Summary List Placement Americans received $600 weekly unemployment benefits under the CARES Act in March, but the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) found in May that a portion of those funds fell into the wrong hands due to failures in detecting fraud. Mississippi just affirmed those findings on a statewide level — with a […]
Crazy. Horrible. Grueling. These are the words real estate agents use when asked to describe the current state of the market and what it’s like to buy a home today. Buyers are facing unprecedented challenges, they say, due to a confluence of housing market conditions: Pricing. Redfin reported earlier this month that the national median […]
Summary List Placement Student-loan payments have been on pause for the duration of the pandemic, providing significant financial relief to borrowers. But the pause is set to lift in October, and some Democrats want to ensure borrowers are as prepared as possible. On Monday, Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Ed Markey of Massachusetts, and Tina […]
Summary List Placement I wrote last week about the pressures facing Amazon as it tries to hire workers and expand rapidly in a tight labor market. It’s a hard task. The company is almost certainly going to need to raise wages and rethink its approach to employment in an attempt to become more of a […]
Summary List Placement Millions of Americans are behind on rent payments and will soon have to confront their back rent once the nationwide eviction ban expires at the end of June. But for low-income Californians, financial rental relief could be on the horizon. Last month, California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced plans to pay off 100% […]
Summary List Placement A bipartisan gang of 21 lawmakers is in fluid negotiations over a $1 trillion infrastructure plan, with the crucial difference being how to pay for some of it. Some moderate Democrats in the group are leaning in a certain direction on revenue: strengthening the IRS’ ability to pursue tax evaders. A pair […]
Summary List Placement Hotel workers are quitting their jobs for better pay during the US labor shortage, making recruitment a huge challenge, the owner of a New York City told Fox Business. “Hiring has been incredibly challenging,” Michael Achenbaum, founder and president of Gansevoort Hotel Group, which owns a 186-room room in NYC’s Meatpacking district, […]
Summary List Placement Fast-food chains are pushing up wages amid the current labor shortage – and factories are struggling to raise theirs as quickly, which is one of the reasons a stream of workers is leaving the manufacturing industry, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal. Factories have historically offered better wages than […]
Summary List Placement Hotels are scrambling to find perks to both recruit and retain employees amid a US labor shortage that’s causing some businesses to cut operating hours, slash production, and raise prices. Some hotels are offering long-term perks, such as expanded healthcare access and higher wages, while others are turning to one-off quick fixes, […]
Though the number of high-quality refi candidates grew from 12 to more than 14 million from March through May — a 15% increase — actual refinance rate locks dropped by 27% over the same period, according to recent data from Black Knight’s Originations Market Monitor. Month over month, overall rate lock volume was down 4.7% […]
Summary List Placement On the surface, the labor market hasn’t been making much sense. Take April for example: Ten million Americans were unemployed, even though nearly that same number of jobs were open (9.3 million, a record high). That same month, hiring slowed to a crawl and 4 million more people quit their jobs (another […]
Summary List Placement White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki pushed back against a gas tax proposal under consideration in the Senate, as she argued that ramping up IRS enforcement would net more revenue. At a Monday press conference, Psaki said the administration had projected that the bipartisan group’s planned gas tax measure would raise around […]
Summary List Placement Are you a millennial who earns six figures and still feels broke? Then you might be a “Henry,” short for “high earner, not rich yet.” Melkorka Licea first reported on the Henry millennial for the New York Post. The acronym, invented by Shawn Tully in a 2003 Fortune magazine article, has come […]
Summary List Placement A vandalized property in Colorado Springs, Colorado, that the realtor called a “slice of hell” is set to sell above asking price, just five days after it was put on the market, The Denver Post first reported. The five-bed home in the Broadmoor Bluffs Estates neighborhood was listed on Tuesday for $590,000. […]
Summary List Placement The US economic rebound reached its peak this quarter. From July onward, the story of nationwide recovery will be one of moderation, Bank of America said Friday. The combination of March stimulus, successful vaccine distribution, and swift reopening accelerated the US recovery to an all-out sprint. The economy is on track to […]
