By Nathalie Voit Initial unemployment claims rose to their highest level since mid-January last week, the Department of Labor said in a news release posted on June 9. First-time filings for the week ending June 4 advanced 27,000 to 229,000 from the previous week’s upwardly revised figure. Wall Street had anticipated a 210,000 increase for the period [...]
By Nathalie Voit American newspapers have sustained a dramatic drop in revenue over the last two decades as the print publishing industry loses to digital media. Between 2002 and 2020, newspaper publishing companies saw revenues drop by more than half, from $46.2 billion in 2002 to $22.1 billion nearly two decades later, according to new [...]
By Nathalie Voit The national average for a regular gallon of gas approached five dollars on June 9 as the cost of crude oil and high demand for fuel kept pump prices surging, AAA said in a news release. The cost of a barrel of oil this week soared past $120 as oil demand continues to [...]
By Nathalie Voit In one of the largest student loan forgiveness initiatives ever enacted by a sitting U.S. president, President Joe Biden approved $5.8 billion in targeted debt relief for over half a million borrowers who attended Corinthian Colleges. The historic announcement brought student loans back into the public discourse and the idea of broad loan forgiveness [...]
By Nathalie Voit A widely used Federal Reserve metric signaled that the U.S. economy could contract for the second time this year, potentially triggering a recession. The Atlanta Fed's GDPNow tracker, considered a running estimate of real GDP growth, stands at just 0.9% for the second quarter ending on June 30 after being downwardly revised from [...]
By Nathalie Voit The ongoing infant formula shortage means plenty of room for scammers, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) warned on its website. In a consumer alert issued on May 18, the federal agency alerted the public about the rise of online scammers “tricking desperate parents and caregivers into paying steep prices for formula that never arrives.” [...]
By Nathalie Voit One-third of American adults earning $250,000 a year or more are living paycheck-to-paycheck, according to a survey from fintech marketplace bank Lending Club and digital merchant PYMNTS.com released on June 1. The astonishing survey results found that 36% of U.S. consumers who made up the top five percent of income earners in the U.S. claimed to [...]
By Nathalie Voit Apple kicked off its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in Cupertino, California, on June 6 by introducing iOS16, its latest version of the iOS mobile operating system that powers iPhone devices. iOS16 features several new features that set it apart from older versions, including a personalized lock screen, a shared iCloud photo library, expanded iMessage [...]
By Nathalie Voit More than 46,000 Americans have lost over $1 billion in crypto to scams since the start of 2021, according to a new report released by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) on June 3. Reported losses last year were nearly 60 times what they were in 2018, with a median loss of $2,600 per individual. [...]
By Nathalie Voit In a press release posted on June 3, Walmart said it would introduce four new “next-generation” fulfillment centers (FCs) to complement its existing network of eCommerce services. Walmart said these first-of-their-kind buildings will significantly reduce the time it takes to process an order using a “powerful combination of people, robotics, and machine learning.” Orders [...]
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