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    Claudia Goldin Wins Nobel in Economics for Studying Women in the Work Force

    Her research uncovered the reasons for gender gaps in labor force participation and earnings. She is the third woman to win the prize.The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences was awarded on Monday to Claudia Goldin, a Harvard professor, for advancing the world’s understanding of women’s progress in the work force.Dr. Goldin is the third woman to have won the economics Nobel, which was first awarded in 1969, and the first one to be honored with it solo rather than sharing in the prize.Who is the winner?Claudia Goldin, 77, is the Henry Lee Professor of Economics at Harvard University. She has long been a trailblazer in the field — she was the first woman to be offered tenure in Harvard’s economics department, in 1989.She was asleep when the call informing her of the prize came in — she had gotten up earlier to let the dog out but had gone back to bed. She said in an interview that she was “delighted.”She saw a woman winning the economics award on her own as a sort of “culmination” after years of “important changes” toward more gender diversity in the field.Why did the committee say she received the prize?The Nobel committee announced the award in Stockholm. The committee praised Dr. Goldin for her research into female employment, which showed that employment among married women decreased in the 1800s, as the economy moved away from agricultural and toward industry. Women’s participation then increased in the 1900s, as the service sector began to expand as a part of the economy.She also illustrated that the process of closing the gender wage gap has been uneven over the course of history. Recently, progress in closing it has been halting: Today, Women in the United States make a little over 80 cents for every dollar a man makes.In the past, gender wage gaps could be explained by education and occupation. But Dr. Goldin has shown that most of the earnings difference is now between men and women in the same jobs, the Nobel committee said. Notably, it kicks in after the birth of a woman’s first child.In a 15-year study of business school students at the University of Chicago, for instance, Goldin and her colleagues found in one paper that the gap in pay started to widen a year or two after a woman had her first baby.“Claudia Goldin’s discoveries have vast societal implications,” said Randi Hjalmarsson, a member of the committee and professor of economics at the University of Gothenburg.Dr. Goldin said that she hoped people would take away from her work how important long-term changes are to understanding the labor market.“We see a residue of history around us,” she said, explaining that societal and family structures that women and men grow up in shape their behavior and economic outcomes.While there has been “monumental progressive change, at the same time there are important differences,” she said, and those differences often tie back to women doing more work in the home. “We’re never going to have gender equality until we also have couple equity.”Who won the 2022 Nobel for economics?Last year, the award went to Ben S. Bernanke, the former Federal Reserve chair, along with Douglas W. Diamond of the University of Chicago and Philip H. Dybvig of Washington University in St. Louis. They won for work that has reshaped how the world understands the relationship between banks and financial crises.The economics prize was established in memory of Alfred Nobel by Sweden’s central bank and is awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.Who else has won a Nobel Prize this year?The award for physiology or medicine went to Katalin Kariko and Drew Weissman for their discoveries that led to the development of effective vaccines against Covid-19.The prize in physics was shared by Pierre Agostini, Ferenc Krausz and Anne L’Huillier for techniques that illuminate the subatomic realm of electrons.The award for chemistry went to Moungi G. Bawendi, Louis E. Brus and Alexei I. Ekimov for the discovery and development of quantum dots, nanoparticles so small that their size determines their properties.The literature prize went to the Norwegian novelist, poet and playwright Jon Fosse “for his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable.”The Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Narges Mohammadi, Iran’s most prominent human rights activist and an inmate in the country’s notorious Evin Prison, “for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran and her fight to promote human rights and freedom for all.” More

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    Russia’s Economy Is Increasingly Structured Around Its War in Ukraine

