LONDON — The Bank of England on Thursday cut its key interest rate for the first time in four months amid signs that the stubbornly high inflation that has plagued British consumers and businesses is beginning to ease.
Policymakers at Britain’s central bank voted 5-4 to reduce the base rate by a quarter of a percentage point to 3.75% on Thursday, the lowest since February 2023.
The move came a day after the Office for National Statistics reported that consumer price inflation slowed to 3.2% in the 12 months through November, from 3.6% a month earlier.
The figure was below the Bank of England’s forecast of 3.4%. That gave policymakers room to cut interest rates in an effort to bolster Britain’s stagnant economy. Statistics released earlier this week showed a weakening jobs market, with the number of job vacancies declining and the unemployment rate rising to 5.1%, the highest since January 2021.
Even so, the bank’s Monetary Policy Committee was divided on whether to cut interest rates, with four members remaining focused on the fight against inflation, which is still well above the Bank of England’s 2% target.
British consumer prices are also rising faster than in other parts of Europe and North America. The inflation rate in the 20 European countries that use the euro currency remained at 2.1% in November. The U.S. inflation rate was 3.0% in September, the latest figures released due to the government shutdown.
Lower interest rates help spur economic growth by reducing borrowing costs, which can lead to increased spending by consumers and boost investment by businesses. But that can also fuel higher prices.
Central bankers have to weigh those competing forces, trying to prevent inflation from eroding the value of earnings and savings without putting an unnecessary brake on economic growth.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Federal Reserve reduced its key interest rate by a quarter-point for the third time in a row Wednesday but signaled that it may leave rates unchanged in the coming months.
The cut decreased the Fed’s rate to about 3.6%, the lowest it has been in nearly three years. Lower rates from the Fed can bring down borrowing costs for mortgages, auto loans, and credit cards over time, though market forces can also affect those rates.
Chair Jerome Powell suggested at a news conference that after six rate cuts in the past two years, the central bank can step back and see how hiring and inflation develop. In a set of quarterly economic projections, Fed officials signaled they expect to lower rates just once next year.
Fed officials “will carefully evaluate the incoming data,” Powell said, adding that the Fed is “well positioned to wait to see how the economy evolves.”
The chair also said that the Fed’s key rate was close to a level that neither restricts nor stimulates the economy, a significant shift from earlier this year, when he described the rate as high enough to slow the economy and quell inflation. With rates closer to a more neutral level, the bar for further rate cuts is likely higher that it was this fall.
“We believe the labor market will have to noticeably weaken to warrant another rate cut soon,” Ryan Sweet, global chief economist at Oxford Economics, said.
Three Fed officials dissented from the move, the most dissents in six years and a sign of deep divisions on a committee that traditionally works by consensus. Two officials voted to keep the Fed’s rate unchanged: Jeffrey Schmid, president of the Kansas City Fed, and Austan Goolsbee, president of the Chicago Fed. Stephen Miran, whom Trump appointed in September, voted for a half point cut.
December’s meeting could usher in a more contentious period for the Fed. Officials are split between those who support reducing rates to bolster hiring and those who’d prefer to keep rates unchanged because inflation remains above the central bank’s 2% target. Unless inflation shows clear signs of coming fully under control, or unemployment worsens, those divisions will likely remain.
“What you see is some people feel we should stop here and we’re in the right place and should wait, and some people think we should cut more next year,” Powell said.
A stark sign of the Fed’s divisions was the wide range of cuts that the 19 members of the Fed’s rate-setting committee penciled in for 2026. Seven projected no cuts next year, while eight forecast that the central bank would implement two or more reductions. Four supported just one. Only 12 out of 19 members vote on rate decisions.
President Donald Trump on Wednesday criticized the cut as too small, and said he would have preferred “at least double.” Trump could name a new Fed chair as soon as later this month to replace Powell when his term ends in May. Trump’s new chair is likely to push for sharper rate cuts than many officials will support.
Stocks jumped in response to the Fed’s move, in part because some Wall Street investors expected Powell to be more forceful in shutting down the possibility of future cuts. The broad S&P 500 stock index rose 0.7% and closed near an all-time high reached in October.
Powell was also optimistic about the economy’s growth next year, and said that consumer spending remains resilient while companies are still investing in artificial intelligence infrastructure. He also suggested growing worker efficiency could contribute to faster growth without more inflation.
Still, Powell said the committee reduced borrowing costs out of concern that the job market is even weaker than it appears. While government data shows that the economy has added just 40,000 jobs a month since April, Powell said that figure could be revised lower by as much as 60,000, which would mean employers have actually been shedding an average of 20,000 jobs a month since the spring.
“It’s a labor market that seems to have significant downside risks,” Powell told reporters. “People care about that. That’s their jobs.”
The Fed met against the backdrop of elevated inflation that has frustrated many Americans, with prices higher for groceries, rents, and utilities. Consumer prices have jumped 25% in the five years since COVID.
“We hear loud and clear how people are experiencing really high costs,” Powell said Wednesday. “A lot of that isn’t the current rate of inflation, a lot of that is e mbedded high costs due to higher inflations in 2022-2023.”
Powell said inflation could move higher early next year, as more companies pass tariff costs to consumers as they reset prices to start the year. Inflation should decline after that, he added, but it’s not guaranteed.
“We just came off an experience where inflation turned out to be much more persistent than anyone expected,” he said, referring to the spike in 2022. “Is that going to happen now? That’s the risk.”
The Fed’s policy meeting took place as the Trump administration moves toward picking a new Fed chair to replace Powell when his term finishes in May. Trump’s nominee is likely to push for sharper rate cuts than many officials may support.
Trump has hinted that he will likely pick Kevin Hassett, his top economic adviser. But on Wednesday, Trump said he would meet with Kevin Warsh, a former Fed governor who has also been on the short list to replace Powell.
Trump added that he wants someone who will lower interest rates. “Our rates should be the lowest rates in the world,” he said.
A government report last week showed that overall and core prices rose 2.8% in September from a year earlier, according to the Fed’s preferred measure. That is far below the spikes in inflation three years ago but still painful for many households after the big run-up since 2020.
Adding to the Fed’s challenges, job gains have slowed sharply this year and the unemployment rate has risen for three straight months to 4.4%. While that is still a low rate historically, it is the highest in four years. Layoffs are also muted, so far, as part of what many economists call a “low hire, low fire” job market.
The Fed typically keeps its key rate elevated to combat inflation, while it often reduces borrowing costs when unemployment worsens to spur more spending and hiring.
Powell will preside over only three more Fed meetings before he steps down. On Wednesday, he was asked about his legacy.
“I really want to turn this job over to whoever replaces me with the economy in really good shape,” he said. “I want inflation to be under control, coming back down to 2%, and I want the labor market to be strong.”
___
Associated Press Writers Collin Binkley and Alex Veiga in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
NEW YORK — Most U.S. stocks are rising on Thursday, but a drop for Oracle is holding Wall Street back as investors question whether its big spending on artificial-intelligence technology will pay off.
The S&P 500 fell 0.4% in early trading and pulled a bit further from its all-time high, which was set in October. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 233 points, or 0.5%, as of 9:35 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.7% lower.
Oracle was one of the heaviest weights on the market and sank 14.5% even though it reported a better profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. Its 14% growth in revenue came up just short of expectations.
Doubts also remain about whether all the spending that Oracle is doing on AI technology will produce the payoff of increased profits and productivity that proponents are promising. Analysts said they were surprised by how much Oracle may spend on AI investments this fiscal year, and questions continue about how the company will pay for it.
Such doubts are weighing on the AI industry broadly, even as many billions of dollars continue to flow in. They had helped drag the broad U.S. stock market through some sharp and scary swings last month.
Nvidia, the chip company that’s become the poster child of the AI boom and is raking in close to $20 billion each month, fell 2.8% Thursday. It was the single heaviest weight on the S&P 500.
Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison said it will continue to buy chips from Nvidia, but it’s now taking a policy of “chip neutrality,” where it will use “whatever chips our customers want to buy. There are going to be a lot of changes in AI technology over the next few years and we must remain agile in response to those changes.”
Most U.S. stocks nevertheless rose, thanks in part to easing Treasury yields in the bond market. The yield on the 10-year Treasury fell to 4.10% from 4.13% on Wednesday and from 4.18% on Tuesday.
Lower Treasury yields mean U.S. government bonds are paying less in interest, which can encourage investors to pay higher prices for stocks and other kinds of investments.
A day earlier, yields eased after the Federal Reserve cut its main interest rate for the third time this year and indicated another cut may be ahead in 2026. Wall Street loves lower interest rates because they can boost the economy and send prices for investments higher, even if they potentially make inflation worse.
