proxy for the consumer that looks quite strong. So I think there's a lot more room to absorb the impact of higher prices today in the U.S. and especially when you compare it to some of our other major trading partners. So, Sarah, thanks for taking the time to talk. Sarah Wolfe: As always, it was great to speak with you, Ellen. Ellen Zentner: And thanks for listening. If you enjoy Thoughts on the Market, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and share the podcast with a friend or colleague today.

Consumer prices reached an all-time high this past December, and a new year brings new challenges across inflation, wage growth and interest rates.----- Transcript -----Ellen Zentner Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Ellen Zentner, Chief U.S. Economist for Morgan Stanley Research. Sarah Wolfe And I'm Sarah Wolfe, also on Morgan Stanley's U.S. Economics team. Ellen Zentner And on this episode of the podcast, we'll be talking about the outlook for consumer spending in the face of inflation, Omicron, rising interest rates and other headwinds. It's Friday, January 28th at 10:00 a.m. in New York. Ellen Zentner So Sarah, as most listeners have observed since the Fall, inflation is on everyone's mind, with consumer prices reaching a 39-year high in December, and we're forecasting inflation to recede throughout this year from about 7% now down to 2.9% by the fourth quarter. But let's talk about right now. Ellen Zentner So, you've got your finger on the pulse of the consumer. You're a consumer specialist on the team. And so, I want to ask, how quickly have consumers adjusted their spending over the past few months because of inflation? What evidence have we seen? Sarah Wolfe The consumer buying power has been very resilient in the face of high inflation. This week we got the fourth quarter GDP data and we saw the real PCE expanded by 3.3%. So that is another very strong quarter for consumer spending. And that brings spending to nearly 8% year over year in 2021, so very elevated. However, we are beginning to see that consumers may be reaching the upper echelon of their price tolerance in December. We got the retail sales report a couple of weeks ago for December, and we saw a very large contraction in consumer spending declined by more than 3%, and the decline was pretty broad based across all categories that have seen very high inflation, and this is largely reflective of goods spending. So, this is a pretty clear signal to us that while Omicron may be weighing on spending, inflation is largely at play here. And we still expect inflation to be peaking in January and February, so we likely will see some deterioration in consumer spending as we enter the first quarter of 2022. Ellen Zentner How weak could consumer spending be this quarter? Sarah Wolfe Right now, we just started our tracking for the first quarter of 2022 at 1.5% GDP growth, but within that, we have 1-2% contraction in real PCE. I will note that inflation's high so nominal PCE is still tracking positive, but it's not looking very good as we enter the first quarter. Ellen Zentner Yeah, it seems clear that inflation is taking a bite. And remind me, we have this great consumer pulse survey that we've been putting out, and I think it was back in November, right? That the people were actually saying, "Look, I'm more worried about inflation than Omicron or than COVID 19". And that's incredible. I mean, that's a pandemic that's been weighing on people's minds and yet inflation usurped. Sarah Wolfe We're also seeing it in the consumer sentiment surveys. The University of Michigan surveys inflation expectations each month. Near term inflation expectations have reached all-time highs. They're at 4.9%, and we're starting to see longer term expectations also start to tick up. In January, they hit 3.1%, which is a high since 2011. So, it's definitely being felt by consumers and causing a lot of uncertainty among them as well. Ellen Zentner But now, because we have this forecast that inflation is going to peak in February, which is data we have in hand in March, if we're right on that, can that give us a lot of confidence that at least households can see that there's light at the end of the tunnel and start to breathe a sigh of relief? Sarah Wolfe Yeah. As you mentioned, there are few headwinds facing the consumer right now. We think most of them are going to recede by the end of the first quarter. Ellen Zentner Another big change for the consumer versus last year, that you've been writing about is the roll off of government stimulus for a lot of Americans. That had really helped bolster consumer spending, getting us to that big growth rate in 2021 that you mentioned. But now that that's rolling off, what impact might it have on spending this year? Sarah Wolfe So, the big impact to spending is going to be felt this quarter in the beginning of 2022. And that's for two reasons. The first is that the child tax credits have come to an end. That did not get extended because the Build Back Better plan was not passed in time. and the child tax credits were boosting income for lower, middle-income households by $15B a month. And that included $300-360 payments per child per month. A lot of that was going straight into spending, food, other essential items, school supplies. So, we're going to get a level shift down in income and spending in January alone just because of the expiration. So, the other reason that first quarter is going to be hard for consumers is because a lot of the stimulus came through one year ago in 1Q21. That's when we got the $600 checks per person, then the $1400 checks and then also the supplemental $300 unemployment insurance benefit. So, when you're looking at income and spending year over year, especially for lower middle-income households, this is going to be