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Tag: social and economic status

  • Misery in El Paso: Hundreds of homeless migrants live in squalor amid deportation fears | CNN

    Misery in El Paso: Hundreds of homeless migrants live in squalor amid deportation fears | CNN

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    El Paso, Texas
    CNN
     — 

    One-year-old Brenda’s tiny feet are bare on the cold asphalt of an El Paso parking lot as the harsh reality starts to sink in for her parents. They are undocumented. They are homeless. And their daughter barely escaped death when they crossed the Rio Grande.

    “My daughter would have died because she was super frozen,” said Glenda Matos.

    Matos’ pain is clear in her eyes as she recalls her daughter being drenched, in the freezing cold, all while crying hysterically. Matos and her husband, Anthony Blanco, say they had nothing to keep their daughter warm, not even body heat, because they, too, were wet and cold.

    Matos says she hugged Brenda tightly and ran from house to house begging for help until they finally found a kind El Paso resident who helped them with clothes and shelter.

    “I asked God for help,” Glenda said. “God… put those people in my way.”

    For Matos, the tiny red rosary with an image of Our Lady of Guadalupe, hanging from Brenda’s ancle, saved them. Matos says she wrapped the religious token on her daughter’s little body for protection when they left their native Venezuela.

    Brenda and her parents are some of the hundreds of migrants living in squalor in the streets of downtown El Paso around Sacred Heart Parish. The makeshift camp – with its piles of blankets, strollers and tents lining both sides of a busy street – has city officials expressing concerns about safety and public health given the area is packed with migrants who have no running water or proper shelter.

    The surge of migrants aggregating here started a few weeks ago, when anxiety about the scheduled end of the Trump-era pandemic public health rule known as Title 42 prompted thousands of migrants to turn themselves in to border authorities or to cross into the United States illegally in a very short period of time.

    Title 42 allows immigration authorities to swiftly return some migrants to Mexico. The policy was scheduled to lift last week, but a Supreme Court ruling kept the rule in place while legal challenges play out in court.

    While the impact of the ruling has sent ripples throughout the southern border, the scene in El Paso is one of a kind. It’s the only U.S. border town where hundreds of migrants are living in the streets longer than expected. It’s a new phenomenon that city officials say had never happened during prior migrant surges.

    It’s driven, in part, by the anxiety created by the uncertainty of Title 42, which motivated some migrants to cross the border illegally. These migrants don’t have family or sponsors in the US to receive them. And many also fear that traveling out of town without the proper paperwork could lead to apprehension by US immigration authorities.

    Evelyn Palma sits with her five children in the streets of El Paso, Texas.

    The misery around Sacred Heart Parish is palpable. Evelyn Palma has blankets hooked and draped on a chain-linked fence to keep the cold and the drizzle from hitting her five children, ages 1 to 8, some of them shirtless. She’s been living on the street for eight days. But Friday was especially miserable because it was 40 degrees and it poured overnight.

    “We woke up drenched,” Palma said.

    The 24-year-old mother from Honduras says she and her children turned themselves in to immigration authorities earlier this month, but they were swiftly returned to Mexico, likely under Title 42. That’s why, she says, that a week ago she decided to evade authorities by crossing the river.

    She is part of the growing number of migrants who El Paso city officials say have decided to enter the US illegally and, for various reasons, have not left the city.

    “They are people who came into the country in anticipation of Title 42 going away,” said Mario D’Agostino, El Paso’s deputy city manager.

    The living conditions Palma and other migrants are enduring has officials concerned about their safety and overall public health. City spokesperson Laura Cruz-Acosta says that the spread of disease is top of mind.

    “We are still in the middle of what is being called a ‘tripledemic,’ with continuing high infection levels of upper respiratory infections across the community,” Cruz-Acosta said.

    Evelyn Palma receives gifts for her children in the streets of El Paso, Texas.

    And while the city has space for about 1,500 migrants at shelters that have been erected at the convention center and at a public school, those beds are only offered to migrants who have turned themselves in to border authorities and have been allowed to stay in the US pending their immigration cases. Those migrants receive documentation from US Customs and Border Protection that allows them to travel within the country.

    Migrants who enter the country illegally are not offered city-provided shelter because federal dollars are being used to foot the bill. And those monies can’t be used to serve people who entered the country illegally, according to D’Agostino.

    City officials have been referring undocumented migrants to non-profit organizations and churches like Sacred Heart Parish, which turns into a shelter when night falls.

    That’s why hundreds of migrants aggregate on the streets around the church, hoping to score one of the 120 to 130 slots to enter the church for the night.

    Around 6 p.m., a line of migrants forms outside the church’s gymnasium. Parents can be seen clutching their children to try to keep them warm. Women and men with children are given priority, according to Rafael García, the priest that runs the shelter. García says it’s tough to send people away but that his church has limited resources to serve the growing need.

    Angello Sánchez and his 4-year-old son Anyeider were allowed into the shelter for the night several times this week. The Colombian father says he was trying to protect his son from the cold because his little face still had windburn from being out in the elements during the recent freeze.

    “I got here from southern Mexico on a train. It was so cold and he wasn’t wearing any jacket,” Angello said.

    Palma, the mother of five, says she was offered entry into the shelter with her children but decided not to take the offer because a pregnant friend who is accompanying her was denied access.

    El Paso, which means “The Pass” in Spanish, has historically been a gateway for migrants passing through into the United States.

    “For hundreds of years people have been passing through and it’s just part of their journey,” D’Agostino said. “In normal times the community doesn’t even realize it.”

    But this migrant surge is different because migrants are staying for days and even more than a week, city officials say.

    Besides lacking family or sponsors in the US to receive them, many migrants don’t have money to pay for their transportation out of the city. And in the makeshift migrant camp around Sacred Heart Parish, word is spreading about another factor that has some undocumented migrants hunkering down in El Paso: The fear of getting detained at immigration checkpoints located in the interior of the US.

    In the last week, at least 364 undocumented migrants who were traveling in commercial buses headed to northern cities were detained at these immigration checkpoints, according to tweets posted by El Paso’s border patrol chief.

    Palma says she heard about the checkpoints and the apprehensions and decided to stay in El Paso longer while she figures out what to do.

    “If immigration detains me, they’ll return me,” Palma said.

    Juan Pérez, from Venezuela, was down the street and said that “immigration is in the exits [of the city]… they’ll return us and send us to Mexico.”

    The US has 110 Border Patrol checkpoints in the southern and northern borders, where vehicles are screened for the “illegal flow of people and contraband,” according to a recent US Government Accountability Office report. The checkpoints are usually between 25 and 100 miles from the border, according to the same report.

    Anthony Blanco holds a hand-written sign asking for a job while his wife, Glenda Matos, plays with Brenda in the streets of El Paso, Texas.

    Anthony Blanco says he’s not afraid of being detained at these interior checkpoints.

    “I’ve walked through many different countries without documents. I don’t think we’re going to be detained, but if that happens, it was God’s will,” Blanco said.

    For days this week, Blanco has been holding a sign on the street corner that reads, “Help me with work so I can support my wife and baby,” and asking drivers who pass by for money for bus tickets to Denver.

    Why Denver? He says word has spread that there is work there and living is more affordable.

    Friday morning, a day which was especially miserable because it was cold after a hard overnight rain, Blanco was all smiles. He says he had collected enough money to continue his journey to Denver.

    “Thank God,” Blanco said.

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  • Senior citizens will soon get that big hike in their Social Security benefits | CNN Politics

    Senior citizens will soon get that big hike in their Social Security benefits | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Senior citizens and other Social Security recipients will start getting a heftier monthly benefit next month due to an 8.7% annual cost-of-living adjustment aimed at helping them cope with high inflation.

    The increase, the largest in more than 40 years, will boost retirees’ monthly payments by more than $140 to an estimated average of $1,827 for 2023.

    The adjustment is the highest that most current beneficiaries have ever seen because it is based on an inflation metric from August through October, which was also around 40-year highs. Inflation has cooled somewhat since then, though prices remain elevated.

    “I’m sure everyone is anxiously awaiting because prices are still high,” said Mary Johnson, a Social Security and Medicare policy analyst at The Senior Citizens League, an advocacy group. “Just shopping for food to feed people during the holidays is going to be a huge challenge.”

    Roughly 70 million people will receive the increase, which follows a 5.9% adjustment for 2022.

    Many senior citizens depend heavily on Social Security. Some 42% of elderly women and 37% of elderly men rely on the monthly payments for at least half their income, according to the Social Security Administration.

    Just when the beefed-up payment will arrive depends on recipients’ ages and birth dates. Those who received Social Security before May 1997 get their monthly benefit on the 3rd of each month. For more recent retirees, those whose birth dates are the 1st through the 10th of the month receive it on the second Wednesday, while those born on the 11th to 20th and the 21st to 31st of the month are paid the third and fourth Wednesdays, respectively.

    Even though recipients received a sizable adjustment for this year, inflation ate away at the boost.

    The increase fell short of actual inflation by an average of more than $42 – or 46% – every month or roughly $508 for the year, Johnson said.

    Many retirees have been forced to turn to their savings or public assistance. One-third of seniors reported signing up for food stamps or visiting a food pantry over the past 12 months, compared with 22% in 2020, according to recent surveys by The Senior Citizens League. Also, 17% have applied for assistance with heating costs, compared with 10% in 2020.

    This is not a new problem. Benefits have not kept up with the rising cost of living for years, even with the annual adjustments.

    As of March, inflation has caused Social Security payments to lose 40% of their buying power since 2000, according to a study released earlier this year by the league. Monthly benefits would have to increase by $540 to maintain the same level of buying power as in 2000.

    Senior citizens will also see their Medicare Part B premiums drop in 2023, the first time in more than a decade that the tab will be lower than the year before, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced in the fall. It’s only the fourth time that premiums are declining since Medicare was created in 1965.

    The standard monthly premiums will be $164.90 in 2023, a decrease of $5.20 from 2022.

    The reduction comes after a large spike in 2022 premiums, which raised the standard monthly premium to $170.10, up from $148.50 in 2021. A key driver of the 2022 hike was a projected jump in spending due to a costly new drug for Alzheimer’s disease, Aduhelm. However, since then, Aduhelm’s manufacturer cut the price and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services limited coverage of the drug.

    Also, spending was lower than projected on other Part B items and services, which resulted in much larger reserves in the Part B trust fund, allowing the agency to limit future premium increases.

    The big annual adjustment could end up hurting some seniors, Johnson said.

    For instance, the resulting increase in income could push them above the thresholds for certain government benefits, such as Medicare Extra Help, Medicaid, food stamps and rental assistance, leaving them eligible for less or no aid. Or they could have to pay more for their Medicare Part B premiums, which are adjusted for income.

    Also, they could have to start paying taxes – or owe higher levies – on their Social Security benefits if their income rises above a certain level.

    Further, the increase could leave Social Security’s finances on even shakier ground. The combined trust funds that pay benefits to retirees, survivors and the disabled will be depleted by 2035 and only able to distribute roughly three-quarters of promised payments unless Congress addresses the program’s long-term funding shortfall, according to the most recent Social Security trustees’ report.

