News of the Day

U.S. existing home sales dropped to the lowest level in nearly two years in April as house prices jumped to a record high amid a persistent lack of inventory.

Existing home sales fell 2.4% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.61 million units last month, the lowest level since June 2020 when sales were rebounding from the COVID-19 lockdown slump. It was the third straight monthly sales decline.

Home resales, which account for the bulk of U.S. home sales, declined 5.9% on a year-on-year basis.

The bulk of April’s sales were likely closings on contracts signed one to two months ago before mortgage rates started their rapid ascent. A further decline in sales is likely as contracts decreased for the fifth straight month in March.

The median existing house price shot up 14.8% from a year earlier to an all-time $391,200 in April. The median house price surged 22% in the South, which had seen a rapid rise in sales as Americans moved from other regions.

Sales remained concentrated in the upper-price end of the market amid a paucity of entry-level houses.

There were 1.03 million previously owned homes on the market, down 10.4% from a year ago.

Supply is likely to remain tight. The government reported on Wednesday that building permits for single-family housing, the largest segment of the housing market, tumbled to a six-month low in April.

At April’s sales pace, it would take 2.2 months to exhaust the current inventory of existing homes, down from 2.3 months a year ago. A six-to-seven-month supply is viewed as a healthy balance between supply and demand.

Properties typically remained on the market for 17 days, unchanged from the prior month and a year ago. Eighty-eight percent of homes sold in April were on the market for less than a month. First-time buyers accounted for 28% of sales. All-cash sales made up 26% of transactions.

Retail sales rose 0.9 percent in April as a rebound in automobile sales and a pickup in dining powered another monthly increase in consumer spending, according to data released Tuesday by the Census Bureau.

Sales by retailers, restaurants and bars totaled $677.7 billion in April, according to the Census Bureau, up from a revised March total of $671.6 billion. Retail sales are adjusted for seasonal spending pattern changes, but not for inflation.

Economists expected retail sales to rise 1 percent last month after auto dealers reported a sharp pickup in sales and restaurant activity rose in April. Both were key drivers of the April increase in retail sales, which has steamed ahead despite inflation hitting an annual rate of 8.3 percent last month, according to Labor Department data.

Sales by restaurants and bars rose 2 percent in April, in line with a 1.9 percent monthly increase in March. Retail sales minus auto dealers and auto parts shops rose by 0.6 percent in April, and retail sales without the food and beverage industry rose 0.7 percent.

“These broad increases reflect the continued strength of consumer demand in the US, despite rising economic risks. Retail sales have shown steady growth in recent months, despite the worsening outlook in consumer confidence,” wrote Cailin Birch, global economist at Economist Intelligence Unit, in a Tuesday analysis.

Yesterday, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) each released a technical assistance document about disability discrimination when employers use artificial intelligence (AI) and other software tools to make employment decisions.

Employers increasingly use AI and other software tools to help them select new employees, monitor performance, and determine pay or promotions. Employers may give computer-based tests to applicants or use computer software to score applicants’ resumes. Many of these tools use algorithms or AI. These tools may result in unlawful discrimination against people with disabilities in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

The EEOC released a technical assistance document, “The Americans with Disabilities Act and the Use of Software, Algorithms, and Artificial Intelligence to Assess Job Applicants and Employees,” focused on preventing discrimination against job seekers and employees with disabilities. Based on the ADA, regulations, and existing policy guidance, this document outlines issues that employers should consider to ensure that the use of software tools in employment does not disadvantage workers or applicants with disabilities in ways that violate the ADA. The document highlights promising practices to reduce the likelihood of disability discrimination. The EEOC technical assistance focuses on three primary concerns under the ADA:

• Employers should have a process in place to provide reasonable accommodations when using algorithmic decision-making tools;
• Without proper safeguards, workers with disabilities may be “screened out” from consideration in a job or promotion even if they can do the job with or without a reasonable accommodation; and
• If the use of AI or algorithms results in applicants or employees having to provide information about disabilities or medical conditions, it may result in prohibited disability-related inquiries or medical exams.