a tough quarter. Ellen Zentner All right. So that's a lot of stimulus that came in, not just over 2020, but all the way into early 2021. So, does that mean that they spent all of that money that they got? Because you've been writing a lot about this idea of an excess savings. So, what do you mean by that? How do we define excess savings? Who's holding that excess savings, and can it make its way into the economy? Sarah Wolfe So, to define what excess savings is, it's basically cumulative savings above the pre-COVID savings trend. And how does that compare to the savings rate? The savings rate is just a monthly snapshot of income and spending, but excess savings is looking at how much is building up over time. And so excess savings, as many have heard this number, was over $2T throughout 2020 and 2021. We have data that shows that some of it was held all the way across the income distribution, but 80% of that was held among the top 20%. And so, a lot of that excess savings is still sitting with the wealthiest people. Sarah Wolfe What about the excess savings for lower income people? It's a smaller dollar amount, and for that reason, it just does not go as far. We have been dealing with, I mentioned, with six to eight months of high inflation. We've seen consumer spending throughout all of this high inflation. And part of that was likely driven by the drawdown in excess savings for lower income households. And so, when I think about spending for 2022, excess savings is not the main driver. Ellen Zentner So in this battle that households have with inflation, right? You got excess savings. There's a lot of uncertainty around how and when that might filter into the economy. And so, it seems that in the face of higher inflation then it makes labor income all that much more important. So, when you're looking at income or prices, how do you weigh that tug of war? Sarah Wolfe So it's OK if prices are going up as long as wages are going up by more. And so, people continue to spend. What we're seeing in the data right now is that, on net, real wages are negative. I mean, we're dealing with 7% inflation. However, and this is very important, real wages for the lowest income group are actually positive. They're the group that's seen the strongest wage growth and it actually is outpacing inflation. I say this is really important because of all we have discussed. The rolling off of fiscal stimulus - this is a group that gets hurt the most by that. Inflation - this is also the group that gets hurt the most by that. When we think about the spending bucket of lower middle-income households, most of their spending goes to essential items like food, energy and shelter. Energy prices alone have increased by over 8% in the last three months. Sarah Wolfe So, seeing real wage growth is very important, and we expect real wages to enter a positive territory for middle- and higher-income households as well as we enter mid 2022, and inflation comes down to about 4% or so. Ellen Zentner Yeah, so for those of you not able to see us, Sarah rolls her eyeballs when she says "come down to 4%" because that's still such a high rate of inflation. But it is quite a few percentage points lower than where we've peaked. So, it's really about the direction. Households can start to breathe a sigh of relief that indeed this is not some sort of permanently higher inflation and ultimately just that labor market improvement, remains the most important piece of the consumer spending outlook. Would you agree? Sarah Wolfe I would agree. Fundamentally, income is what drives spending and a large chunk of income is labor compensation. So as long as we're seeing job gains and wage growth outpacing inflation, we should continue to see spending as we move through a tough first quarter. Ellen Zentner But importantly, we've got to be right on those inflation forecasts. You know, finally, let me just say a couple of things about the Fed's meeting here. So, we do believe that the Fed has laid the groundwork to start raising rates in March, and so higher interest rates are meant to slow activity and specifically through the credit channel, right? They're going to raise the cost of access to credit this year. But in terms of, sort of what contributes most to, say, downturns when the Fed is tightening is the interest expense on the household balance sheet, right? All that debt we carry, which is a tremendous amount, that interest expense rises. So, should we be worried about household balance sheets in this environment because the Fed is going to be raising rates? Sarah Wolfe Yeah, I mean, households are carrying over $14T in debt, but things are not as bad as they sound. 70% of household debt is in mortgages and another 10% is in auto debt. And luckily, those are largely locked in at fixed rates. 90% of mortgages are at fixed rates, so that alone is 68% of the household balance sheet. Sarah Wolfe So, the picture looks better on net for households. Obviously, you need to be a homeowner for it to be in that fixed rate. So, there are non-homeowners that are more susceptible to changing rates. So, people that are holding more credit card debt, that's more lower income people. So that is the group that's going to be the most affected by a raising rates environment. Ellen Zentner Right. Good point. And so, it's even more important that we keep the labor market strong and wage growth strong for those lower income cohorts. Ellen Zentner So we've talked a lot about the consumer, Sarah, but I could do this all day long. So, thanks for taking the time today. Sarah Wolfe It was great talking with you, Ellen. Thanks for having me on. Ellen Zentner And thanks for listening. If you enjoy the show, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts and share Thoughts on the Market with a friend or colleague today.