The Walt Disney Co. was among the market’s strongest gainers. It climbed 2.1% after OpenAI announced a three-year agreement that will allow it to use more than 200 Disney, Marvel, Pixar and Star Wars characters to generate short, user-prompted social videos. Disney is also investing $1 billion in OpenAI.
Elsewhere on Wall Street, Oxford Industries tumbled 15.1% after the company behind Tommy Bahama and Lilly Pulitzer said its customers have been seeking out deals and are “highly value-driven.” CEO Tom Chubb said the start of the holiday shopping season has been weaker than the company expected, and it cut its forecast for revenue over the full year.
Vera Bradley, meanwhile, fell 26% after reporting a larger loss than expected.
In stock markets abroad, indexes ticked higher in Europe after falling in much of Asia.
Japan’s Nikkei 225 index sank 0.9%, hurt by a sharp drop for SoftBank Group Corp., which is a major investor in AI.
___
AP Writers Teresa Cerojano and Matt Ott contributed.
SAN FRANCISCO, December 10, 2025 (Newswire.com)
– Instawork today released The Year in Flexible Labor 2025, an annual view of the real-time labor dynamics that shaped local economies this year.
Based on millions of completed shifts across 150 markets, the real-time data shows affordability as the dominant force determining where businesses operate and where workers choose to earn. While major markets remained the busiest for total shifts, inland regions, particularly parts of North Carolina, Ohio, and Tennessee, saw the fastest acceleration in demand. This aligns with recent Census data showing that the fastest-growing U.S. metros were in Southern and inland markets.1
Logistics and manufacturing operations show a similar pattern. A 2025 study of 50 U.S. metro areas found that warehousing and distribution activity has increasingly re-concentrated in inland and mid-sized markets rather than coastal hubs, driven by land availability, operating costs, and proximity to regional supply chains.2 Instawork’s flexible labor data captures this trend in real-time.
Key Insights From Instawork Year in Flexible Labor 2025
1. Affordability Increased Staffing Pressure
Several major markets continued to show the largest demand for flexible work, but affordability challenges intensified sharply in 2025:
San Francisco and Seattle recorded the widest wage-inflation gaps, with real wages falling further behind the cost of essential goods.3
That pressure coincided with population and cost trends in inland markets where wage growth held closer to inflation and operating costs remained more stable.
2. Inland Metros Drove the Fastest Shift Growth
As affordability tightened in coastal markets, inland regions captured the strongest gains in flexible labor activity, reflecting broader economic and population expansion in the South and Midwest. Raleigh-Durham led the way with a surge in flexible labor demand followed by Nashville, New York, Columbus, and Dallas.
Instawork Year of Flexible Work 2025: The Inland Surge Inland Metros Drove the Fastest Shift Growth
3. Core Operational Roles and Midweek Demand Held Steady
General labor, warehouse work, back-of-house kitchen roles, and event staffing were in the highest demand throughout 2025, with businesses leaning on flexible staffing to manage an uncertain business environment.
Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Tuesdays (in that order) remained the busiest shift days, giving workers predictable midweek opportunities, while maintaining schedule and income flexibility.
4. Wage Movement by Occupation
Role-level wage trends varied, reflecting local cost pressures and staffing needs. Merchandisers saw the strongest wage growth, followed by brand ambassadors, security personnel, and entry-level warehouse workers. Hotel housekeepers, food service workers, and forklift drivers experienced slight declines.
Instawork Year in Flexible Labor 2025: Wage Growth by Occupation Wage Movement by Occupation
2025 Totals at a Glance
Top 5 most requested roles:
General Labor, Warehouse Associate, Line Cook, Event Server, Dishwasher
Fastest-growing markets:
Raleigh-Durham, Nashville, New York, Columbus, Dallas
Peak shift days:
Wednesday, Thursday, Tuesday (in order)
Average fill rate: 95%
Stat of the Year
Raleigh-Durham’s 50% shift growth and North Carolina’s broader population gains reflect a structural rise in inland economic activity, consistent with population and supply chain operations growth.1 2
Signals for 2026
Inland momentum will grow as businesses seek more predictable and lower-cost markets.
Wages and role demand will continue to vary as businesses respond to global economic uncertainty and cost pressures, which impact staffing needs.
Flexible staffing will continue serving as an affordability hedge, allowing operators to match labor to demand in real-time.
Major markets with improving wage-inflation alignment (e.g., New York, Atlanta) may become more attractive for logistics and hospitality expansion.
1. U.S. Census Bureau, “Metro Area Trends” (2025) and “Vintage 2024 Population Estimates”, showing growth in 88% of U.S. metros and fastest growth concentrated in Southern/inland cities.
2. ScienceDirect (2025), “Re-concentration of logistics activities across 50 U.S. metros,” documenting the inland/mid-sized shift in warehousing and distribution activity.
3. Instawork’s Quarterly Wage Index, December 2025
About Instawork
Instawork’s mission is to create economic opportunities for businesses and hourly workers across the globe. As the leading AI-powered marketplace for hourly labor, Instawork connects light industrial, hospitality, retail, and robotics companies to skilled workers, turning staffing agility into a competitive advantage. Instawork helps more than nine million workers earn on their terms while developing valuable skills.
Backed by leading investors such as Benchmark, Craft, Greylock, and Spark Capital, Instawork is redefining how businesses stay resilient and how people work.
Last week, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) published a study claiming that AI is already capable of replacing 11.7% of existing U.S. labor. It’s certainly the kind of eye-popping study guaranteed to get a lot of eyes on researchers’ work at a time of shaky faith in AI, as stockholders might want some reassurance that their AI investments are going to pan out.
The report on this research is called “The Iceberg Index: Measuring Skills-centered Exposure in the AI Economy,” but it also has its own dedicated page called “Project Iceberg” that lives on the MIT website. Compared to the research paper, the project page has a lot more emoji. Where the paper on the study comes across sort of like a warning about AI tech, the project page, which is headlined “Can AI Work with You?” feels more like an ad for AI, in part thanks to text like this:
“AI is transforming work. We have spent years making AIs smart—they can read, write, compose songs, shop for us. But what happens when they interact? When millions of smart AIs work together, intelligence emerges not from individual agents but from the protocols that coordinate them. Project Iceberg explores this new frontier: how AI agents coordinate with each other and humans at scale.”
The titular “Iceberg Index” comes from an AI simulation that uses what the paper called “Large Population Models” that apparently ran on processors housed at the federally funded Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which is affiliated with the Department of Energy.
Legislators and CEOS seem to be the target audience, and they’re meant to use Project Iceberg to “identify exposure hotspots, prioritize training and infrastructure investments, and test interventions before committing billions to implementation.”
The Large Population Model—should we start shortening this to LPM?—claims to be able to digitally track the behavior of 151 million human workers “as autonomous agents” with 32,000 trackable “skills,” along with other factors like geography.
The overall finding, the researchers claim, is that current AI adoption accounts for 2.2% of “labor market wage value,” but that 11.7% of labor is exposed—ostensibly replaceable based on the model’s understanding of what a human can currently do that an AI software widget can also do.
It should be noted that humans in actual jobs constantly work outside their job descriptions, handle exceptional and non-routine situations, and are—for now—uniquely capable of handling many of the social aspects of a given job. It’s not clear how the model accounts for this, although it does note that its findings are correlational not causal, and says “external factors—state investment, infrastructure, regulation—mediate how capability translates to impact.”
However, the paper says, “Policymakers cannot wait for causal evidence of disruption before preparing responses.” In other words, AI is too urgent to get hung up on the limitations of the study, according to the study.
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — Santa Fe has long referred to itself as “The City Different” for its distinct atmosphere and a blending of cultures that stretches back centuries. Now, it’s trying something different — something officials hope will prevent a cultural erosion as residents are priced out of their homes.
It’s the first city in the United States to directly link wages to housing affordability, aiming to counter high rents by tying minimum wage increases to consumer prices as well as fair market rental prices.
Many see the new ordinance as a big step forward for workers, but Mayor Alan Webber also sees it as an important tool for addressing an affordability crisis that threatens the very fabric of Santa Fe.
“The purpose is to make a serious difference in assuring that people who work here can live here,” he said. “Santa Fe’s history and culture is really reflected in the diversity of our people. It’s that diversity that we’re trying to preserve.”
Santa Fe is not alone. Rising rents and housing prices have squeezed households nationwide, leaving many with less income to pay for other necessities. Experts say the financial pressure on renter households has increased compared to pre-pandemic conditions.
How the ordinance works
Santa Fe’s minimum wage will increase to $17.50 starting in 2027. The annual increase historically has been tied to consumer prices, but going forward a new blended formula will be used to calculate the annual increase, with the Consumer Price Index making up one half and fair market rent data making up the other.
There’s a 5% cap in case costs skyrocket, and if consumer prices or rents tank in any particular year, the minimum wage will not be reduced.
