五月褐皮书指出价格压力上升

US EconomicPerspectives May Beige Book pinpoints rising pricepressures Amy Yang We have previously leveraged our proprietary LLM tools to analyze the Beige Book,assessing economic sentiment across key macroeconomic variables: growth, thelabor market, inflation, and perceived recession probabilities. In this piece wecontinued this exercise and updated our analysis for the latest Beige Book from May2026. Economist+1-212-250-9959 Matthew Luzzetti, Ph.D.Chief US Economist+1-212-250-6161 Brett RyanSenior US Economist+1-212-250-6294 Overall, the latest scores for the May Beige Book continue to signal a resilientgrowth outlook and a stable labor market, albeit with increasing upside risks toinflation. The report provided further indications of how the Middle East conflict andgrowing AI investment demand have impacted the economy, leading to strongactivity growth in the manufacturing sector, emerging risks to consumer spending,and the risk of wage inflation, which could make the inflationary impact of energyshocks more persistent. While our baseline remains that the Fed is on holdindefinitely, the Beige Book revealed that recent demand-side forces and supplyshocks point to rising risks of rate hikes being necessary to bring inflation back ontoa more sustainable path towards 2% (see US outlook Cliffs notes (June 2026)). Justin WeidnerEconomist+1-212-469-1679 May Beige Book pinpoints rising price pressures We have previously leveraged our proprietary LLM tools to analyze the Fed’s BeigeBook,assessing economic sentiment across key macroeconomic variables:growth, the labor market, inflation, and perceived recession probabilities (see Fromqualitative to quantitative: decoding Beige Book with AI). The derived sentimentscores were able to capture economic dynamics over the past decade. In this piecewe continued this exercise and update our analysis for the latest Beige Book fromMay 2026. As a reminder, the score is based on a scale of 0 to 10, a score of 0 is associated witha lower assessment of conditions, and a score of 10 is associated with higherassessment. A score of 5 is neutral (see Appendix for prompt for full details). Notethat for the last topic on recession, a score of 0 would suggest that the recession isnot expected in next 12 months, while a score of 10 would suggest that therecession is nearly certain in next 12 months. Our data spans from January 2015 tothe latest Beige Book in May 2026. While the latest Beige Book continued to reflect a stable labor market and healthygrowth backdrop as observed in April, it offered more insights into the economicrepercussions of the Middle East conflict and the surge in AI-driven investment.Specifically, the report highlighted robust hiring and activity growth within themanufacturing sector. However, it also pointed to clear inflation risks, primarilystemming from wage adjustments and the spill-over effects of energy-relatedcosts. Concurrently, there is emerging weakness in some areas of consumption,attributed to affordability issues (see Figure 1-4). The labor market score remained stable at a neutral level of 5, reflecting a lowunemployment rate of 4.3% and a consistent pace of payroll gains in recent months(Figure 5). The Beige Book particularly emphasized robust hiring within themanufacturing sector, driven by defense-related activities and increasing demandfor data centers. Furthermore, the report noted more frequent upward wageadjustments, which are a response to high oil prices and the rising cost of living. Thistrend could indicate potential risks of wage inflation and a more persistentinflationary impact from energy shocks. Indeed, our inflation sentiment score increased from 7 to 8 in May, reaching itshighest level since mid-2022, the peak of the COVID-19 driven inflation shocks. TheMay report indicated a clear intensification of price pressures compared to April,characterizinginflation as"moderate to strong",an upgrade from April'sdescription of price growth as "mostly moderate." Both reports consistentlyidentify energy-related costs stemming from the Middle East conflict as a primarydriver, with broader impacts on freight, shipping, and various materials. The growth sentiment score slightly decreased to 5, despite the May reportindicating a broader base of moderate growth (10 districts) compared to April (8districts), with manufacturing activity showing modest to strong growth. However,the latest report also extensively discussed the divergence in consumer spending,with middle- and lower-income households experiencing increased financialstrains due to growing affordability pressures. Additionally, energy price spikesnegativelyimpacted agricultural conditions.Given the elevated uncertaintyweighing on both business and consumer sentiments, the recession score saw amodest increase from 4 in April to 6. This recession score has consistently exceededour estimated probability for most of the sample period (Figure 8), which remains 4 June 2026US Econo