Robotaxis keep running into battles with firefighters on the streets of San Francisco, and the fire chief is fed up.

“They’re not ready for prime time,” said boss Jeanine Nicholson.

Nicholson talks about Waymo and Cruise driverless taxis that pick up passengers and drop them off in certain neighborhoods. Now these companies want to quickly expand their service to the entire city in unlimited numbers and in any weather, day or night. And state regulators seem poised to approve their request.

City leaders are concerned — not just in San Francisco, but also in Los Angeles and Santa Monica, where Waymo and another robotaxi company, Motional, say they are ready to deploy their AI-powered robotaxi service once state regulators this report green light.

The robo-taxis industry is allowing itself to move too fast and break things, these officials say, and are putting more robo-taxis on public roads despite proving inept at dealing with fire engines, ambulances, and police cars. And they say that California authorities set the rules, so cities have little leverage over how autonomous vehicles are regulated.

“I’m not against the technology. I understand that it’s important and that it’s the way the industry is evolving,” Nicholson said. “But we need to fix what’s not working right now before they impact the rest of the city.”

State regulators track robo-taxis collisions, but do not collect data on traffic flow issues such as roadblocks or fire truck obstructions.

But the fire department does. Since January 1, the fire service has logged at least 39 robotaxi incidents.

Although robotic cars don’t get tired, don’t drive drunk or high, and don’t get distracted by their iPhones, as the self-driving car industry is realizing, they often get stuck in traffic for no apparent reason. Sometimes these robo-roadblocks are short-lived, but other times the roadblocks last so long that a robotaxi company employee has to drive to the scene of the accident and move the car out of the way.

Fire Department incidents include reports of robotaxis:

• I run through yellow police tape and ignore warning signs to emerge onto a road littered with storm-damaged electrical cords, then pass emergency vehicles with some of those cords threaded around lidar sensors on the roof.
• Two times the access roads to the fire station were blocked, causing another fire station to send an ambulance to a medical emergency.
• Sits motionless on a one-way street, forcing a fire engine to reverse and take a different route to a burning building.
• I pulled up behind a fire truck whose emergency lights were on, parked there, and interfered with firefighters unloading ladders.
• Enter an active fire location, then park a tire on a fire hose.

Two cruise robotic taxis drive through police cordons into an emergency scene where electrical wires got caught on lidar sensors on the roof.

(John Phillip Bettencourt)

After a mass shooting on June 9 that left nine people injured, a robotic taxi blocked a lane in front of emergency responders in the city’s Mission District. Another lane was open, but in a press release, the fire department said the blockage could have been “catastrophic” on a narrower street.

To deal with a troubled Robotaxi, firefighters try to communicate with a remote-controlled Robotaxi operator, who can sometimes move the car out of the way.

Should this prove impossible, the Robotaxi company will have to send a human to the scene of the accident. In one instance, a firefighter had to smash a window to get a robotic taxi to move out of the way.

“Dealing with Life and Death”

The fire chief said every Robotaxi company offers training on how to deal with “bricked” vehicles.

“We have 160,000 calls a year. “We don’t have the time to personally attend to a car that’s in the way when we’re going to an emergency,” she said.

Cruise spokeswoman Hannah Lindow said the company is “proud of our publicly reported safety record, which includes driving millions of miles in an extremely complex urban environment.” Dealing properly with emergency response personnel is important to us. As such, we maintain an open line of communication with first responders to receive feedback and discuss specific incidents to improve our response.”

Waymo issued a prepared statement: “Safety is at the core of our mission and we’ve consistently shared more details than anyone.” [autonomous vehicle] companies regarding our methods and insights into our performance. We believe this transparency will benefit our riders – who enjoy a safe, accessible and enjoyable mobility option tens of thousands of times a week – and stimulate more discussion about safety in the industry.”

Nicholson acknowledged that no one has ever been killed or injured as a result of Robotaxi misconduct. “But I don’t want anything bad to happen because we can’t get to the crime scene. A fire can double its size in a minute. It’s a matter of life and death, and I’m not saying that dramatically.”

The robotaxi industry in California is under the jurisdiction of two state agencies — the Department of Motor Vehicles, which issues permits and is responsible for safety, and the California Public Utilities Commission, which regulates commercial passenger transportation, including buses, taxis, and limousines.

The supply commission is scheduled to vote on the expansion of the robotaxis on June 29. The resolutions she will vote on make it clear that under the agency’s own rules, problems such as traffic flow and disruption to rescue workers cannot be used to deny expansion permits. The resolutions identify four “goals” to consider: inclusion of people with disabilities; improved transportation for the disadvantaged; reduction of greenhouse gases; and passenger safety.

Critics point out that while the Commission takes care of the safety of Robotaxi passengers, it leaves other safety issues to the DMV. The DMV collects data on collisions and has the power to suspend permits, but so far has not taken any action or commented on Robotaxi disruption to firefighters.

The DMV declined to make its director Steve Gordon available for an interview, but issued a statement saying its four-year-old rules could be changed at some point: “The DMV has its regulations on autonomous vehicles developed through a public process with stakeholders (e.g. local, state, federal agencies, academics, interest groups, industry representatives) providing input to the development. Comments made during this process were considered and incorporated into the final rationale as part of the rulemaking process. The DMV implemented the first set of regulations in 2014, the second in 2018 and the third in 2019. Future regulations will use a similar process, inviting members of the public and other stakeholders to participate and provide comments .”

Robotaxi regulation issues go beyond robotaxi expansion: The entire way California regulates autonomous technology is being called into question.

The DMV has come under fire in the state assembly, which passed a bill in May that would strip the agency of some of its powers to regulate driverless heavy-duty trucks. Several lawmakers said they voted in part because they felt the DMV had done a poor job of regulating self-driving cars.

Security data censored

In 2021, the DMV entered into a court-approved agreement with Waymo that allows self-driving car makers to censor not only trade secrets but also basic safety performance information, including most details of collision reports as well as information about how the company handles emergencies self-driving cars bypasses .

The industry is strict about the information it makes available to the public about its operations on public roads.

Waymo won’t say how many cars it operates in San Francisco. Cruise said the company operates 150 to 300 cars, but declined to be more specific. Neither company will say how big and how fast its fleet will grow. Neither Waymo nor Motional will say how many robo-taxis they are testing in Santa Monica and LA

San Francisco city officials, a notoriously fractious group, agree that they will oppose the expansion plan, from Mayor London Breed onwards, until a solution is found to address traffic flow, job site issues and better communications between the companies and the city .

“Typically, the mayor is on the side of the corporations and the supervisors are on the other side,” said board member Aaron Peskin. “We say: don’t give them everything they want until these things are proven. Don’t make us guinea pigs.”

The fire chief wonders why the ability to handle emergency situations hasn’t been given a high priority.

“If they can do all of this with AI, I’m sure they can figure it out,” Nicholson said.

The Services Commission has collected statements of support from dozens of groups, including business groups like the Silicon Valley Leadership Group and disability advocates like the American Council for the Blind. The former argue that the development of robotaxi is essential to keep California at the forefront of innovation, the latter argue that easy and equitable transportation for all people is a social good that benefits everyone. No one on either side of the debate has disputed either claim.

But authorities including the Los Angeles Department of Transportation and the City of Santa Monica have submitted statements to the commission, arguing that the Robotaxi service should be rolled out gradually as problems are identified and fixed. Both also called for significantly more data transparency on security issues at Robotaxi.

Industry countered with motions opposing any kind of gradual introduction.

Why the rush? Robotaxi companies have poured huge sums into developing expensive artificial intelligence technologies and are looking to get a return on their investment.

Cruise, owned by General Motors, has big pockets. Waymo, owned by Google’s Alphabet, goes even deeper. But the pressure is great. In October, Ford and Volkswagen closed their robotaxi joint venture, Argo, after concluding they would get a better return if they invested the money in electric cars and driver assistance and safety systems.

The Supply Commission’s robotaxi expansion measure should be considered as part of a June 29 “approval agenda” package that will include 50 orders and resolutions on a variety of issues to be adopted by the agency’s five commissioners with a single vote or are to be rejected. After this story was published, the vote was moved to July 13th.

One of those commissioners, Attorney John Reynolds, was appointed by Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2021. At the time, he was serving as General Counsel for Cruise.

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In 2021, the San Francisco Giants penned one of the most remarkable seasons in recent baseball history, culling a 107-win juggernaut from a roster of journeymen and unknown veterans. As the 2023 season begins, the Giants are merely a roster of journeymen and unheralded veterans.

As Brandon Crawford marks the Giants’ last game of earlier glory years, this is perhaps baseball’s most anonymous and mediocre team, a wasteland of mediocre veterans like Michael Conforto and Sean Manaea. At 27-25, they’re pretty much average on offense and defense. Aside from Crawford and top player Logan Webb, the Giants are essentially a faceless, shapeless entity designed to win exactly 85 games. So here are the three giants that the San Franciscans are already fed up with.