Santa Fe first adopted a living wage in 2002. The ordinance has been expanded over the years and the mission this time was to deal with median housing prices and rental costs that were far above any other major market in New Mexico.
University of New Mexico finance professor Reilly White presented the city with 25 years of data that showed changes in fair market rents and consumer prices. He said people earning minimum wage were falling behind.
“It became clear that any index that was made had to be duly weighted in favor of some of this real estate side and some of the cost of living side,” White said.
Crafting the ordinance was like threading a needle, the mayor said, explaining that the aim was to benefit workers while not overly burdening the mom-and-pop shops that are the backbone of Santa Fe’s economy.
Who benefits
About 9,000 workers will see a bump in wages once the ordinance kicks in. That’s about 20% of the city’s workforce.
Diego Ortiz will be among them. The 42-year-old father has called Santa Fe home for nearly three decades, working construction jobs to support his family.
Choosing between paying rent, buying groceries and helping his children is a constant worry. He also talked about wanting his children to be able to focus on their studies. His son is having to delay school so he can work and save money, he said.
“If there’s economic stability where we can get a good wage with the sweat of our brow, then we’re going to be able to pay our rent, pay our bills, or get a house,” he said. “Our families will be better and that will be a big change.”
According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, the lowest income renters are disproportionately Black, Native American and Latino.
“Raising the minimum wage is an important thing to do in terms of affordability. Certainly part of the problem is an income problem,” said Dan Emmanuel, a senior researcher with the coalition. But he also warned that raising wages wouldn’t address affordability for seniors or those with disabilities who are not part of the workforce but make up a large share of low-income renters.
More tools
Providing an income boost to a subset of the population also won’t necessarily resolve the underlying shortage of housing that’s driving up prices overall, said Issi Romem, an economist and fellow at the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at the University of California-Berkeley.
That’s why Santa Fe officials say they’re working to permit more homes and apartment units.
On the edge of town, leasing flags whipped in the wind Wednesday as construction crews were busy building new complexes with adjacent swaths of dirt cleared for more. Mayor Webber said the uptick in permitting already is paying off — rental prices grew by just 0.5% this year.
Santa Fe also is counting on revenue from a so-called mansion tax, which targets home sales over $1 million, to fuel a trust fund for affordable housing projects.
Webber said the stakes are high and the city must tackle affordability from every angle.
“Can the people who work here afford to live here?” he asked. “Can we keep Santa Fe diverse? Can we continue to be ‘The City Different’ in spite of the economic pressures that are at work?”
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — Santa Fe has long referred to itself as “The City Different” for its distinct atmosphere and a blending of cultures that stretches back centuries. Now, it’s trying something different — something officials hope will prevent a cultural erosion as residents are priced out of their homes.
It’s the first city in the United States to directly link wages to housing affordability, aiming to counter high rents by tying minimum wage increases to consumer prices as well as fair market rental prices.
Many see the new ordinance as a big step forward for workers, but Mayor Alan Webber also sees it as an important tool for addressing an affordability crisis that threatens the very fabric of Santa Fe.
“The purpose is to make a serious difference in assuring that people who work here can live here,” he said. “Santa Fe’s history and culture is really reflected in the diversity of our people. It’s that diversity that we’re trying to preserve.”
Santa Fe’s minimum wage will increase to $17.50 starting in 2027. The annual increase historically has been tied to consumer prices, but going forward a new blended formula will be used to calculate the annual increase, with the Consumer Price Index making up one half and fair market rent data making up the other.
There’s a 5% cap in case costs skyrocket, and if consumer prices or rents tank in any particular year, the minimum wage will not be reduced.
Santa Fe first adopted a living wage in 2002. The ordinance has been expanded over the years and the mission this time was to deal with median housing prices and rental costs that were far above any other major market in New Mexico.
University of New Mexico finance professor Reilly White presented the city with 25 years of data that showed changes in fair market rents and consumer prices. He said people earning minimum wage were falling behind.
“It became clear that any index that was made had to be duly weighted in favor of some of this real estate side and some of the cost of living side,” White said.
Crafting the ordinance was like threading a needle, the mayor said, explaining that the aim was to benefit workers while not overly burdening the mom-and-pop shops that are the backbone of Santa Fe’s economy.
About 9,000 workers will see a bump in wages once the ordinance kicks in. That’s about 20% of the city’s workforce.
Diego Ortiz will be among them. The 42-year-old father has called Santa Fe home for nearly three decades, working construction jobs to support his family.
Choosing between paying rent, buying groceries and helping his children is a constant worry. He also talked about wanting his children to be able to focus on their studies. His son is having to delay school so he can work and save money, he said.
“If there’s economic stability where we can get a good wage with the sweat of our brow, then we’re going to be able to pay our rent, pay our bills, or get a house,” he said. “Our families will be better and that will be a big change.”
According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, the lowest income renters are disproportionately Black, Native American and Latino.
“Raising the minimum wage is an important thing to do in terms of affordability. Certainly part of the problem is an income problem,” said Dan Emmanuel, a senior researcher with the coalition. But he also warned that raising wages wouldn’t address affordability for seniors or those with disabilities who are not part of the workforce but make up a large share of low-income renters.
Providing an income boost to a subset of the population also won’t necessarily resolve the underlying shortage of housing that’s driving up prices overall, said Issi Romem, an economist and fellow at the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at the University of California-Berkeley.
That’s why Santa Fe officials say they’re working to permit more homes and apartment units.
On the edge of town, leasing flags whipped in the wind Wednesday as construction crews were busy building new complexes with adjacent swaths of dirt cleared for more. Mayor Webber said the uptick in permitting already is paying off — rental prices grew by just 0.5% this year.
Santa Fe also is counting on revenue from a so-called mansion tax, which targets home sales over $1 million, to fuel a trust fund for affordable housing projects.
Webber said the stakes are high and the city must tackle affordability from every angle.
“Can the people who work here afford to live here?” he asked. “Can we keep Santa Fe diverse? Can we continue to be ‘The City Different’ in spite of the economic pressures that are at work?”
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
WASHINGTON — The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits declined last week in a sign that overall layoffs remain low, even as several high-profile companies have announced job cuts.
U.S. applications for unemployment benefits in the week ending Nov. 22 dropped 6,000 from the previous week to 216,000, the Labor Department reported Wednesday. The figure is below the 230,000 forecast by economists, according to a survey by data provider FactSet.
Applications for unemployment aid are seen as a proxy for layoffs and are close to a real-time indicator of the health of the job market. The job cuts announced recently by large companies such as UPS and Amazon typically take weeks or months to fully implement and may not yet be reflected in the claims data.
The four-week average of claims, which softens some of the week-to-week volatility, dropped 1,000 to 223,750.
For now, the U.S. job market appears stuck in a “low-hire, low-fire” state that has kept the unemployment rate historically low, but has left those out of work struggling to find a new job.
The total number of Americans filing for jobless benefits for the week ending Nov. 15 rose 7,000 to 1.96 million, the government said. The increase is a sign that the unemployed are taking longer to find new work.
Last week, the government said that hiring picked up a bit in September, when employers added 119,000 new jobs. Yet the report also showed employers had shed jobs in August. And the unemployment rate ticked up to 4.4%, its highest level in four years, as more Americans came off the sidelines to look for work but did not all immediately find jobs.
On Tuesday, the government reported that retail sales slowed in September after three months of healthy increases. Consumer confidence plunged to its second-lowest level in five years, while wholesale inflation eased a bit.
The data suggests that both the economy and inflation are slowing, which boosted financial markets’ expectations that the Federal Reserve will reduce its key interest rate at its next meeting Dec. 9-10.
In a packed room at library in a downtown Boston, Rep. Ayanna Pressley posed a blunt question: Why are Black women, who have some of the highest labor force participation rates in the country, now seeing their unemployment rise faster than most other groups?
The replies Monday from policymakers, academics, business owners and community organizers laid out how economic headwinds facing Black women may indicate a troubling shift for the economy at large.
That compares with a 3.2% to 3.4% increase for white women over the same period. And it extended a year-long trend of the Black women’s unemployment rate increasing at a time of broad economic uncertainty.
Many roundtable attendees view those numbers as both an affront and a warning about the uneven pressures on Black women.
“Everyone is missing out when we’re pushed out of the workforce,” said Pressley, a progressive Democrat. “That is something that I worry about now, that you have all these women with specific expertise and specializations that we’re being deprived of.”
And when Black women do have work, she said they tend to be “woefully underemployed.”
Black women had the highest labor force participation rate of any female demographic in 2024, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, yet their unemployment rate remains higher than other demographics of women.
Historically, their unemployment rate has trended slightly above the national average, widening during periods of slowed economic growth or recession. Black Americans are overrepresented in industries like retail, health and social services, and government administration, according to a 2024 Bureau of Labor Statistics Survey.
