And so as we look at it today, we would say from a macro standpoint in the U.S. We still have a lot of savings that got transferred during the pandemic, right? There was something like $6 trillion that got printed and kind of pumped into the economy and so that really fattened consumers savings and we may be whittling it down, but if you look at a graph, it’s still higher than it was pre the start of the pandemic. So savings are still a net positive. You have jobs that – creation, that is at really an unprecedented level right now and the demand for labor is so high. I spend my experience over time that when a consumer has money and they have a job and they have mobility to go to another job, they spend. And so, I think there are impacts like inflation, which is coming down on the good side.
So that actually is positive, right. And there’s kind of tighter monetary policy, so financing costs are going up. But a lot of mortgages were locked in and a lot of them are not floating right now. So the ingredients for consumer spending still feel really, really healthy. And I know we skew more towards an affluent customer, but we’re not seeing a slowdown. And I know that you would say, well, but you’re expecting to be down kind of high single-digits to double-digit in EBITDA in the first half, that’s – strictly inventory. Because the companies that are driving that are not suffering from end market demand at least from what we’re hearing from – kind of our customers, customers. So we feel really good, Larry, that conditions are not present for a recession.
Now if anything, I would say, I might feel that interest rates have more to go than what the market is predicting because it’s hard for us to see inflation coming down significantly from here given that labor demand remains so strong and wage growth is still running 5% plus. I think that’s generally consistent with inflationary conditions. And as long as JOLTS keeps coming out with 10 million and 11 million prints, compared to a historical norm of 6 million or 7 million, it just demonstrates the kind of power that the labor kind of has today in this market. And so, I think that’s a nice tailwind for the rest of the year. I would also say when you look internationally, we are now getting China, which was comping against kind of zero COVID policy and kind of shutdowns that we’re periodically running through the country when that happens in China, it impacts Asia dramatically.
And so now that China has reopened, we’re seeing strength in some of our international operations where we have Asian kind of distribution and that’s, likely a positive tailwind to global growth. And as you know, Europe last year after Russia invaded Ukraine dealt with inflation that was four to five times higher than us and in energy inflation that was an order of magnitude higher than what we were dealing with and that really hammered the consumer over there. So I know there’s still a war going on, but their inflation is coming down. And we took a very difficult kind of dose of medicine in Europe in 2022 and now 2023 if anything has upside from the severity of the drop in 2022. So from where I sit, I would tell you, Larry, it feels better in terms of end market sales and the economy through the rest of this year – now that may not bode well for ’24 if interest rates have to go up significantly higher.