3.Brandon Crawford

Not even two years ago, Brandon Crawford was ranked fourth in National League MVP picks, hitting 24 homers and hitting an .895 OPS at the shortstop with a Gold Glove-caliber defense. Now he’s bad. He’s arguably the worst everyday player in the majors — if he’s still an everyday player at all. In 29 games (he missed a lot of time in May with a calf strain), he averaged .172 with an OPS of .575, which would be fourth-worst in the league if he had enough at-bats to qualify. Worse, this doesn’t really feel like a coincidence — it feels like Crawford’s new reality. Although Crawford is admittedly hampered by injuries, he’s also 36 and well past his prime.

Most significantly, Crawford achieves by far the highest performance of his career. This season, Crawford has hit in 33 percent of his plate appearances; his previous high (or low, I guess) was 24.4 percent in 2020. Likewise, Crawford is also having its worst fielding season. While 29 games isn’t big enough to really gauge a player’s fielding ability, it’s clear that Crawford lost a step at shortstop. Never the fastest or most agile player, Crawford has blossomed into an elite defender due to his strong arm and skillful positioning. However, since the shift was off-limits, Crawford’s limited range came into its own. Since Baseball Savant introduced Outs Above Average in 2017, Crawford has been one of Major League Baseball’s most consistent elite defensemen, never ranking below the 88th percentile from 2017-2022. Now he’s in the 24th percentile.

Certainly Brandon Crawford has built up too much goodwill for Giants fans to claim his head this early in the season; He is a four-time All-Star who has featured prominently on two World Series champion teams. However, if Crawford continues to struggle, it’s only a matter of time before the good memories can stop fans from wishing him a happy release.

2.Michael Comfort

After the Giants criticized Aaron Judge as a free agent and broke their agreement with Carlos Correa, their plans for a massive, spectacular addition to their offseason roster fell through. Rather than lure a well-paid All-Star to the Bay Area, the Giants chose Michael Conforto and signed the injury-prone outfielder to a two-year, $36 million deal in hopes he could regain the form he thrived on 88 homers with an .856 OPS from 2017–19 with the New York Mets.

In his first season with the Giants, Conforto did well; His .236 batting average is just below what the Giants were hoping for, but his 11 home runs are the most on the roster and his 116 OPS+ shows he’s a slightly above average hitter. Still, his performance doesn’t match his status as the second-highest-paid player on the team and is a far cry from what Aaron Judge (the Giants’ real target) is doing with the New York Yankees.

In addition, Conforto is a terrible defender. Confined to right field, Conforto doesn’t have the speed or instinct to make a positive impact in outfield. According to Baseball Savant, he ranks in the 29th percentile for sprint speed and 37th percentile in outfielder leap, putting him in the 19th percentile overall for Outs Above Average.

1. Sean Manaea

An all-starting pitcher for the first seven years of his career, Sean Manaea faced the Giants’ greatest humiliation: a demotion in the bullpen. During his previous stints at Oakland and San Diego, Manaea was never exactly an ace, but he was the kind of reliable, innings-guzzling starter that every good team needs. In San Francisco, his command was so scattered and his performance so poor that he was transformed into an overpaid, overqualified midfielder. Manaea’s overall stats (2-2, 6.61 ERA) are poor, but his performance as a starter was particularly annoying. In his six starts, Manaea has a 7.54 ERA and opposing batters have a .971 OPS against him; For reference, Sean Murphy has an OPS of .970, which is the sixth best in baseball. Luckily, Manaea has done well in his recent appearances outside of the pen, giving hope that he can still turn his season around.

Like Michael Conforto, Manaea was one of the Giants’ key offseason moves, signing a two-year, $25 million deal with the Giants. And like Conforto, Manaea wasn’t worth the investment.

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Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco President

Mary Daly
discussed her outlook for the economy, inflation, wages and interest rates in an interview at a live Wall Street Journal event Monday. Here is a transcript lightly edited for clarity.

NICK TIMIRAOS: Hello and welcome back to WSJ Live Q&A. I’m Nick Timiraos, reporter for The Wall Street Journal. I’m very happy to be joined today by Mary Daly, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. Mary, thank you so much for joining us.

MARY C. DALY: Oh, it’s my complete pleasure. Happy New Year, and I look forward to our conversation.

MR. TIMIRAOS: Me too. If you’re a part of our audience viewing on wsj.com, please send us your questions in the chat. I’ll be reviewing those in just a minute. And we’ll answer as many of them as we can. And we’ll get started now with one of them.

Khaled asks, Mary: How do you anticipate the first quarter of the year turning out for the U.S. economy? Do you see a recession on the horizon with the Fed hiking into what looks like a slowing economy?

MS. DALY: So thanks for the question. So I absolutely expect the economy to continue slowing. That is what we’ve been trying to fashion, really. We knew that as we raised interest rates, that would bridle demand, helping bring demand and supply back in balance, and bringing inflation down. And we’re seeing that slowing continue. We have been tightening, as you know, into a slowing economy, because that’s what’s necessary to fully bring inflation back down to 2%. So in terms of the first quarter, my modal outlook is really that growth will continue to slow, the labor market will continue to slow, and that inflation will continue to come down. If that should transpire, then raising interest rates through those things and getting up to a level that we would stop and hold for some period of time, to my mind, would be appropriate policy.

But I will say, right at the top of our time together, that the Fed is very data dependent. We’re completely data dependent. So while that’s my modal outlook, and very consistent with the Summary of Economic Projections that we released in December, our views, or my views, could change as the economy does different things, evolves differently than we expect. So I’ll be looking at all the risks to that evolution, as well as continuing on the path of fully restoring price stability.

MR. TIMIRAOS: So on that point, Mary—and for people who don’t follow every twist and turn of the Fed—four times a year you and your colleagues put out projections, called the Summary of Economic Projections, or the SEP, that looks at where policy would go under a modal or most likely economic outlook. And in the last set of projections in December, the inflation forecasts for almost everybody, it looks like, went up a little bit. And so I wonder, a number of people have asked me, why did that inflation projection rise in the last set of forecasts? What is it that you’re seeing? Because the consumer-price index in October and November was quite better behaved than it had been. So what influenced that decision to raise the inflation projection in December?

MS. DALY: Well, that’s a terrific question. And I will speak for myself, because I was one of those who raised my inflation forecast, and very consistent with how you saw the median of the SEP evolve. So, why? Well, when you decompose the inflation data, you know, it’s very encouraging that overall CPI [consumer-price index] is coming down, overall PCE [personal-consumption expenditures] is coming down. Those are very good pieces of information. But we saw most of that action in energy costs and in goods prices, which we were expecting to come down because they would come down as supply chains improved and bottlenecks, you know, were released. So those were pieces of good news that we absolutely need. About half of the excess inflation we observe in our country is related to supply disruptions. And so those supply disruptions improving is causing inflation to come down.

What we haven’t seen yet is core services come down in the way that we would like it to. And importantly, and really importantly, is that if you do core services, excluding housing—because we have a pretty good handle on how shelter costs behave; we know that home prices come down first. That eventually trickles into rental prices, which eventually brings shelter price inflation down. And that takes 16 to 18 months, 12 to 18, really, depending on whose estimate you’re using. But it takes a while. But pretty much we can forecast how that will evolve.

It is the core services inflation, excluding housing services, shelter services, that just has shown no sense that it’s coming down. And that is particularly, historically, been persistent and very highly related to the progression of the labor market and wage growth. So that’s why my own forecast for inflation rose in the December SEP; it’s because we see more persistence in some of the aspects of inflation that are just harder to bring down quickly. And I think what you’re seeing is an agreement across FOMC [Federal Open Market Committee] participants that the inflation data have just come in more persistent than we had expected, and we have to build that in.

Ultimately, policy makers are risk managers. We have to have a modal outlook, the most expected outlook, but then we also have to manage the risks, and right now the biggest risk out there that would be very hard to entangle is that inflation expectations, which have held steady—so far—would start to drift in response to more persistent inflation. And so we’re determined, dedicated, united, resolute—you can use any of the words you’ve probably heard one of us say—to just remind people that we are committed to bringing inflation down to our price stability target of 2%. But it isn’t going to happen quickly and it won’t be complete, in all likelihood, in the coming year.

MR. TIMIRAOS: So if I could stick with that, so it sounds like if you have an inflation dashboard—I don’t want to oversimplify your remarks, but just to make sure I understand—if you have three buckets that you’re looking at: goods and energy, which went up a lot, coming down now; that’s sort of helping you out; housing, which hasn’t turned around yet, but because of what you discussed on rents, you think it could help you out down the road. And so is it fair to say you’re really focused on that third bucket, which is core services, excluding housing, i.e., the labor market?

MS. DALY: Yes. I think that’s a good—you know, people put them into different numbers of buckets, but I think those three buckets are really clear, and they do tell you how I’m looking at the dashboard. And so we want to see continued improvement in all of the buckets, but it’s that core services, excluding housing, that, so far, hasn’t brought a lot of relief, and that is very important to overall inflation coming down to 2% over time.