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  • ‘Life or death.’ As Britons buckle under the cost of living crisis, many resort to ‘warm banks’ for heat this winter | CNN

    ‘Life or death.’ As Britons buckle under the cost of living crisis, many resort to ‘warm banks’ for heat this winter | CNN

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    London
    CNN
     — 

    In a community center in central London, a young child plays in a makeshift area as her caregiver rocks her stroller and chats to a friend.

    The Oasis Centre in Waterloo sits in a four-story building that has a warm, inviting feeling, with plush chairs and lots of potted plants.

    But it’s not your regular high street hangout. This is a haven for families and local people to escape the bitter squeeze of Britain’s cost-of-living crisis – if only for the afternoon.

    Thousands of warm banks have opened their doors across the UK this winter, as household budgets are squeezed even further by spiking energy bills and inflation reaches a 40-year high, leaving many scrambling to pay for basic necessities. There are more than 3,000 registered organizations running warm banks in Britain, according to the Warm Welcome Campaign, an initiative that signposts community-led responses to the cost-of-living crisis.

    “A lot of people are struggling,” Charlotte, a community and families worker at the center, tells CNN. Her full name is not being disclosed for privacy reasons.

    “We haven’t even really got to the peak of the living crisis yet,” the 33-year-old mother-of-four adds. “No one should be choosing whether to put food on the table or to put the heating on.”

    The hub is funded by donations from individuals and local businesses, as well as grant incomes from charitable trusts.

    The cost of living has risen sharply since early 2021, according to data from the UK government. From October 2021 to October 2022, domestic gas and electricity prices increased by 129% and 66% respectively, the same research found.

    The average annual energy bill surged 96% from last autumn to £2,500 (roughly $3,000), with the UK government intervening to cap the unit cost of gas and electricity bills at that level until April 2023. However, the total amount consumers pay for their energy depends on their consumption habits, where they live, how they pay for energy and what type of meter they use, according to the UK’s regulator, Ofgem.

    A welcoming sign outside the Oasis Centre, an open to all communal area which acts as a 'warm bank', in London, on December 12.

    Charlotte, who works at and uses the warm space in Waterloo, says she limits her gas and electricity use in her flat. Instead of turning on the heating in the evening, she and her partner sit under quilts and use hot water bottles to stay warm, she says.

    She also anticipates her household energy costs increasing over Christmas, as her children, who are between 4 and 17 years old, spend more time at home during the school holidays. At the moment, Charlotte spends most days at the hub and said this habit will continue over the holidays to help alleviate her costs at home.

    Grace Richardson is an adult services manager at Future Projects in Norwich, in eastern England, an organization that offers health, housing and financial support to residents. She says her team started planning over the summer to provide a warm space in the organization’s Baseline Centre, located in an area with significant poverty.

    “This winter in particular, it’s extremely important that we’re offering a space that people can turn everything off at home and they can save money,” she tells CNN.

    “We’ve got people here working full time and they cannot make ends meet. That’s where the real difference is.”

    From young parents to pensioners to students in their 20s, Richardson says that people from all walks of life use the warm space, with about 25 attending each day. The warm bank, where staff serve meals, is subsidized by grant funding from the local council and private or corporate foundations, as well as donations from individuals.

    The café space at Future Projects' Baseline Centre in Norwich. The Centre, which serves as a community space, is currently undergoing renovation.

    Michael John Edward Easter, 57, says the service at the Baseline Centre has been a lifeline for him this winter.

    Easter, who has lymphedema in both legs and arthritis in one knee, is unable to work. Speaking to CNN earlier this month, he said he’d turned the heating on in his one-bedroom flat just twice so far this year to avoid spiking energy costs and compensate for a 50% increase in his weekly supermarket bill.

    He says he “was in a mess” when he first reached out to the Baseline Centre in January for welfare advice, as he was dealing with mobility challenges and craved a sense of community.

    “I was so ashamed and embarrassed, but I had to cry out for help,” he says. “I needed help and I just didn’t know where to turn to. If I’m totally honest, I’m very lonely.”

    Richardson suggests the need for warm banks is a result of government inaction.

    “I think that it highlights just how far removed our government is right now from the reality of real life. I think it screams … the divide between us and them, it’s only getting wider,” she says. “We keep referring to this as a cost of living crisis, as though it’s a period of time we’re going to go through and we will come out the other side. Will we? It’s life or death.”

    Energy prices have soared across Europe since fall 2021, driven in part by Russia’s war in Ukraine. But UK energy prices rose more sharply than in comparable economies such as France and Italy, analysts told CNN Business this summer.

    In November, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and Finance Minister Jeremy Hunt announced higher taxes and reduced public spending in an effort to heave the country out of a recession forecast to last just over a year and shrink its economy by just over 2%, according to the Office for Budget Responsibility. The UK is the only G7 economy that remains smaller than it was before the coronavirus pandemic, according to the Office for National Statistics.

    Snow-covered roofs on terraced houses in Aldershot, UK, on December 12. UK power prices jumped to record levels just as a lengthy spell of freezing temperatures caused a surge in demand.

    The UK government also announced an Energy Bill Support Scheme worth £400 per eligible household, which will partially subsidize domestic energy bills from winter 2022 to 2023, as well as providing extra financial support to help pensioners pay their heating costs this winter under the Winter Fuel Payment scheme.

    In December more than one million households with prepayment meters did not redeem their monthly energy support vouchers – included in the government’s Energy Bill Support Scheme – the BBC reported.

    But Michael Marmot, a lead researcher in epidemiology and health inequalities, says years of austerity, paltry government support, cuts to spending on social welfare and infrastructure, and a lack of regulation in the UK’s energy market have plunged millions into fuel poverty.

    “Poverty has been building up over the last dozen years and getting worse,” says Marmot, director of University College London’s Institute of Health Equity.

    “We look the worst in G7 countries, we’re the only one in terms of recovery … that hasn’t gone back to where we were pre-pandemic. This is mismanagement on a colossal scale.”

    An estimated 3.69 million households in the UK were in fuel poverty as of December 2020 compared with 6.99 million households in December 2022, Simon Francis, who coordinates the End Fuel Poverty Coalition, told CNN.

    This figure is set to steadily increase, with more than three-quarters of UK households – 53 million people – forecast to be in fuel poverty by the new year, according to research by the University of York in northern England.

    The human rights organization Save the Children has distributed 2,344 direct grants to low-income families in the UK in the past year, the Guardian reported. The head of the charity also called on the government to provide more support for families, as it predicts acute financial hardship for millions in January.

    “What do you want a well-functioning society to do? At the minimum, people should be able to eat, to feed their families, have a safe dwelling … and a safe dwelling includes one that’s warm enough,” Marmot adds.

    Flyers advertising the warm spaces service alongside complimentary refreshments for visitors, at the Ashburton Hall community hub, operated by Greenwich Leisure Ltd., in Croydon, UK, on December 15.

    Susan Aitken, leader of Glasgow City Council in Scotland, says warm banks are “not a solution” to the cost of living crisis but rather “an emergency service.” The council has established more than 30 warm banks across the city in spaces including church halls, libraries, sports venues and cafes, and that number is expected to increase, according to Aitken. The service runs on council budgets and charitable donations.

    “The solution is for people to be able to stay in their own homes,” she says.

    “It’s bad enough that food banks have become a permanent fixture of communities across the UK now. To have places that people have to go to because they can’t afford to heat their own home is an absolute indictment (of government policy).”

    CNN has reached out to the UK government for comment, but it did not respond.

    Back at the Oasis Centre, locals show up for anything from knitting circles to after-school clubs offering free hot meals.

    Steve Chalke, the hub’s founder, says about 200 people use the facility daily for warmth. He says that he does not advertise the service as a warm bank because it is “dehumanizing.” Instead, he coordinates community-led events that are held in warm venues across the city.

    “The idea is to not inquire and to not ask,” he says. “It’s stigmatizing and it’s traumatizing, you know, so you end up feeling a non-person. So we want to take away that stigma in every way we can.”

    Steve Chalke, founder of the Oasis Centre, at the hub in Waterloo, London, on December 1.

    Francis, the End Fuel Poverty Coalition coordinator, says one of the most significant challenges to curbing fuel poverty is removing the taboo that people may feel when asking for support.

    “I think one of the problems with fuel poverty … is it is quite a hidden form of poverty. People kind of … try and cover it up and try and get by,” he says. “We’re not going to know the full extent of the pain that people are suffering this winter, because there will be ways that people will disguise what it is that they’re doing.”

    The mental health costs of fuel poverty are far-reaching, according to a 2020 report from the UCL Institute of Health Equity. The report said that young people living in cold homes are seven times more likely to have symptoms of poor mental health compared with those living in warm homes.

    “There’s surprisingly lots of people that do have work, but yet it’s not enough to keep afloat, at least without needing some help,” says Bintu Tijani, a mother-of-four who goes to the Oasis Centre at least three times a week to warm up. “It’s having a significant impact on people’s wellbeing, mental health and wellbeing.”

    Looking ahead to Christmas and the New Year, Francis says he is also concerned about the strain that treatment needed for medical conditions exacerbated or caused by cold weather will have on Britain’s National Health Service (NHS).

    “We’re still calling for the government to realize that if it doesn’t take action to support those who are the most vulnerable … it is going to see a huge increase in the number of people turning up at the NHS’ door to seek help because of the fact that they are now living in a cold, damp home and it is making them sick,” he says.

    Britain’s NHS is already under pressure amid staff shortages, historic nurses’ strikes over poor pay and working conditions, and a backlog of treatments resulting from the coronavirus pandemic.

    Aitken, the councilor in Glasgow, believes this Christmas will “be a pretty miserable time” for many.

    “A Christmas where you have to ration how long you can put your heating on in your home is not a good Christmas for anyone.”

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  • White House cautiously optimistic over economy in 2023: ‘Absolutely no sign’ job growth will tumble or unemployment will spike | CNN Politics

    White House cautiously optimistic over economy in 2023: ‘Absolutely no sign’ job growth will tumble or unemployment will spike | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    As Wall Street and Main Street fret about a potential recession, White House officials are projecting confidence about the economy’s ability to weather the storm in 2023.

    “We’re feeling cautiously optimistic because we are starting to see some real concrete measurable signs of progress,” Aviva Aron-Dine, deputy director of the White House National Economic Council, told CNN in a Zoom interview.

    The Biden administration economist pointed to a range of metrics showing inflation has cooled off, real wages have heated up and the job market has defied doomsday predictions.

    The White House is hoping for a soft landing, in which the Federal Reserve tames inflation without crashing the economy.

    “We remain optimistic about a transition to stable, steady growth with lower inflation – without giving up labor market gains, without a recession,” Aron-Dine said.

    So far, so good – at least from the administration’s perspective.

    For the moment, metrics suggest the economy has remained resilient and consumers are more optimistic as inflation has eased. The Conference Board’s latest consumer confidence index this month, for example, showed a significant jump from November. And after spiking to record highs in June, gas prices have plunged to 17-month lows, delivering a major boost to consumers.

    And some broader trends appear to be working in the administration’s favor, like hiring, which has slowed but has not collapsed.

    There is “absolutely no sign” that job growth will fall on a “sustained basis” below a pace of roughly 150,000 jobs a month, Aron-Dine said.