Entertainment Reporter and Mr. Gay Pride finalist Justin Hill catches up with LGBTQIA+ musicians and performers Nik Navy, Sarah Wolfe and Dirty Versachi to talk about the queer music scene... See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The housing market has seen record home price growth this year. But who does this boom benefit and who gets left behind?----- Transcript -----Jim Egan Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm James Egan, co-head of U.S. Securitized Products Research from Morgan Stanley,Sarah Wolfe and I'm Sarah Wolfe from the US economics team, focused on the U.S. consumer.Jim Egan And on this edition of the podcast, we'll be talking about the impact of the housing boom on America's low-income households. It's Tuesday, November 16th, 10:00 a.m. in New York.Jim Egan Regular listeners of the podcast have probably heard me talking with my colleague Jay Bacow about the record level of home price growth that we've seen this year. And we've talked about it from a number of different angles: how high can home price appreciation actually climb? How sustainable is this current level of growth? What's the aftermath going to be? But today, Sarah, you and I are going to be approaching this from a slightly different angle, and we're going to talk about the impact of rising home values on low-income households. So, what were some of the big questions behind your recent research, Sarah?Sarah Wolfe So there's been a lot of discussion this year, as you mentioned, around rising home prices, rising rents and the extremely healthy housing environment. So, we wanted to look at what this meant for households all across the income distribution and, in particular, what it meant for low-income households. There's been a lot of focus on how low-income households are going to fare as we move off of fiscal stimulus - I'm talking about the unemployment insurance benefits, the economic impact payments - and so we wanted to explore real estate wealth as a potential source of equity for this group in order to make the transition away from government stimulus into a more recovery part of the economy easier or not. And so that's really the focus of this report.Jim Egan All right. Now you've spent a lot of time talking about the low-income consumer. We've got the kind of excess savings narrative across the consumer in aggregate. I know that that is appearing in the low-income consumer a little bit, but maybe not as much as further up the spectrum. Can you dig into that for us a little bit? How is the low-income consumer performing right now?Sarah Wolfe So overall, the low-income consumer over the last year and a half has performed very well, and that's because we've seen an unprecedent amount of fiscal stimulus. We've also seen strong job growth among low-income industries, including retail trade, leisure and hospitality. These are where the jobs are coming back. And we're also seeing pretty strong wage growth for low-income workers. And then at the same time, there was a pretty significant pullback in spending like dining out and other services. So together we got this buildup of excess savings and, low-income households had savings as well, and there was excess savings held all across the income distribution. While this is really significant, it's important to know that the dollar amount of excess savings held among lower income households is not that significant. And they also have a higher marginal propensity to consume out of their savings. So, while the savings is there, it likely will not last long. And so, it's not going to be a longer-term source of wealth, and that's why we decided to turn our attention to real estate wealth. Will this be a potential long-term source of wealth and significant for this group of consumers?Jim Egan OK. So, when you looked into housing wealth and particularly for low-income consumers, what did you find?Sarah Wolfe Well, low-income homeowners have actually seen their real estate wealth increased by roughly $18,000 per household. That's from the end of 2019 through mid-2021. Now, in dollar terms, that's less than the rise in real estate for higher income groups. But in percentage change, it's a 19% increase in real estate wealth among low-income homeowners. And that's the largest percentage increase across the entire income distribution when it comes to real estate wealth.Sarah Wolfe So, there's clearly been a substantial amount of real estate wealth for homeowners, but it leads me to ask the question, can they actually access that wealth?Jim Egan That is probably the question we get asked most frequently. The record rise we've seen in home prices has brought equity in the U.S. housing market to levels we haven't seen. We have data going back over 26 years. We've never had more equity in the housing market than we do right now. Part of that's because this rise in home prices just was not accompanied by the rise in mortgage debt that we saw in the early 2000s, the last time home price growth was really anywhere close to where it is right now. So, the question we get from investors pretty frequently is, well are borrowers going to access this? How can borrowers access this? Are we going to see that same sort of mortgage equity withdrawal, that sort of cash out activity that we saw during the last cycle. And look, the high-level answer is it's difficult to say, given the lack of comprehensive data that we see there. Now, we do have some form of data from the GSEs, we have it from Ginnie Mae, that can show us how cash out activity is evolving, and we are seeing cash out activity really pick up in 2021. It wasn't the case in 2020. Falling rates in 2020 meant that a larger percentage of refinancings were more just straight rate-and-term refinances. They didn't have a cash out component. But we are starting to see cash out refinance activity pick up in 2021 from where it was in 2020. Sarah Wolfe And how does mortgage credit availability play into all of this?Jim Egan We do think that's playing a pretty big role. Now we've talked about how mortgage credit availability is running at pretty tight levels. We actually undid six years' worth of easing lending standards in the six months following COVID, but we have started to see lending standards plateau and they've started to ease from here. Now, how of those tight lending standards manifested themselves in terms of cash out activity? We're actually seeing the dollar amount that is being cashed out, it's lower today than it was in 2019 in terms of absolute dollar amount. If we talk about the amount of equity, the rising home prices we've seen, that means as a percentage of the property value, in 2019, we were seeing cash out refi's remove roughly about 18% of value from the house. That's down to just 13% today. So people are able to access that equity, but tighter credit standards might be contributing to that dollar amount being lower. And it certainly means that the borrowers who are more likely to be able to access that are probably borrowers that are further up the credit quality spectrum, higher credit scores, for instance, perhaps higher income levels as well. So we do think that tight credit availability plays a role. But Sarah, turning this back to you.Jim Egan Once we get past the borrower's ability to actually remove cash from their home or the borrower's ability to tap that equity in their home. What are you seeing households use that money for?Sarah Wolfe Well, a bulk of the equity goes back into the home in the form of home improvement and repairs. There is a smaller amount that goes towards non-housing expenditures like education and apparel. Also, some of it goes towards paying down debt. But the large majority is back into the house in terms of home repairs and improvements.Jim Egan OK, I want to switch gears from homeowners to renters. Rents have been racing higher in recent months. That doesn't seem great for low-income consumers who don't own their homes. But what are you seeing there?Sarah Wolfe That's true. Home price appreciation is great for those who own a home, but only half of the bottom 20% are homeowners. This compares to 80% homeownership among the top 20%. And so while we've seen a rise in home price appreciation, it's coincided with escalating rents for non-homeowners. To put some numbers around it, CPI inflation-- this is consumer price index-- showed that rents rose 0.4% in October and 0.5% in September. And while that might not seem like a big number, that's the largest two month increase in rent inflation since 1992. We also find that low-income renters spend 63% of their income paying rent nationally, which is quite elevated. And we're forecasting that rent prices are just going to keep going up and up in the coming years, making it harder for Low-Income non-homeowners to afford having a home and leaving them at the mercy of rising rents.Jim Egan Now we've done a lot of work on inequal access to homeownership among minorities. How does this factor into the rising burden of rent?Sarah Wolfe Well, on top of the income disparity in homeownership, the racial disparity adds another dimension to the divide between low-income homeowners and renters. Our ESG strategies find that on average, the gap in homeownership between White and Black and Hispanic households is widest for low to moderate income families. This really limits the benefits of home price appreciation for minorities and further exacerbates racial inequalities.Jim Egan All right, so the record level of home price growth, which has led to a record level of equity in U.S. households, does appear to have increased wealth across the income spectrum. But when we look a little bit closer, that's not necessarily the case for lower income households the same way it is for higher income households. And, across the board, the ability of these different households to tap that equity is still a question.Sarah Wolfe That's correct. But I think that it's important to keep in mind that the picture is not all bad. The low-income household is still healthy, and we have the substantial amount of labor market income coming from lower wage jobs like retail trade, leisure and hospitality, transportation, combined with strong wage growth, all helping and supporting income growth longer term for this group.Jim Egan Sarah, always great speaking with you.Sarah Wolfe Great talking with you, Jim.Jim Egan As a reminder, if you enjoy Thoughts on the Market, please take a moment to rate and review us on the Apple Podcasts app. It helps more people to find the show.