MR. TIMIRAOS: So, Mary, we saw a pretty substantial revision to wage growth in the hourly earnings data that the Labor Department reported on Friday. The last month or two had been revised higher in November, and then in December the numbers all came in lower. Now, I realize you don’t want to overreact to just one month of data, but if this more benign trajectory of wage growth is sustained, what implications would that have for your outlook on wage and inflation pressures and for interest rates?

MS. DALY: So, if I may, I would like to take this moment to just talk about how I think of it from first principles, because there’s a piece of the economy that we study way before we ever think of wage growth. You know, wages are just another form of prices. They tell you about the price of labor and they tell you what the outcome of demand and supply imbalances looks like. And so right now we have more demand for labor than we have supply of labor, supply of workers interested in doing jobs. That’s going to push wage growth up and push it away from what the steady state or the sustainable level of wage growth is, which is 2% inflation plus medium- to longer-run productivity growth. So when I saw the wage growth data coming down, that seems completely consistent with the fact that the labor market is slowing.

You know, we had the—we still have numbers that are above, well above, what it takes to just hold the economy steady. We’re making more jobs than we have new entrants or re-entrants coming in willing to take them. So we’re still out of balance, but it is slowing. We are bringing demand and supply into a great balance, and I would expect to see that in wage growth. So, so far, the economy is operating much like I would expect, given the interest rate increases we’ve taken. So now the job is about thinking about working on that until the job is well and truly done, until the labor market is in sufficient balance, that wage growth realigns itself with 2% inflation and productivity growth, and then we see that pushing through to price inflation, and all of that brings us back down to that 2% target on price inflation that we’ve talked about. So that’s how I see the economy working and it’s why we pay attention to wage growth, but I pay attention to the inputs to wage growth, which are labor demand, labor supply.

MR. TIMIRAOS: Now, money markets have reacted strongly to these revisions to average hourly earnings, and also on Friday there was a sizable drop in a widely watched survey of business purchasing managers for the service sector, especially in the leading new orders component. The market has an assessment right now that you’ve basically done your job and that you don’t need to tighten as much as you projected just a few weeks ago. Now, when you and I did this conversation a year ago, you told me that those interest rate projections, the dots, are only good on the day that they’re submitted. So why shouldn’t the wage data and some of these other reports we’ve seen lead now to a downward revision in your rate forecast, closer to where the market is?

MS. DALY: Well, there’s really two, maybe three reasons. Let me start with one and see how many numbers I get to.

So the first one—and you’re absolutely right; the dots are only as good as the day that we print them. So the question is, to what extent do the—do my dots, as we call them, do my projections change as the incoming information came in? And so for me what I see is it’s one month of data. You said that right out of the gate. It’s one month of data. I don’t want us—I don’t think we should declare victory on inflation, on the labor market, on any of the things that we’re seeing based on one month of data.

Second is if I asked us all to do this thought experiment, so I’m going to ask us all to do it. Imagine you don’t know anything about where we’ve come from. You just know—you look at the data we have today and you see unemployment’s historically low, jobs are being created a—we’re adding about a hundred thousand more jobs per month than we actually can sustain with new entrants and re-entrants to the labor force, and we have inflation at high rates and, you know, painfully injuring millions of Americans—low, moderate, middle-class Americans—who really are strapped to find ways to substitute across to continue to live their lives and, you know, increase their well-being, you would—most people—would say: Wow, the Fed’s really got to do something. The economy’s out of balance and we need to fix that.

And so I think that, importantly, we need to separate the fact that, yes, we do have good news coming in. Yes, we are seeing monetary policy transmission working. But it’s really too soon to declare victory on this. And if you declare victory early and stop, you can find yourself with a much worse situation down the road. And that’s what happened in the 1970s and we found ourselves with the need to do the [Paul] Volcker disinflation, which was necessary, of course, but painful. And I don’t want to put the economy in that situation again.

And I would return us all to the level of the economy is still out of balance. Demand for labor still outstrips supply by quite a lot. Demand for goods and services is still outstripping supply. So we still need to bring those two things back in balance so that we can have 2% inflation. And ultimately—this is really how I think about it—we want to return the economy to a place where Americans—businesses, consumers, you know, communities—they don’t have to think about inflation every day. When I’m out there in the community, that’s the No. 1 topic on people’s mind: inflation. It beats out recession by quite a lot.

MR. TIMIRAOS: Everyone in your position says that they’re mindful of the lags of monetary policy.

MS. DALY: Sure.

MR. TIMIRAOS: What does being mindful of the lags mean for you in concrete terms? Does it mean, for example, that the Fed can slow down or stop raising interest rates absent clear signs of economic weakness in the data? I mean, people ask me all the time: If you wait to see signs that the economy is rolling over, doesn’t that mean you’ll have gone too far, that you’ll have overshot?

MS. DALY: So that’s a terrific question. So I look at this many, many ways, try to get empirical information about lags but also just you have to use the data that are incoming.

So let’s start with there are lags in monetary policy. We don’t actually know how long they are. What we do know is that the speed of transmission from when we talk about our policy to where markets price in the policy rates has sped up tremendously. It’s almost immediate. We say something, markets put it in. You know, you saw that in early ’21. Before we ever raised the interest rate at all, we had mortgage rates starting to climb just on the idea that we were going to raise the interest rate. So that piece of the transmission mechanism is very fast.

But there’s still this piece between when rates go up and when it starts to impact the real economy, and we’ve seen it evolve but it comes with lag. So we raised the interest rate starting March of ’21 and we saw the housing sector respond almost immediately. It’s interest-sensitive. Other interest-sensitive sectors respond. But only now are we seeing that trickle through to a slower growth in the economy that would mean slower employment growth and slower wage growth and, you know, slower demand growth more generally. So that’s what the lags are. You could hear just by my description of them we don’t know a precise number of quarters, so it requires intense study on a regular basis. I would say that’s basically the definition of data dependence.

But the other thing that I use—and I found this very helpful—is San Francisco Fed researcher Andrew Foerster, along with some other colleagues of his, have done something they call the proxy funds rate. And it just recognizes that not only is our funds rate that adjusts that’s important for policy, it’s also our forward guidance and our balance-sheet policy. And his own estimates would put the proxy rate well above the funds rate we have in place right now. And so I’m mindful that right now the funds rate is actually higher, and it’s why we’re seeing the economy slow, in my judgment.

So what I’m looking at is we don’t need to see inflation get to 2%. We don’t need to see inflation even get necessarily down to something within a stone’s throw of 2% before we would stop raising and simply hold.

But this piece right here, this phase two of tightening, is extremely challenging, right? Phase one is raise the interest rate until you get it into somewhat restrictive territory. That part is complete. Now we have to raise the interest rate just enough to be able to sit with that and keep the economy bridled sufficiently to bring inflation down. That is going to be challenging to find that rate, and so that’s why I said at the top of the hour that starting point is the SEP, putting it between 5.25 and 5.5, if memory serves. That’s a reasonable place to start, but we’re going to need to go in and imagine, as the data roll in: Do we need to go higher, or can we stop a little earlier?

I think something above 5 is absolutely, in my judgment, going to be likely. But when I say absolutely going to be likely, I still have uncertainty bands around that. But that’s where I’m putting it right now. My own projection is we’ll need to go above 5. How far above 5 we need to go, not completely clear. But importantly, we have a lot of data coming in and we have meetings in which we can debate this.

I think this is why you’ll hear a lot of us saying meeting by meeting. It doesn’t mean we wait to decide until the meeting’s upon us; it means that we don’t want to forecast a set of decisions that have so much uncertainty attached to them. That would, in fact, be imprudent. So what we’re really trying to communicate is our reaction function and how we will respond. And there, I think, it’s really about looking at all the data and seeing when do we have some confidence that inflation is on the path down.

MR. TIMIRAOS: So you and your colleagues will have another meeting in about three weeks and I want to ask about that meeting. Do you see the need for another 50-basis-point rate increase, which is what you all did in December? Or do you think that the data now, and being mindful of what you’ve done, could allow you to support shifting to a 25-basis-point increase instead of 50 at the next meeting?

MS. DALY: So heading into the next meeting I see those as both on the table, 25 or 50. And it really is about incoming information. And we have another CPI report coming out next week. I’ll have many—I get out to the district after the new year, and I’ll be talking to, you know, my boards, and my councils, and my contacts, having roundtables, really gathering up the information, not just about the backward-looking data we’ve been observing but also the forward-looking views that they have about how the economy’s shaping up, and how they’re going to put money to that by investing in their firms or cutting back. And I need to know all of those things before I can really decide between 25 or 50. Because ultimately those are just the tactical ways we’re going to get to the place we need to be.

I think this is why I have been a proponent of let’s shift the conversation from pace to level. Where are we going to land? And when I think about where we’re going to land, then it’s somewhere above five. But when you’re being seriously data dependent, doing it in more gradual steps does give you the ability to respond to incoming information and account for those lags. So that’s how I’m thinking about it but, again, I want to be data dependent, not wall off a 50 basis-point increase as not likely, because we just don’t have—we haven’t even seen the CPI.

