WASHINGTON, April 21 ― American firms are seeing increased business as Covid-19 cases decline across the world's largest economy, even as they struggle with rising prices and scarce staff, the Federal Reserve said yesterday.
However, “inflationary pressures remained strong” and companies are “continuing to pass swiftly rising input costs through to customers,” the report said. Those shocks have contributed to the high rate of inflation in the United States, which has prompted the Fed to begin hiking interest rates and signal plans to do so throughout this year.