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    The Surprising Left-Right Alliance That Wants More Apartments in Suburbs

    The YIMBY movement isn’t just for liberals any more. Legislators from both sides of the political divide are working to add duplexes and apartments to single-family neighborhoods.For years, the Yimbytown conference was an ideologically safe space where liberal young professionals could talk to other liberal young professionals about the particular problems of cities with a lot of liberal young professionals: not enough bike lanes and transit, too many restrictive zoning laws.The event began in 2016 in Boulder, Colo., and has ever since revolved around a coalition of left and center Democrats who want to make America’s neighborhoods less exclusive and its housing more dense. (YIMBY, a pro-housing movement that is increasingly an identity, stands for “Yes in my backyard.”)But the vibes and crowd were surprisingly different at this year’s meeting, which was held at the University of Texas at Austin in February. In addition to vegan lunches and name tags with preferred pronouns, the conference included — even celebrated — a group that had until recently been unwelcome: red-state Republicans.The first day featured a speech on changing zoning laws by Greg Gianforte, the Republican governor of Montana, who last year signed a housing package that YIMBYs now refer to as “the Montana Miracle.” Day 2 kicked off with a panel on solutions to Texas’s rising housing costs. One of the speakers was a Republican legislator in Texas who, in addition to being an advocate for loosening land-use regulations, has pushed for a near-total ban on abortions.Anyone who missed these discussions might have instead gone to the panel on bipartisanship where Republican housing reformers from Arizona and Montana talked with a Democratic state senator from Vermont. Or noticed the list of sponsors that, in addition to foundations like Open Philanthropy and Arnold Ventures, included conservative and libertarian organizations like the Mercatus Center, the American Enterprise Institute and the Pacific Legal Foundation.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    How Trump’s Justice Dept. Derailed an Investigation of a Major Company

    The industrial giant Caterpillar hired William Barr and other lawyers to defuse a federal criminal investigation of alleged tax dodges.In December 2018, a team of federal law enforcement agents flew to Amsterdam to interview a witness in a yearslong criminal investigation into Caterpillar, which had avoided billions of dollars of income taxes by shifting profits to a Swiss subsidiary.A few hours before the interview was set to begin, the agents were startled to hear that the Justice Department was telling them to cancel the long-planned meeting.The interview was never rescheduled, and the investigation would limp along for another few years before culminating, in late 2022, with a victory for Caterpillar. The Internal Revenue Service told the giant industrial company to pay less than a quarter of the back taxes the government once claimed that Caterpillar owed and did not impose any penalties. The criminal investigation was closed without charges being filed — and even without agents having the chance to review records seized from the company.Caterpillar appears to have defused the investigation at least in part by deploying a type of raw legal power that rarely becomes publicly visible. This account is based on interviews with people familiar with the investigation, regulatory filings and internal Justice Department emails provided to Senate investigators and reviewed by The New York Times.In the months leading up to the canceled interview in the Netherlands, Caterpillar had enlisted a small group of well-connected lawyers to plead the company’s case. Chief among those was William P. Barr, who had served as attorney general in the George H.W. Bush administration.Richard Zuckerman, the Justice Department’s top tax official, stopped an investigation into Caterpillar after meeting with its lawyers.Jerry ZolynskyWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    U.S. Employers Add 275,000 Jobs in Another Strong Month

