Tyler Schipper, an economist and associate professor in the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of St. Thomas, spoke to KSTP-TV about the stock market bouncing back and how tariffs are impacting prices in stores. How consumers feel about the economy depends on where they are with their finances, he said.
He cited data about how people who earn more than $100,000 and have money in the stock market feel better about the economy than those who earn $50,000. He likened that to how who a person is impacts their view on if the unemployment rate is low at 4.1% or if tariffs are high or not.
From the interview:
"We're not seeing large scale layoffs, but we're also not seeing firms scramble to hire people. We're seeing people that don't have jobs take longer to find that next job or that first job," Schipper said.
"One of the things that I'm struggling with is that this upward trajectory of the stock market is mostly (people think) that really bad things aren't happening ... So instead of really really high tariffs we're kind of settling into higher tariffs but not that kind of worst case scenario ... and that's kind of had a feedback loop to how some people feel about the economy," he said.