Switching the Office Phone System to Microsoft Teams Telephony for NonprofitsWould you like ONE communication and collaboration system for calling, chat and video conferencing? If you use Office 365, you already have it.Easily route calls to the right personSwitch between video and audio callsAdd new members to an on-going callAccess voicemail from any deviceCommunity IT has assisted several clients switch to Microsoft Teams for all their telephone needs. In this free webinar, Sarah Wolfe talks with Community IT CTO Matt Eshleman on BenefitsBest practices for changing overAvoiding downtimeTraining staff on this useful tool you probably already haveLearn how Microsoft Teams features work for nonprofit office phones and how to switch securely and easily.Should your nonprofit consider a switch to Microsoft Teams telephony?Join Community IT's CTO Matt Eshleman and Sarah Wolfe for an in-depth discussion of the pros and cons of ditching your physical office phones system to use Microsoft Teams for staff phones, and how to handle the change over if you decide to switch.As with all our webinars, this presentation is appropriate for an audience of varied IT experience. There is (slightly) more to the change management than just asking everyone to use Teams now to make all phone calls. Learn how Microsoft Teams features work for nonprofit office phones and how to switch securely and easily.Community IT is proudly vendor-agnostic and our webinars cover a range of topics and discussions. This conversation will feature a realistic look at the main virtual telephony tool available – but will also discuss the options for your nonprofit if you are not using Microsoft Teams or don't have the Microsoft Office 365 package. Webinars are never a sales pitch, always a way to share our knowledge with our community.Presenters:A DC Area native, Sarah Wolfe joined Community IT Innovators in March 2018. As the Associate Account Manager she is responsible for ensuring our partner organizations are receiving the right combination of IT support services to meet their organizational needs and goals.Prior to joining Community IT, Sarah was a science teacher at various schools in Maryland. She attended Oberlin College in Ohio, graduating in 2008 with a Bachelor of Arts in Biology.Sarah is excited to interview Matt on the topic of Microsoft Teams telephony for nonprofits, having dealt with a number of office phone set ups as a staff person in prior organizations, and also in her role as a Community IT account manager for clients with questions about best practices and saving budget on expensive office telephony they no longer need.As the Chief Technology Officer at Community IT and our resident cybersecurity expert, Matthew Eshleman is responsible for shaping Community IT's strategy around the technology platforms used by organizations to be secure and productive. With a deep background in network infrastructure, he fundamentally understands how technology works and interoperates both in the office and in the cloud.Matt holds dual degrees in Computer Science and Computer Information Systems at Eastern Mennonite University, and an MBA from the Carey School of Business at Johns Hopkins University.Matt is a frequent speaker at NTEN events and has presented at the Inside NGO conference, Non-Profit Risk Management Summit and Credit Builders Alliance Symposium. He is also the session designer and trainer for TechSoup's Digital Security course.