“Black women are at the center of the Venn diagram that is our society,” said Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman, a PhD candidate in public policy and economics at the Harvard Kennedy School.
She pointed to April as the month when Black women’s unemployment began to diverge more sharply from other groups. A policy agenda that ignores the causes, she said, could harm the broader economy.
Roundtable participants cited many long-standing structural inequities but attributed most of the latest divergence to recent federal actions. They blamed the Trump administration’s downsizing of the Minority Business Development Agency and the cancellation of some federal contracts with non-profits and small businesses, saying those actions disproportionately impacted Black women. Others said tariff policies and mass federal layoffs also contributed to the strain.
The administration’s opposition to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives was repeatedly mentioned by participants as a cause for a more hostile environment for Black women to find employment, customers or government contracting.
There is no concrete data on how many Black federal workers were laid off, fired or otherwise dismissed as part of President Donald Trump’s sweeping cuts through the federal government.
The attendees discussed a wide range of potential solutions to the unemployment rate for Black women, including using state budgets to bolster business development for Black women, expanding microloans to different communities, increasing government resources for contracting, requiring greater transparency on corporate hiring practices and encouraging state and federal officials to enforce anti-discrimination policies.
“I feel like I was just at church,” said Ruthzee Louijeune, the Boston City Council president, as the meeting wrapped up. She encouraged attendees to keep up their efforts, and she defended DEI policies as essential to a healthy workforce and political system. Without broad-based efforts, the Democrat said, the country’s business and political leadership would be “abnormal” and weakened.
“Any space that does not look like our country and like our cities is not normal,” she said, “and not the city or country we are trying to build.”
The Conference Board said Tuesday that its consumer confidence index dropped to 88.7 in November from an upwardly revised October reading of 95.5, the second-lowest reading since April, when President Donald Trump announced sweeping tariffs that caused the stock market to plunge.
The figures suggest that Americans are increasingly wary of high costs and sluggish job gains, with perceptions of the labor market worsening, the survey found. Declining confidence could pose political problems for Trump and Republicans in Congress, as the dimmer views of the economy were seen among all political affiliations and were particularly sharp among independents, the Conference Board said.
Earlier Tuesday, a government report showed that retail sales slowed in September after healthy readings over the summer. While economists forecast healthy growth for the July-September quarter, many expect a much weaker showing in the final three months of the year, largely because of the shutdown.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
On the ground, the story feels different. Many Minnesotans experience a daily reality marked by high prices, shrinking financial cushions, and a feeling of being stuck in their jobs. And yet, as they read positive headlines and see others thriving, many are left with a pervasive sense that the economy is working well — just not for them.
And economists say both impressions are true, rather than contradictory. Minnesota isn’t experiencing one post-pandemic recovery. It’s experiencing two.
“The top 10% of income earners are responsible for 50% of consumption,” said Tyler Schipper, associate economics professor at the University of St. Thomas. Moody’s Analytics recently reported that top earners now account for a higher share of spending than any point since it started tracking the figure in 1989.
“So when we measure economic activity — GDP, retail sales — we’re really observing the behavior of people who are doing relatively well.” Aggregate data like these indicators “doesn’t give every household an equal vote,” he said.
Measures that treat each person equally, regardless of income, tell a different story. Consumer sentiment surveys measuring how people feel about the economy show falling confidence. The University of Michigan’s widely watched confidence index dropped 4.9% from October to November and is down nearly 30% from a year earlier. The last time Americans, on average, expressed a net positive view of the U.S. economy was February 2020.
That divide, between strong top-line indicators and sinking household outlooks, can be a hallmark of what is sometimes called a “K-shaped” economy. It’s not a perfect metaphor, but it has become a useful visual shorthand: one group climbing upward, another slipping or stagnating.
“When averages look good but half the population feels terrible, that’s not a contradiction. It means the income distribution has widened,” Schipper said.
That gap can be shown using a number of indicators and trend lines. But it can also be seen in the lived experience of Minnesotans who find themselves on opposite sides of this gulf.
Barry: “It’s not my economy”
Barry Page, 68, earns over $900 a month in Social Security and pays more than $1,000 in rent. He has been looking for work since January, when an arrest — later deemed improper with the charges being dismissed — led to the loss of his job as an industrial painter. Despite the case’s dismissal and expungement, he says the record still haunts his job applications and background checks.
“I’ve been trying to get a job for almost a year,” he said on a recent afternoon while waiting for the Metro Green Line at a University Avenue fast-food restaurant in St. Paul and picking at his french fries. “They look at that computer and they say, ‘He’s too old,’ and that’s that.”
His monthly expenses — rent, groceries, utilities — exceed his income before he has bought food for the week. “If I put all my Social Security check toward rent, I can’t pay my gas bill, my electric bill. I have to have a job.”
A fast-food meal that once cost $8–9 now runs him $15. “You get what they give you,” he said, holding up a sandwich he described as “salad with bread.”
He’s resigned himself to paying prices he never would have two years ago. But he’s still angry that companies are able to charge those high prices, because higher earners can afford them.
“Society sets prices for them, not us. They can afford it. We’re struggling to live in their economy,” he said, referring to higher-income Minnesotans. “It’s not my economy.”
Page relies on friends, including a pastor and a friend in Washington, D.C., that he’s currently waiting on a call from, to keep him afloat. “If it wasn’t for them, I’d be on the streets,” he said.
For him, like millions of other Minnesotans, the economy isn’t abstract. It isn’t a graph. It’s an increasingly unreliable ladder, where the rungs feel less stable today than they did the day or the year before.
Joe: “We’re tightening up, but we’re fine.”
Twenty miles away, on the other arm of Minnesota’s economic trajectory, is Joe Mueller, a real-estate agent and owner of a growing rental portfolio. He said his companies collectively gross around $1.25 million a year, though his net take-home is likely less than half that. He describes himself as someone who once “came from nothing.” He used to sell real estate out of a rusted $400 pickup that he’d park around the block from showings.
Now, Mueller occupies a financial reality most Minnesotans will never see, as a successful real estate agent and owner of The MOVE Group at RE/MAX.
As prices have climbed, he and his wife have trimmed some discretionary spending — ending vacations earlier, opting for cheaper flights, being “mindful of waste.” But those adjustments aren’t necessary, but rather precautionary.
“We don’t stress over the price of eggs,” he said. “That’s a blessing, and I recognize that it’s not the same for everyone.”
When prices rose, he didn’t go without; he optimized his spending to match the happiness it brought him and his family. “If you can do a $5,000 vacation for $3,000 and still get 90% of the experience, that’s great,” he said.
When asked about economic worry, he rejected the word. He prefers “prepared.” “Every economy has cycles,” he said. “You adjust. You weather it. You don’t pull the fire alarm.”
Mueller’s experience is emblematic of high-earning Minnesota households. Like everyone, they recognize conditions have shifted compared to before the pandemic. But they are able to recalibrate their spending and lifestyle from a position of confidence, not desperation.
More broadly, and in stark contrast to Page’s outlook, for Mueller, the economy is not a threat. It’s a system that still works, as long as you stick to the right strategies, maintain the right buffers, and stay in the right mindset.
Why economists say these two realities can coexist
Mueller and Page are not symbols — they’re Minnesotans living through the same macroeconomic conditions but experiencing them in fundamentally different ways.
Mueller’s household has buffers — equity in real estate, cash flow from rentals, diversified income, and enough discretionary spending to adjust when he needs to.
“When things tighten, we tighten,” he said. “If a recession comes, we’ll weather it. We live below our means, and we’re willing to dial back the extras.”
Page’s household has no buffers and no margin to absorb a surprise.
“When I was working, I was good,” he said. “I was bringing home $2,500 to $3,500 a month. But now — now I’m getting $967 and rent is $1,035. I ain’t got nothing left.”
How can their experiences be so disparate, and why are their trajectories diverging instead of converging?
Economists say the trend of divergence is no longer simply an artifact of the pandemic or a short-term mismatch between supply and demand. Instead, it reflects a deeper pattern of different groups moving through fundamentally different economies.
Perhaps most alarming for those who have held traditionally middle-class jobs — police officers, teachers, manufacturing supervisors, and many others — is that this is no longer a low-income vs. high-income dichotomy. Labor market trends, combined with inflation, means many middle and upper-middle-income households are struggling to make ends meet and are only one layoff or emergency from slipping down the rungs of the income ladder.
The orthodox view of Minnesota’s economy — low unemployment, steady job growth, high labor-force participation — is not inaccurate. But those averages have masked a widening split within the state’s households, one that economists say has been building quietly for years and is now showing up more plainly in certain data points.
“You really can’t talk about one economy anymore,” said Kjetil Storesletten, a macroeconomist at the University of Minnesota. “You have multiple trajectories depending on assets, education, and where you sit in the labor market. The aggregate number is just the weighted summary of all of those realities.”
