Michael Gapen

Michael Gapen has served as a senior US economist at Barclays and later Morgan Stanley. His research focuses on US macroeconomic conditions, Federal Reserve policy, labor markets, and inflation dynamics. His detailed analyses of Federal Reserve meeting outcomes and preview notes before FOMC meetings are widely read by institutional investors across fixed income and equity asset classes. Gapen brings a combination of academic rigor and practitioner-accessible communication to economic research that reaches thousands of buy-side clients. His work on the labor market — including careful decompositions of employment survey data to separate cyclical from structural drivers of unemployment and wage growth — has provided institutional investors with a more granular understanding of how tightening or loosening labor markets translate into inflation pressure and Federal Reserve reaction. His experience at multiple major sell-side institutions gives his analysis credibility with diverse client bases across fixed income, currency, and equity strategies.