    Last month, the US economy added a surprisingly strong 263,000 jobs. That’s down sharply from 647,000 in the same period last year – but still a very healthy pace.

    Despite a series of mass layoffs in the tech and media industries, Aron-Dine added that there is “no sign of a big increase in unemployment.”

    Indeed, initial jobless claims remain very low. The Labor Department said Thursday that first-time claims for unemployment benefits rose just slightly in the latest week and remain near two-month lows. However, some economists – including ones at the Fed – warn this trend could be about to change due in large part to continued pressure from higher borrowing costs.

    After raising interest rates for a seventh meeting in a row, the Fed last week projected the unemployment rate will rise from a historically low level of 3.7% today to 4.6% by the end of next year. That implies an increase of approximately 1.6 million unemployed people.

    Some, though certainly not all, business leaders and major banks expect the US economy will slip into a downturn next year. For instance, PNC is now projecting a “mild recession” that is similar to the downturns of 1990-1991 and 2001.

    “The risk of a recession is elevated right now – certainly higher than six months or a year ago,” Gus Faucher, chief economist at PNC, told CNN. “We need to be prepared for a recession sometime in the spring or summer of 2023.”

    Other economists including Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, are growing more confident a recession may be avoided.

    Although Fed officials say a soft landing is still possible, some of the Fed’s own metrics are flashing red.

    A New York Fed model that uses shifts in the bond market to forecast recession risks finds there is a 38% chance of a recession in the next 12 months. That narrowly surpasses the peak in 2019 and is the highest level since just before the Great Recession.

    There are signs that cracks are forming in consumer spending – the main engine of the US economy – due to high inflation that has forced some Americans to dip into savings and turn to credit cards. Retail sales declined in November by the most in nearly a year as shoppers pulled back on everything from furniture and cars to even e-commerce.

    Asked about the surprise retail sales slump, Aron-Dine noted this metric can experience significant volatility.

    “If you look at the data over a more extended period, you’re just not seeing any signs that would make us think that is a significant concern,” she said.

    In that effort to transition away from high inflation, Aron-Dine said, the White House continues to evaluate ongoing risks, calling the war in Ukraine “one of the most significant risks that we monitor.”

    “I think all year, we’ve seen that there are signs of real strength and opportunities for a successful transition, and that there are significant risks. And so our work, our strategy has been about trying to take advantage of the strengths and mitigates the risk,” she said, later adding, “I think we have reason for optimism, reasons to believe the US economy is well positioned, but there are global challenges and high on that list is potential downstream consequences of the war in Ukraine for food and energy as we saw this year and more generally.”

    Another hurdle Biden’s economic team will face in the new year will be achieving consensus among a newly divided Congress.

    Biden’s first two years in office were marked by the passage the administration’s proposed major spending bills aimed at bolstering the country’s recovery from the coronavirus pandemic, rebuilding the nation’s infrastructure, overhauling major social safety net programs, enhancing domestic supply chains and making climate investments.

    But some major provisions the Biden White House has pushed for, including the revival of the enhanced child credit have failed to move forward in Congress. The previous expansion of the child tax credit lifted 2.1 million children out of poverty in 2021, according to the Census Bureau.

    A last-ditch effort this month to pass the credit into law as part of the $1.7 trillion government spending bill failed. And with Republicans taking over the House of Representatives next year, its passage is even less likely.

    “It is a disappointment that Republicans blocked inclusion of Child Tax Credit improvements during the lame duck,” Aron-Dine said, adding, “I won’t get ahead of agenda setting our strategy for next year, but of course, this will remain a priority for us.”

    Along with broader efforts to tackle inflation and avoid a recession, the implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act will also be top of mind for Biden economic officials in the coming year.

    A slate of provisions in the IRA are scheduled to roll out in January, including home energy efficiency tax credits and a $35 cap on the cost of insulin for seniors on Medicare.

    And CNN previously reported that along with deploying a messaging strategy aimed at highlighting existing accomplishments, as Biden heads into the new year, the White House is looking to highlight ways the Inflation Reduction Act will lower everyday costs.

    Aron-Dine told CNN that the enactment of the IRA “is just going to have a huge effect in shaping our work in the year ahead, with one of our biggest priorities really being just making sure that we fully realize the potential of that law.”

    And as the administration prepares to frame Biden’s agenda ahead of the State of the Union address next year, National Economic Council Director Brian Deese told the Wall Street Journal this week that officials are considering a push for policies aimed at getting Americans back to work, including childcare and eldercare benefits.

    It’s not clear whether the White House is considering using executive authority or proposals to Congress to move forward on the initiative. Aron-Dine declined to offer specifics.

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  • Twitter hit by legal complaints from 100 former employees following Musk’s layoffs | CNN Business

    Twitter hit by legal complaints from 100 former employees following Musk’s layoffs | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN
     — 

    Twitter has been hit with allegations from 100 former employees affected by mass layoffs at the company, including that it unfairly laid off more women than men, terminated employees who were actively on medical or parental leave and reneged on promises related to severance pay.

    The allegations were included as part of the former employees’ demands for arbitration against the company, according to a statement on Tuesday by attorney Shannon Liss-Riordan.

    Liss-Riordan is the same attorney who has brought four proposed class action lawsuits against Twitter by former employees affected by Elon Musk’s takeover. The arbitration demands are meant to help workers who can’t participate in that litigation because of contracts they signed with the company.

    Claims in the arbitration demands mirror those in the lawsuits. Some also claim that Musk placed “unreasonable demands” on Twitter’s workforce in an effort to shrink its staff, according to the statement.

    “The conduct of Twitter since Musk took over is incredibly egregious, and we will pursue every avenue to protect workers and extract from Twitter the compensation that is due to them,” Liss-Riordan said in the statement. She added that her firm has heard from hundreds of former Twitter employees and has filed only the “first wave” of arbitration demands.

    “We are ready to fight them one by one, on behalf of potentially thousands of employees if that becomes necessary,” she said.

    Liss-Riordan previously brought three proposed class action suits on behalf of female employees, disabled employees and contractors who were laid off. Another suit was filed by a group of former employees who accuse Twitter of breach of contract because it allegedly failed to follow through on promises to allow remote work and provide consistent severance benefits after the acquisition.

    Twitter, which recently laid off much of its communications department, did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding the arbitration demands. Twitter has denied the breach of contract allegations in the lawsuit brought by former employees about remote work and severance, and it has not responded to the claims in the three other suits.

    Liss-Riordan has also filed three complaints against Twitter with the National Labor Relations Board on behalf of employees affected by the layoffs.

    The mounting claims by former employees come after Twitter terminated about half of its staff in a mass layoff last month shortly after Musk’s takeover. Musk later pushed out hundreds of additional employees, including by requiring them to agree to an ultimatum to work “extremely hardcore” or leave the company.

    The former employees suing Twitter scored an early win last week when a judge ruled in favor of their motion ordering the company to alert all laid-off employees of the pending lawsuits before requiring them to sign severance agreements waiving their rights to litigation.

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  • Here’s what’s in the $1.7 trillion federal spending bill | CNN Politics

    Here’s what’s in the $1.7 trillion federal spending bill | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Senate leaders unveiled a $1.7 trillion year-long federal government funding bill early Tuesday morning.

    The legislation includes $772.5 billion for non-defense discretionary programs and $858 billion in defense funding, according to a bill summary from Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy, chair of the Senate Committee on Appropriations.

    The sweeping package includes roughly $45 billion in emergency assistance to Ukraine and NATO allies, boosts in spending for disaster aid, college access, child care, mental health and food assistance, more support for the military and veterans and additional funds for the US Capitol Police, according to Leahy’s summary and one from Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama, the top Republican on the Senate Appropriations Committee.

    However, the bill, which runs more than 4,000 pages, left out several measures that some lawmakers had fought to include. An expansion of the child tax credit, as well as multiple other corporate and individual tax breaks, did not make it into the final bill. Neither did legislation to allow cannabis companies to bank their cash reserves – known as the Safe Banking Act. Also, there was also no final resolution on where the new FBI headquarters will be located.

    The spending bill is the product of lengthy negotiations between top congressional Democrats and Republicans. Lawmakers reached a “bipartisan, bicameral framework” last week following a dispute between the two parties over how much money should be spent on non-defense domestic priorities. They worked through the weekend to craft the legislation.

    The Senate is expected to vote first to approve the deal this week and then send it to the House for approval before government funding runs out on December 23. The bill would keep the government operating through September, the end of the fiscal year.

    Congress originally passed a continuing resolution on September 30 to temporarily fund the government in fiscal year 2023, which began October 1.

    More aid for Ukraine: The spending bill would provide roughly $45 billion to help support Ukraine’s efforts to defend itself against Russia’s attack.

    About $9 billion of the funding would go to Ukraine’s military to pay for a variety of things including training, weapons, logistics support and salaries. Nearly $12 billion would be used to replenish US stocks of equipment sent to Ukraine through presidential drawdown authority.

    Also, it would provide $13 billion for economic support to the Ukrainian government.

    Other funds would address humanitarian and infrastructure needs, as well as support European Command operations.

    Emergency disaster assistance: The bill would appropriate more than $38 billion in emergency funding to help Americans in the west and southeast affected by recent natural disasters, including tornadoes, hurricanes, flooding and wildfires. It would aid farmers, provide economic development assistance for communities, repair and reconstruct federal facilities and direct money to the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Disaster Relief Fund, among other initiatives.

    Overhaul of the electoral vote counting law: A provision in the legislation aims at making it harder to overturn a certified presidential election, in a direct response to the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.

    The changes would overhaul the 1887 Electoral Count Act, which then-President Donald Trump tried to use to overturn the 2020 election.

    The legislation would clarify the vice president’s role while overseeing the certification of the electoral result to be completely ceremonial. It also would create a set of stipulations designed to make it harder for there to be any confusion over the accurate slate of electors from each state.

    Higher maximum Pell grant awards: The bill would increase the maximum Pell grant award by $500 to $7,395 for the coming school year. This would be the largest boost since the 2009-2010 school year. About 7 million students, many from lower-income families, receive Pell grants every year to help them afford college.

    Increased support for the military and veterans: The package would fund a 4.6% pay raise for troops and a 22.4% increase in support for Veteran Administration medical care, which provides health services for 7.3 million veterans.

    It would include nearly $53 billion to address higher inflation and $2.7 billion – a 25% increase – to support critical services and housing assistance for veterans and their families.

    The bill also would allocate $5 billion for the Cost of War Toxic Exposures Fund, which provides additional funding to implement the landmark PACT Act that expands eligibility for health care services and benefits to veterans with conditions related to toxic exposure during their service.

    Beefing up nutrition assistance: The legislation would establish a permanent nationwide Summer EBT program, starting in the summer of 2024, according to Share Our Strength, an anti-hunger advocacy group. It would provide families whose children are eligible for free or reduced-price school meal with a $40 grocery benefit per child per month, indexed to inflation.

    It would also change the rules governing summer meals programs in rural areas. Children would be able to take home or receive delivery of up to 10 days worth of meals, rather than have to consume the food at a specific site and time.

    The bill would also help families who have had their food stamp benefits stolen since October 1 through what’s known as “SNAP skimming.” It would provide them with retroactive federal reimbursement of the funds, which criminals steal by attaching devices to point-of-sale machines or PIN pads to get card numbers and other information from electronic benefits transfer cards.