The DOJ’s guidance document, “Algorithms, Artificial Intelligence, and Disability Discrimination in Hiring,” provides a broad overview of rights and responsibilities in plain language, making it easily accessible to people without a legal or technical background. This document:

• Provides examples of the types of technological tools that employers are using;
• Clarifies that, when designing or choosing technological tools, employers must consider how their tools could impact different disabilities;
• Explains employers’ obligations under the ADA when using algorithmic decision-making tools, including when an employer must provide a reasonable accommodation; and
• Provides information for employees on what to do if they believe they have experienced discrimination.

Inflation cooled off slightly in April as the pace of both yearly and monthly price growth dropped, according to data released Wednesday by the Labor Department. The consumer price index (CPI), the Labor Department’s closely watched gauge of inflation, rose 8.3 percent over the past 12 months and 0.3 percent in April alone.

Gasoline prices dropped 6.7 percent in April and energy prices on the whole dropped 2.7 percent last month after double-digit gains in March. Gas prices are still up 44.7 percent over the past 12 months, and energy prices remain 30.3 percent higher than they were in April 2021.

While a dip in gas prices brought some relief for consumers, inflation in other crucial goods and services continued to rise.

Food prices rose 0.9 percent in April and are up 9.4 percent on the year — the steepest annual increase since April 1981 — with groceries alone costing 10.8 percent more over the past 12 months. Prices for transportation services rose 3.1 percent on the month, and prices for medical care services rose 0.5 percent in April.

Inflation for goods other than food and energy, which economists call “core inflation,” also rose 0.6 percent in April after a 0.3 monthly increase in March. Core inflation is significant to economists because it strips out more-volatile food and energy prices, giving a clearer view into broader trends beyond those two markets.

The leader of Wisconsin’s Department of Workforce Development said Monday there’s been “fantastic progress” in its efforts to modernize the state’s unemployment insurance system.

Secretary-designee Amy Pechacek, in an appearance on Wisconsin Public Radio’s “The Morning Show,” said the department is paying 84 percent of unemployment claims within one to three days.

DWD struggled in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. The economic shutdown of March 2020 and the influx of claims that resulted placed a strain on the unemployment system, creating a backlog of hundreds of thousands of claims. Some potential applicants weren’t able to connect to the department’s call center to complete the process.

As of June 2020, unemployment applicants waited 19 days on average for their claims to be paid, according to DWD data. Some applicants reported much longer waits, however.

We have inherited a system that is over 50 years old,” Pechacek said. “When I walked in the door, I was surprised to learn that when folks had to send in documentation to support their unemployment claim, they had to either fax it or mail it.”

Since then, the department has made changes so applicants can upload those documents online.

“We’ve got artificial intelligence on the backend that pulls that data right off, so it’s very efficient,” Pechacek said.

According to the most recent department statistics, 91 percent of initial applications for unemployment benefits have been filed online. That number jumps to 95 percent for weekly claims.

Pechacek said the department increased project appointment and contractor hiring during the pandemic, especially in adding judges to address claim appeals. According to department data, more than 700 appeals were waiting to be scheduled as of the end of April. That’s down from almost 13,000 appeals a year ago.

Tourism spending in Wisconsin has outperformed the national average for the past two years in comparison to 2019 numbers, state officials announced.

A release from Gov. Tony Evers spotlighted figures from the Travel Recovery Insights report released by the U.S. Travel Association and Tourism Economics. It shows travel spending in the state in February was 1 percent lower than in 2019, while the national average was 6 percent lower.

The release also notes Wisconsin in February “fared better than tourism powerhouses” such as Texas, Michigan, North Carolina, Hawaii, California, Minnesota, Illinois and New York, each of which were down between 4 and 18 percent compared to the same month in 2019.

A graph included in the release shows tourism spending in the state has largely followed the national trend, with a sharp dip in early 2020 coinciding with the start of the pandemic. Travel spending in the state has remained below 2019 numbers for much of 2020 and 2021, and exceeded 2019 for the first time in September of last year.

Over the six-month period ending in February, travel spending in the state exceeded 2019 levels four times, the release shows. It was up 1 percent in September, down 4 percent in October, up 1 percent in November, up 4 percent in December, up 1 percent in January and down 1 percent in February.

