The Biden-Harris administration has consulted a Gen Z staffer to provide insight on economic matters.
The staffer, known as the “vibe-rarian,” counsels Jared Bernstein, the Council of Economic Advisors chair, on the “economic vibes” seen on social media platforms.
According to Axios, the staffer, Molly Opinsky, will assess the “vibes” of an issue with an economic narrative.
“People are the best arbiters of how they’re feeling about the economy,” Bernstein told the outlet. “I just think it’s very hard to do this job effectively absent empathy, absent trying to understand what people are going through.”
University of Michigan economics professor Justin Wolfers said that he has “never seen a divergence between the hard economic statistics and the vibes as large as we saw in the past few years.”
“The greater the disjunction between vibes and reality, the more it calls for [an] understanding of what people are feeling,” he noted.
“Vibe,” a Gen Z slang term, is used when referring to the atmosphere of a place or a positive feeling.