    Economists are trying to gauge whether forecasts of a slowing labor market were mistaken or just premature. For now, gains are consistent and strong.If the economy is slowing down, nobody told the labor market.Employers added 275,000 jobs in February, the Labor Department reported Friday, in another month that exceeded expectations even as the unemployment rate rose.It was the third straight month of gains above 200,000, and the 38th consecutive month of growth — fresh evidence that four years after going into pandemic shutdowns, America’s jobs engine still has plenty of steam.“We’ve been expecting a slowdown in the labor market, a more material loosening in conditions, but we’re just not seeing that,” said Rubeela Farooqi, chief economist at High Frequency Economics.Previously reported figures for December and January were revised downward by a total of 167,000, reflecting the higher degree of statistical volatility in the winter months. That does not disrupt a picture of consistent, robust increases.At the same time, the unemployment rate, based on a survey of households rather than businesses, increased to a two-year high of 3.9 percent. The increase from 3.7 percent in January was driven by people losing or leaving jobs as well as those entering the labor force to look for work.A more expansive measure of slack labor market conditions, which includes people working part time who would rather work full time, has been steadily rising and now stands at 7.3 percent.Wage growth slowed slightly in FebruaryYear-over-year percentage change in earnings vs. inflation More

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    Unemployment fell for Black women in February as more joined the labor force

    Black women saw their unemployment rate fall to 4.4% from 4.8%.
    Among Hispanic women, the unemployment rate jumped to 5% from 4.3%.
    Valerie Wilson, director at the Economic Policy Institute’s Program on Race, Ethnicity and the Economy, said that the labor market is showing positive signs for Black women.

    A sign posted outside a restaurant looking to hire workers in Miami on May 5, 2023.
    Joe Raedle | Getty Images News | Getty Images

    Unemployment among Black women fell in February as the number of those looking for work increased, data released Friday by the U.S. government showed.
    The U.S. unemployment rate edged higher last month to 3.9% from 3.7% in January, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday. Adult women age 20 and older in the labor force followed that trend, with the unemployment rate ticking up to 3.5% from 3.2%.

    The percentage of unemployed Black women, however, fell to 4.4% from 4.8%. This comes as the labor force participation rate within the group — which measures how many workers are currently employed or searching for work — rises to 63.4% from 62.9%.

    Valerie Wilson, director at the Economic Policy Institute’s Program on Race, Ethnicity and the Economy, said that the labor market is showing positive signs for Black women. She pointed to the decrease in the unemployment rate, while the employment/population ratio edged higher to 60.6% from 59.9%.
    “That seems unambiguously that things are moving in a positive direction,” she told CNBC.
    As for why the cohort was able to buck the trend, Wilson said it could be due to the specific industries that added jobs last month.
    “We saw increases in health care and government services, which are sectors where we see a significant number of Black women being employed,” she said. “The fact that those were two sectors that added jobs and had the highest job growth in the last month is probably a factor in that increased participation rate and reduced unemployment rate.”

    For Hispanic women, unemployment rose to 5% from 4.3%.
    Overall, with the unemployment rate still sitting below 4%, this month’s report paints the picture of a strong labor market, Wilson said.
    “At this point, at that lower rate of unemployment, you’re not going to get huge shifts as long as that growth is still positive on the net,” she said. While economists could still see slight moves from month to month, at the current pace of U.S. job growth, the labor market should remain stable and steady.
    — CNBC’s Gabriel Cortes contributed to this report.

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    U.S. job growth totaled 275,000 in February but unemployment rate rose to 3.9%

    Nonfarm payrolls increased by 275,000 for the month while the jobless rate moved higher to 3.9%. Wall Street had been looking for 198,000 new jobs and unemployment at 3.7%.
    Downward revisions to December and January reduced initial estimates by 167,000 jobs.
    Wages rose just 0.1% on the month, one-tenth of a percentage point below the estimate, and were up 4.3% from a year ago.
    Health care led with 67,000 new jobs. Government again was a big contributor, with 52,000, while restaurants and bars added 42,000.

    Job creation topped expectations in February, but the unemployment rate moved higher and employment growth from the previous two months wasn’t nearly as hot as initially reported.
    Nonfarm payrolls increased by 275,000 for the month while the jobless rate moved higher to 3.9%, the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been looking for payroll growth of 198,000.

    February was a step higher in growth from January, which saw a steep downward revision to 229,000, from the initially reported 353,000. Job growth in December also was revised down to 290,000 from 333,000, bringing the two-month total to 167,000 fewer jobs than initially reported.

