Rachel Barber
Rachel Barber focuses on turning dense economic policy and data into clear reporting about how money and markets shape everyday finances. She works as an economy and money reporter at USA TODAY, covering the U.S. economy, the Federal Reserve and personal finance. Her recent work centers on interest rate decisions, inflation pressures and labor market shifts, with a consistent emphasis on what those forces mean for consumer wallets.
Federal Reserve and interest rate decisions
Barber’s core beat is the Federal Reserve, and she follows both formal decisions and shifting expectations around interest rates. In her coverage of rising odds for a rate hike as inflation surges, she tracks how traders’ bets change as new data on prices, oil and jobs comes in and explains how those moves translate into borrowing costs. She writes live and explanatory pieces around meetings, including detailed stories on the first rate increase since 2023 and why upcoming interest rate moves are hard to predict under a chair she presents as an “enigma.”
Across these articles, she brings in futures market tools and economist forecasts, then connects the numbers to practical outcomes like credit card, auto and personal loan rates.
Her Federal Reserve reporting often highlights the tension between political pressure and central bank decisions. In coverage of a president pressing for lower rates while traders bet on a hike, she lays out the committee’s recent history of cuts and holds, the public signals from policymakers and the market’s implied probabilities for future moves.
She then uses that backdrop to explain the likelihood and potential scale of upcoming changes in the benchmark rate, keeping the focus on how prolonged higher rates affect borrowing, saving and debt repayment.
Inflation, energy prices and consumer costs
Barber treats inflation as a bridge between global events and household budgets. In her rate-hike odds story, she ties the surge in inflation partly to disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz that push up oil, gas and related goods, showing how supply shocks abroad can raise costs at home. In her coverage of rate decisions, she returns to inflation’s distance from the Fed’s target, oil moving above key thresholds and the way sustained price pressures drive policymakers to keep rates elevated.
She also reports on specific consumer price changes that sit downstream from these macro forces.
In a grocery story where she contributes reporting on nationwide price cuts at a discount chain, she helps explain what shoppers should expect as individual products become cheaper. Her work on tariff reductions between the U.S. and China similarly links trade policy shifts to potential changes in prices on tens of billions of dollars’ worth of goods. Together, these pieces show an interest in following policy and market moves all the way to the store shelf.
Labor market, workforce and small business
Barber spends significant time on the labor market, looking at both workers and employers. In her reporting on a shrinking workforce, she explains who is leaving the labor force and why those exits threaten to slow the broader economy. She appears on broadcast segments to “dig into the numbers” behind hiring trends, using data to unpack whether hiring is “broken” and what that means for job seekers and businesses.
Her coverage of monthly jobs reports similarly walks through changes in hiring and unemployment and what those shifts signal about the health of the economy.
She extends that lens to small business formation and entrepreneurship. In her piece on booming small business creation, Barber examines what is driving more workers to become their own boss, connecting policy, labor market conditions and financial incentives to the rise in new ventures. She keeps the focus on structural changes, showing how business creation interacts with worker decisions to stay in or leave traditional employment.
Personal finance, borrowing costs and mortgage rates
Barber’s personal finance work concentrates on how macroeconomic shifts show up in household borrowing and saving. In multiple stories and syndicated versions of her reporting, she walks through why 30-year fixed mortgage rates are high, stressing that the Fed does not set mortgage rates directly and explaining the link between mortgage rates and the 10-year Treasury yield. She describes periods when mortgage rates surpass 7%, placing those levels in historical context and outlining the mix of inflation, geopolitical risk and investor behavior that keeps borrowing costs elevated.
Her service-oriented pieces often carry “what it means for you” framing, especially around rate hikes and policy moves. In those articles, she translates the federal funds rate into concrete effects on credit card APRs, auto loans, personal loans and savings yields, offering a clear map from committee decisions to line items on consumer statements. Barber extends this approach through her newsletter, “Making More of Your Money,” which focuses on helping readers make more informed choices about their finances in light of economic news she covers.
Barber’s background includes election coverage and local news editing, which informs the way she approaches national economic stories. She previously covered the 2024 presidential election, giving her familiarity with how policy debates intersect with economic outcomes for voters. Before that, she edited news for a community paper, an experience that aligns with her emphasis on clear, accessible explanations of how abstract policy decisions affect everyday life.
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Aaron Karp
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Adrienne Roberts
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Alex Bronzini-Vender
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Alex DeMarban
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