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- A Montana builder finds it so hard to hire locally that it's flying in workers on a private jet instead.
- It's more economical to rent the jet, it told the Federal Reserve's Beige Book survey.
- The tight labor market is a target of the Fed as it tries to bring down inflation by hiking interest rates.
A Montana building company is finding it so hard to hire locally that it's flying in workers on a private jet instead.
That's what it told the latest Beige Book survey, which gathered information on economic activity from the Federal Reserve's regional branches up to late February.
"A Montana construction firm has found it economical to rent a jet to fly workers into one of its plants to fill operational needs," the report published Wednesday read.
The firm said hiring locals "would be our first choice, but we had to adjust when we could not staff that way."
It's yet another sign of a tight labor market, where openings outstrip the number of workers available to fill them. It won't please the Fed, which wants to see the market ease so that wage pressures won't drive inflation.
At the same time, though, the Beige Book showed a large drop of construction projects in Montana, likely the fallout from the Fed's aggressive interest-rate hikes, which have helped drive up borrowing costs.
Some companies could be "hoarding" workers — hiring them even though they don't have a current need for them, as the market is so tight, analysts have said.
Official figures showed the US added far more jobs than expected in January, coming in at 517,000 compared with predictions for 185,000.
The Fed has raised interest rates at a historically fast pace over the past year to try to cool high rates of inflation.
Friday will bring the February reading on jobs growth, and investors will watch for it for clues on what the Fed will do next in interest rates. A hot labor market tends to fuel inflation, as it puts upward pressure on wage growth.
Investors now expect the Fed to keep hiking for longer following Chair Jerome Powell's hawkish testimony before Congress this week. Expectations for a 50-basis-point increase in March helped drive a selloff in stocks in the wake of his comments.