    More money for child care: The legislation would provide $8 billion for the Child Care and Development Block Grant, a 30% increase in funding. The grant gives financial assistance to low-income families to afford child care.

    Also, Head Start would receive nearly $12 billion, an 8.6% boost. The program helps young children from low-income families prepare for school.

    Help to pay utility bills: The bill would provide $5 billion for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program. Combined with the $1 billion contained in the earlier continuing resolution, this would be the largest regular appropriation for the program, according to the National Energy Assistance Directors Association. Home heating and cooling costs – and the applications for federal aid in paying the bills – have soared this year.

    Enhance retirement savings: The bill contains new retirement rules that could make it easier for Americans to accumulate retirement savings – and less costly to withdraw them. Among other things, the provisions would allow penalty-free withdrawals for some emergency expenses, let employers offer matching retirement contributions for a worker’s student loan payments and increase how much older workers may save in employer retirement plans.

    More support for the environment: The package would provide an additional $576 million for the Environmental Protection Agency, bringing its funding up to $10.1 billion. It would increase support for enforcement and compliance, as well as clean air, water and toxic chemical programs, after years of flat funding.

    It also would boost funding for the National Park Service by 6.4%, restoring 500 of the 3,000 staff positions lost over the past decade. This would be intended to help the agency handle substantial increases in visitation.

    Plus, the legislation would provide an additional 14% in funding for wildland firefighting.

    Additional funding for the US Capitol Police: The bill would provide an additional $132 million for the Capitol Police for a total of nearly $735 million. It would allow the department to hire up to 137 sworn officers and 123 support and civilian personnel, bringing the force to a projected level of 2,126 sworn officers and 567 civilians.

    It would also give $2 million to provide off-campus security for lawmakers in response to evolving and growing threats.

    Investments in homelessness prevention and affordable housing: The legislation would provide $3.6 billion for homeless assistance grants, a 13% increase. It would serve more than 1 million people experiencing homelessness.

    The package also would funnel nearly $6.4 billion to the Community Development Block Grant formula program and related local economic and community development projects that benefit low- and moderate income areas and people, an increase of almost $1.6 billion.

    Plus, it would provide $1.5 billion for the HOME Investment Partnerships Program, which would lead to the construction of nearly 10,000 new rental and homebuyer units and maintain the record investment from the last fiscal year.

    Increased health care funding: The package would provide more money for National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response. The funds are intended to speed the development of new therapies, diagnostics and preventive measures, beef up public health activities and strengthen the nation’s biosecurity by accelerating development of medical countermeasures for pandemic threats and fortifying stockpiles and supply chains for drugs, masks and other supplies.

    More resources for children’s mental health and for substance abuse: The bill would provide more funds to increase access to mental health services for children and schools. It also would invest more money to address the opioid epidemic and substance use disorder.

    Tiktok ban from federal devices: The legislation would ban TikTok, the Chinese-owned short-form video app, from federal government devices.

    Some lawmakers have raised bipartisan concerns that China’s national security laws could force TikTok – or its parent, ByteDance – to hand over the personal data of its US users. Recently, a wave of states led by Republican governors have introduced state-level restrictions on the use of TikTok on government-owned devices.

    Enhanced child tax credit: A coalition of Democratic lawmakers and consumer advocates pushed hard to extend at least one provision of the enhanced child tax credit, which was in effect last year thanks to the Democrats’ $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan. Their priority was to make the credit more refundable so more of the lowest-income families can qualify. Nearly 19 million kids won’t receive the full $2,000 benefit this year because their parents earn too little, according to a Tax Policy Center estimate.

    New cannabis banking rules: Lawmakers considered including a provision in the spending bill that would make it easier for licensed cannabis businesses to accept credit cards – but it was left out of the legislation. Known as the Safe Banking Act, which previously passed the House, the provision would prohibit federal regulators from taking punitive measures against banks for providing services to legitimate cannabis businesses.

    Even though 47 states have legalized some form of marijuana, cannabis remains illegal on the federal level. That means financial institutions providing banking services to cannabis businesses are subject to criminal prosecution – leaving many legal growers and sellers locked out of the banking system.

    FBI headquarters: There was also no final resolution on where the new FBI headquarters will be located, a major point of contention as lawmakers from Maryland – namely House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer – pushed to bring the law enforcement agency into their state. In a deal worked through by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, the General Services Administration would be required to conduct “separate and detailed consultations” with Maryland and Virginia representatives about potential sites in each of the states, according to a Senate Democratic aide.

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  • Taiwan’s military has a problem: As China fears grow, recruitment pool shrinks | CNN

    Taiwan’s military has a problem: As China fears grow, recruitment pool shrinks | CNN

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    Taipei, Taiwan
    CNN
     — 

    Taiwan has noticed a hole in its defense plans that is steadily getting bigger. And it’s not one easily plugged by boosting the budget or buying more weapons.

    The island democracy of 23.5 million is facing an increasing challenge in recruiting enough young men to meet its military targets and its Interior Ministry has suggested the problem is – at least in part – due to its stubbornly low birth rate.

    Taiwan’s population fell for the first time in 2020, according to the ministry, which warned earlier this year that the 2022 military intake would be the lowest in a decade and that a continued drop in the youth population would pose a “huge challenge” for the future.

    That’s bad news at a time when Taiwan is trying to bolster its forces to deter any potential invasion by China, whose ruling Communist Party has been making increasingly belligerent noises about its determination to “reunify” with the self-governed island – which it has never controlled – by force if necessary.

    And the outlook has darkened further with the release of a new report by Taiwan’s National Development Council projecting that by 2035 the island can expect roughly 20,000 fewer births per year than the 153,820 it recorded in 2021. By 2035, Taiwan will also overtake South Korea as the jurisdiction with the world’s lowest birth rate, the report added.

    Such projections are feeding into a debate over whether the government should increase the period of mandatory military service that eligible young men must serve. Currently, the island has a professional military force made up of 162,000 (as of June this year) – 7,000 fewer than the target, according to a report by the Legislative Yuan. In addition to that number, all eligible men must serve four months of training as reservists.

    Changing the mandatory service requirement would be a major U-turn for Taiwan, which had previously been trying to cut down on conscription and shortened the mandatory service from 12 months as recently as 2018. But on Wednesday, Taiwan’s Minister of National Defence Chiu Kuo-cheng said such plans would be made public before the end of the year.

    That news has met with opposition among some young students in Taiwan, who have voiced their frustrations on PTT, Taiwan’s version of Reddit, even if there is support for the move among the wider public.

    A poll by the Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation in March this year found that most Taiwanese agreed with a proposal to lengthen the service period. It found that 75.9% of respondents thought it reasonable to extend it to a year; only 17.8% were opposed.

    Many experts argue there is simply no other option.

    Su Tzu-yun, a director of Taiwan’s Institute for National Defense and Security Research, said that before 2016, the pool of men eligible to join the military – either as career soldiers or as reservists – was about 110,000. Since then, he said, the number had declined every year and the pool would likely be as low as 74,000 by 2025.

    And within the next decade, Su said, the number of young adults available for recruitment by the Taiwanese military could drop by as much as a third.

    “This is a national security issue for us,” he said. “The population pool is decreasing, so we are actively considering whether to resume conscription to meet our military needs.

    “We are now facing an increasing threat (from China), and we need to have more firepower and manpower.”

    Taiwan’s low birth rate – 0.98 – is far below the 2.1 needed to maintain a stable population, but it is no outlier in East Asia.

    In November, South Korea broke its own world record when its birth rate dropped to 0.79, while Japan’s fell to 1.3 and mainland China hit 1.15.

    Even so, experts say the trend poses a unique problem for Taiwan’s military, given the relative size of the island and the threats it faces.

    China has been making increasingly aggressive noises toward the island since August, when then-US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi controversially visited Taipei. Not long after she landed in Taiwan, Beijing also launched a series of unprecedented military exercises around the island.

    Since then, the temperature has remained high – particularly as Chinese leader Xi Jinping told a key Communist Party meeting in October that “reunification” was inevitable and that he reserves the option of taking “all measures necessary.”

    Chang Yan-ting, a former deputy commander of Taiwan’s air force, said that while low birth rates were common across East Asia, “the situation in Taiwan is very different” as the island was facing “more and more pressure (from China) and the situation will become more acute.”

    “The United States has military bases in Japan and South Korea, while Singapore does not face an acute military threat from its neighbors. Taiwan faces the greatest threat and declining birth rate will make the situation even more serious,” he added.

    Roy Lee, a deputy executive director at Taiwan’s Chung-hua Institution for Economic Research, agreed that the security threats facing Taiwan were greater than those in the rest of the region.

    “The situation is more challenging for Taiwan, because our population base is smaller than other countries facing similar problems,” he added.

    Taiwan’s population is 23.5 million, compared to South Korea’s 52 million, Japan’s 126 million and China’s 1.4 billion.

    Besides the shrinking recruitment pool, the decline in the youth population could also threaten the long-term performance of Taiwan’s economy – which is itself a pillar of the island’s defense.

    Taiwan is the world’s 21st largest economy, according to the London-based Centre for Economics and Business Research, and had a GDP of $668.51 billion last year.

    Much of its economic heft comes from its leading role in the supply of semiconductor chips, which play an indispensable role in everything from smartphones to computers.

    Taiwan’s homegrown semiconductor giant TSMC is perceived as being so valuable to the global economy – as well as to China – that it is sometimes referred to as forming part of a “silicon shield” against a potential military invasion by Beijing, as its presence would give a strong incentive to the West to intervene.

    Lee noted that population levels are closely intertwined with gross domestic product, a broad measure of economic activity. A population decline of 200,000 people could result in a 0.4% decline in GDP, all else being equal, he said.

    “It is very difficult to increase GDP by 0.4%, and would require a lot of effort. So the fact that a declining population can take away that much growth is big,” he said.

    Taiwan’s government has brought in a series of measures aimed at encouraging people to have babies, but with limited success.

    It pays parents a monthly stipend of 5,000 Taiwan dollars (US$161) for their first baby, and a higher amount for each additional one.

    Since last year, pregnant women have been eligible for seven days of leave for obstetrics checks prior to giving birth.

    Outside the military, in the wider economy, the island has been encouraging migrant workers to fill job vacancies.

    Statistics from the National Development Council showed that about 670,000 migrant workers were in Taiwan at the end of last year – comprising about 3% of the population.

    Most of the migrant workers are employed in the manufacturing sector, the council said, the vast majority of them from Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines.

    Lee said in the long term the Taiwanese government would likely have to reform its immigration policies to bring in more migrant workers.

    Still, there are those who say Taiwan’s low birth rate is no reason to panic, just yet.

    Alice Cheng, an associate professor in sociology at Taiwan’s Academia Sinica, cautioned against reading too much into population trends as they were affected by so many factors.

    She pointed out that just a few decades ago, many demographers were warning of food shortages caused by a population explosion.

    And even if the low birth rate endured, that might be no bad thing if it were a reflection of an improvement in women’s rights, she said.

    “The educational expansion that took place in the 70s and 80s in East Asia dramatically changed women’s status. It really pushed women out of their homes because they had knowledge, education and career prospects,” she said.