MR. TIMIRAOS: So we get the CPI on Thursday. And a lot of the people who put, you know, point forecasts forward are projecting that the headline figure could actually decline, which would bring the year-over-year number down somewhere to the low 6%. Of course, it had been up as high as 9% back in June. If we were to see a pretty soft CPI Thursday, similar to what we saw in the last two monthly prints, I mean, would that be enough for you to say, OK, maybe we can slow to the more measured quarter-point rate increment that was more traditional for the Fed, before last year?

MS. DALY: Well, I’d like to look at—take a little more nuanced look at the CPI that’s coming in. And I’ll tell you exactly what I’ll be looking for. So, of course, I’d like to see the overall come down. I mean, that’s just direct relief to Americans who have been struggling, painfully for many, through high inflation. So there’s nothing but positive information there. But when I’m thinking about policymaking, I’m thinking of what is the underlying inflation, and not just how do I get it from, you know, 9 to 6, but how do I get it to 2?

So I’m going to be paying a lot of attention to core services, ex-housing, because I’d like to see some improvement there or at least no acceleration. I’d like to see some sense that we’ve got some momentum on that front as well. And the wage growth numbers coming in give me some hope that we will start to see that behave better, behave more consistent with its historical trend and help us gain confidence that we’re going to be able to get back down to 2%. So, yes, it would be so welcomed if we continued to get the headline to come down. That is absolutely the case. And it won’t be the only thing I’m looking at as I decide about what optimal policy is going forward.

And I think it’s also important at this juncture to say that the meetings are really live meetings. They’re important times for us to go and debate and deliberate with each other so that we can come up with the best policy that serves all Americans. I mean, all of us on—who are participants, and we have a full committee, have different walks of life we’ve come from, different trainings we’ve come from, we have different people we speak to on a regular basis. We’re all trying to assemble the information.

And so prejudging what we’ll vote for or be supportive of before we get there and have discussed it with our colleagues, is really not, to me, best policy practice. So that’s why I—I’m not trying to hedge here, as much as I’m trying to say this: a critical part of our deliberations comes at the meeting. So we’re going to wait for the data, and then go to the meeting, and think hard about is 50, 25—you know, those are the range of what I think is the most likely—which one of those would we choose?

But we’re all committed to the same thing, being resolute to bring inflation back down to 2% and, importantly, do it as gently as we can so that we cause as few Americans additional pain. I mean, so many Americans are already in pain from the high inflation, but when you lose your job as the economy slows that’s also painful. We have to balance those things as we go forward to ensure that we’re doing it as gently as we possibly can.

MR. TIMIRAOS: So then, what is the argument? Is there a strong argument for doing 50 at this next meeting? It sounds like everything you just said could be an argument for doing 25.

MS. DALY: I do—I can argue on—I’m an economist, so I can give you arguments for either side. But so why would you—you know, just to talk about what’s the argument for doing 50 versus 25. If you thought your level might be higher down the road, you thought the inflation data just weren’t cooperating, you thought that getting there sooner would be better. You know, for me, when I look at that, I say there’s—a case could be made for either one right now. And what I want to really do is get with my colleagues and debate, and deliberate, and be mindful. And I have said—I wrote a whole speech about being resolute and mindful. Resolute to get inflation down and mindful about how we do it.

And mindful works both ways. We have to be mindful that there are lags in monetary policy, and that we have to be conscious of those lags so that we don’t create an unforced error and overtighten, only to cause people pain that was unnecessary. So absolutely mindful there. And that might call for a more gradual pace. But we also have to be mindful about the fact that if inflation gets embedded into people’s expectations, if they start expecting that inflation’s going to be high so they’re forever asking for wage growth that incorporates higher inflation, well, that’s something you absolutely want to avoid.

I have not seen signs of a wage-price spiral. I haven’t seen signs of inflation expectations drifting. And I think a lot of that owes to the fact that we’ve been resolute. We’re going to bring inflation down. So I want to be mindful on both sides. That means data dependence. That means talking—you know, looking at the published data, talking to our contacts, and talking with each other—participants of the FOMC—to really try to do our best to create optimal policy that works for the economy overall, and all the members of it.

MR. TIMIRAOS: In the economic projections last month, you and your colleagues put down where you think the unemployment rate would be at the end of this year. And that projection was at around 4.6%. Now, turning to audience questions, Michael asks: Is the Fed predicting what will happen, or is it telling us what it wants to have happen? And I wonder about that in the context of this higher unemployment rate. Is that the Fed saying actually the unemployment rate needs to rise here?

MS. DALY: So what the projections are—and I’ll speak about how I write my projections down. When I write my projections down, I go through this exercise. It’s a rigorous exercise, looking at models, talking to contacts, talking to my teams, et cetera. And we say the following: In order to get inflation down, what do we think we need to do with the policy rate? And we look at the labor market, of course. And we find, oh, that’s very, very strong right now. We have more job openings than we have workers able to fill them. That means that we have to raise the interest rate, like we have been, in order to get that part of the economy back in balance.

I’m reassured by the supply chains improving, so that takes that worry off the plate a little bit, diminishes it, anyway. So then I write down the policy path that I think is the most likely policy path to get the economy back in traction, or back in a sustainable pace. Then we look at what impact is that going to have on the labor market. How likely do I think it is that the unemployment rate will rise? And there, we’re really balancing off what you’ve seen as two ends of a spectrum. And the ends are so extreme you wouldn’t think that they would—it’s not either/or. But the middle is there, it is. It’s, will it all come out of vacancies? Will we have some miraculous tightening of the economy that only decreases the amount of posted vacancies that the economy has and doesn’t take a—improve, or increase, rather, the unemployment rate at all?

So I think the vacancies are going to play a large role, but I don’t think it’s going to be everything. And I also think it’s not going to raise the unemployment rate, you know, to some really challenging level that is too much pain to tolerate. So that’s why I put in an estimate of around 4.5-4.6. And that’s what I expect to happen, given the rate of increases we’ve taken, the additional ones that I’ve planned, and then holding them there to bring the economy back into balance. So that’s what I think of as balancing our two objectives, getting inflation down to 2%, and doing it as gently as we possibly can.

And remember, an unemployment rate of 4.5%, 4.6%, is not out of historical norms for where the unemployment rate would settle. And it is a temporary phenomenon. It’s not one that it goes up there and stays forever. It’s just a balancing of the tradeoffs that we face between getting inflation down and doing so by bridling in the economy. I mean, ultimately here’s the big problem we have in the labor market. We don’t have enough workers. Labor supply is not growing very rapidly and workers who previously were in the labor market have yet to come back, and may not come back.

And so those things mean that we can just—our potential to grow is slower, unless we have increases in productivity that allows us to increase output without adding workers. So we’re in that quandary right now in the U.S. And it’s something that the Fed doesn’t have the levers to fix it. But the barriers to labor supply, labor force participation, are there. And we’re seeing the effects of those things.

MR. TIMIRAOS: To follow on that, how much evidence of sustained disinflation or lower wage growth will the Fed—would you want to see before you decide that maybe such a large increase in the unemployment rate won’t be necessary, that appropriate policy won’t actually cause that magnitude of increase?

MS. DALY: So one of the things that I really need to see is the labor market to come back in balance. So we would be narrowing it to say, well, the labor market can come back into balance by just firms not looking for as many workers. And I think that’s going to be a big part of the conversations, big part of the outcome, right? It’s why the unemployment rate isn’t forecast to rise very rapidly like it has historically. It’s because a lot of this is just going to come—firms are going to say: Look, we just are going to slow our pace of hiring. So that is less painful than when firms actually lay workers off, and that’s how I think this will work.

If the unemployment rate comes up less, then that would be terrific. I mean, obviously, if I’m thinking about doing this in an ideal world—which we do not face, by the way—you would want to bring down inflation and you’d have no challenges in doing that. But we don’t face that world. We have demand and supply out of balance, which is why inflation is high. So we have to bring demand in balance with supply, existing supply, being mindful that supply’s also recovering. But that’s in the goods markets, not in the labor market. We don’t really see a lot of labor supply growth here. And that means that we’re going to have to bring labor demand back in balance, which is going to, in my estimate, produce some increase in the unemployment rate.

MR. TIMIRAOS: So, Mary, we’re almost out of time. I want to try to get in one or two more questions here. These are related.

Lee asks, I think the question on everyone’s mind is: When will inflation decline to 2 to 3%? So my question I would put to you is: How long do you think—under your modal outlook, how long does it take to get inflation back to 2% using the Fed’s, you know, preferred inflation gauge, which is the PCE index?

MS. DALY: My own projection is that my modal outlook—the thing that I think is most likely—is that we’ll get into the low 3s by the end of this year, which would be welcome relief for Americans facing high inflation that’s not been anywhere close to the low 3s. And then get closer to 2% by the end of ’24, and then get into 2% in early ’25. So that’s the future I see.

