Julia Coronado:
I think it’s too early to say that the U.S. is heading to a recession. Certainly, we have seen the U.S. just continue to be more resilient than people expect year after year, quarter after quarter.
And one of the things the U.S. has going in its favor is that it is the most diversified economy. We have manufacturing, we have construction, we have professional services jobs, we have some of them, health care, as you noted, been a big contributor to job gains.
So we have a really robust diversified economy. We do worry, though, not just about the federal job losses. The federal sector is pretty small. It’s less than 2 percent of the work force. But there’s been a lot of cuts in contract payments to contractors with the federal government. And that’s probably twice as big as the actual loss of federal jobs directly.
So we’re really watching that carefully. Who contracts with the federal government? Pretty much everybody, from farmers to hospitals to universities to primary schools. And those are areas where job gains have been really strong over the last year or two. So we’re watching for signs that those sectors that have really driven the gains feel the squeeze of both the reduced payments, as well as just the uncertainty that hangs over the environment right now.
