You can tell very different stories on inflation right now: Headline CPI up 5.4% over 12 months. core PCE up 2.3% annual rate over last 24 months. There has been a recent price jump, but much more in CPI, and taking into account slow 2020 inflation, doesn't look as bad.

I find this breakdown from Julia Coronado very helpful. The burst of auto inflation moderated, bringing monthly core increases down. But just as important, the non auto, non re-opening sector, (the “everything else”) price increases continued slowing (3 months in a row).

Why not borrow someone else’s proven recipe and repurpose CureVac’s production network to make 1 billion doses of another vaccine? CureVac’s hard-fought supply chain is worth deploying even if its initial COVID-19 mRNA vaccine is not. My latest  piie.com/blogs/realtime…

Child Tax Credit payments starting (up 177B at annual rate) accounted for over ¾ of the Personal Income increase in July (220B at annual rate). Wages up some, UI down again (as states cut benefits and people shift to jobs). CTC more than offset this months drop in UI.

About 0.1 percentage point of the 0.3 percent month-over-month increase in the monthly core inflation measure was due to pandemic-affected services and increases in cars. 8/

Disappointing jobs report. After top 10 in history job gains in June and July, a big slowdown. Virus is the story. Didn’t derail economy, but slowed it. Still short > 5 million jobs from 2/2020 Need faster job growth (especially with millions losing unemployment insurance)

🇺🇸👷‍♂️🧑🏿‍💼"This is a real slowdown. And it's one we can't really afford". The US economy added a disappointing 235,000 jobs in August. Jay Shambaugh, ex-presidential economic advisor, tells Ben Boulos it shows "the strong impact of the Delta variant". bbc.co.uk/news/business-…

I was on BBC News (World) this AM talking about the US jobs report with Ben Boulos . Video below.

Why is hiring slowing, pandemic or lack of workers? This figure makes me lean pandemic. We didn't suddenly run out of workers in August (and UI was ending), but Delta did get worse. AND hours in leisure & hosp have come down. Counterpoint is wages still rising & lots of openings

Continue to find this one of the most interesting figures to think about inflation right now. Very glad @WhiteHouseCEA produces it each month.

Happy 5th birthday to EconoFactOrg and congrats to Michael W. Klein on 5 years of producing high quality objective and accessible pieces on important economic topics.

Honored that President Biden announced his intent to nominate me to be the Undersecretary for International Affairs in the Treasury Department. whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/… via @whitehouse