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WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. economy grew at a healthy 2.8% annual rate from July through September, with consumers helping drive growth despite the weight of still-high interest rates. Wednesday's report from the Commerce Department said the gross domestic product — the economy's total output of goods and services — did slow slightly from its 3% growth rate in the April-June quarter. But the latest figures still reflect surprising durability just as Americans assess the state of the economy in the final stretch of the presidential race. Consu...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Some manufacturers and retailers are urging President Joe Biden to invoke a 1947 law as a way to suspend a strike by 45,000 dockworkers that has shut down 36 U.S. ports from Maine to Texas. At issue is Section 206 of the Labor Management Relations Act of 1947, better known as the Taft-Hartley Act. The law authorizes a president to seek a court order for an 80-day cooling-off period for companies and unions to try to resolve their differences. Biden has said, though, that he won't intervene in the strike. Taft-Hartley was m...
WASHINGTON (AP) — America's employers delivered another healthy month of hiring in June, adding 206,000 jobs and once again displaying the U.S. economy's ability to withstand high interest rates. Last month's job growth did mark a pullback from 218,000 in May. But it was still a solid gain, reflecting the resilience of America's consumer-driven economy, which is slowing but still growing steadily. Still, Friday's report from the Labor Department contained several signs of a slowing job market. The unemployment rate ticked up from 4% to 4.1%, a...
WASHINGTON (AP) — A measure of prices that is closely tracked by the Federal Reserve suggests that inflation pressures in the U.S. economy are continuing to ease. Friday's Commerce Department report showed that consumer prices were flat from April to May, the mildest such performance in more than four years. Measured from a year earlier, prices rose 2.6% last month, slightly less than in April. Excluding volatile food and energy prices, so-called core inflation rose 0.1% from April to May, the smallest increase since the spring of 2020, when t...
WASHINGTON (AP) — As president, Donald Trump imposed a 25% tariff on foreign steel, which hurt Clips & Clamps Industries, a Michigan auto supplier — raising its materials prices, making it harder to compete with overseas rivals and costing it several contracts. Jeff Aznavorian, the company president, thought he might enjoy some relief once Joe Biden entered the White House. Instead, Biden largely preserved Trump's tariffs — on steel, aluminum and a mass of goods from China. "It was a little surprising that an ideologically different admin...
WASHINGTON (AP) — The nation's employers pulled back on their hiring in April but still added a decent 175,000 jobs in a sign that persistently high interest rates may be starting to slow the robust U.S. job market. Friday's government report showed that last month's hiring gain was down sharply from the blockbuster increase of 315,000 in March. And it was well below the 233,000 gain that economists had predicted for April. Yet the moderation in the pace of hiring, along with a slowdown last month in wage growth, will likely be welcomed by t...
MIAMI (AP) — Having fled economic and political chaos in Venezuela, Luisana Silva now loads carpets for a South Carolina rug company. She earns enough to pay rent, buy groceries, gas up her car — and send money home to her parents. Reaching the United States was a harrowing ordeal. Silva, 25, her husband and their then-7-year-old daughter braved the treacherous jungles of Panama's Darien Gap, traveled the length of Mexico, crossed the Rio Grande and then turned themselves in to the U.S. Border Patrol in Brownsville, Texas. Seeking asylum, the...
WASHINGTON (AP) — America's employers delivered another outpouring of jobs in March, adding a sizzling 303,000 workers to their payrolls and bolstering hopes that the economy can vanquish inflation without succumbing to a recession in the face of high interest rates. Last month's job growth was up from a revised 270,000 in February and was far above the 200,000 jobs that economists had forecast. By any measure, it amounted to a major burst of hiring, and it reflected the economy's ability to withstand the pressure of high borrowing costs r...
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. job openings barely changed in February, staying at historically high levels in a sign that the American job market remains strong. The Labor Department reported Tuesday that employers posted 8.76 million job vacancies in February, up modestly from 8.75 million in January and about what economists had forecast. But the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, or JOLTS, showed that layoffs ticked up to 1.7 million in February from 1.6 million in January, highest since March 2023. The number of Americans quitting their jobs...
WASHINGTON (AP) — For the first time in more than two decades, Mexico last year surpassed China as the leading source of goods imported by the United States. The shift reflects the growing tensions between Washington and Beijing as well as U.S. efforts to import from countries that are friendlier and closer to home. Figures released Wednesday by the U.S. Commerce Department show that the value of goods imported by the United States from Mexico rose nearly 5% from 2022 to 2023, to more than $475 billion. At the same time, the value of Chinese im...
WASHINGTON (AP) — The nation's employers delivered a stunning burst of hiring to begin 2024, adding 353,000 jobs in January in the latest sign of the economy's continuing ability to shrug off the highest interest rates in two decades. Friday's government report showed that last month's job gain — roughly twice what economists had predicted — topped the December gain of 333,000, a figure that was itself revised sharply higher. The unemployment rate stayed at 3.7%, just above a half-century low. Wages rose unexpectedly fast in January, too. Avera...
WASHINGTON (AP) — The nation's employers added a robust 216,000 jobs last month, the latest sign that the American labor market remains resilient even in the face of sharply higher interest rates. Friday's government report showed that December's job gain exceeded the 173,000 that were added in November. The unemployment rate was unchanged at 3.7% — the 23rd straight month that joblessness has come in below 4%. Some details of the report, though, may disappoint the inflation fighters at the Federal Reserve, who might now be inclined to del...