Summary List Placement A Texas chicken-restaurant chain has promoted workers in their late teens and early 20s to managerial positions paying more than $50,000 per year because of a staff shortage, its CEO told the Wall Street Journal. Garrett Reed, CEO of Layne’s Chicken Fingers, a fast-food chain with six restaurants across the state, told […]
Summary List Placement Democratic lawmakers are keeping the pressure on President Joe Biden to cancel $50,000 in student debt per borrower. While he has not yet done so, the majority of Americans support an even bigger debt wipeout. A poll released last week from GoBankingRates — a personal finance portal — found that of the […]
Summary List Placement Houses are selling quicker than ever before in the US, according to a report by real-estate site Zillow. Newly listed homes nationwide typically took six days to go under contract in May, which was one day shorter than in April, according to the report. Homes in Cincinnati, Kansas City, and Columbus typically […]
Summary List Placement Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders said Sunday that he believes the contents of a bipartisan infrastructure bill are “mostly good,” but said he has concerns over how lawmakers may decide to fund it. Sanders, an Independent, made the comments during an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “What is in the bipartisan bill […]
Summary List Placement Wilbur Ross, the commerce secretary under former President Donald Trump, raked in at least $53 million from private companies while working in the administration and earning a taxpayer-funded salary, according to a Huffington Post report. While leading the Department of Commerce, Ross reported making a minimum of $53 million to $127 million […]
Summary List Placement This Father’s Day, there’s a crucial message about gender equality and economics that should be blasted across the country: To recover from the “she-cession” — the recession that has disproportionately hurt women — one of the steps businesses need to take is to treat men as equal caregivers. Amid devastating job losses […]
Summary List Placement The American Dream has long paired ideals — opportunity, liberty, and equality — with some material items. A TV. A white picket fence. A yard. Material prosperity has been part of the equation ever since the US emerged as an economic superpower after World War II in 1945. When rations and restrictions […]
Summary List Placement Tiina Lee, CEO of Deutsche Bank UK and Ireland, wants investment banking graduates to be in the office five days a week, even as the company adopts a hybrid-working model. “My personal view in terms of grads and interns is that they should want to spend as much time in the office […]
Summary List Placement California is facing its worst drought in over four years. Over 37 million people have already been impacted by the “megadrought” and nearly 95% of the state has been classified as experiencing “Severe Drought,” which puts the land in significant danger of wildfires, according to the National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS). […]
Summary List Placement Last week, the “New York Times” ran a story about a small menu price increase at a fast-casual food chain. Written by Julie Creswell, the piece began, “Executives at Chipotle said on Tuesday that the fast-food chain had raised menu prices by about 4% to cover the cost of the increased employee […]
Summary List Placement High-earning millennials are feeling broke. Sixty percent of millennials raking in over $100,000 a year say they’re living paycheck to paycheck, according to a new survey by PYMNTS and lending company LendingClub which analyzed economic data and census-balanced surveys of over 28,000 Americans. It found that the more than half (54%) Americans […]
Summary List Placement Partisan politics, Congress’ legislative language, and interest group lobbying are about to turn America’s 160 million workers into guinea pigs. We’re all about to be part of a huge study on whether unemployment insurance keeps people out of the labor market. The biggest variable in this 50-state experiment is the new unemployment […]
Summary List Placement Colorado passed a law that required employers tell prospective employees how much a job pays — and six months later companies are rejecting applicants from the state altogether. Johnson & Johnson, McKesson, CBRE Group, and Cardinal Health recently posted job listings seeking workers in every US location “except Colorado,” The Wall Street […]
The housing market is no stranger to supply constraints. A toxic combination of wildly inflated lumber prices, a lack of new and existing homes, and the sheer number of borrowers willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars over ask on homes they’ve never seen in person, has created a pandemic-driven problem that the industry […]
This article first appeared in the June 18th newsletter Lending Life. Sign up here to receive each weekday. On Thursday, President Joe Biden signed a bill into law, declaring June 19th, or Juneteenth, a federal holiday. Biden’s order commemorates the date the last enslaved African-Americans were informed that they were free. Wonderful news, right? Wrong. […]
For Jason Vanslette, a lawyer who specializes in foreclosure litigation, everything came to a screeching halt on March 27, 2020. President Donald Trump had just signed the CARES Act into law, and with it, a moratorium on foreclosures and evictions had locked into place. Vanslette, a partner at Kelley Kronenberg in Fort Lauderdale, said a […]