    The jobless level increased as the household survey, used to calculate the unemployment rate, showed a decline of 184,000 in those employed. The increase came even though the labor force participation rate held steady at 62.5%, though the “prime age” rate increased to 83.5%, up two-tenths of a percentage point. The survey of establishments shows the total number of jobs.
    Average hourly earnings, watched closely as an inflation indicator, showed a slightly less than expected increase for the month and a deceleration from a year ago. Wages rose just 0.1% on the month, one-tenth of a percentage point below the estimate, and were up 4.3% from a year ago, down from the 4.5% gain in January and slightly below the 4.4% estimate.
    Hours worked rebounded from a slip in January, with the average work week up to 34.3 hours, an increase of 0.1 percentage point.

    The jobs numbers likely keep the Federal Reserve on track to cut interest rates later this year, though the timing and extent remain uncertain.

    Stocks rose Friday following the news, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average up nearly 150 points in early trading. Treasury yields moved lower; the benchmark 10-year note was last at 4.07%, down about 0.02 percentage points on the session.
    “It’s got literally a data point for every view on the spectrum,” Liz Ann Sonders, chief investment strategist at Charles Schwab, said of the report. Those range from “the economy is plunging into a recession to Goldilocks, everything is fine, nothing to see here. It’s certainly mixed,” she added.
    Job creation skewed toward part-time positions. Full-time jobs decreased by 187,000 while part-time employment rose by 51,000, according to the household survey. An alternative jobless measure, sometimes called the “real” unemployment rate, that includes discouraged workers and those holding part-time jobs for economic reasons rose slightly to 7.3%.

    From a sector standpoint, health care led with 67,000 new jobs. Government again was a big contributor, with 52,000, while restaurants and bars added 42,000 and social assistance increased by 24,000. Other gainers included construction (23,000), transportation and warehousing (20,000) and retail (19,000).
    The report comes with markets on edge about the state of growth in the broader economy and the impact that might have on monetary policy. Futures trading moved slightly after the report, with traders now pricing in the greater certainty of an initial Fed interest rate cut in June.
    “There’s no new thing under the sun between this report and last month’s report. It doesn’t really give us a whole lot of information, other than we can qualitatively say, we’re still growing jobs at a good pace and wages are still a little bit higher than we would like,” said Dan North, senior economist at Allianz Trade Americas.
    North added that the report probably “doesn’t change the narrative” for the Fed, though he thinks the first cut may not happen until July.
    In recent days, Fed officials have sent mixed signals, indicating that inflation is cooling but not by enough to warrant the first interest rate cuts since the early days of the Covid pandemic crisis.
    Fed Chair Jerome Powell, speaking this week on Capitol Hill, described the labor market as “relatively tight” but moving into better balance from the days when job openings outnumbered available workers by a 2-to-1 margin.

    Along with that, he said inflation “has eased notably” though still not showing enough progress back to the Fed’s 2% target. But on Thursday he told the Senate Banking Committee that the state of the economy has the Fed “not far” from when it could start easing up on monetary policy.
    “We’ve got a data-dependent fed, which means we’re all at the mercy of the data,” Sonders said. “Big moves outside the range of consensus on labor market data, on inflation data, can move the needle. But in-line or mixed numbers, then we all just jump to the next report.”
    Job creation has stayed strong despite a spate of high-profile layoffs, particularly in the tech industry. Most recently, companies such as Cisco, Microsoft and SAP have announced substantial reductions in their workforces. Outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas said this was the worst February for layoff announcements since 2009, in the late days of the global financial crisis.
    However, workers appear to still be able to find employment. Job openings were virtually unchanged in January at nearly 9 million and still outnumbered the unemployed by 1.4 to 1. Weekly jobless claims have moved little, at 217,000 in the most recent week of filings, though continuing claims did just pass 1.9 million, and the four-week moving average for that metric hit its highest level since December 2021.
    Amid the conflicting signals, markets have pared back expectations for Fed rate cuts. Futures market traders are pricing in the first reduction coming in June, versus the expectation of March at the beginning of the year, and now figure on four total cuts this year against six or seven previously, according to CME Group data.