Join us for a new series featuring interviews with Community IT employees. In this series, we will talk about nonprofit technology career paths, career resources, skills, and certifications. We will also touch on mentoring opportunities as you start out on your career and ways to give back if you are further along. In today’s interview, Carolyn talks with Sarah Wolfe, our Account Associate, who just celebrated her third year anniversary with Community IT. Sarah is a client wrangler for Community IT. She does non-technical account management and customer service work and handles sales inquiries. She makes sure that people understand the agreements that they have with Community IT, makes sure that the processes are working right, and connects people with the solutions that they need if they’re having trouble.Sarah discusses the challenges of being a woman in IT, where to go for mentoring, and what experiences she would advise a high school student interested in IT sales or account management to pursue. Speaker:A DC Area native, Sarah Wolfe joined Community IT Innovators in March 2018. As the Associate Account Manager she is responsible for ensuring our partner organizations are receiving the right combination of IT support services to meet their organizational needs and goals.Prior to joining Community IT, Sarah was a science teacher at various schools in Maryland. She attended Oberlin College in Ohio, graduating in 2008 with a Bachelor of Arts in Biology, and took classes at UMCP as part of the MSMaRT program from 2010 to 2011 for her teaching certification. In her free time, Sarah enjoys gardening, rock climbing, and curling up with her menagerie to read a good book or science blog.

In this episode, Eileen talks with Sarah Wolfe, Communications Specialist for Efficiency Vermont. During the conversation, Sarah explains how her personal passion for environmental issues led her to this work, and shares the ways that Vermonters can benefit from the programs and initiatives offered by Efficiency Vermont.

It's Emma's birthday, so let's talk about birthdays! Emma and Winston have a birthday chat, and are joined periodically by some of our past guests, John-Paul Cirelli, Michelle Agresti, Emma Cohen, and Sarah Wolfe, to talk about their favorite birthday traditions and experiences. Featuring: "Babanukah," internet scavenger hunts, board games, kicking off Halloween in August, talent shows, tattoos, bowling alleys, the beach, and strategic birthday cake. Want to buy Emma a birthday coffee? Check out her Ko-fi page! Follow John-Paul on twitter @MondoVulgare, and make sure to check out his podcast Celluloid Bastards! Follow Michelle on twitter @michellevelyna, and make sure to check out Arden & Hit The Bricks! Find Us Online: If you enjoy Pairing, follow us on social media and tell your friends! Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, & Tumblr @PairingPodcast. Also check out our website, www.thepairingpodcast.com Please consider leaving us a review on Apple Podcasts, as that's one of the best ways to get more people listening in! Support Us: Become a Pairing Patron on Patreon to get access to exclusive content, personalized pairings, bonus episodes, and more! And do't forget to check out our Merch store! About Pairing: Pairing was created, hosted, and produced by Emma Sherr-Ziarko, with music and audio recording by Winston Shaw, and artwork by Darcy Zimmerman and Katie Huey. This episode was edited by Emma Sherr-Ziarko.