    “The next thing you see globally is that once women’s education level improved, fertility rates started declining.”

    “All these East Asian countries are really scratching their head and trying to think about policies and interventions to boost fertility rates,” she added.

    “But if that’s something that really, (women) don’t want, can you push them to do that?”

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  • ‘This is a war’: Californians seek affordable housing alternatives | CNN Business

    ‘This is a war’: Californians seek affordable housing alternatives | CNN Business

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    Los Angeles
    CNN
     — 

    At 26, Ixchel Hernandez has become the defender and protector of her family’s modest apartment. In the two decades they’ve lived in their Los Angeles home, the family of four has successfully fought against multiple attempts aimed at pricing and, ultimately, forcing them out.

    “We are human beings with the right to live in our home, and that’s just frankly what every person… in every home and [in] every building should know … they have the right to have their own space, to have their home,” Hernandez said.

    But, across the country, affordable housing is becoming increasingly rare to find. The lack of housing inventory coupled with inflation and zoning inequalities have priced out most families, especially those who start with little-to-no capital of their own.

    Ixchel’s parents moved to the United States from Mexico in hopes of giving her and her brother opportunities and a safe environment. Her father, Jose Hernandez, never wanted to give the family’s various landlords a reason to evict them over the years, and he dreamed of owning his own home one day.

    “Thank God we never failed to pay our rent,” he said. But in order to keep up with rising rents, both parents worked and even opened up their home to another family for a brief time. Ixchel remembers six people crammed into their one-bedroom apartment.

    “It shouldn’t have to be that way where you’re kind of fighting for space or you’re going to have to move so far out of LA to be able to have a home,” she said.

    To purchase a house in more than 75% of the nation’s most populous cities, an average family needs to spend at least 30% of their annual income on housing. In cities like Miami, New York and Los Angeles, that number surges to more than 80% of an average family’s annual income.

    Home ownership for the Hernandez family, and so many others, has felt like a fading American dream. That is until they discovered a Civil Rights era approach that helps promote home ownership, particularly among minority groups, who are disproportionately impacted by the affordable housing crisis. It’s called a Community Land Trust, or CLT.

    The Hernandez family at their home.

    “We’re operated by residents who actually live in our building… [as well as] folks from the communities that we’re serving,” said Kasey Ventura of the Beverly-Vermont Community Land Trust. “My interest in this work, outside of just preserving housing and affordable housing, is preserving culture in a community.”

    A CLT is essentially a nonprofit organization that buys the land on which a building sits, thereby allowing a community’s residents to collectively manage it. Some residents eventually choose to form a co-op with their neighbors and take ownership of their buildings, renting the land.

    The Hernandez family and their neighbors embraced the concept. This year they joined the Beverly-Vermont CLT, one of at least five in Los Angeles and more than 200 nationwide. The process requires neighbors to meet regularly over several months before ultimately unanimously agreeing on various terms so as to finalize the trust. Ixchel now sits on the board of her building’s management; it’s in the final stages of ownership transfer to the co-op.

    “What’s important is that we’re now owners!” said Ixchel’s mother, Guadalupe Santiago. “But it’s also important to remember it was not easy,” her father cautioned.

    “It may not seem like a lot to a lot of folks that have money or come from money,” Ixchel said. “[But] we are just as much trying to build that generational wealth.”

    According to 2019 figures, the United States was roughly 3.8 million homes short of what was needed to house families. That is more than double the number from a decade earlier. California has the largest housing deficit of any other state, requiring an estimated million more homes to meet housing demands.

    “We don’t necessarily view housing as a need that everybody should have. And that’s key… in this work,” said Kasey Ventura, who helps run the Beverly-Vermont Community Land Trust in Los Angeles.

    While CLTs are a solution, Ventura admits there are — and should be — other affordable housing options to adequately address the crisis.

    In Southern California, there is growing demand for construction and rental of ADUs, or Accessory Dwelling Units. Also called “carriage homes,” the converted garages or newly built smaller structures sit adjacent to existing homes and are on the same property. The mostly studio or one-bedroom apartments provide a more affordable option to many who prefer to live or work in areas that might otherwise be too expensive.

    Others have advocated for utilizing unoccupied homes. There are dozens of vacant houses, in some cases, sitting just a few blocks from several homeless encampments lining many Los Angeles sidewalks. However, efforts to transform them into affordable housing in some neighborhoods have proven controversial among existing homeowners.

    Another route undertaken by some companies is Employer-Assisted Housing. Although they have only finished a portion of what they initially pledged, in recent years corporations like Google, Meta and Apple have promised to spend billions of dollars on some 40,000 new homes in California. The initiative began in order to combat soaring home prices in the Bay Area, while also recruiting and retaining talent who needed more affordable housing options, along with a shorter commute to the office.

    “Just to be able to be like, ‘Okay, I’m gonna wake up, take a walk down the street and come to work.’ I mean that’s awesome!” said Matthew Johnson, an employee of Factory_OS in Vallejo, California, which already plans to provide workforce housing options to its workers in the coming years. However, unlike other companies, Factory_OS employees will build their own homes.

    In a space once used to build US Navy submarines during World War II, Larry Pace now operates Factory_OS outside San Francisco. He co-founded the company with Rick Holliday to address the worsening housing shortage.

    Matthew Johnson working at Factory_OS.

    “That we’ve repurposed a building that was once for instruments of war, [so as] to [now] create affordable and supportive housing…. I don’t know how much cooler that can be,” said Pace.

    Factory_OS puts homebuilding onto an assembly line and produces fully finished modular units within two weeks. From insulation and drywall to flooring, fixtures and paint, all of it is prefabricated within the confines of the factory before it’s trucked to a site for assembly.

    “We’ve created an IKEA for the manufacturing of homes,” said Pace. “Then we put the pieces together.”

    When hoisted by a crane and stacked like sophisticated Legos, the modular units combine to make entire apartment buildings. Pace maintains there are massive cost-savings and huge efficiencies in moving homebuilding into a factory setting compared with on-site construction.

    “We’re building houses for the people who need them, for the people who have been struggling to be able to support their families or pay rent or pay bills,” said Johnson, as he placed support beams for a roof of one of the units.

    The 38-year-old Factory_OS employee and father of five was once homeless, and he said he often thinks about the families who will one day live under the roof he’s assembling. w

    “Every morning I wake up, I’m grateful… that I come home from work and there are my kids waiting for me,” said Johnson.

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  • This former tech worker is helping change laws for people who get laid off | CNN Business

    This former tech worker is helping change laws for people who get laid off | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Ifeoma Ozoma’s path as an advocate for tech workers started with a series of tweets one morning in June 2020.

    It was a few months after she was pushed out from her job at Pinterest, the image-sharing and social media platform. Across the United States, protests and outrage filled the streets after a White police officer in Minneapolis knelt on the neck of George Floyd for more than nine minutes, ultimately killing him.

    As companies scrambled to express their solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement, her former employer released a statement.

    “We heard directly from our Black employees about the pain and fear they feel every day living in America,” Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann said in the statement. “This is not just a moment in time. With everything we do, we will make it clear that our Black employees matter, Black [Pinterest users] and creators matter, and Black Lives Matter.”

    Ozoma, the daughter of Nigerian immigrants, said she wasn’t having it. She fired back with a series of tweets accusing the lifestyle company of racism, pay inequity and retaliation.

    “I shouldn’t have to share this story in the year of our Lord, 2020 — but here we are,” she tweeted. “I’m an alum of Yale, Google, FB, … etc and recently decided to leave Pinterest, which just declared ‘solidarity with BLM.’ What a joke.”

    Ozoma said her tweets broke a nondisclosure agreement she’d signed when she left the company, thrusting her into the spotlight as the latest person to speak up about alleged mistreatment within the male-dominated tech field. While she’d already left her job by then, she risked the reputation she’d built from years of work within the industry, she said.

    But instead of shrinking from the challenge, she leaned into it.

    “My entire career has been in tech and so I was very aware of the costs of speaking up, but I wasn’t afraid of it. I knew that it was what I had to do,” she said. “Fear is something I haven’t really felt since my mom died from a rare cancer when I was in college. The worst thing that could have happened already did … Pinterest could bankrupt me and make it impossible for me to be hired by any other tech companies, but they couldn’t break me. “

    Ozoma told CNN her conflict with Pinterest started after she realized she was getting paid less than half what a White male colleague earned for doing the exact same work.

    She said she raised her concerns with her employer and gave the company time to address the issues. But in March 2020, she was let go from her job at Pinterest.

    “The purpose wasn’t just, ‘let me vent,’” she said of her flurry of tweets in June 2020. “The purpose was, people need to understand that this is what’s happening. And if it happened to me with the public profile that I had within the company and outside of the company, then it can happen to anyone else.”

    Two months after Ozoma and another woman of color, Aerica Shimizu Banks, publicly accused Pinterest of racial discrimination, former chief operating officer Francoise Brougher sued the company over gender discrimination and retaliation. Pinterest later agreed to settle the lawsuit for $22.5 million, but did not admit to liability as part of the settlement.

    It later said it conducted a thorough investigation on the issues raised and concluded Ozoma and Banks were “treated fairly.”

    “We want each and every one of our employees at Pinterest to feel welcomed, valued, and respected,” a Pinterest spokesperson said in June. “We’re committed to advancing our work in inclusion and diversity by taking action at our company and on our platform. In areas where we, as a company, fall short, we must and will do better.”

    Pinterest says it has taken steps to monitor employee salaries to ensure equal pay for comparable work.

    In a separate statement to CNN late last month, Pinterest said it’s launched various diversity and inclusion measures, including pay transparency tools for employees. The company said it’s also taken steps to monitor employee salaries to ensure equal pay for comparable work.

    “We have increased the percentage of women in leadership, added board members who are committed to diversity, and we continue to set goals for increasing diversity at the company,” a Pinterest spokesperson told CNN in an email. “We … are committed to ensuring that every employee feels safe, championed, and empowered to raise any concerns about their work experience.”

    After Ozoma began tweeting about her experience at Pinterest, direct messages poured in from people facing similar frustrations at other companies, she said. She knew she had to do something about it.

    She emerged as a passionate advocate for tech workers by seeking legal protections for whistleblowers.

    Pinterest is based in San Francisco. At the time, California’s law offered some protection to employees who broke non-disclosure agreements to speak out about workplace harassment or discrimination based on sex — but not about racial discrimination, Ozoma said.

    Ozoma got busy. She began educating whistleblowers on their options, urged tech companies to rethink their policies on nondisclosure agreements and reached out to lawmakers to seek new legislation that would protect employees speaking out on all forms of discrimination.

    Ozoma worked with California state senator Connie Leyva, right, on a bill that prevents nondisclosure agreements from being used against people speaking out about workplace discrimination. California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed it into law last October.

    In California, she worked with state senator Connie Leyva on a law that prevents nondisclosure agreements from being implemented against people speaking out on any workplace discrimination, including race.

    In October last year, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed the bill — known as the Silenced No More Act — into law.

    “California workers should absolutely be able to speak out — if they so wish — when they are a victim of any type of harassment or discrimination in the workplace,” Senator Leyva said at the time. “It is unconscionable that an employer would ever want or seek to silence the voices of survivors that have been subjected to racist, sexist, homophobic or other attacks at work.”