I mean, the main messages there is we could find ourselves, you know, working to bring—it might end up that there’s more persistence than I’ve factored in, and that would require more policy actions on our part. But the idea that we get inflation down to something close to the low 3s by the end of this year and something close to the low 2s by the end of next year, to me those seem like our commitment to restore price stability. That’s the promise we’ve more or less made to Americans, that we’re going to do our very best to, within a reasonable amount of time, restore price stability, get inflation down, and get the economy back on a sustainable path. So relief is coming, but it will be gradual. And to be faster than that would require enormous pain on the labor market that I’m just unwilling to put forth, given that we already see some relief going through in supply chains and we also have lags in monetary policy. So that’s why I think settling for the low 3s next year—or this year, rather—and the low 2s in ’24 is a reasonable path to balance our two objectives.

MR. TIMIRAOS: And then the last question comes from Takuma, and that’s about the 2% inflation target. And I hear this all the time. The question here is: The 2% inflation goal was calibrated in the era of globalization. Do you think that the 2% goal needs to be recalibrated as we enter an era of de-globalization? And I’ll just add my own end of the question here: Should the 2% target be changed if it turns out we’re in an environment where we’re going to see higher inflationary pressures?

MS. DALY: I don’t see that as being on the table at all right now. It’s not on the table for me.

First let me say we don’t know what the deglobalization factors are. We’re right—still in the process of sorting all of that out. So the thing that I’ve learned in policymaking and as a researcher, as an economist, is it’s—every single time we have a cyclical change, it is—people, or everyone, we’re all very quick to say: Well, this is probably going to change the world. It’s always going to be like this going forward. And caution is our best approach right now. So I see no evidence, right, today that we should be changing the inflation target, apart from it’s always a very bad idea for credibility to change numbers—to change your goalposts when you’re in the middle of trying to achieve it. We are in playoff season for football or any sport, really, you can think of. You don’t—you don’t change the goalposts in the middle of the campaign to get inflation back down.

But on a more serious note about should we change it overall, you know, it’s been a very good benchmark through a lot of pressures—through a low-inflation environment, through a high-inflation environment—so I would see little impetus for that discussion. So for me, it’s not even on the table right now. But we will be, of course, doing another framework review, I know, as the chair said, about every five years. So as we do that, we would investigate things like that. But for today and for the foreseeable future, getting inflation down to our stated goal of 2% is the job at hand.

MR. TIMIRAOS: Well, Mary, it looks like that’s all the time we have for this afternoon, for this morning. So thank you very much for joining us.

MS. DALY: Thank you. It’s my pleasure. Great way for me to kick off the new year. Appreciate it, Nick.

MR. TIMIRAOS: Same for us.

And to our audience, if you missed part of this event, the full program will be available to re-watch on our Live Q&A page. And with that, I want to thank all of you in the audience for joining us today. We will be back next week with St. Louis Fed President

James Bullard
on January 18, and you can check back on this page for updates. And we’ll see you next time.

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Adam Shapiro, vice president at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, stated his views on the current economy and the outlook as of January 12, 2023.

• While continuing to cool over the last several months, 12-month inflation remains at historically high levels. The headline personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index rose 5.5% in November 2022 from a year earlier. This marks a decline in inflation to a level last observed in October 2021, but still well above the Fed’s longer-run goal of 2%. A portion of the inflation moderation is attributable to recent declines in energy prices. Core PCE inflation, which removes food and energy prices, has shown less easing.
• Owing to fiscal relief efforts and lower household spending over the course of the pandemic, consumers accumulated over $2 trillion dollars in excess savings, based on pre-pandemic trends. Since then, consumers have drawn down over half of this excess savings which has helped support recent growth in personal consumption expenditures. A considerable amount of accumulated savings remains for some consumers to support spending in 2023.
• In the wake of the pandemic, consumer spending patterns shifted away from services towards goods. While there appears to be some normalization of spending behavior, this shift has generally persisted. Real goods spending remains significantly above its pre-pandemic trend, driven by strong demand for durables such as furniture, electronics, and recreational goods. Spending on services has shown a resurgence but remains below its pre-pandemic trend.
• Supply chain bottlenecks for materials and labor remain a constraint on production, although there are some recent signs of easing. The fraction of manufacturers who reported operating below capacity due to insufficient materials peaked in late 2021 and has moderately declined over the past year. However, the fraction of manufacturers reporting insufficient labor has persisted at high levels.
• The labor market remains tight, despite some signs of cooling. The number of available jobs remains well above the number of available workers, although vacancy postings have been trending down in recent months. The tight labor market has put continued upward pressure on wages and labor market turnover.
• A decomposition of headline PCE inflation into supply- and demand-driven components shows that both supply and demand factors are responsible for the recent rise in inflation. The surge in inflation in early 2021 was mainly due to an increase in demand-driven factors. Therefore, supply factors became more prevalent for the remainder of 2021. Supply-driven inflation has moderated significantly over recent months, while demand-driven inflation remains elevated.
• The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) raised the federal funds rate by 50 basis points at the December meeting to a range of 4.25 to 4.5%. This cycle of continued rate increases since March of last year represents the fastest pace of monetary policy tightening in 40 years. The increase in the federal funds rate has been accompanied by a gradual reduction in the size of the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet.
• Economic activity in sectors such as housing, which is sensitive to rising interest rates, has slowed considerably in recent months. Housing starts have fallen steadily over the past year, as have other housing market indicators, such as existing home sales and house prices.
• Although the labor market is currently very strong, financial markets are pointing to some downside risks. Namely, the difference between longer- and shorter-term interest rates has turned negative, which historically tends to occur immediately preceding recessions. It remains unclear whether lower longer-term yields are indicative of anticipated slower growth or lower inflation.
• Short-term inflation expectations remain elevated relative to their pre-pandemic levels in December 2019. Consumers are expecting prices to rise 5% this year, while professional forecasters are expecting prices to rise 3.5%. Longer-term inflation expectations remain more subdued, indicating that both consumers and professionals believe inflation pressures will eventually dissipate.
• Rent inflation is expected to remain high over the next year. The prices for asking rents have grown quite substantially over the last two years. As new leases begin and existing leases are renewed, these higher asking rents will flow into the stock of rental units, putting upward pressure on rent inflation.
• We are expecting inflation to moderate over the next few years as monetary policy continues to restrain demand and supply bottlenecks continue to ease. We anticipate that it will take some time for inflation to reach the Fed’s longer-run goal of 2%.

The views expressed are those of the author, with input from the forecasting staff of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. They are not intended to represent the views of others within the Bank or within the Federal Reserve System. FedViews appears eight times a year, generally around the middle of the month. Please send editorial comments to Research Library.

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Community Development Research Briefs

Author(s): Brooke Lappe, Emory University and Jason Vargo, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco

Download the full report (pdf, 1.35 mb)

Executive Summary

Wildfires, which are increasing in frequency, duration, and intensity, are measurably affecting vulnerable populations, labor, housing, and education. This report describes how wildfire smoke disrupts various sectors of the economy across the United States. Wildfire smoke is a growing problem for groups that face greater economic barriers than the general population, such as low-income families, housing-vulnerable communities, and frontline workers.

Key Takeaways

• In the past decade, most Americans have experienced statistically significant increases in days of light, medium, and heavy wildfire smoke and decreases in smoke-free days.
• Increases in the number of days of smoke were greatest for the most dense, dangerous, and disruptive category of smoke.
• Avoiding wildfire smoke exposures is likely worth hundreds of billions of dollars per year to Americans.
• Increases in wildfire smoke are occurring in the nation’s most vulnerable communities, with disproportionate increases for minority populations and those with limited English proficiency.
• Frontline workers (here referring to those workers in outdoor occupations and often without indoor air filtration) are increasingly experiencing exposure to wildfire smoke. Smoke will continue to increase the risk of occupational hazards, decrease productivity, and cause worker disruptions in industries that depend on these workers. Adapting to these changing conditions will result in additional costs for businesses, consumers, and governments.
• Wildfires have increased heavy smoke exposures for young children and students in poverty. This could have impacts on early childhood and K‒12 education, such as disruptions in learning, poor academic outcomes, and increased food insecurity.
• Housing-vulnerable communities are experiencing an increase in heavy smoke days, especially in the high-cost regions of the West (The Federal Reserve’s Twelfth District). Wildfires are likely to pressure the housing sector by increasing housing costs and disproportionately impacting housing for vulnerable communities who live in housing types (older units, rental units, etc.) that are less likely to access protective adaptations.
• Dramatic increases in disruptive smoke overlap with eligibility for existing financing programs that could help build resilience to smoke-related damages. Programs that target low- and moderate-income communities and communities of color may have outsized importance in building broad economic resilience to climate risks.