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    Biden Portrays Next Phase of Economic Agenda as Middle-Class Lifeline

    The president used his State of the Union speech to pitch tax increases for the rich, along with plans to cut costs and protect consumers.President Biden used his State of the Union speech on Thursday to remind Americans of his efforts to steer the nation’s economy out of a pandemic recession, and to lay the groundwork for a second term focused on making the economy more equitable by raising taxes on companies and the wealthy while taking steps to reduce costs for the middle class.Mr. Biden offered a blitz of policies squarely targeting the middle class, including efforts to make housing more affordable for first-time home buyers. The president used his speech to try and differentiate his economic proposals with those supported by Republicans, including former President Donald J. Trump. Those proposals have largely centered on cutting taxes, rolling back the Biden administration’s investments in clean energy and gutting the Internal Revenue Service.Many of Mr. Biden’s policy proposals would require acts of Congress and hinge on Democrats winning control of the House and the Senate. However, the president also unveiled plans to direct federal agencies to use their powers to reduce costs for big-ticket items like housing at a time when the lingering effects of inflation continue to weigh on economic sentiment.From taxes and housing to inflation and consumer protection, Mr. Biden had his eye on pocketbook issues.Raising Taxes on the RichMany of the tax cuts that Mr. Trump signed into law in 2017 are set to expire next year, making tax policy among the most critical issues on the ballot this year.On Thursday night, Mr. Biden built upon many of the tax proposals that he has been promoting for the last three years, calling for big corporations and the wealthiest Americans to pay more. He proposed raising a new corporate minimum tax to 21 percent from 15 percent and proposed a new 25 percent minimum tax rate for billionaires, which he said would raise $500 billion over a decade.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Work From Home Data Shows Who’s Fully Remote, Hybrid and in Person

    The American workplace’s experiment with remote work happened, effectively, overnight: With the onset of the pandemic in March 2020, more than half of workers began working from home at least part of the time, according to Gallup. But the shift to a permanent hybrid-work reality has been gradual, with periods of tension as workers across […] More

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    The jobs report comes as the Fed considers the timing of interest rate cuts.

    The Federal Reserve is considering when and how much to cut interest rates, and the employment report on Friday will give policymakers an up-to-date hint at how the economy is evolving ahead of their next policy meeting.Fed officials meet on March 19-20, and they are widely expected to leave interest rates unchanged at that gathering. But investors think that they could begin to lower interest rates as early as June, a view that Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, did little to either strongly confirm or upend during his congressional testimony this week.“We’re waiting to become more confident that inflation is moving sustainably to 2 percent,” Mr. Powell told lawmakers on Thursday. “When we do get that confidence, and we’re not far from it, it will be appropriate to dial back the level of restriction.”The Fed is primarily watching progress on inflation as it contemplates its next steps, but it is also keeping an eye on the labor market. If job growth is strong and the labor market is so robust that wages rise quickly, that could keep price increases higher for longer as companies try to cover their costs. On the other hand, if the job market begins to slow sharply, that could nudge Fed officials toward earlier interest rate cuts.For now, unemployment has remained low and wage growth has been solid — but not as strong as the peaks it reached in 2022. That has given Fed officials comfort that the supply of workers and the demand for new employees is coming back into balance, even without a painful economic slowdown.“Although the jobs-to-workers gap has narrowed, labor demand still exceeds the supply of available workers,” Mr. Powell said this week.If the recent progress in restoring balance continues, it could allow the Fed to pull off what is often called a “soft landing”: a situation in which the economy cools and inflation moderates so the Fed can back away from aggressive interest rate policy without a recession. More