Powell meets a changed economy: Fewer workers, higher prices

By CHRISTOPHER RUGABER
AP Economics Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) — Restaurant and hotel owners struggling to fill jobs. Supply-chain disruptions forcing up prices for small businesses. Unemployed Americans unable to find work even with job openings at a record high. Those and other disruptions to the U.S. job market — consequences of the viral pandemic that erupted 18 months ago — appear likely to endure, a group of business owners and nonprofit executives told Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on Friday. The changing work conditions, described during a “Fed Listens” virtual roundtable, underscore the ways that the COVID-19 outbreak and its delta variant are continuing to transform the U.S. economy.