For the first time since the mid-20th century, over 95 percent of this year’s planned new electric-generating capacity in the United States is zero-carbon.[1] Natural gas has long been relied on to ensure the nation’s power grids deliver electricity when needed. However, recent trends indicate a shift: Between 2020 and 2024, the share of new capacity burning natural gas fell from 21 percent to 4 percent while the share of new battery storage capacity has skyrocketed, increasing from 1 percent to 23 percent. This stunning growth in battery deployment means that moving forward, utilities will be ..read more

In another strong jobs report, payrolls rose 303,000 last month, well above the expectation of 214,000 jobs added. CEA takes you through the details of the report over at our X thread, including the tick down in the unemployment rate and the increase in the labor force participation rate. In this blog, we wanted to explore why the job market has repeatedly beat expectations. That is, the above-expectations numbers in March are not unusual in recent employment reports. What is this consistent, one-sided miss telling us about the U.S. job market?  One answer to ..read more

Both overall and core PCE price inflation came in at 0.3% in February, according to data out this morning from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Over the year, inflation by this measure was up 2.5% overall and 2.8% for the core index (which leaves out volatile energy and food costs). Those rates are significantly down from their peaks, by 4.7 percentage points for the overall measure and by 2.8 percentage points for the core. In fact, the 2.8% core rate is the lowest in almost 3 years. CEA’s X thread takes you through these and other highlights of the report. One remarkable attribute of the cur ..read more

Obtaining a college degree is a well-established route to the middle-class. In August 2023, the Biden-Harris Administration introduced the Saving on a Valuable Education (SAVE) plan to ensure that the burden of student loans does not hinder opportunities afforded by a post-secondary education, particularly for those who come from less-advantaged backgrounds who need to finance their studies with debt. This voluntary, income-driven repayment (IDR) plan adjusts monthly payments based on the borrower’s income, with potential for zero-dollar payments when incomes are low. Compared to previous ..read more

In a recent blogpost reviewing the latest CPI report, the CEA showed how one significant component of inflation, core services excluding housing (also known as “non-housing services,” or NHS), had recently accelerated. Given the broad decline in inflation—down about two-thirds from its peak in mid-2022—we wanted to take a closer look at what’s driving this apparent NHS acceleration and assess its prospective role in inflation’s future trajectory. We find that the recent acceleration in NHS inflation is largely driven by unusual movements in the CPI’s measure of health insurance costs, about wh ..read more

After two decades of declining or flat employment demand in the US semiconductor industry, job creation in US semiconductor manufacturing is growing again.  This blog describes recent trends in semiconductor manufacturing employment and how funding and incentives created by President Biden’s CHIPS and Science Act are likely to spur continued growth in the sector. Recent Hiring Trends America invented the semiconductor. But in the 2000s and early 2010s, many semiconductor firms closed U.S. plants and shifted production to lower-cost locales overseas. Between 2002 and 2009, semiconductor ma ..read more

We learned this morning that inflation as measured by the Consumer Price Index was 0.4 percent in February and 3.2 percent over the past year. Core inflation, which leaves out volatile food and energy prices in order to better parse inflation’s underlying trend, was also 0.4 percent over the month and 3.8 percent over the last year. In this blog, we look at a few categories in the CPI report that drive the broad index through the lens of 6-month annualized changes. Because one month of data doesn’t capture the underlying trend, and 12-month measures underweight more recent movements, we prefer ..read more

One of the most important ways that President Biden has added real fairness to the tax code is by providing the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) with the resources they need to reduce the tax gap and improve service delivery for taxpayers. The gross tax gap is the difference between what taxpayers owe and what they pay, and in 2021, it clocked in at a very large $688 billion. Even after accounting for IRS’s enforcement efforts, the net tax gap was $625 billion in 2021. The Inflation Reduction Act provided $80 billion in additional funding to the IRS, much of which is dedicated to closing the tax ..read more

Payrolls rose by a much stronger-than-expected 353,000 in January, as the unemployment rate held steady at 3.7 percent. In our X thread, CEA highlights some of the key factors in today’s report, including: The three-month moving average of payroll growth is now 289,000. Over the last two months, payroll employment was revised up by a combined 126,000. The prime-age labor force participation rate ticked up to 83.3%. Average hourly earnings grew by 0.6%. In this post, we tackle the question that many who follow these data likely had in mind when they clicked over to the BLS website this mornin ..read more

Today’s GDP report showed the US economy expanded at a strong 3.3 percent clip in the last three months of last year. Over the full year, real GDP was up 3.1 percent (2022Q4 to 2023Q4), also a very solid growth rate, supported by the strong labor market, consumer spending, business investment, net exports, and easing inflation. CEA drills further into the report on X. This post features a series of tables and figures that place today’s report into the context of the current economic expansion by looking at where we were, where many forecasters thought we’d be at this point, and how these devel ..read more