Those “weights” matter. When higher-income households — who both earn more and spend far more per person — continue to spend, the economy’s overall indicators look resilient even if many other households are straining to just keep up with the basics.
“We observe an aggregate number, but behind it are many separate distributions moving differently,” he said. “Averages can hide enormous disparities.”
This story was originally published by MinnPost and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
On Feb. 14, 2022, a Starbucks manager pulled Michaela Sellaro aside for a meeting.
Just a few weeks earlier, Sellaro and a group of her fellow baristas at the coffee shop at 2975 East Colfax Ave. in Denver informed the company’s CEO that they planned to organize a union.
In the early afternoon, at a table by the windows, the store and district managers sat Sellaro down for a chat. The message, though light and breezy, was clear: “You know Starbucks’ stance is that we don’t need a union to represent our partners,” Kaylin Driscoll, the district manager, told Sellaro, according to a recording reviewed by The Denver Post.
Relationships with leadership will degrade if employees vote to organize, the managers told her. Promotions could be nixed. Benefits might change.
“The dynamic of having those conversations will change with a union,” said Ariel Rodriguez, the store’s manager, in the recording. “I have no personal desire to be part of a store that has to work through a union to have those conversations with you. I have zero interest in that.”
The East Colfax store, which the company has since closed, represents one of 18 Starbucks cafes in Colorado that have unionized since 2022, despite the Seattle-based coffee giant’s well-documented union-busting activity. What started with one unionized store in Buffalo, New York, in 2021 has blossomed into a nationwide movement encompassing 640 locations and thousands of workers around the United States.
Union supporter Pete DeMay of Chicago chants into a bullhorn along with other picketers during a labor organizing action at the Starbucks location at 2975 E. Colfax Ave. in Denver on Friday, March 11, 2022. (Photo by Eric Lutzens/The Denver Post)
Starbucks has nearly 18,300 locations, company-operated and licensed, across the U.S. and Canada. So far, despite the rapid growth in organizing, fewer than 4% of Starbucks workers are employed in unionized stores.
Starbucks has fought these efforts tooth and nail along the way. The National Labor Relations Board, which regulates private sector union activity in the U.S., has found the company illegally fired workers in response to organizing, closed stores because of union votes and engaged in widespread unfair labor practices designed to quash workers’ efforts.
The coffee conglomerate is the biggest violator of labor law in modern history, according to Starbucks Workers United, the national union representing company workers. The NLRB and its judges have found Starbucks has committed more than 500 labor law violations, the union says. Workers have filed more than 1,000 unfair labor practice charges, including more than 125 since January. More than 700 unresolved charges remain.
Despite the hundreds of union votes over the past four years, baristas are still working without a contract. This month, 92% of union workers voted to authorize an open-ended unfair labor practices strike ahead of the holiday season. The vote comes after six months of Starbucks “refusing to offer new proposals to address workers’ demands for better staffing, higher pay and a resolution of hundreds of unfair labor practice charges,” the union said in a news release.
On Nov. 13, more than 1,000 workers — from 65 stores in more than 40 cities, including Colorado Springs and Lafayette — walked off the job. The union said it was “prepared to continue escalating” its strikes if the company failed to deliver a new contract.
“Union baristas mean business and are ready to do whatever it takes to win a fair contract and end Starbucks’ unfair labor practices,” said Michelle Eisen, a Starbucks Workers United spokesperson and 15-year veteran barista. “We want Starbucks to succeed, but turning the company around and bringing customers back begins with listening to and supporting the baristas who are responsible for the Starbucks experience.
“If Starbucks keeps stonewalling, they should expect to see their business grind to a halt. The ball is in Starbucks’ court.”
The union’s push comes amid a wave of public support for organizing efforts. More than two-thirds of American adults approve of labor unions, according to Gallup polling, a level last reached in the 1950s and early 1960s. Support remains especially strong among young people — a demographic common for Starbucks baristas.
Starbucks representatives declined an interview request for this story. Sara Kelly, Starbucks’ chief partner officer, told employees in a letter this month that the company had bargained in good faith with the union, reaching more than 30 tentative agreements on full contract articles.
“Our commitment to bargaining hasn’t changed,” Kelly wrote. “Workers United walked away from the table, but if they are ready to come back, we’re ready to talk. We believe we can move quickly to a reasonable deal.”
Starbucks, she said, remains the best job in retail, paying, on average, $30 per hour for hourly workers once benefits are factored in.
The first Colorado union shop
But employees at Colorado’s first unionized cafe quickly learned the extent to which Starbucks would go to dissuade organizing efforts.
Harris didn’t know much about labor organizing, but she was intrigued. She and her colleagues were sick of the low compensation, of underscheduling and understaffing, and of not learning their weekly schedules until the night before.
Harris connected with the Buffalo workers over Twitter, and the resulting conversations helped launch the first Starbucks union efforts in Colorado.
Many of her colleagues were scared. One quickly told management about the plans.
Within a week, a rarely seen district manager suddenly showed up at the store, Harris said. Management organized an hour-long meeting about how the union was a bad idea, she said.
“They laid it on thick,” Harris said.
The day the workers officially filed with the NLRB, the Marshall fire broke out in Boulder County. As the blaze raged in Superior and Louisville, the Starbucks employees continued to work. Several staffers lost their own homes or were forced to evacuate.
Harris said she got a call that night from her manager, asking if she was OK. Then she said she was told to be at work first thing the next morning.
“It was a total exploitation of us,” Harris said.
As the vote neared, Starbucks amped up its anti-union activity, she said. Management initiated more two-on-one meetings with staff members. For many of the teenage baristas, this represented one of their first jobs. And here leadership was telling them that they wouldn’t be able to transfer stores or enjoy the perks that nonunion employees would receive, such as credit card tips.
Len Harris fires up the crowd during a rally at Trident Booksellers and Cafe in Boulder on Thursday, July 25, 2024. Harris helped to organize the first unionized Starbucks in Colorado, in Superior, before she was fired. (Matthew Jonas/Boulder Daily Camera)
“The individual intimidation was infuriating beyond belief,” Harris said. “I was sick to my stomach that they were taking advantage of these younger workers to terrify them.”
An executive flew in from Seattle and observed staff at work for weeks, Harris said. Management started cutting workers’ hours.
In April 2022, 12 of the 14 employees at the Superior location voted in favor of forming the union. The company, though, refused to negotiate with the newly formed body. So they went on strike in November, shutting down the store for the entire day.
The following day, Starbucks fired Harris, citing a policy about handling cash that she said she had never heard of. An administrative law judge with the NLRB later found the company had illegally fired Harris based on her union activity. She’s still waiting for tens of thousands of dollars in court-ordered back pay.
“I feel like I’ve gotten a peek behind the curtain to the levels of depravity that the company will sink to to take advantage of their employees,” she said.
The Starbucks playbook
The tactics Starbucks used to try to quash worker organizing in Superior are part of the playbook deployed by company leadership across Colorado and the rest of the country, according to interviews, NLRB documents and news reports.
Emily Alice Dinaro started organizing a Starbucks location on Denver’s 16th Street mall in 2022 because of what she saw as management’s failure to protect staff from violence, drug use and volatile customer interactions that were occurring daily.
After the union activity began, management started enforcing existing rules more strictly, while introducing new edicts, she said. Union supporters were singled out, and these new enforcement steps were used to push people out of the store, Dinaro said.
Out of the 26-person staff, 18 workers signed union cards, while 10 of them signed a letter to the Starbucks CEO informing him of their support. But the implementation of these new rules — concerning dress code, cell phone use and cash handling, among other things — forced widespread turnover at the store, Dinaro said. Only five people ended up voting in the union election, which passed successfully.
Dinaro was fired shortly after the vote over what the company said were repeated violations of its attendance and punctuality policy. In 2024, an NLRB judge ruled that Starbucks had fired her illegally due to her union activity.
“When I first started at Starbucks, I thought they were an outstanding, virtuous company,” Dinaro said. “I’ve come to learn they just have an outstanding PR team.”
Starbucks barista Brenna Bellfield holds roses, a symbol of the labor movement, in front of the unionized East Colfax location of Starbucks in Denver, Colorado, on Saturday, Jan. 2022. (Eli Imadali/Special to The Denver Post)
A Starbucks spokesperson, in a statement to The Post this month, said the company “respects our partners’ right to choose through a fair and democratic process, to be represented by a union or not to be represented by a union.”
But federal judges have repeatedly said otherwise. The NLRB, time and again, has found that Starbucks violated the National Labor Relations Act in dealings with employees and their efforts to unionize.