    Ozoma’s advocacy work has given whistleblowers a safe space to go for information.

    Around the same time Newson signed the measure into law, she launched a Tech Worker Handbook online to provide free resources for employees seeking information on how to speak out on workplace discrimination and harassment.

    “So many people reached out when I told my story, and most of them were tech workers or workers within the tech industry,” she said.

    She said she’s recruited dozens of experts and tech industry professionals to contribute to the site, saying the goal is not to encourage employees to be whistleblowers, but to provide them with information about options if they choose that path.

    After leaving Pinterest, Ozoma moved to a farm near Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she runs a tech policy consulting company and raises a flock of chickens.

    “I cannot tell someone who is supporting their kids and their partner on their health insurance … go leave your job so that your kids don’t have health insurance, so that you can feel good about speaking up,” she said.

    “It’s such an individual decision. If I had kids at the time who are on my health insurance, I probably wouldn’t have said anything.”

    Since the site launched, Ozoma said she has received hundreds of inquiries from employees seeking more details on how to disclose and fight discrimination at work. The 30-year-old mentors activists and other people fighting all over the world against workplace discrimination.

    Ozoma now runs a tech policy consulting company, Earthseed, and is the director of tech accountability at the new Center on Race and Digital Justice at the University of California, Los Angeles. This year, Time Magazine named her one of its TIME100 Next, a group of emerging leaders who are shaping the future.

    Her new role as an advocate is happening hundreds of miles away from the tech world she left behind.

    After leaving Pinterest, Ozoma moved to a farm near Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she grows her own vegetables and raises a flock of chickens nicknamed the Golden Girls.

    She said she has no plans to go back to Silicon Valley, but will keep fighting for employee rights.

    “I’m just working now from a different position on issues that really impact the industry in a way that I feel is additive,” she said.

    “I don’t think that there’s anything more fulfilling than being part of the circle of life,” she said, using a metaphor that mirrors her current life on a farm, “whether that’s watching a seed or planting a seed in the ground and watching it grow and create more seeds.”

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  • Amazon CEO explains thinking behind layoffs as unionized warehouse workers protest outside | CNN Business

    Amazon CEO explains thinking behind layoffs as unionized warehouse workers protest outside | CNN Business

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    CNN Business
     — 

    Amazon CEO Andy Jassy on Wednesday said an “uncertain” economy pushed the e-commerce giant to move forward with rare and wide-ranging layoffs after having gone on a significant hiring spree for much of the pandemic.

    “We had the lens of a very uncertain economic environment, as well as our having hired very aggressively over the last several years,” Jassy said in an interview at the New York Times DealBook summit on Wednesday. “We just felt like we needed to streamline our costs.”

    The remarks came as part of Jassy’s first interview since Amazon

    (AMZN)     confirmed earlier this month it had begun laying off corporate workers, with plans for layoffs to continue into early next year. The company is reportedly planning to cut up to 10,000 employees, though it has not confirmed a figure.

    Amazon, more than most tech companies, experienced a staggering pandemic boom as more customers shifted their spending online during the health crisis. Like other tech companies, it has since changed course and begun cutting employees as it confronts a shift in demand as well as rising inflation and recession fears.

    “A lot has happened in the last few years that I’m not sure people anticipated,” Jassy said. “You just look in 2020, our retail business grew 39% year-over-year, at a $245 billion annual run rate, which is unprecedented, and it forced us to make decisions in that time to spend a lot more money and to go much faster in building infrastructure than we ever imagined we would.”

    “We built a physical fulfillment center footprint over 25 years that we doubled in 24 months,” Jassy said.

    Even so, Jassy said he thinks the team “made the right decision” regarding its infrastructure build out. Regarding the hiring spree, Jassy said he now looks at is as a “lesson for everyone.”

    “I don’t necessarily think it was the wrong thing to have been doubling down, because we were growing so well and we had so many ideas that we thought were good for customers and good for the business, but I think it’s a good lesson, I think, for everybody,” Jassy said. “When you’re hiring, even when things are going really well, that it’s good to think about if there’s some kind of sudden change, even one that you just have a little bit of a hard time imagining. Would you like the incremental headcount that you’re adding at that time, or do you want to be a little bit more conservative?”

    As Jassy spoke, Amazon warehouse workers who helped organize the company’s first-ever US labor union at a Staten Island facility gathered in the rain outside of the venue to protest their chief executive’s appearance in New York.

    Despite the landmark union victory in April, Amazon has so far refused to formally recognize the grassroots worker group known as the Amazon Labor Union, or come to the bargaining table. The company has aggressively pushed back against the workers’ victory through the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).

    While the NLRB battle indicates the labor union is on the cusp of being certified, Jassy suggested Amazon’s legal battle with the worker group isn’t done yet. He said there “were a lot of irregularities in that vote,” which is why the company filed objections with the NLRB. (Amazon’s objections were previously rejected by an NLRB hearing officer.)

    Jassy also emphasized that the last two Amazon union elections held resulted in workers voting not to unionize, and that Amazon prefers to have a direct relationship with fulfillment center workers rather than going through unions.

    Labor activist Chris Smalls joins members of the Amazon labor union and others for a protest outside of the New York Times DealBook Summit as Amazon's CEO, Andy Jassy, will be appearing on November 30, 2022 in New York City.

    “In my own opinion on where we are with that legal process is that we’re far from over with it,” Jassy said. “I think that it’s going to work its way through the NLRB, it’s probably unlikely the NLRB is going to rule against itself, and that has a real chance to end up in federal courts.”

    In an interview with CNN Business ahead of Jassy’s remarks, Amazon Labor Union President Chris Smalls slammed that Jassy “even had the audacity to feel comfortable to come to New York City knowing that we haven’t negotiated anything yet.”

    “We definitely want to take this opportunity to let him know that the workers are waiting and we are ready to negotiate our first contract,” he added of the demonstration, which he called a “welcoming party” for Jassy.

    Smalls said he’s been contacted by a few laid-off Amazon employees in corporate roles, who have since grown interested in the protections of unions. “I tell them — you may have good salary, you may have good perks, you may got good stocks and benefits, obviously better than warehouse workers, but at the end of the day, you’re still an at-will employee,” Smalls said.

    “I explained to them, the one building that can’t be touched right now by mass layoffs is JFK8 Staten Island,” he said. “I encourage them to do what they have to do, if that means form a union, so be it, we support it.”

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  • A hard look at New York’s controversial new approach to the homeless | CNN Politics

    A hard look at New York’s controversial new approach to the homeless | CNN Politics

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    A version of this story appeared in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.



    CNN
     — 

    New York City Mayor Eric Adams gave the city’s first responders, including its police force, a controversial new task this week – to enforce a state law that allows them to involuntarily commit people experiencing a mental health crisis.

    From CNN’s report by Mark Morales:

    Adams said it was a myth that first responders can only involuntarily commit those who displayed an “overt act” that they may be suicidal, violent or a danger to others. Instead, he said the law allowed first responders to involuntarily commit those who cannot meet their own “basic human needs” – a lower bar.

    The police department is still formulating a plan and Adams, a former cop, said officers will get additional training and real-time support from mental health professionals.

    The move follows a raft of violence in New York City and also increasingly visible homeless encampments in New York and cities around the country.

    Adams framed the policy as a way to help people who need it.

    “It is not acceptable for us to see someone who clearly needs help and walk past,” he said.

    Advocates for the homeless oppose this. “The city really needs to approach this more from a health and housing lens, rather than focusing on involuntary removals and policing,” Jacquelyn Simone from the Coalition for the Homeless told CNN’s Brynn Gingras for her report that aired this week on “AC360°.”

    Mental health professionals are questioning it. “We are defaulting to an extreme that takes away basic human rights,” Matt Kudish, CEO of the New York chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, said in a statement after Adams’ announcement.

    Kudish said New York should do more to help people before they need intervention: “The City has the power to provide onsite treatment, as well as treatment in homeless shelters or supported housing, but has chosen not to.”

    Police are worried it puts them in a precarious position. “As soon as they want to resist, now where does the liability form – on the uniformed officer,” retired NYPD detective Andrew Bershad told Gingras.

    I talked to Ryan McBain, a policy researcher at the RAND Corporation who studies how government policies can reach vulnerable populations, including those experiencing both mental illness and housing insecurity.

    McBain argued Adams’ move is “well-intentioned but misguided,” first of all because police interactions with people experiencing serious mental health issues is “fuel for escalation.”

    “It’s something like 1 in 4 people who are shot by a police officer are people with significant mental health issues,” McBain said. When I looked to confirm that 25% figure, I found this in a 2015 Washington Post investigation.

    “If you stop and think about it, it makes sense, right? People who are disoriented or having atypical thoughts, they’re not in a position oftentimes to comply collaboratively with a police officer,” he said. “And given the fact that police officers are carrying weapons, you have sort of a recipe for bad outcomes.”

    There’s evidence, he said, that actually deploying trained mental health professionals alongside police officers would be more effective. In New York, first responders will get additional training and have access to a hotline with mental health professionals.

    Another issue is more systemic and has to do with how the US deals with chronic and serious mental illness, from a system of large institutional asylums that were shuttered in the ’60s and ‘70s to a flawed system focused on private insurance and community-based mental health centers.

    Currently, there aren’t enough beds for psychiatric patients.

    “We don’t need giant asylums where the conditions are inappropriate, but we do need larger facilities with more beds that can provide the type of care that the patients really need when they have more serious mental health issues,” McBain said.

    More permanent supportive housing is required for people who experience both mental health issues and homelessness. But that kind of solution – the public providing housing alternatives for people who cannot provide for themselves – can be expensive and politically difficult.

    RELATED: How one Minnesota county has been rapidly housing the homeless since the pandemic

    It’s a sentiment echoed by Dennis Culhane, a professor of social policy at the University of Pennsylvania, who appeared on “AC360°” on Thursday. “That is the fundamental problem here,” Culhane said. “You cannot actively and effectively treat people without having them in a place where they can take care of themselves.”

    McBain said that in the US health system, which is geared around insurance paying for services, mental health is not treated on par with physical health.

    “In the best of all possible worlds, you’d have a continuum of care for addressing people’s mental health needs,” he said.

    “And that continuum would begin with high-quality outpatient services that private insurers pay for at parity with physical health conditions. … I think until you see the system try to address these issues in a holistic way, these issues are going to continue to persist,” he said, arguing, “Mayor Adams is proposing putting a Band-Aid on something for which you really need sutures.”

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  • India on track for record $100 billion in remittances, says World Bank | CNN Business

    India on track for record $100 billion in remittances, says World Bank | CNN Business

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    New Delhi
    CNN Business
     — 

    The extensive Indian diaspora will help the South Asian country reach a special milestone this year.

    Asia’s third largest economy is on track to receive more than $100 billion in yearly remittances in 2022, according to a World Bank report published Wednesday. This will be the first time a country will reach that milestone figure, it said.

    Remittances, or money transfers from migrant workers to families back home, are an important source of income for households in poorer countries. They not only reduce poverty in developing nations but have also been associated with higher school enrollment rates for children in disadvantaged households.