WASHINGTON (AP) — An ambitious 2021 agreement by more than 140 countries and territories to weed out tax havens and force multinational corporations to pay a minimum tax has been weakened by loopholes and will raise only a fraction of the revenue that was envisioned, a tax watchdog backed by the European Union has warned. The landmark agreement, brokered by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, set a minimum global corporate tax of 15%. The idea was to stop multinational corporations, among them Apple and Nike, from u...
WASHINGTON (AP) — The reprieve is over. Just as the American economy is struggling with high inflation and interest rates, the coming resumption of student loan payments poses yet another potential challenge. The suspension of federal student loan payments, which took effect at the height of the pandemic in 2020, expires late this summer. Interest will start accruing again in September. Payments will resume in October. Though many hoped their loans might at least be lightened, the Supreme Court last week struck down a Biden administration p...
WASHINGTON (AP) — For nearly a year, the Federal Reserve has been on a mission to cool down the job market to help curb the nation's worst inflation bout in four decades. The job market hasn't been cooperating. Consider what happened in January: The government said Friday that employers added a sizzling 517,000 jobs last month and that the unemployment rate dipped to 3.4%, the lowest level since 1969. The job gain was so large it left economists scratching their heads and wondering why the Fed's aggressive interest rate hikes haven't slowed h...
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. economy likely rolled out of 2022 with momentum, registering decent growth in the face of painful inflation, high interest rates and rising concern that a recession may be months away. Economists have estimated that the gross domestic product — the broadest measure of economic output — grew at a 2.3% annual pace from October through December, according to a survey of forecasters by the data firm FactSet. The Commerce Department will issue its first of three estimates of fourth-quarter GDP growth at 8:30 a.m. Easte...
The cost of living in Cairo has soared so much that security guard Mustafa Gamal had to send his wife and year-old daughter to live with his parents in a village 70 miles south of the Egyptian capital to save money. Gamal, 28, stayed behind, working two jobs, sharing an apartment with other young people and eliminating meat from his diet. "The prices of everything have been doubled," he said. "There was no alternative.'' Around the world, people are sharing Gamal's pain and frustration. An auto parts dealer in Nairobi, a seller of baby clothes...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Inflation eased last month as energy prices tumbled, raising hopes that the surging costs of everything from gasoline to food may have peaked. According to a Commerce Department report Friday that is closely watched by the Federal Reserve, consumer prices rose 6.3% in July from a year earlier after posting an annual increase of 6.8% in June, the biggest jump since 1982. Energy prices made the difference in July: They dropped last month after surging in June. So-called core inflation, which excludes volatile food and energy pri...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Consumers struggling with skyrocketing prices for food, gas, autos and rent got a tantalizing hint of relief last month, when prices didn't budge at all from June after 25 straight months of increases. With gas prices continuing to fall, inflation is probably slowing further this month. So has the worst bout of inflation in four decades possibly peaked? Economists say it's too soon to know for sure. Even if inflation has peaked, it will likely remain high well into next year. Since inflation ignited early last year, it has t...
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. employers added an astonishing 528,000 jobs last month despite flashing warning signs of an economic downturn, easing fears of a recession and handing President Joe Biden some good news heading into the midterm elections. Unemployment dropped another notch, from 3.6% to 3.5%, matching the more than 50-year low reached just before the pandemic took hold. The economy has now recovered all 22 million jobs lost in March and April 2020 when COVID-19 slammed the U.S. The red-hot numbers reported Friday by the Labor Department a...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Stagflation. It was the dreaded "S word" of the 1970s. For Americans of a certain age, it conjures memories of painfully long lines at gas stations, shuttered factories and President Gerald Ford's much-ridiculed "Whip Inflation Now" buttons. Stagflation is the bitterest of economic pills: High inflation mixes with a weak job market to cause a toxic brew that punishes consumers and befuddles economists. For decades, most economists didn't think such a nasty concoction was even possible. They'd long assumed that inflation w...
WASHINGTON (AP) — America's employers added 428,000 jobs in April, extending a streak of solid hiring that has defied punishing inflation, chronic supply shortages, the Russian war against Ukraine and much higher borrowing costs. Friday's jobs report from the Labor Department showed that last month's hiring kept the unemployment rate at 3.6%, just above the lowest level in a half-century. The economy's hiring gains have been strikingly consistent in the face of the worst inflation in four decades. Employers have added at least 400,000 jobs f...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Another month, another four-decade high for inflation. For the 12 months that ended in March, consumer prices rocketed 8.5%. That was the fastest year-over-year jump since 1981, far surpassing February's mark of 7.9%, itself a 40-year high. Even if you toss out food and energy prices — which are notoriously volatile and have driven much of the price spike — so-called core inflation jumped 6.5% in the past 12 months. That was also the sharpest such jump in four decades. Consumers have felt the squeeze in everyday routi...
NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks sank Friday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average briefly falling more than 1,000 points, as a new coronavirus variant first detected in South Africa appeared to be spreading across the globe. Investors were uncertain whether the variant could potentially reverse months of progress at getting the COVID-19 pandemic under control. The S&P 500 index dropped 106.84 points, or 2.3%, to close at 4,594.62. It was the worst day for Wall Street's benchmark index since February. The index was dragged lower by everything from b...
DETROIT (AP) — Take a step back from the picked-over store shelves, the stalled container ships and the empty auto showrooms, and you'll find a root cause of the shortages of just about everything. Even as the pandemic has dragged on, U.S. households flush with cash from stimulus checks, booming stock markets and enlarged home equity have felt like spending freely again — a lot. And since consumer demand drives much of the U.S. and global economies, high demand has brought goods shortages to the U.S. and much of the world. Add the fact tha...