The coffee giant shuttered a store in Colorado Springs in 2022 shortly after its workers voted to unionize and one day before a requested bargaining date. The NLRB, the following year, ordered Starbucks to reopen that store, along with 22 others around the country, because the company had failed to give notice to labor groups.
The NLRB invalidated another union election at a different Colorado Springs location in 2022, finding that management threatened employees through “highly coercive” questioning and “textbook unlawful interrogation.” One manager gave “dire” warnings to workers that unionized stores would not receive certain benefits, such as pay raises.
In several instances, Starbucks violated federal law by firing Colorado workers over pro-union activities, the NLRB found.
The company has employed these same tactics to dissuade union activity across the country.
Federal labor regulators in 2022 asked a court to force Starbucks to stop the company’s “virulent, widespread and well-orchestrated response to employees’ protected organizing efforts.”
Starbucks has refused to divulge how much it has spent on its response to worker organizing campaigns. A federal judge in 2023 ordered the company to comply with a U.S. Department of Labor subpoena seeking expenditure documents for its investigation into the company’s compliance with the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act.
“We will not sit idly by when any company, including Starbucks Corp., defies our request to provide documents to make certain they are complying with the law,” Solicitor of Labor Seema Nanda said in a statement at the time.
Howard Schultz, the coffee chain’s billionaire founder, has said the unionization drive felt like an attack on his life’s work. In previous speeches to his employees, he has cast the union as “a group trying to take our people,” an “outside force that’s trying desperately to disrupt our company” and “an adversary that’s threatening the very essence of what (we) believe to be true.”
Sharon Block, a former NLRB member under President Obama and a professor at Harvard Law School, said the coffee giant has used a tried-and-true playbook to stifle union activity. But with weak federal laws and a National Labor Relations Board that has been stunted by the Trump administration, she said, there is little incentive for unscrupulous companies to play by the rules.
“This is a continuing pattern of behavior that sends a signal to the workers that this is a company that will do almost anything to stop them,” she said in an interview.
Starbucks has earned the distinction as a model for unlawful corporate union busting, the Economic Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, wrote in a January article. The National Labor Relations Act lacks teeth, making companies more than willing to accept a few slaps on the wrist in order to achieve their broader goals, the report’s author noted.
“There is no mystery as to why corporations like … Starbucks … violate the (law) with such regularity: Crime pays great dividends, as it produces the desired chilling effect on worker organizing and as corporations consider the law’s paltry sanctions an insignificant price to pay to prevent unionization through fear and disruption,” the article states. “The penalties for violating the (law) are utterly meaningless for multibillion-dollar corporations.”
‘No contract, no coffee’
Despite these aggressive union-busting efforts, Starbucks workers continue to organize in Colorado and across the country.
Unionized shops in Colorado have grown to 17 stores, including five in Denver. More than 640 member stores have joined the cause since 2022, making the drive one of the fastest organizing efforts in modern history, according to Starbucks Workers United.
Now workers want a contract.
The union and the company conducted their first bargaining session in April 2024, meeting monthly that summer. In December, however, the union says Starbucks backtracked on the agreed-upon path forward. Starbucks Workers United accused the company of failing to bargain in good faith.
In April, the company rejected Starbucks’ package. The two sides have yet to return to the bargaining table.
Workers voted overwhelmingly on Nov. 5 to authorize an open-ended unfair labor practice strike. The union on Nov. 13 turned Starbucks’ Red Cup Day — an annual free cup giveaway around the holiday season — into a “red cup rebellion,” forcing the closure of nearly all 65 stores where workers were striking.
Starbucks Workers United said they planned to continue escalating the strike, warning that it could be the “largest, longest strike in company history” if the company refuses to deliver a fair contract.
Colorado Sens. John Hickenlooper and Michael Bennet, along with 24 of their Senate colleagues, wrote a letter this month to Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol, pushing the company to end its “illegal union-busting efforts and negotiate a fair contract with its employees.”
“It is clear that Starbucks has the money to reach a fair agreement with its workers,” the senators wrote. “Starbucks must reverse course from its current posture, resolve its existing labor disputes, and bargain a fair contract in good faith with these employees.”
Jeremy Dixon, right, and Starbucks baristas picket outside a Starbucks store during a rally to demand a new union contract in Colorado Springs on Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2025. (Photo by Hyoung Chang/The Denver Post)
Kelly, Starbucks’ chief partner officer, said the company already offers the best overall wage and benefits package in retail. She touted strong benefits that include health care, 100% tuition coverage for a four-year college degree and up to 18 weeks of paid family leave. The union, she wrote, is proposing pay increases of 65% immediately and 77% over three years, along with other proposals that would “significantly affect store operations and customer experience.”
“These aren’t serious, evidence-based proposals,” Kelly wrote.
The union, though, says many workers don’t get enough hours to qualify for benefits. Starting wages for baristas, they say, are $15.25 an hour in a majority of states, though Denver’s minimum wage stands at $18.81, requiring higher rates. Barista positions listed on the company’s website start at $17 per hour in Colorado, while shift supervisor roles begin around $21 per hour.
Baristas in Fort Collins and Colorado Springs last month participated in a national wave of pickets as they demanded a fair contract and prepared to strike.
“No contract, no coffee!” workers and their allies shouted as they rallied outside a Starbucks cafe on South College Avenue in Fort Collins. “Respect our rights or expect our strikes!”
Drivers honked their horns in support, while supporters gave thumbs-down reactions to those frequenting the coffee chain.
Three days later, a dozen people picketed outside a cafe on Carmela Grove in Colorado Springs, chanting in call-and-response choruses.
“I’m proud so many other stores are willing to step up with us,” said Blue Taylor, a shift supervisor and strike captain at the store. The 19-year-old watched as the company, during the store’s unionizing drive, spread misinformation about the consequences of organizing and tried to dissuade workers from supporting the cause. It didn’t work.
Amid wider economic uncertainty, some analysts have said that businesses are at a “no-hire, no fire” standstill. That’s caused many to limit new work to only a few specific roles, if not pause openings entirely. At the same time, sizable layoffs have continued to pile up — raising worker anxieties across sectors.
Some companies have pointed to rising operational costs spanning from President Donald Trump’s barrage of new tariffs and shifts in consumer spending. Others cite corporate restructuring more broadly — or, as seen with big names like Amazon, are redirecting money to artificial intelligence.
Federal employees have encountered additional doses of uncertainty, impacting worker sentiment around the job market overall. Shortly after Trump returned to office at the start of the year, federal jobs were cut by the thousands. And the record 43-day government shutdown also left many to work without paychecks.
The impasse put key economic data on hold, too. In a delayed report released Thursday, the Labor Department said U.S. employers added a surprising 119,000 jobs in September. But unemployment rose to 4.4% — and other troubling details emerged, including revisions showing the economy actually lost 4,000 jobs in August. There’s also growing gender and racial disparities. The National Women’s Law Center notes women only accounted for 21,000 of September’s added jobs — and that Black women over the age of 20, in particular, saw unemployment climb to 7.5% for the month.
The shutdown has left holes in more recent hiring numbers. The government says it won’t release a full jobs report for October.
Here are some of the largest job cuts announced recently:
Verizon
In November, Verizon began laying off more than 13,000 employees. In a staff memo announcing the cuts, CEO Dan Schulman said that the telecommunications giant needed to simplify operations and “reorient” the entire company.
General Motors
General Motors moved to lay off about 1,700 workers across manufacturing sites in Michigan and Ohio in late October, as the auto giant adjusts to slowing demand for electric vehicles. Hundreds of additional employees are reportedly slated for “temporary layoffs” at the start of next year.
Paramount
In long-awaited cuts just months after completing its $8 billion merger with Skydance, Paramount plans to lay off about 2,000 employees — about 10% of its workforce. Paramount initiated roughly 1,000 of those layoffs in late October, according to a source familiar with the matter.
In November, Paramount also announced plans to eliminate 1,600 positions as part of divestitures of Televisión Federal in Argentina and Chilevision in Chile. And the company said another 600 employees had chosen voluntary severance packages as part of a coming push to return to the office full-time.
Amazon
Amazon said last month that it will cut about 14,000 corporate jobs, close to 4% of its workforce, as the online retail giant ramps up spending on AI while trimming costs elsewhere. A letter to employees said most workers would be given 90 days to look for a new position internally.
UPS
United Parcel Service has disclosed about 48,000 job cuts this year as part of turnaround efforts, which arrive amid wider shifts in the company’s shipping outputs. UPS also closed daily operations at 93 leased and owned buildings during the first nine months of this year.
Target
Target in October moved to eliminate about 1,800 corporate positions, or about 8% of its corporate workforce globally. The retailer said the cuts were part of wider streamlining efforts.
Nestlé
In mid-October, Nestlé said it would be cutting 16,000 jobs globally — as part of wider cost cutting aimed at reviving its financial performance amid headwinds like rising commodity costs and U.S. imposed tariffs. The Swiss food giant said the layoffs would take place over the next two years.