Research Motivations and Methodology

Wildfire Smoke Health Effects

The health impacts of wildfire smoke exposure are not uniformly distributed across regions and populations. Certain populations, such as lower-income, children or older adults, medically compromised individuals or those who cannot avoid exposure, are especially vulnerable to smoke-induced health effects. Wildfire smoke exposure is associated with asthma exacerbations, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, respiratory infections, myocardial infarction, ischemic heart disease, heart failure, dysrhythmia, pulmonary embolism, ischemic stroke, transient ischemic attack, out-of-hospital cardiac arrests, and all-cause mortality (Reid et al. 2016; Heaney et al. 2022; Wettstein et al. 2018). Such health outcomes as cardiovascular disease and cerebrovascular emergency department visits have been linked specifically to heavy-density smoke exposure, which has increased the most in the past decade (Wettstein et al. 2018). Previous research has shown that the negative health effects of prescribed fire smoke are more pronounced in children born to black and Hispanic mothers, as well as children of low-income mothers (Jones and Berrens 2021). Our findings suggest that individuals who are experiencing increased exposures might also live in communities with limited resources to reduce the impacts of the exposures.

Descriptive analyses were conducted on the presence of wildfire smoke plumes and their overlap with population centers to describe the magnitude of and trends in wildfire smoke affecting communities across the United States in 2011–2021. These data on census tract–level wildfire smoke exposures were combined with information on specific populations to characterize wildfire smoke exposures across different socioeconomic groups.

To describe recent trends in wildfire smoke, a comparison of estimates in the earliest five years (2011–2015) to those of the latest five years (2017–2021) of the 11-year study period was conducted. Using census tract aggregations of the daily smoke data, the mean annual days of smoke were calculated and then used to statistically test changes in frequency of wildfire smoke plumes across the study period. In each analysis, census tract estimates of person-days or number of smoke-days are used as the basis for central tendency estimates within the county or SVI (Social Vulnerability Index) tertile. All analyses were performed using R Statistical Software (R Core Team 2021).

Wildfire Smoke Exposures

To obtain community-level exposure to wildfire smoke, data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Hazard Mapping System (HMS) smoke dataset were combined with population data from the 2010 U.S. Census. HMS data use satellite-detected fires with multiple daily satellite images and a combination of analyst examination and automated processing to record smoke plumes of categorical densities across North America. Satellite imagery that detects smoke plumes can reliably identify periods of wildland fire influence on ground-level measurements of air quality from validated monitors. Plume densities reported in HMS data correlate with PM2.5 concentrations, with concentrations <10 µg/m3 categorized as light, 10–21 µg/m3 as medium, and >21 µg/m3 as heavy.i

To estimate the sizes of populations potentially impacted by light, medium, and heavy wildfire smoke plumes between January 1, 2011, and December 31, 2021, smoke plume data and 2010 census block group centers of population were linked. Daily smoke density categories were assigned to populations in each block group if a smoke plume from any time in the day contained the block group population center. The spatial intersection of HMS plumes and population centers is detailed in Vargo 2020. Block group populations were held constant at 2010 levels to quantify the impact of changes in wildfire smoke regimes and disentangle them from population shifts over the course of the decade. Populations under each smoke category were considered for each day. The resulting quantity, person-days, is the product of the number of people in a census block group or tract and the number of days that block group experiences smoke. Person-days by smoke density and smoke-free person-days were then aggregated across geographies and time periods for our analyses.

After quantifying and describing general trends in wildfire smoke since 2011, the same data are combined with information on specific populations of interest to better understand who is most affected by wildfire exposures and how those communities might be prioritized for climate-resilient community development.

What is a person-day?

Throughout the report, person-days are used to capture, together, the number of people and the amount of time spent under smoke plumes. When a smoke plume is observed over a population center, each person who lives there is considered to have experienced one smoke day. Suppose 500 people live in a population center; each time a plume is over it, 500 person-days of smoke would be tallied. This measure can be adapted to consider communities of concern—for example, to count frontline worker—days, student-days, or household-days of smoke.

A person-day is a useful metric specifically because it incorporates people into descriptions of air quality. It helps to give an accounting of the potential impact of smoke by capturing the number of people and the amount of time people may have been exposed. Person-days assign exposures at fine scale but allow for versatile aggregation and comparison of exposures for different geographies and time periods.

Populations of Concern

There are several community dimensions of interest relevant to understanding wildfire smoke exposure and the resulting economic impacts. The characteristics of people or a community (e.g., age, race, health status, income, occupation), social inequalities (e.g., social capital, political power, lack of access to information), place-based inequalities (e.g., rural versus urban, elevation), and adaptation inequalities all impact a population’s susceptibility to disaster events and their resulting exposures (Cutter, Boruff. and Shirley 2003). Although wildfire smoke events affect entire populations together, their impacts are shaped by the population’s susceptibility and its adaptive capacity. This report’s findings suggest that increases in smoke are occurring in communities with high vulnerability in the labor, housing, and education sectors. Communities with fewer economic resources may face more barriers in avoiding exposures during a wildfire smoke event (Murphy et al. 2015). However, this overlap of vulnerability and growing exposure suggests that interventions that target at-risk communities may more efficiently reduce smoke exposure, potential health impacts, and social and economic losses associated with wildfires. This report is not exhaustive in its description of populations of concern. Considering other marginalized populations, such as indigenous communities, is important for improving understanding of the impacts of wildfire smoke.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)’s SVI data were used to investigate populations of concern for wildfire smoke and evaluate characteristics that might affect the health risks of wildfire smoke exposures. All analyses were performed using the 2018 versionii of the SVI data at the census tract scale. Daily person-days of wildfire smoke at the block group level were aggregated to annual census tract aggregates and linked with 2018 SVI percentile rankings of four themes: (1) socioeconomic status, (2) race/ethnicity/language, (3) household composition and disability, and (4) housing/transportation. Estimates of person-days and number of smoke-days for each smoke density were calculated using national tertiles of the overall SVI theme and the four component themes. The tertile with the lowest SVI scores is referred to as having the greatest health/social “advantage,” and the tertile with the highest SVI scores is referred to as having the greatest health/social “disadvantage.” The assignment of tertiles using the census tract file (rather than other aggregations of SVI data) ensures that each tertile has roughly the same number of people. Additionally, specific components of the SVI (e.g., the number of persons without a high school diploma) were considered to examine changes in wildfire smoke among specific populations over the study period.

Frontline Workers

Wildfires have uneven impacts across the labor force and especially affect those who work outdoors or in indoor situations lacking adequate air conditioning or ventilation. Wildfire smoke impacts among these workers, referred to here as frontline workers, are expected to be greater than for other workers. Frontline workers are often paid lower wages, especially workers involved in food production and preparation or the movement and distribution of goods. These workers are also disproportionately racial and ethnic minorities. Migrant workers are also overrepresented in many of these frontline occupations, especially farmworkers and construction workers (Thomason and Bernhardt 2020). As a result of structural inequities, frontline workers have underlying health risks, low socioeconomic status, and reduced health-care access, which increases their overall vulnerability to wildfire smoke (Schenker et al. 2015). Frontline workers face increased occupational hazards, such as smoke-related health effects and exacerbated health vulnerabilities (Zhou et al. 2021), decreased productivity, and a greater likelihood of work disruptions and instability. As wildfire smoke increases hazards for these workers and disrupts productivity, the national economy suffers.

The contribution of industries to state labor forces and GDPs (gross domestic product), the percentage of workers considered frontline, and how frontline workers’ exposure to smoke changed from 2011–2015 to 2017–2021 were used to quantify smoke exposures in the labor force. The American Community Survey (ACS) five-year data from 2019 were used to enumerate frontline workers or those more likely to work outdoors and less likely to be able to mitigate their smoke exposures. Using estimates for variables included within the group C24050: Industry by Occupation for the Civilian Employed Population 16 Years and Over, the contribution of frontline industries to local labor forces and exposures among frontline workers were assessed. Among the 13 industries captured within the ACS group, frontline workers included in two occupations (“Natural resources, construction, and maintenance” and “Production, transportation, and material moving”) were counted as frontline workers and used with smoke days to arrive at frontline worker-days of smoke exposure. Four industries in the ACS variable with a majority of workers in frontline occupations were given special consideration: “Agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting, and mining”, “Construction”, “Manufacturing”, and “Transportation and warehousing, and utilities”. State-specific GDP information was collected from the Bureau of Economic Analysis Table (SAGDP2N Gross domestic product by state) for year 2020.iii

School-Aged Children

The negative impacts on air quality make children a population of concern for wildfire smoke exposures. The development of the brain and organs throughout childhood and adolescence makes pollution potentially more damaging to children’s health, with much more long-lasting permanent effects, compared to adults (WHO 2005). Air pollution can decrease cognition and lead to poorer educational outcomes in the long term (Shier et al. 2019; Miller and Hui 2022). The economic impacts of childhood air pollution exposures can also impact near- and long-term school facilities and district budgets (Li and Jimenez 2022). A study of California schools from 2002–2003 through 2018–2019 found that wildfires related to nearly two-thirds of the school closure days and more than 70% of missed student-days over the 17 years (Miller and Hui 2022). Moreover, the study found significant negative impacts on academic performance among younger students. Another recent study found that the presence of wildfire smoke decreased students’ test scores, particularly for younger grades and disadvantaged districts. The impacts of one year, 2016, were projected to result in lost future earnings of more than $1.5 billion (Wen and Burke 2022).