Women In Pop is launching our first ever live event on March 20: Women In Pop Presents. One of the artists performing on the night is Sarah Wolfe and in this episode she chats to Jett Tattersall about performing at Women In Pop presents, her new single 'U Think This Is A Game?' and her future plans. Tickets for Women In Pop Presents are on sale now at womeninpop.com/live

Emma is joined by her longtime friend Sarah Wolfe to discuss the last and most epic of the Harry Potter novels, The Deathly Hallows. We talk about the flaws in the book(s), but also what is so wonderful and powerful about them, and we have our own Hallows vs. Horcruxes debate. Plus, Emma talks a bunch about California wine. Featuring: camping wine vs. battle wine, discussing the epitaphs, children being the hope of our generation, living in a fascist state, actual books on tape, wine genres, Jim Dale vs. Stephen Fry, J.K.'s homage to J.R.R., why Alan Rickman took the role of Snape, and growing up.  Follow Sarah on Instagram and Twitter @theswolfe. If you would like to experience the glory that is her Harry Potter MadLibs or Trivia creations, join us on Patreon! Sponsor: -Winc is a wine subscription service that delivers high quality wine at affordable prices, customized to your palate, right to your door. Go to trywinc.com/pairingpodcast for $22 off your first order! Find Us Online: If you enjoy Pairing, follow us on social media and tell your friends! Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, & Tumblr @PairingPodcast. Also check out our website, www.thepairingpodcast.com Please consider leaving us a review on Apple Podcasts, as that's one of the best ways to get more people listening in! Support Us: Become a Pairing Patron on Patreon to get access to exclusive content, personalized pairings, bonus episodes, and more! And do't forget to check out our Merch store! About Pairing: Pairing was created, hosted, and produced by Emma Sherr-Ziarko, with music and audio recording by Winston Shaw, and artwork by Darcy Zimmerman and Katie Huey. This episode was edited by Emma Sherr-Ziarko.

Interview with Sarah The Rebel, also known in some parts of the wrestling world as Sarah Wolfe, but perhaps best known as Razor in the AXS TV show Women of Wrestling, the promotion owned by original GLOW founder David McLane. We cover her start in professional wrestling, the schools she has been to, training with New Japan, her time as a manager/valet, how she became involved in WOW, and her views on the current representation of women in AEW, NXT and WWE. Follow Sarah on Twitter @SarahTheRebel and check out Razor at WOW Follow Holy Shoot on Twitter @holyshootpod and on Facebook Intro Music: Ruby Riott (instrumental version) by our friends The B+ Players Ths interview will be included in the upcoming Women Love Wrestling book in January 2020  

Body hair. We all have it. Some of us remove it, some of us let it grow wild. Taylor invites Body Positivity advocate, Sarah Wolfe, back to discuss how our body hair impacts our self-esteem, dating, and finances. The ladies aren't holding back and no hair is off limits! From toe hair to mustache hair, we're talking about it! 

Photographer, 9-5er, animal lover, and body positivity advocate Sarah Wolfe shares her many experiences, struggles, and insights into being an above-average sized woman.  Taylor and Sarah talk about how your weight and body image can impact your confidence, mental health, social and work life. 

Clinical Psychologist, Sarah Wolfe, joined Mick Coyle to talk about children in care on this week’s Mental Health Monday. Sarah discussed mental health in children in care, why children go into care and the issues that they face. Plus, a special preview to the 24 hour radio show “Mental Health Monday marathon” next week with Jake Mills and producers Lizzi and Dave. Follow Mick @MrMickCoyle, Sarah Wolfe @SarahWolfePsych and Jake Mills @JakeMills1

Sarah Wolfe now makes more money as a freelance textile designer than she ever did as an employee. Learn how she did it! The post Weaving Together New Work Opportunities With Textile Designer Sarah Wolfe (022) appeared first on Life Skills That Matter.