Lufthansa Group
In September, Lufthansa Group said it would shed 4,000 jobs by 2030 — pointing to the adoption of artificial intelligence, digitalization and consolidating work among member airlines.
Novo Nordisk
Also in September, Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk said it would cut 9,000 jobs, about 11% of its workforce. The company — which makes drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy — said the layoffs were part of wider restructuring, as it works to sell more obesity and diabetes medications amid rising competition.
ConocoPhillips
Oil giant ConocoPhillips announced plans in September to lay off up to a quarter of its workforce, as part of broader efforts from the company to cut costs. Between 2,600 and 3,250 workers were expected to be impacted, with most layoffs set to take place before the end of 2025.
Intel
Intel has moved to shed thousands of jobs — with the struggling chipmaker working to revive its business. In July, CEO Lip-Bu Tan said Intel expected to end the year with 75,000 “core” workers, excluding subsidiaries, through layoffs and attrition. That’s down from 99,500 core employees reported the end of last year. The company previously announced a 15% workforce reduction.
Microsoft
In May, Microsoft began laying off about 6,000 workers across its workforce. And just months later, the tech giant said it would be cutting 9,000 positions — marking its biggest round of layoffs seen in more than two years. The company has cited “organizational changes,” but the labor reductions also arrive as the company spends heavily on AI.
Procter & Gamble
In June, Procter & Gamble said it would cut up to 7,000 jobs over the next two years, 6% of the company’s global workforce. The maker of Tide detergent and Pampers diapers said the cuts were part of a wider restructuring — also arriving amid tariff pressures.
WASHINGTON, D.C.: The U.S. Department of Education is starting to break apart its major offices and hand their duties to other agencies — an early sign of how U.S. President Donald Trump might follow through on his campaign promise to shut the department down completely.
Several offices that support the nation’s schools and colleges will be moved to departments such as Labor, Interior, Health and Human Services, and even the State Department. Officials say federal funding for schools and colleges will continue as Congress intended, but they have not said whether current Education Department employees will keep their jobs.
Since taking office, Trump has pushed to get rid of the Education Department, saying it is too influenced by liberal ideas. Department leaders have already been preparing to split up their work among other federal agencies. In July, the Supreme Court allowed major layoffs that cut the department’s staff in half.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon has recently begun publicly arguing that her department should be closed, saying on social media that states and other federal agencies could handle its main tasks — such as giving out grants and answering questions from schools — more effectively.
But questions remain about whether other agencies are prepared to take on these responsibilities. The Education Department manages billions of dollars in federal aid and helps states interpret complicated education laws. Closing it will test whether the administration can make the transition smoothly or whether students who depend heavily on federal support — including those in rural and low-income schools and students with disabilities — will be harmed.
Money Will Still Flow
Although most school funding in the U.S. comes from state and local governments, the Education Department plays a crucial role in sending federal money to schools and colleges. Officials say that money will continue to flow, but often through different agencies. For example:
The Department of Labor will now manage major funding programs, including Title I money for schools serving low-income students. Labor already took over adult education programs in June.
Health and Human Services will handle grants that help parents who are attending college.
The State Department will run foreign-language education programs.
The Interior Department will oversee programs for Native American students.
One of the Education Department’s biggest jobs is managing the US$1.6 trillion federal student loan system. For now, this will not change, though both Trump and McMahon have said another agency might be better suited to run it. Pell Grants and federal student loans will still be issued, and borrowers must continue making payments.
The FAFSA website, which students use to apply for financial aid, will stay open, and the department will continue to help families with the application. The department will also continue to oversee college accreditation, which allows schools to accept federal aid.
For now, the department will continue to handle student disability funding, though McMahon has said it could eventually be transferred to Health and Human Services.
The Education Department also oversees investigations into schools accused of discrimination — including cases involving disability rights, sex discrimination, racial discrimination, and shared ancestry bias. These responsibilities will stay within the department for now, though McMahon has suggested they could be moved to the Department of Justice.
However, after the mass layoffs in March, the Office for Civil Rights has been operating with far fewer staff. The cuts have raised doubts about whether it can reduce its enormous backlog of student and family complaints. Department data shows it has been resolving fewer civil rights cases even as new complaints continue to rise.
The New York Liberty hired Golden State Warriors assistant Chris DeMarco to replace Sandy Brondello as head coach, a person familiar with the situation told The Associated Press on Friday.
The person spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because no official announcement had been made.
DeMarco has been with the Warriors for 13 years in a variety of positions, including player development coach and assistant.
ESPN was first to report the hiring.
He’s the latest WNBA hire with NBA backgrounds, joining Alex Sarama (Portland) and Sonia Raman (Seattle), who were two of the five head coaches hired this offseason in the league.
The Liberty let Brondello go soon after their loss in the first round of the WNBA playoffs. She helped guide the team to its first WNBA championship in 2024. She was recently hired by the Toronto expansion team.
At the time of Brondello’s departure, New York general manager Jonathan Kolb said the team was looking for “evolution and innovation” and asking, “How do we position ourselves to be at the top of the league in a real sustainable way as the league evolves?”
DeMarco has been the Bahamian national team coach since 2019. Liberty star Jonquel Jones hails from that island nation. He has been a part of all four of the Warriors championships.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
NEW YORK (AP) — Verizon is laying off more than 13,000 employees in mass job reductions that arrive as the telecommunications giant says it must “reorient” its entire company.
The job cuts began on Thursday, per to a staff memo from Verizon CEO Dan Schulman. In the letter, which was seen by The Associated Press, Schulman said Verizon’s current cost structure “limits” the company’s ability to invest — pointing particularly to customer experiences.
“We must reorient our entire company around delivering for and delighting our customers,” Schulman wrote. He added that the company needed to simplify its operations “to address the complexity and friction that slow us down and frustrate our customers.”
Verizon had nearly 100,000 full-time employees as of the end of last year, according to securities filings. A spokesperson confirmed that the layoffs announced Thursday account for about 20% of the company’s management workforce, which isn’t unionized.
Verizon has faced rising competition in both the wireless phone and home internet space — particularly from AT&T, T-Mobile and other big market players. New leadership at the company has stressed the need to right the company’s direction.
Schulman became CEO just last month. In the company’s most recent earnings, he stated that Verizon’s trajectory was at a “critical inflection point” — and said, rather than incremental changes, Verizon would “aggressively transform” its operations.
For its third quarter of 2025, Verizon posted earnings of $4.95 billion and $33.82 billion in revenue. The carrier reported continued subscriber growth for its prepaid wireless services, but it lost a net 7,000 postpaid connections.
News of coming layoffs at Verizon was reported last week by The Wall Street Journal. The outlet says that the 13,000 job cuts mark the largest-ever round of layoffs at the company.
Beyond the cuts across Verizon’s workforce, Schulman said that the New York company would also “significantly reduce” its outsourced and other outside labor expenses.
It’s a tough time for the job market overall — and Verizon isn’t the only company to announce sizeable workforce reductions recently. More and more layoffs have piled up at companies like Amazon, UPS, Nestlé and more.
Some companies have pointed to rising operational costs spanning from U.S. President Donald Trump’s barrage of new tariffs and shifts in consumer spending. Others cite corporate restructuring more broadly — or are redirecting money to artificial intelligence. Regardless, such cuts have raised worker anxieties across sectors.
Schulman on Thursday recognized that “changes in technology and in the economy are impacting the workforce across all industries.” He said that Verizon had established a $20 million “Reskilling and Career Transition Fund” for workers departing the company.
Shares of Verizon fell just over 1% by Thursday’s close.
Sales of previously occupied U.S. homes increased last month to the fastest pace since February as lower mortgage rates helped pull more homebuyers into the market.
Existing home sales rose 1.2% in October from the previous month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.10 million units, the National Association of Realtors said Thursday.
Sales climbed 1.7% compared with October last year. The latest sales figure topped the roughly 4.09 million pace economists were expecting, according to FactSet.
The national median sales price increased 2.1% in October from a year earlier to $415,200, an all-time high for any October on data going back to 1999. Home prices have risen on an annual basis for 28 months in a row.
Sales have remained sluggish this year, but have gotten a boost this fall as the average rate on a 30-year mortgage declined to its lowest level in more than a year.
Even so, affordability and uncertainty over the economy and job market remain significant hurdles for many aspiring homeowners after years of skyrocketing home prices.
That’s kept existing U.S. home sales stuck at around a 4-million annual pace going back to 2023. Historically, sales have typically hovered around 5.2 million a year.
To close that gap will take a drastic increase in the number of homes on the market and a more meaningful decline in mortgage rates, said Lawrence Yun, NAR’s chief economist, whose 2026 forecast calls for a 14% increase in home sales.