Outside the classroom, school closures disrupt resources and services, such as meals and child care, and, as a result, students face increased risk of food insecurity and poor academic outcomes. Child-care providers and school districts with smaller budgets that serve disadvantaged communities could be particularly vulnerable to the impacts of wildfires because they often have greater needs and fewer resources available to address such issues. Parents are more likely to miss work to meet unexpected child-care needs, and households in low- and middle-income communities and communities of color are less likely to have reliable and affordable child-care options available to them (Harknett, Schneider, and Luhr 2022; Shrimali 2020). Additionally, child care disproportionately falls on low- and middle-income women and women of color, widening existing inequities (Shrimali 2020).

To estimate the impact of wildfire smoke on economically disadvantaged students, we used the ACS 2019 five-year estimates for the number of K–4 students enrolled in school and below the poverty line (variable group B14006) to calculate student-days of heavy smoke.

Housing-Vulnerable People and People Experiencing Homelessness

Affordable and safe housing is an important factor in dealing with many climate risks, as well as a commodity that is also threatened by climate risks. Homes are places of refuge from outdoor elements, such as wildfire smoke, and at the same time, fires pressure housing markets through loss of housing stock, limiting where new housing should be built, requiring retrofits, and increasing risks to existing properties. Lower-income residents will face disproportionate impacts due to the legacy of such practices as redlining, which segregated communities of color to neighborhoods that experience hotter temperatures and greater flood risks (Hoffman, Shandas, and Pendleton 2020; Katz 2021). Guidance for coping with wildfire smoke advises individuals to keep indoor air as clean as possible, often by closing windows and doors and running an air conditioner with a clean filter (CDC 2022). Lower-income households are more likely than higher-income households to live in housing that needs repair (Divringi et al. 2019), less likely to buy air filters, less likely to live in homes with air conditioning, and more likely to avoid running air conditioning due to the cost of energy (Hansen et al. 2011; English et al. 2007). Similarly, renters are more likely to be low‑income and thus more likely to rely on landlords to modify their homes to mitigate the effects of climate change.

Housing tenure is particularly important as a proxy for improvements and retrofits being installed, such as HVAC or window/door upgrades to control indoor climate. Few renters are in the position to invest in such improvements, and landlords are reluctant to pursue such investments (Melvin 2018). To consider the smoke exposures among housing-vulnerable households, estimates of renter-occupied households—along with cost-burdened (spending more than 30% of the household’s income on housing), owner-occupied households built prior to 1980—were counted for all U.S. census tracts.

The Comprehensive Housing Affordability Strategy (CHAS) data from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) were used to describe the overlap of smoke exposures with housing conditions that make it more difficult for residents to protect themselves (CHAS Database 2019). CHAS data are generated by HUD from custom tabulations of ACS data and provide estimates at the census tract scale within the range of the smoke record, specifically 2014‒2018. CHAS Table 12 was used to obtain detailed estimates of housing tenure (renter vs. owner-occupied), cost burden, year the structure was built, and household income. The estimates were combined with tract information about wildfire smoke exposure to describe household-days of smoke and changes across the study period.

People experiencing homelessness face a lack of regular shelter, as well as access to information and resources to prepare for and respond to wildfires, which amplify their wildfire smoke and health risk (Every et al. 2014; Gin et al. 2021; Gin et al. 2022). Additionally, many people experiencing homelessness are also working in low-wage, frontline jobs and thus represent a portion of the labor force especially vulnerable to disruptions from smoke exposures.  A 2020 survey of people experiencing homelessness in Portland, Oregon, found that 75% did not receive any information during wildfires and 69% received no type of help during wildfire and smoke events (Hines, Petteni, and Knowlton 2021).  Information on unhoused populations was obtained from HUD’s inventory of Point-in-Time (PiT) Counts assembled as part of the Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress (HUD 2021). Information about boundaries of Continuum of Care (CoC) were overlaid with census tracts to calculate the average number of days of smoke experienced by a CoC each year and to arrive at homeless-days of exposure. Although limited in their coverage, the PiT numbers give an idea of where the confluence of people experiencing homelessness and dangerous smoke resides. 

Community Investment Opportunities

Several programs exist to direct investment to the communities where there are concentrations of disadvantaged populations discussed in this report. Given the intersectional nature of many of the factorsiv used to describe those disadvantages, programs targeting low- and moderate-income communities and communities of color can be important for fostering resilience to many climate risks and other social determinants of economic, physical, and mental health. The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) is one example of legislation intended to ensure regulated banks help meet the credit needs of the local communities in which they operate. Specifically, banks are assessed on their record of meeting the credit needs of the entire community they serve, including low- and moderate-income neighborhoods. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) also identifies tracts for its Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) and those that are in Difficult Development Areas (DDAs) (CHAS Database 2019)—areas with high land, construction, and utility costs relative to the area median income and based on Fair Market Rents (FMRs) and income limits.

The Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) identifies tracts for the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA). To be considered CRA-eligible, metropolitan tracts must be identified as low (tract median family income less than 50% of area median family income) or moderate (tract median family income greater than or equal to 50% and less than 80% of area median family income) income, or be identified as nonmetropolitan, middle (tract median family income greater than or equal to 80% and less than 120% of area family median income) income tracts designated by the FFIEC as distressed or underserved.  Using CRA-eligible tract designations from 2020, changes in smoke exposures in qualified tracts were assessed.

Select Figures

The following figures are interactive versions of figures found in the full report.

Please review the related sections of the PDF (linked in each figure caption) for more discussion of the data.

National Trends in Wildfire Smoke, 2011–2021

Annual person-days of smoke exposure, 2011-2021 (billions)

Wildfire smoke exposures of all smoke densities have increased in recent years, with the largest increases in the most dangerous and disruptive category of smoke.

Source: Hazard Mapping System Smoke Product from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). For more details and analysis see pages 11-13 in the full report (pdf, 1.33 mb).

Wildfire Smoke Impacts on the Labor Force

Each industry’s share of the state labor force, the percentage of workers considered frontline, and how frontline workers’ exposure to smoke changed from 2011–2015 to 2017–2021.

Table 1. The total labor force, frontline workers, industry-specific workers, and frontline workers for each state are shown below.

Source: American Community Survey (ACS) 2019, Industry by Occupation for the Civilian Employed Population 16 Years and Over; Bureau of Economic Analysis (SAGDP2N); Hazard Mapping System Smoke Product from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). For more details and analysis see pages 15-19 in the full report (pdf, 1.33 mb).

Wildfire Smoke Impacts on Children and Schools

Nationally, there were 569 million heavy smoke student-days (grades K–4), with 100 million among students below the poverty line (Figure 5). Between 2011–2015 and 2017–2021, heavy smoke student-days increased 300%.

Figure 5. Student-days of heavy smoke for all K-4 students (light) from 2011 to 2021; student-days for those in poverty (dark)v

Heavy smoke exposures among vulnerable students have increased dramatically in recent years. Younger students (grades K‒4), particularly those in poverty, are most affected academically by school closures.

Source: American Community Survey (ACS) Five-Year Estimates 2019; Poverty Status in the Past 12 Months by School Enrollment by Level of School for the Population Three Years and Over (B14006); Hazard Mapping System Smoke Product from National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). For more details and analysis see pages 19-20 in the full report (pdf, 1.33 mb).

Download figures (zip file, 14 mb)

Download data (zip file, 29 mb)

The views expressed in this report are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco or the Federal Reserve System.

Brooke Lappe

is a doctoral student in the Environmental Health Sciences program at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health. Her research focuses on understanding the links between climate and health. Prior to joining the doctoral program, Brooke received her Master of Public Health from Emory University, completed a Pathways Internship at the US Environmental Protection Agency, and worked at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Epidemiology Research and Innovations Branch.

Jason Vargo, PhD

is a senior researcher in Community Development at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, where he focuses on understanding the role of climate risk and equity in ensuring an inclusive and prosperous economy for all. He holds a PhD in City and Regional Planning from Georgia Institute of Technology and dual master’s degrees in urban planning and public health from Emory University and Georgia Tech.

Acknowledgments

Thank you to all the colleagues at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco from community development, the web team, and communications who helped with this report. Additional thanks to Dr. Katie Conlon and Dr. Maria Mirabelli for their partnership in this work, and to the Climate Change and Health Equity Section at the California Department of Public Health.

End Notes

i. Particulate matter (PM) is a measure of air pollution that refers to inhalable particles made up of various chemicals. PM2.5 refers to particles that are generally 2.5 micrometers and smaller (Source: EPA Particulate Matter [PM] Basics).

ii. The 2018 version of the CDC’s Social Vulnerability Index is the most recent release at the time of the analysis. It is the case that neighborhood/population characteristics shift over time, such that a neighborhood’s SVI score in 2010 may be different than in 2018. By using the 2018 designations, the analysis highlights where smoke exposure changes over the last decade in neighborhoods that recently rank among the nation’s most vulnerable.

iii. Industry codes “11, 21”, “31-33”, and “22, 48-49” from the SAGDP2N data are used to capture industries with majority frontline workers.

iv. For examples of some of these “social determinants of health,” see the individual indicators of the CDC’s Social Vulnerability Index.

v. Reflects only changes in smoke over the study period and not changes to the number of students or students in poverty.