Overall economic impact data for 2021 won’t be available until June, the release shows, but the state’s tourism industry in 2020 saw $17.3 billion in business sales and supported more than 157,000 jobs. In 2019, those numbers were $22.2 billion and 202,000 jobs, according to figures provided by Travel Wisconsin.

The groundswell of organized retail crime is a national issue that risks spreading local law enforcement thin. While the American public sees headlines of smash-and-grab robberies or watches shock-inducing footage of their favorite retailers left ransacked and wrecked, it’s our local police forces that are left to pick up the pieces.

Almost 70 percent of storefronts have reported an increase in theft this past year, and the Coalition of Law Enforcement and Retail estimates that organized retail crime accounts for $45 billion in annual retail losses. In one instance alone in February 2021, a group brazenly grabbed handbags worth $165,000 from the shelves of a Chanel store in New York in a daytime robbery.

Why the sudden spike in crime sprees over the past couple of years? Historically, organized retail crime tends to increase in challenging times. According to U.S. court statistics, retail theft skyrocketed by 16 percent after 9/11 and by 30 percent during the 2008 recession. It’s no surprise that we are seeing a similar, albeit accelerated, trend amid the protracted pandemic and crippling inflation.

But what makes this current organized retail crime wave more pervasive and problematic than ever is where these stolen goods may end up once they are swiped from store shelves. Gone are the days of pawning stolen merchandise on street corners and flea markets; criminals are turning to the anonymity of the internet to peddle their loot. Stolen items are showing up on the virtual marketplaces that consumers traffic on a daily basis, seamlessly fitting in with honest online storefronts and businesses.

That’s why federal legislation such as the Integrity, Notification, and Fairness in Online Retail Marketplaces for Consumers, or INFORM Consumers Act, could be a valuable and essential tool. It’s the least Congress can do to support law enforcement online as they continue to work to combat organized retail crime. The bill requires online marketplaces to clearly disclose contact information of certain high-volume, third-party sellers to consumers and provide consumers with ways to report suspicious marketplace activity. The Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general would have authority to enforce the requirements.

The Federal Reserve Wednesday raised its benchmark interest rate by a half point for the first time in two decades as policymakers intensify their fight to cool red-hot inflation, a move that threatens to slow U.S. economic growth and exacerbate financial pressure on Americans.

The 50-basis point hike — a widely anticipated move — puts the key benchmark federal funds rate at a range between 0.75% to 1.0%, the highest since the pandemic began two years ago.

The Fed also announced it will start reducing its massive $9 trillion balance sheet, which nearly doubled in size during the pandemic as the central bank bought mortgage-backed securities and other Treasury’s to keep borrowing cheap. In a plan outlined Wednesday, the Fed indicated it will begin winding down the balance sheet June 1 at an initial combined monthly pace of $47.5 billion, a move that will further tighten credit for U.S. households. It will increase the run-off rate to $95 billion over three months.

Collectively, the steps mark the most aggressive tightening of monetary policy in decades as the Fed races to catch up with inflation, which hit a fresh 40-year high in March.

“Inflation is much too high,” Fed Chairman Jerome Powell told reporters at a post-meeting news conference. “We understand the hardship it is causing, and we’re moving expeditiously to bring it back down. We have both the tools we need and the resolve that it will take to restore price stability on behalf of American families and businesses.”

Job openings increased to 11.549 million in March, the Labor Department said in its Job Openings and Labor Turnover Summary (JOLTS) on Tuesday.

The number of vacancies across the U.S. economy has held sharply above the number of hires, which were little changed month-on-month at 6.7 million in March. And the number of quits also edged up to a record high of 4.5 million, with the quits rate hovering little changed at 3.0%.

By industry, job openings rose significantly among retail trade employers, with vacancies increasing by 155,000 month-on-month. Durable goods manufacturing industries also saw vacancies rise by 50,000 in March. On the other hand, vacancies decreased by 69,000 in transportation, warehousing and utilities industries, and by 43,000 in state and local government education.

Job openings across the board, however, remain well above pre-pandemic levels, as vacancies were averaging around just 7.1 million per month throughout 2019. And these openings have remained even as firms have brought back workers at rates well above pre-virus levels for much of the past year.