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YORK, Pa. (AP) — Federal Reserve officials typically gather many of their insights and observations about the economy from some of the top Ph.D. economists in Washington.
On a visit Monday to York, Pennsylvania, Chair Jerome Powell got an earful from a group with a decidedly different perspective: Small-business people who are grappling personally with inflation, high interest rates, labor shortages and other challenges of the post-pandemic economy.
Powell, along with Patrick Harker, head of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, traveled to York to learn about the efforts of the long-time manufacturing hub, where York Peppermint Patties were once made, to diversify its economy.
The businesspeople they spoke with were generally optimistic but expressed a range of concerns: They are still having trouble finding all the workers they need. Higher interest rates have discouraged some of them from expanding. And higher costs and a chronic difficulty in acquiring enough supplies have persisted.
“We were a little blind-sided by inflation,” said Julie Flinchbaugh Keene, co-owner of Flinchbaugh’s Orchard & Farm Market, who spoke to Powell and Harker at the Gather 256 coffee shop while the two Fed officials conducted a walking tour. Since the pandemic struck more than three years ago, she said, “predictability is just gone. It’s very hard to operate a business without predictability.”
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