From New York Times, I'm Michael Obaro. This is The Daily.

Today.

Why is the economic recovery from the pandemic so uneven?

Why are companies finding it so hard to hire?

Why are the prices of used cars surging?

Kevin Rus talk to our colleague, Business Reporter Ben Casoline, about this strange moment in the US economy.

It's Tuesday, May 18th.

Ben, hello.

Kevin.

You look great. Your hair is luxurious and pandemic grown and it's, you know, it's irradiant.

I'm finally almost ready to get a haircut to shear off the COVID locks.

Ben, you are my personal, I was going to say economics guru, but it's more like economics therapist because I come to you when I'm very worried about something and you explain patiently why I shouldn't be that worried about it.

And so lately, most of my questions have been essentially some version of like, am I crazy here? Like what is happening in the economy right now?

So tons of people are obviously still struggling from the pandemic, but you know, housing prices are going insane all over the country.

People are getting rich on Dogecoin and other weird investments.

Millions of people are still out of jobs, but there's also these weird labor shortages where businesses can't find enough people to work.

I keep seeing things on Twitter about like the price of lumber being crazy.

And so like, can you please just tell me what is happening and whether I should be storing money under my mattress?

I can tell you not to store money under your mattress. That part's easy.

Okay, that's a relief.

No, so I will try to answer your questions as best I can, but I'm going to offer a warning right up front here, which is that I have no idea what is happening in the economy right now.

But then if you have no idea, how are any of the rest of us supposed to have an idea?

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