    Over the last few years, the World Bank report said, Indians have moved to high-skilled jobs in high-income countries such as the United States, United Kingdom, and Singapore — from low-skilled employment in Gulf countries such as Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar — and sending more money back home as a result.

    India had received $89.4 billion in remittances in 2021, according to the World Bank, making it the top recipient globally last year.

    “Remittance flows to India were enhanced by the wage hikes and a strong labor market in the United States,” and other rich countries, the bank said.

    Despite being poised to reach the record figure, India’s remittance flows are expected to account for only 3% of its GDP in 2022, it said.

    Apart from India, the other top recipient countries for remittances in 2022 are expected to be Mexico, China, and the Philippines. The next year may be more challenging for Indian diaspora, however.

    2023 will “stand as a test for the resilience of remittances from white-collar South Asian migrants in high-income countries,” because of rising inflation in the United States and slowing global growth, according to the report.

    Globally, remittances to low and middle income nations are expected to grow an estimated 5% to $626 billion this year, it added.

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  • HP says it will lay off up to 6,000 workers over the next couple years | CNN Business

    HP says it will lay off up to 6,000 workers over the next couple years | CNN Business

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    CNN Business
     — 

    HP Inc. announced on Tuesday that it will lay off thousands of workers over the next three years, becoming the latest tech company to significantly downsize staffing amid a souring economic climate.

    The computer maker disclosed the major job cuts in a statement accompanying its lackluster quarterly earnings report on Tuesday afternoon, where it also said sales dropped more than 11% compared to the same period last year.

    “The company expects to reduce gross global headcount by approximately 4,000-6,000 employees,” HP said. “These actions are expected to be completed by the end of fiscal 2025.”

    HP had previously reported having a global headcount of

    some 51,000 employees.

    HP President and CEO Enrique Lores added in a statement that the company’s so-called “Future Ready strategy” will “enable us to better serve our customers and drive long-term value creation by reducing our costs and reinvesting in key growth initiatives to position our business for the future.”

    The news makes HP the latest in a growing list of once-high-flying tech companies that are now announcing significant job cuts. Facebook-parent Meta recently said it was cutting 11,000 jobs across the company, and Amazon

    (AMZN)     confirmed last week that wide-ranging layoffs had begun at the e-commerce giant that would continue into next year.

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  • Twitter Africa employees accuse Elon Musk of discrimination over severance terms | CNN Business

    Twitter Africa employees accuse Elon Musk of discrimination over severance terms | CNN Business

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    CNN Business
     — 

    Laid-off employees at Twitter’s Africa headquarters are accusing Twitter of “deliberately and recklessly flouting the laws of Ghana” and trying to “silence and intimidate” them after they were fired.

    The team has hired a lawyer and sent a letter to the company demanding it comply with the West African nation’s labor laws, provide them with additional severance pay and other relevant benefits, in line with what other Twitter employees will receive.

    They have also petitioned the Ghanaian government to compel Twitter to “adhere to the laws of Ghana on redundancy and offer the employees a fair and just negotiation and redundancy pay,” according to a letter to the country’s Chief Labour Officer obtained by CNN.

    “It is clear that Twitter, Inc. under Mr Elon Musk is either deliberately or recklessly flouting the laws of Ghana, is operating in bad faith and in a manner that seeks to silence and intimidate former employees into accepting any terms unilaterally thrown at them,” the letter states.

    Twitter laid off all but one of the African employees just four days after the company opened a physical office in the capital Accra following Musk’s takeover. But the staff of about a dozen were not offered severance pay, which they say is required by Ghana’s labor laws, based on their employment contracts. They also claim they were not informed about the next steps — unlike employees in the United States and Europe — until a day after CNN reported on their situation.

    CNN contacted Twitter for comment but received no response.

    In the letter to Twitter Ghana Ltd, obtained by CNN, the African employees rejected a “Ghana Mutual Separation Agreement” from Twitter, which they say was sent to their personal emails offering final pay that the company claims to have been arrived at after a negotiation.

    Several members of the team and their lawyer told CNN that there was no such negotiation on severance pay. They claim it was below what is required by law and contradicts what Musk tweeted that departing employees would receive.

    “Everyone exited was offered 3 months of severance, which is 50% more than legally required,” Musk tweeted. Twitter informed the Ghana-based employees in early November that they would be paid until their last day of employment — December 4. And they will continue to receive full pay and benefits during the 30-day notice period.

    “It was very vague, did not talk about outstanding leave or paid time off, and just asked us to sign if we agree. I never bothered to go back to the document because it is rubbish and is still in violation of labor laws here,” one former employee told CNN on condition of anonymity.

    The Accra-based team accuses Twitter of dealing with them in bad faith, not being transparent, and discriminating against them compared to laid-off employees in other jurisdictions.

    “The employees are distressed, humiliated, and intimidated by this turn of events. There are non-Ghanaian employees, some with young families, who moved here to take up jobs and have now been left unceremoniously in the lurch, with no provision for repatriation expenses and no way to communicate with Twitter, Inc. and discuss or plead their case,” the notice to Ghana’s Chief Labour Officer says.

    Their attorney, Carla Olympio, says the sudden termination of almost the whole team violated Ghanaian employment law because it is considered a “redundancy” which requires three-month notice to authorities and a negotiation on redundancy pay.

    “In stark contrast to internal company assurances given to Twitter employees worldwide prior to the takeover, it seems that little attempt was made to comply with Ghana’s labor laws, and the protections enshrined therein for workers in circumstances where companies are undertaking mass layoffs due to a restructuring or reorganization,” she wrote in a statement to CNN.

    The employees said in their appeal to Ghana’s Chief Labour Officer that Twitter’s formal entry into the continent started with “great fanfare and with the support of the government,” and they expect similar attention to their plight now.

    They are demanding 3 months’ gross salary as severance pay, repatriation expenses for non-Ghanaian staff, vesting of stock options provided in their contracts, and other benefits such as healthcare continuation that were offered to staff worldwide.

    CNN has reached out to Ghana’s Employment and Labor Relations ministry for comment.

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  • Airbnb CEO on the tech downturn: ‘It’s like we’re all in a nightclub and the lights just came on’ | CNN Business

    Airbnb CEO on the tech downturn: ‘It’s like we’re all in a nightclub and the lights just came on’ | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    After years of seemingly unstoppable growth, the tech industry is now facing the “ultimate reality check” as it confronts broader economic uncertainty and waves of layoffs, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky told CNN on Thursday.

    “It’s like we’re all in a nightclub and the lights just came on,” Chesky said in an interview on “CNN This Morning.” After a period of “exuberance and euphoria,” he added, “now we all have to, like, take a hard look at things.”

    His remarks come at a difficult moment for the tech industry. Facebook-parent Meta said last week it was cutting 11,000 jobs after nearly doubling its staff during the pandemic. Amazon confirmed this week that lay offs had begun in its corporate workforce, with reports saying it plans to cut 10,000 positions. And Twitter recently cut approximately 50% of its staff as new owner Elon Musk races to bolster its bottom line.

    Airbnb may be an exception. Chesky said the company is not undergoing layoffs at this time, and in fact is hiring. But that is due in large part to the company cutting 25% of its staff at the start of the pandemic as the travel industry was clobbered, and losing more employees by attrition after.

    “Two-and-a-half years ago, we lost 80% of our business in eight weeks,” Chesky said. “People were predicting we were going to go out of business.”

    “We just hunkered down,” he added. “We rebuilt the company from the ground up, and we stayed really lean.” Now, Chesky said, “we’re stepping on the gas, we’re not putting on the brakes.”

    While the reckoning hitting much of Silicon Valley is painful, Chesky appeared to suggest that a more sober reassessment of the industry could also provide an opportunity for the tech sector to rethink its place in society, after years of criticism for the impact its products can have on people.

    “I think Silicon Valley has done so many amazing things for the world, but we have to be careful having a fetishization of new technology, as if the new technology is going to solve all the problems that the last technology created,” Chesky said. “We need more diversity in Silicon Valley, but that diversity should not just be demographic diversity. We need artists, humanists in this industry.”

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  • Why foreign workers in the US are especially vulnerable to the Twitter turmoil | CNN Politics

    Why foreign workers in the US are especially vulnerable to the Twitter turmoil | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Twitter employees who are relying on the company for work visas have been left in limbo, finding themselves at the whims of its new billionaire owner, knowing if they quit, they may have to leave the United States.

    Earlier this week, Elon Musk gave remaining staff an ultimatum to commit to working “hardcore” or to leave. But some staff who would like to leave the company feel like they can’t because doing so, may leave them no choice but to depart the US, multiple former Twitter employees told CNN.

    Tech companies in the US, including Twitter, have leaned on an employment-based visa, known as H-1B, to bring skilled foreign workers into the country. The program allows companies in the US to employ foreign workers in high-skilled occupations like architecture, engineering, mathematics, among other fields.

    In fiscal year 2022, Twitter had nearly 300 people approved to work on H-1B visas, according to US Citizenship and Immigration Services data. It’s unclear how many have chosen to stay.

    Facebook – another company that’s undergoing mass layoffs – had more than 1,300 people approved to work on H-1B visas, the data shows.

    Employees on temporary visas, like H-1B or other work visas, are especially vulnerable to the layoffs happening at Twitter and across the tech industry. Some staff who were on employment-based visas and have already been laid off by Musk have found themselves scrambling.

    “Firing folks who are on a H-1B in a major economic downturn is not just putting them out of the job, it’s tantamount to ruining their lives,” one former employee told CNN, adding that some people who had accepted Musk’s ultimatum had accepted it “out of self-preservation.”

    Twitter users are flocking to Mastodon. What is it?

    Fiona McEntee, an immigration lawyer based in Chicago, represents immigrants who are on H-1B visas and are part of the recent tech layoffs.

    While McEntee stressed everyone’s situation is unique, one of the primary challenges employees on H-1B visas face is that they have a limited window of time to find a new employer, adjust to another visa, or leave the United States. The 60-day grace period usually starts from the last day of employment.

    “It’s a short time period to line these things up.” McEntee said, noting that filing a visa transfer, for example, can take time. McEntee’s firm has been receiving multiple calls from people affected by the layoffs who are concerned about next steps.

    “A layoff is hard enough on people to begin with but when you’re faced with having to leave what’s been your home for a significant time, it adds a whole layer of trauma to this,” she told CNN.

    One former Twitter employee described the challenges facing a former colleague who is in the US with his family on an employment-based visa and now faces the prospect of having to leave.

    For that reason, some staff at Twitter who are on H-1B visas are staying on despite wanting to leave the company, a former employee told CNN, adding that they’re “concerned with being forced into a flooded job market where they may be unable to find a job and before being forced out of the country.”

    The US Department of Homeland Security issues 65,000 H-1B visas annually as mandated by Congress, in addition to another 20,000 for those who have a masters’ degree or doctorate from a US university. The visa can be granted for up to six years.

    “These are people who didn’t just necessarily arrive last year or the year before, or even when they were approved,” said David Bier, associate director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute. Bier noted that some people may have been working for Twitter under a different visa before being hired on an H-1B.

    “Many of these people will have been in this country for over a decade,” Bier said.

    One former Twitter employee stressed the importance of visa holders and their contribution to US innovation and technological leadership.

