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Journal Article
What Do Financial Officers Predict for Price Growth?
Survey responses from chief financial officers and other financial decisionmakers yield a new measure of inflation expectations. Rather than asking about expectations for overall inflation, this survey asks about expected price growth at each respondent’s business. Aggregating survey responses provides an economy-wide indicator that tracks well with actual core consumer price index inflation. Survey responses collected before and during the recent oil shock imply that core inflation could remain elevated this year if the historical relationship between financial officer expectations and ...
Journal Article
Firms’ Inflation Expectations During the Pandemic-Era Surge
Inflation expectations among businesses can affect how they set current prices. Firms’ expectations diverged from those of professional forecasters during the pandemic-era inflation surge and moved closer to household expectations. Analyzing firms’ survey data from 2018 to 2025 reveals three main patterns behind this shift: Businesses became more sensitive to current inflation perceptions, their longer-term expectations temporarily drifted up, and their perceptions of the Federal Reserve’s inflation goal increased. However, when inflation eventually moderated, the survey data show that ...
Journal Article
What Do Financial Officers Predict for the Labor Market?
Business leader surveys can be an important and reliable source for insights into future labor market conditions, particularly for expected wage growth. Survey responses from financial executives regarding their expectations for wages at their firms have closely tracked subsequent actual U.S. nominal wage growth since 2002, outperforming household survey projections in their accuracy. Estimates for this year point to continued nominal wage growth in 2026. Respondents also expect employment growth to moderate, though their projections reflect uncertainty regarding potential gains in workers’ ...