Summary List Placement At the time ocean shipping took over the world, America gave up on the shipping industry. In 1960, when the world moved 1.2 million tons of goods via ship, the American fleet comprised 16% of the world’s total cargo shipping power. By 2019, global trade shot up to 10.7 million tons — but […]
Summary List Placement The number of job openings in the US reached a record high of 9.3 million in April. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate remained elevated at 5.8%, according to data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. The disconnect between these two figures has been the source of debate for many economists and market […]
Summary List Placement Abigail Disney knows what lurks in the minds of the wealthy. She’s one of them, after all. The heiress and outspoken wealth-tax advocate penned an essay in The Atlantic about the staggeringly low tax rates that a ProPublica expose revealed many billionaires have been paying. She said it reveals a mindset at […]
Mortgage applications for new home purchases fell 9% month-over-month in May at a seasonally unadjusted pace ― the second consecutive month sales of new homes have dropped, according to data released Thursday by the Mortgage Bankers Association. Compared to May of last year, MBA’s Builder Application Survey (BAS) revealed purchases are down 5.9%. On a […]
Summary List Placement Lumber prices are so high they’ve created an entire black market. US lumber prices are currently more than double last year’s, after they hit a record high last month. Jim Yarbough, a supply-chain expert from British Standards Institution, told Bloomberg the soaring prices have created a massive opportunity for an underground lumber […]
Summary List Placement Sen. Bernie Sanders, chair of the Senate Budget Committee, drafted a $6 trillion infrastructure package that Senate Democrats are considering approving without GOP support, per two people familiar with the matter. The sources, who described it as an early blueprint, were granted anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly. The figure […]
The average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage fell three basis points from the week prior to 2.93%, according to data released Thursday by Freddie Mac‘s PMMS. This marks the first time in over two months mortgage rates have fluctuated outside a five basis point range above or below 3%. “Mortgage rates continued to drift down as markets concur with […]
Summary List Placement Food prices are surging in grocery stores as well as on restaurant menus. Last week, Chipotle hiked prices for menu items by about 4%, as the cost of labor and ingredients continues to rise amidst a spike in demand. Red Robin and Cracker Barrel have also increased prices by about 3%, The […]
Summary List Placement Filings for unemployment insurance increased last week, indicating new snags in the labor market’s recovery. Weekly jobless claims came in at an unadjusted 412,000 last week, according to the Labor Department. The median estimate from economists surveyed by Bloomberg was for 370,000 claims. The reading snaps six straight weeks of declines that […]
Summary List Placement Democrats are weighing tucking immigration reform into a large infrastructure package using reconciliation this summer, a step that could significantly expand the scope of a Democratic-only package. Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia said that Democrats were interested in fully financing Biden’s $4 trillion infrastructure plans instead of deficit-spending, meaning the cost of […]
Summary List Placement A group of ten Republican and ten Democratic Senators announced on Wednesday that they supported a bipartisan proposal for the infrastructure spending package. Sens. Richard Burr, Bill Cassidy, Susan Collins, Chris Coons, Lindsey Graham, Maggie Hassan, John Hickenlooper, Mark Kelly, Angus King, Joe Manchin, Lisa Murkowski, Rob Portman, Mitt Romney, Mike Rounds, […]
Another month of steadily increasing home prices and insatiable demand led Fannie Mae‘s Economic and Strategic Research Group to alter many of its 2021 predictions – in particular, its outlook on the symbiotic relationship between the housing market and inflation measures. While the housing research group believes current inflation acceleration could be considered transitory, price […]
Summary List Placement Dynastic wealth is growing — and it’s growing faster than the average American family’s wealth. Ten times faster, to be exact. That’s according to a new report from the left-leaning Institute for Policy Studies titled “Silver Spoon Oligarchs,” which examined the growing concentration of wealth in the US. It found that America’s […]
Summary List Placement Republicans are holding strong on their opposition to President Joe Biden’s proposed spending to aggressively combat climate change, along with social investments already on the table. They have long resisted expanding the definition of infrastructure beyond physical items like roads, bridges, and highways. An emerging $1 trillion infrastructure framework that’s being drafted […]