    “For companies to turn their backs on them now is particularly callous and destructive and undermines the trust talented people have around in the world in the hope of America and its opportunities,” they added.

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  • Fed officials crushed investors’ hopes this week | CNN Business

    Fed officials crushed investors’ hopes this week | CNN Business

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    New York
    CNN Business
     — 

    Investors sleuthing for clues about what the Federal Reserve will decide during its December policy meeting got quite a few this week. But those hints about the future of monetary policy point to an outcome they won’t be very happy about.

    What’s happening: Federal Reserve officials made a series of speeches this week indicating that aggressive interest rate hikes to fight inflation would continue, souring investors’ hopes for a forthcoming central bank policy shift. On Thursday, St. Louis Federal Reserve President James Bullard said the central bank still has a lot of work to do before it brings inflation under control, sending the S&P 500 down more than 1% in early trading. It later pared losses.

    Bullard, a voting member on the rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), said that the moves the Fed has made so far to fight inflation haven’t been sufficient. “To attain a sufficiently restrictive level, the policy rate will need to be increased further,” he said.

    Those comments come a day after Kansas City Fed President Esther George, a voting member of the FOMC, said to The Wall Street Journal that she’s “looking at a labor market that is so tight, I don’t know how you continue to bring this level of inflation down without having some real slowing, and maybe we even have contraction in the economy to get there.”

    San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly added on Wednesday that a pause in rate hikes was “off the table.”

    A numbers game: Fed officials should increase interest rates to somewhere between 5% and 7% to tamp inflation, Bullard said Thursday. Those numbers shocked investors, as they would require a series of significant and economically painful hikes which increase the chance of a hard landing.

    The current interest rate sits between 3.75% and 4% and the median FOMC participant projected a peak funds rate of 4.5-4.75% in September. If those numbers hold steady, Fed members would only raise rates by another three-quarters of a percentage point.

    But Fed Chair Powell said at the November meeting that the projections are likely to rise in December and if Bullard is correct, that means investors can expect another one to three percentage points in rate hikes.

    Dreams of a pivot: October’s softer-than-expected CPI and producer price reading bolstered investors’ hopes that the Fed might ease its aggressive rate hikes and sent markets soaring to their best day since 2020 last week.

    But messaging from Fed officials this week has brought Wall Street back down to earth.

    That’s because market rallies help to expand the economy, said Liz Ann Sonders, Managing Director and Chief Investment Strategist at Charles Schwab, which is the opposite of what the Fed is trying to do with its tightening policy. Fed officials could be attempting to do some “jawboning” via excessively hawkish speeches in order to bring markets down, she said.

    The bottom line: Investors listen closely to Bullard’s comments because he’s known for having looser lips than other Fed officials, Peter Boockvar, chief investment officer of Bleakley Financial Group, wrote in a note Thursday. But his hawkish predictions may have been “overboard,” especially since he won’t be a voting member of the FOMC next year.

    Still, Wall Street analysts are listening. Goldman Sachs raised its peak fed funds rate forecast on Thursday to 5-5.25%, up from 4.75-5%.

    A series of high-profile layoffs have rattled Big Tech this month.

    Amazon confirmed that layoffs had begun at the company and would continue into next year, just days after multiple outlets reported the e-commerce giant planned to cut around 10,000 employees. Facebook-parent Meta recently announced 11,000 job cuts, the largest in the company’s history. Twitter also announced widespread job cuts after Elon Musk bought the company for $44 billion.

    The series of high-profile layoff announcements prompted fears that the labor market was weakening and that a recession could be around the corner.

    Those fears aren’t unwarranted: The Federal Reserve is actively working to slow economic growth and tighten financial conditions to rebalance the white-hot labor market. Further layoffs in both tech and other industries are likely inevitable as the Fed continues to raise interest rates.

    But this wave of layoffs isn’t as significant as headlines might lead Americans to believe. Thursday’s weekly jobless claims actually fell by 4,000 to 222,000 in spite of the surge in tech job cuts.

    In a note on Thursday Goldman Sachs analysts outlined three reasons why the layoffs may not point to a looming recession in the US.

    First off, the tech industry accounts for a small share of aggregate employment in the US. While information technology companies account for 26% of the S&P 500 market cap, it accounts for less than 0.3% of total employment.

    Second, tech job openings remain well above their pre-pandemic level, so laid-off tech workers should have good chances of finding new jobs.

    Finally, tech worker layoffs have frequently spiked in the past without a corresponding increase in total layoffs and have not historically been a leading indicator of broader labor market deterioration, Goldman analysts found.

    “The main problem in the labor market is still that labor demand is too strong, not too weak,” they concluded.

    Mortgage rates dropped sharply last week following a series of economic reports that indicated inflation may finally be easing, reports my colleague Anna Bahney

    The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 6.61% in the week ending November 17, down from 7.08% the week before, according to Freddie Mac, the largest weekly drop since 1981.

    But that’s still significantly higher than a year ago when the 30-year fixed rate stood at 3.10%.

    “While the decline in mortgage rates is welcome news, there is still a long road ahead for the housing market,” said Sam Khater, Freddie Mac’s chief economist. “Inflation remains elevated, the Federal Reserve is likely to keep interest rates high and consumers will continue to feel the impact.”

    Affording a home remains a challenge for many home buyers. Mortgage rates are expected to remain volatile for the rest of the year. And prices remain elevated in many areas, especially where there is a very limited inventory of available homes for sale.

    Meanwhile, inflation and rising interest rates mean many would-be buyers are also facing tightened budgets.

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  • Amazon CEO says job cuts will continue into next year | CNN Business

    Amazon CEO says job cuts will continue into next year | CNN Business

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    CNN Business
     — 

    Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said job cuts at the e-commerce giant would continue into early next year, in his first public remarks since the company began widespread layoffs earlier this week.

    “Our annual planning process extends into the new year, which means there will be more role reductions as leaders continue to make adjustments,” Jassy wrote in a letter to staff Thursday. “Those decisions will be shared with impacted employees and organizations early in 2023.”

    Jassy said that the company hasn’t “concluded yet exactly how many other roles will be impacted” by the layoffs, but added that “each leader will communicate to their respective teams when we have the details nailed down.”

    Amazon confirmed on Wednesday that layoffs had begun at the company, just days after multiple outlets reported the e-commerce giant planned to cut around 10,000 employees this week.

    Amazon

    (AMZN)     and other tech firms significantly ramped up hiring over the past couple of years as the pandemic shifted consumers’ habits toward e-commerce. Now, many of these seemingly untouchable tech companies are experiencing whiplash and laying off thousands of workers as people return to pre-pandemic habits and macroeconomic conditions deteriorate.

    Facebook-parent Meta recently announced 11,000 job cuts, the largest in the company’s history. Twitter also announced widespread job cuts after Elon Musk bought the company for $44 billion.

    Jassy alluded to the macroeconomic climate in his memo Thursday, saying this year’s annual operating review “is more difficult due to the fact that the economy remains in a challenging spot and we’ve hired rapidly the last several years.”

    Jassy said that this is the most difficult decision the company has had to make during his year-and-a-half tenure at Amazon’s helm.

    “It’s not lost on me or any of the leaders who make these decisions that these aren’t just roles we’re eliminating, but rather, people with emotions, ambitions, and responsibilities whose lives will be impacted,” Jassy wrote.

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  • Stocks have been clobbered this year, but people are still contributing to their retirement accounts | CNN Business

    Stocks have been clobbered this year, but people are still contributing to their retirement accounts | CNN Business

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    Stocks and bonds have been turning in volatile, bearish performances this year in an economy marked by high inflation and rising interest rates. But that hasn’t deterred most retirement savers, especially the youngest ones.

    401(k) participants have held relatively steady in their savings contribution rates and in their portfolio allocations, according to new third quarter data from Fidelity Investments. And GenZers have actually increased their contributions.

    By the end of the third quarter, the S&P 500 was down 25% for the year. The Nasdaq had fallen 33%. And the S&P US aggregate bond index was off about 13%.

    So it’s not surprising that the average 401(k) account balance fell to $97,200 in the third quarter, according to Fidelity, one of the country’s leading providers of workplace retirement plans. That’s down 6% from the second quarter and 23% from a year earlier.

    But the average savings rate among 401(k) participants, meanwhile, held relatively steady at 13.8%, which includes both employee and employer contributions. That’s only down a fraction from the 13.9% recorded in the second quarter and the 14% recorded in the first quarter.

    Meanwhile GenZers in the workplace – those roughly ages 22 to 25 – increased their savings levels from 10% to 10.3%. That may account for why the youngest generation of today’s employees actually saw their account balances increase 1.2% relative to the second quarter, despite terrible market performance.

    In terms of gender differences, men saved a bit more than women (14.5% versus 13.5%). And age wise, Boomers on the cusp of retirement saved the most (16.5%).

    Allocations also held fairly steady, Fidelity found, with only 4.5% of 401(k) and 403(b) plan participants opting to make a change in the third quarter. The majority of those who did made just one change, and only 29% of them opted for a more conservative investment.

    Despite the volatility in the markets and the economy this year, “Retirement savers have wisely chosen to avoid the drama and continue making smart choices for the long-term,” said Kevin Barry, president of Workplace Investing at Fidelity Investments.

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  • Amazon confirms it has begun laying off employees | CNN Business

    Amazon confirms it has begun laying off employees | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    Amazon confirmed on Wednesday that layoffs had begun at the company, two days after multiple outlets reported the e-commerce giant planned to cut around 10,000 employees this week.

    The initial cuts at Amazon will impact roles on the devices and services team, per a memo shared publicly by Dave Limp, senior vice president of devices & services at Amazon

    “After a deep set of reviews, we recently decided to consolidate some teams and programs. One of the consequences of these decisions is that some roles will no longer be required,” Limp said. “We notified impacted employees yesterday, and will continue to work closely with each individual to provide support, including assisting in finding new roles.”

    Limp did not specify how many employees have been cut.

    Amazon spokesperson Kelly Nantel told CNN Business in a statement that the company looks at all of its businesses as part of an annual operating review process. “As we’ve gone through this, given the current macro-economic environment (as well as several years of rapid hiring), some teams are making adjustments, which in some cases means certain roles are no longer necessary,” Nantel added.

    She continued: “We don’t take these decisions lightly, and we are working to support any employees who may be affected.”

    On Tuesday evening into Wednesday morning, many laid-off Amazon workers posted publicly on LinkedIn that they had been impacted by the job cuts and were looking for work. Some of these posts mentioned they were on teams involved with Amazon’s voice assistant, Alexa.

    Amazon and other tech firms significantly ramped up hiring over the past couple of years as the pandemic shifted consumers’ habits towards e-commerce. Now, many of these seemingly untouchable tech companies are experiencing whiplash and laying off thousands of workers as people return to pre-pandemic habits and macroeconomic conditions deteriorate.

    Facebook-parent Meta recently announced 11,000 job cuts, the largest in the company’s history. Twitter also announced widespread job cuts after Elon Musk bought the company for $44 billion, funded in part by debt financing.

    In a sobering sign of the times, a growing number of business leaders in the tech sector – from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg to Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey – have been issuing remorseful apologies in recent weeks as their employees lose their livelihoods.

    After reaching record highs during the pandemic, shares of Amazon have shed more than 40% in 2022 so far.

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