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Article Citation

Lappe, Brooke, and Jason Vargo. 2022. “Disruptions from Wildfire Smoke: Vulnerabilities in Local Economies and Disadvantaged Communities in the U.S.” Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Community Development Research Brief 2022-06. doi: 10.24148/cdrb2022-06.

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Zheng Liu, vice president at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, stated his views on the current economy and the outlook as of October 20, 2022.

• Economic growth has slowed this year. Real gross domestic product (GDP) fell at an annual rate of 0.6% in the second quarter, according to the final estimate by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Real gross domestic income (GDI), which measures economic activity from the income side and in principle should be identical to GDP, grew at an annual rate of 0.1% in the second quarter, which is much closer to reported GDP growth than the initial estimate of 1.4%.
• Despite the slowdown in economic activity, inflation remains high by historical standards and much higher than the Federal Reserve’s 2% longer-run goal. Helped somewhat by recent declines in energy prices and the easing of durable goods inflation, the 12-month change in the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index declined to 6.2% in August from the recent peak of 7.0% in June. By contrast, core inflation, which excludes food and energy prices, has remained high and rose a few tenths in August to 4.9%.
• The surge in inflation from early 2021 through the first half of 2022 was broad based. Price increases accelerated for all major components of the PCE price index. Inflation contributions from goods, food, and energy have moderated somewhat since March. During the same period, inflation for services (excluding energy services) has remained elevated. Non-energy services is the largest component of consumer spending, accounting for about 65% of the total PCE price index.
• The recent rise in non-energy PCE services inflation has been partly driven by the surge in housing costs. The housing component of the PCE price index includes rents of tenant-occupied housing and imputed rents of owner-occupied housing. Spending on housing accounts for about 15% of the total PCE price index and about 24% of the non-energy PCE services price index.
• The 12-month change in the non-energy PCE services price index accelerated from 3.4% in April 2021 to 4.7% in August 2022. Over the same period, the 12-month change in the PCE housing price index surged from about 2% to 6.4%.
• Following the increase in the federal funds rate in March and ongoing policy guidance for further rate increases, the 30-year mortgage interest rate has surged. The increase in mortgage rates likely has contributed to moderating house price growth. The 12-month change in the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller US National Home Price Index has eased from the recent peak of 20.8% in March to 15.8% in July.
• However, PCE housing inflation continues to rise, reflecting continued strength in demand for rental housing. The increases in house prices and the surge in mortgage rates have discouraged some potential homebuyers and likely kept many in the rental market, contributing to elevated rent inflation.
• Evidence from episodes of past monetary policy tightening shows that tighter policy can slow PCE housing inflation over time. For example, an unexpected increase in the federal funds rate of one percentage point can reduce PCE housing inflation by up to 3 percentage points, with the peak effects coming after about two and a half years.
• The slow transmission of monetary policy changes to PCE housing inflation reflects the slow adjustments of rents, which are calculated based on averages of rents on existing leases and those for newly signed leases. Once a rental contract is signed, rents typically do not adjust for several quarters or even years.
• One signal that monetary policy tightening might be starting to tame housing inflation emerges from the recent slowdown in the growth rate of asking rents on listed rental properties. For example, the 12-month change in Zillow’s observed rent index has slowed from a peak of 17.2% in February 2022 to 12.5% ​​in August 2022. This development portends slower future housing inflation as changes in rents on newly signed lease contracts gradually enter the calculations for overall average rents and overall PCE housing inflation.
• Since it will take time for housing inflation to respond to monetary policy tightening, we expect housing inflation to continue to push up non-energy PCE services inflation in the next few quarters. We project that headline PCE inflation will decline gradually toward the Fed’s 2% longer-term goal by the end of 2025.

The views expressed are those of the author, with input from the forecasting staff of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. They are not intended to represent the views of others within the Bank or within the Federal Reserve System. FedViews appears eight times a year, generally around the middle of the month. Please send editorial comments to Research Library.

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The fear that a “very tight” US labor market will demand fuel wage demands is producing a consensus in Fed policy-making circles on the need for a 0.5 percentage point rise in its base interest rate at its next meeting in May, with possible further hikes of that magnitude at subsequent meetings.

Acting US Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell announces interest rates increase on March 16, 2022 (Source: CSPAN)

The president of the San Francisco Fed, Mary Daly, is one of those adding her voice to what is a growing chorus for a bigger rate rise than the 0.25 percent (25 basis points) the Fed instigated at its meeting last month.

In an interview with the Financial Times (FT), Daly said the case for a half percentage point rise in May had grown. She was commenting in the wake of the latest data from the Labor Department showing the unemployment rate had dropped to 3.6 percent, the lowest since before the pandemic.

The remarks by Daly are significant because she is generally regarded as one of the more “dovish” members of the Fed’s governing body.

“The case for 50 [basis points], barring any negative surprise between now and the next meeting has grown,” she told the FT. “I’m more confident that taking these early adjustments would be appropriate.”

As with all her counterparts in the Fed, starting with the chair Jerome Powell, Daly is focused on the issue of the labor market. The fear in ruling circles is that inflation is leading to upsurge in demands by workers for pay rises to compensate for the losses over the past two years and more.

Daly said the latest data showed the labor market is “very strong” and “tight to an unsustainable level.”

Her views echo previous remarks by Powell who has made clear he is prepared, if necessary, to take the road of former Fed chair Paul Volcker in the 1980s who lifted interest rates to record highs, inducing a deep recession, to crush wage demands.

Daly did not go that far but, according to the FT, they acknowledged the economy may have to slow to bring inflation back into line with the Fed’s 2 percent target.

The Fed’s interest rate moves have nothing to do with bringing down price hikes. They will not reduce the price of oil, lower the price of food and other necessities, or free up global supply chains, impacted by the refusal of governments internationally to take action to eliminate the pandemic.

Higher interest rates are aimed entirely at the working class, with the objective, as Powell has put it, of bringing back the demand for labor in line with supply—that is, by slowing the economy and lifting the jobless rate.

Other members of the Federal Open Market Committee, the Fed’s interest rate setting body, want to go further than a one-off 50 basis point rise. Their ground was staked out by James Bullard, president of the St Louis Fed, who dissented from the 25 basis point increase in March and called for a rise of 50.

In an article last week entitled “Expectations grow that Fed will deploy jumbo-sized rate rises,” the FT noted predictions by Morgan Stanley that the Fed will deliver back-to-back 50 basis point rises starting in May, followed by 25 basis point adjustments at each of the four subsequent meetings for the year. These rises will accompany moves by the Fed to start winding back its holdings of nearly $9 trillion of financial assets which will add to upward pressure on market interest rates.

Citigroup has forecast four 50 basis point increases by the Fed at each of its next four meetings, so that the Fed rate reaches 3 percent by the end of the year.

Summing up the expectations last week, Simona Mocuta, chief economist at State Street Global Advisors, told the FT: “The signaling clearly has been very much on the hawkish side for some time, but that has gotten to a fever pitch in recent days. ” State Street Global Advisors is the investment management division of the State Street Corporation, the world’s fourth largest asset manager.

The expectation of higher Fed rates has led to the phenomenon of yield curve inversion where the rate on shorter-term Treasury bonds rises to a level higher than that on the 10-year bond. Under normal circumstances the rate on the longer-term debt is higher than the short-term rate because lending longer term involves greater risk and uncertainty and therefore demands a higher rate of return.

But last Friday the rate on the two-year Treasury bond reached 2.44 percent while that on the 10-year was 2.38 percent.

Yield curve inversion is regarded by many market analysts as a warning of a forthcoming recession as investors consider that the Fed has pushed up interest rates to levels that will induce a credit squeeze, leading to a recession and lower rates in the longer term.

Previous recessions have often been preceded by a yield curve inversion. Whether it takes place on this occasion remains to be seen. Experience is an increasingly uncertain guide because of the transformation of the US financial system as the result of 15 years of “quantitative easing” (QE). The Fed has pumped in trillions of dollars into the market, first after the crisis of 2008 and then following the market meltdown of March 2020 at the start of the pandemic.

The Fed is now treading a fine line. On the one hand it wants to raise rates to clamp down on a wages upsurge, while on the other it is fearful that a too rapid rise will bring down the financial house of cards it has created by its low interest rate and QE regime.

The actions by the Fed will have international ramifications as central banks around the world also move to lift rates to counter wage demands. It will also exacerbate the already large debt servicing problems for many developing economies and so-called emerging markets.

The class agenda driving central bank and monetary policy was indicated by former Treasury secretary Larry Summers in an interview with Bloomberg over the weekend.

Summers, who often indicates the thinking in fi