“I don’t think we will get there next year,” Yun said. “We need 1 million more home sales to get us back to normal. I’m only looking at an additional half-million home sales next year.”
Homes purchased last month likely went under contract in August and September, when the average rate on a 30-year mortgage ranged from 6.63% to 6.26%, according to Freddie Mac. The decline in mortgage rates accelerated in October, pulling the average rate down to 6.17% — its lowest level since Oct. 3, 2024. It has ticked higher in the weeks since then.
Home shoppers who can afford to buy at current mortgage rates are benefiting from a wider selection of properties on the market this year than a year ago.
There were 1.52 million unsold homes at the end of last month, down 0.7% from September and up 10.9% from October last year, NAR said. However, the latest inventory snapshot remains well below the roughly 2 million homes for sale that was typical before the COVID-19 pandemic.
“To the degree pre-Covid conditions were more normal, we are still tight on inventory,” said Yun.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
NEW YORK — U.S. stock index futures added to their gains after the government reported that employers added twice as many jobs as expected in September. Futures were already higher on enthusiasm for a strong earnings report from AI bellwether Nvidia. Futures for the S&P 500 were up 1.5% before the opening bell, while futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.8%. Futures for the Nasdaq shot 1.9% higher. The Labor Department said employapners added 119,000 jobs in September, more than double the 50,000 economists had forecast. The market also focused on Nvidia as Wall Street’s most influential company jumped 5.1% overnight after reporting better-than-expected results.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.
Wall Street surged on Thursday after Nvidia reported stronger than expected quarterly earnings, tempering worries that AI-related stocks may have become overvalued.
Futures for the S&P 500 were up 1.1% before the opening bell, while futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 0.5%. Futures for the Nasdaq shot 1.6% higher.
The market’s focus remained on Nvidia as Wall Street’s most influential stock jumped 5.1% overnight after the chipmaker reported third-quarter earnings of $31.9 billion. That’s a 65% increase over last year and more than analysts were expecting.
The Santa Clara, California company also forecast revenue for the current quarter covering November-January will come in at about $65 billion, nearly $3 billion above analysts’ projections, an indication that demand for its AI chips remains feverish.
Nvidia is the most valuable company by market capitalization on Wall Street, having briefly topped $5 trillion in value. That means its movements have more of an effect on the S&P 500 than any other stock, and it can single-handedly steer the index’s direction some days.
By continuing to deliver big profits for investors, Nvidia has mostly quieted recent criticism that its shares shot too high, too fast.
Nvidia has become a bellwether for the broader frenzy around artificial-intelligence technology, because other companies are using its chips to ramp up their AI efforts.
Walmart also reported its latest quarterly results Thursday. The Arkansas retailer delivered another standout quarter, posting strong sales and profits that blew past Wall Street expectations as it continues to lure cash-strapped Americans who have grown increasingly anxious about the economy and prices.
With other retailers dialing back projections, the nation’s largest retailer raised its financial outlook Thursday after its strong third quarter, setting itself up for a strong holiday shopping season.
Traders also made their final moves ahead of a September jobs report coming from the U.S. government on Thursday. The labor market data, usually released during the first week of every month, was delayed due to the six-week federal government shutdown.
The Labor Department said Wednesday that it will not be releasing a full jobs report for October because the 43-day shutdown meant it couldn’t calculate the unemployment rate and some other key numbers.
The job market has been slowing enough this year that the Fed has already cut its main interest rate twice. Lower rates can give a boost to the economy and to prices for investments, and the expectation on Wall Street had been for more cuts, including at the Fed’s next meeting in December.
At midday in Europe, Germany’s DAX rose 0.8%, while Britain’s FTSE 100 and the CAC 40 in Paris each added 0.6%.
In Asia, Japan’s Nikkei 225 index initially surged as much as 4.2% before giving up some early gains. It closed nearly 2.7% higher at 49,823.94 as technology stocks rallied, with investor sentiment boosted by Nvidia’s strong quarterly results after trading closed in the U.S.
South Korea’s Kospi added 1.9% to 4,004.85, with gains led by technology and energy stocks. Investors were encouraged by Nvidia’s earnings and reports that the U.S. may delay planned semiconductor tariffs.
Samsung Electronics gained 4.2%, while SK Hynix added 1.6%.
Chinese markets ended mixed as reports said the government might be planning more measures to try to revive the ailing property sector.
Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index was barely changed at 25,835.57, while the Shanghai Composite index lost 0.4% to 3,931.05 after China’s central bank kept its one- and five-year loan prime rates unchanged at 3% and 3.5%, respectively.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 gained 1.2% to 8,552.70, also led by gains for technology stocks.
In energy markets, benchmark U.S. crude oil gained 59 cents, or 1%, to $59.61 per barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, rose 62 cents to $64.13 per barrel.
The U.S. dollar climbed to 157.66 Japanese yen from 157.06 yen. It has been trading at nearly the highest level this year on expectations that the government will delay efforts to rein in Japan’s national debt as Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi raises spending to help spur the economy.
WASHINGTON — U.S. employers added a surprisingly solid 119,000 jobs in September, the government said, issuing a key economic report that had been delayed for seven weeks by the federal government shutdown.
The unemployment rate rose to 4.4% in September, highest since October 2021 and up from 4.3% in August, the Labor Department said Thursday. The unemployment rate rose partly because 470,000 people entered the labor market — either working or looking for work — in September and not all of them found jobs right away.
The increase in payrolls was more than double the 50,000 economists had forecast. But Labor Department revisions showed that the economy lost 4,000 jobs in August instead of gaining 22,000 as originally reported. Altogether, revisions shaved 33,000 jobs off July and August payrolls.
Healthcare and social assistance firms added more than 57,000 jobs in September, construction companies 19,000 and retailers almost 14,000. But factories shed 6,000 jobs and the federal government lost 3,000.
Average hourly wages rose just 0.2% from August and 3.8% from a year earlier, edging closer to the 3.5% year-over-year increase that the Federal Reserve’s inflation fighters like to see.
During the 43-day U.S. government shutdown, investors, businesses, policymakers and the Federal Reserve were groping in the dark for clues about the health of the American job market because federal workers had been furloughed and couldn’t collect the data.
The report comes at a time of considerable uncertainty about the economy. The job market has been strained by the lingering effects of high interest rates and uncertainty around Trump’s erratic campaign to slap taxes on imports from almost every country on earth. But economic growth at midyear was resilient.
Fed policymakers are divided over whether to cut interest rates for the third time this year when they meet next month.
Economists expected to see a continuation of what was happening in the spring and summer: weak hiring but few layoffs, an awkward pairing that means Americans who have work mostly enjoy job security – but those who don’t often struggle to find employment.
The job market has been strained this year by the lingering effects of high interest rates engineered to fight a 2021-2022 spike in inflation and uncertainty around Trump’s campaign to slap taxes on imports from almost every country on earth and on specific products — from copper to foreign films.
Labor Department revisions in September showed that the economy created 911,000 fewer jobs than originally reported in the year that ended in March. That meant that employers added an average of just 71,000 new jobs a month over that period, not the 147,000 first reported.
Since March, job creation has slowed even more — to an average 53,000 a month. During the 2021-2023 hiring boom that followed COVID-19 lockdowns, by contrast, the economy was creating 400,000 jobs a month.
President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration is expected to reduce the number of people looking for work, which means that the economy can create fewer jobs without sending the unemployment rate higher.
With September numbers out, businesses, investors, policymakers and the Fed will have to wait awhile to get another good look at the numbers behind the American labor market.
The Labor Department said Wednesday that it won’t won’t release a full jobs report for October because it couldn’t calculate the unemployment rate during the government shutdown.
Instead, it will release some of the October jobs data — including the number of jobs that employers created last month — along with the full November jobs report on Dec. 16, a couple of weeks late.
That puts an even more intense focus on September jobs numbers released Thursday. They are the last full measurement of hiring and unemployment that Fed policymakers will see before they meet Dec. 9-10 to decide whether to cut their benchmark interest rate for the third time this year.
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AP Economics Writer Christopher Rugaber contributed to this report.
NEW YORK (AP) — Verizon is laying off more than 13,000 employees, as the telecommunications giant says it must “reorient” its entire company.
The jobs cuts began on Thursday, per to a staff memo from Verizon CEO Dan Schulman. In the letter, which was seen by The Associated Press, Schulman noted that Verizon’s current cost structure limits the company’s ability to invest — pointing particularly to customer experiences.
“We must reorient our entire company around delivering for and delighting our customers,” Schulman wrote. He added that the company needed to simplify its operations “to address the complexity and friction that slow us down and frustrate our customers.”
Beyond the job cuts across Verizon’s workforce, Schulman said that the New York company would also “significantly reduce” its outsourced and other outside labor expenses.
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