    The nation’s finances have proven resilient, despite punishing sanctions, giving it leeway to pump money into its military machine.“Everything needed for the front,” Russia’s finance minister declared, echoing a Soviet slogan from World War II as he talked about the government’s latest spending plans.The government still calls its invasion of Ukraine a “special military operation,” but the new budget figures make clear that the economy is increasingly being restructured around war.Nearly a third of the country’s spending next year — roughly $109 billion — will be devoted to “national defense,” the government announced late last month, redirecting money that might otherwise have flowed to health care, education, roads and other sectors. More tellingly, 6 percent of the nation’s total output is being funneled toward Russia’s war machine, more than double what it was before the invasion.Since Russia sent soldiers across the border in February 2022, its economy has had to adapt to dramatic changes with astonishing speed. The European Union, its biggest trading partner, quickly broke economic relations, upending well-established supply chains and reliable sources of income from abroad. The United States used its financial might to freeze hundreds of billions of dollars in Russian assets and cut the country off from the global financial system.Nineteen months later, the economic picture is decidedly mixed. The Russian economy has proved to be much more resilient than many Western governments assumed after imposing a punishing string of sanctions.Moscow has found other buyers for its oil. It has pumped money into the economy at a rapid pace to finance its military machine, putting almost every available worker into a job and raising the size of weekly paychecks. Total output, which the Russian Central Bank estimates may rise as much as 2.5 percent this year, could outpace the European Union and possibly even the United States.Yet that is only part of the story. As Laura Solanko, a senior adviser at the Bank of Finland Institute for Economies in Transition, said: “When a country is at war, gross domestic product is a fairly poor measure of welfare.” Producing bullets adds to a country’s growth rate without necessarily improving the quality of life.The insistent demand for foreign currency — to pay for imported goods or provide a safe investment — has also caused the value of the ruble to sink at a precipitous pace. Last week, it fell to a symbolic break point of 100 to the dollar, further fueling inflation and raising anxiety levels among consumers.Shoppers buying meat at the central market in Rostov-on-Don, Russia, in 2021. Inflation in Russia has driven up the price of meat and other products since the start of the war in Ukraine.Sergey Ponomarev for The New York TimesThe spike in government spending and borrowing has seriously stressed an already overheated economy. The central bank rapidly raised interest rates to 13 percent over the summer, as annual inflation continued to climb. Higher rates, which make it more expensive for businesses to expand and consumers to buy on credit, is likely to slow growth.Consumers are also feeling the squeeze for daily purchases. “Dairy products, especially butter, meat and even bread have gone up in price,” said Lidia Adreevna as she shopped and examined prices at an Auchan supermarket in Moscow. She blamed the central bank.“Life changes,” she offered, “nothing stays forever, not love, or happiness.”Other pensioners at the store also spoke about increases in meat and poultry prices, something almost half of Russians have noticed in the past month, according to survey data from the Moscow-based Public Opinion Foundation published Friday. Respondents also noted increases in the price of medicine and construction materials.Moscow imposed a temporary ban on diesel and gasoline exports last month in an effort to ease shortages and slow rising energy prices, but the restrictions further reduced the amount of foreign currency coming into the country.The exodus of funds is so worrying that the government has warned of reinstating controls on money leaving the country.With a presidential election scheduled in March, President Vladimir V. Putin acknowledged last month that accelerating inflation fueled by a weakened ruble was a major cause of concern. Getting a handle on price increases may discourage the government from embarking on its usual pre-election social spending.Lower standards of living can be “uncomfortable even for an authoritarian government,” said Charles Lichfield, deputy director of the Atlantic Council’s Geoeconomics Center.Since Russia imports a wide range of goods — from telephones and washing machines to cars, medicine and coffee — he said a devalued ruble makes “it more difficult for consumers to buy what they’re used to buying.”A Karachi Port Trust security guard keeping watch over the Clyde Noble, a Russian crude oil tanker berthed at the Karachi Port in Pakistan in June. Pakistan received discounted Russian crude oil as part of a new deal between Islamabad and Moscow.Rehan Khan/EPA, via ShutterstockThe United States, the European Union and countries allied with Ukraine have doggedly tried to cripple Russia with sweeping sanctions.The impact was swift and sharp in the spring of 2022. The ruble tumbled, the central bank increased rates to 20 percent to attract investors, and the government imposed strict controls on capital to keep money inside the country.But the ruble has since bounced back and interest rates come down. Russia found eager buyers elsewhere for its oil, which was selling at vastly discounted prices; liquefied natural gas; and other raw materials. More recently, Russia has become adept at evading the $60 per barrel price cap on oil imposed by the Group of 7 nations as global oil prices have once again started to rise.China is among the nations that have stepped up to buy energy and sell goods to Russia that they previously might have exchanged with European nations. Trade with China rose at an annual rate of 32 percent in the first eight months of this year. Trade with India tripled in the first half of the year, and exports from Turkey rose nearly 89 percent over the same period.Meanwhile, the war is gobbling up other parts of Russia’s budget aside from direct military spending. An additional 9.2 percent of the budget is slated for “national security,” which includes law enforcement. There is money for injured soldiers and for families of those killed in battle, and for “integrating new regions,” a reference to occupied territory in Ukraine.Sergei Guriev, a Russian economist who fled the country in 2013 and is now provost at Sciences Po in Paris, said accurately assessing the Russian economy is difficult. The existing economic models were designed before the war and based on different assumptions, and the published budget figures are incomplete.What that means for Russian households on a daily basis is harder to discern.“Overall, it’s very hard to compare quality of life before and after the war,” Mr. Guriev said. “It’s hard to know what Russians think. People are afraid.”Valerie Hopkins More

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    Amid Strikes, One Question: Are Employers Miscalculating?

    UPS, the Hollywood studios and the Detroit automakers appear to have been taken aback by the tactics and tougher style adopted by new union leaders.The list of gains that the Hollywood writers secured to end a nearly five-month strike with studios once seemed ludicrously ambitious: not just wage increases, but also minimum staffing levels for shows, new royalties on successful series and restrictions on outsourcing writing duties to artificial intelligence.Yet far from an anomaly, the writers’ deal was the latest high-profile labor standoff that seemed to produce substantial gains for workers, and to suggest that they have more leverage than in the past.United Parcel Service employees won large pay increases for part-timers by pushing the company to the brink of a strike, while the lowest-paid academic student employees at the University of California won salary increases of more than 50 percent after a monthlong strike affected thousands of students.Given the unions’ apparent bargaining power and the economic costs to a prolonged work stoppage, the question arises: Why wouldn’t management make its eventual concessions more quickly?The answer, many union and management experts say, is that employers are increasingly miscalculating — acting from a template that applied in previous decades, when employees had little leverage, and underestimating the frustration and resolve in the postpandemic work force.“Psychologically, it’s a big shift: They’ve been in control. They have been able to tell their representatives to go and get concessions on X and Y, to make sure the wage increase is modest,” said Thomas Kochan, an emeritus management professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, referring to corporate executives.“Now, they have to change their expectations internally,” Dr. Kochan added. “They have a lot of work to do.”In example after example, executives appear to have been taken aback by unions’ new, more assertive leaders and their success at rallying members and the public, as well as the ineffectiveness of the employers’ traditional bargaining approach.Sean O’Brien, the Teamsters president, right, attacked UPS over what the union referred to as “part-time poverty” jobs.Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York TimesIn Hollywood, the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents entertainment companies in negotiations with writers, directors and actors, has frequently tried to forge a deal with one of the three guilds, then push the other two to accept similar terms.That appeared to be the group’s strategy this year as well: After the writers went on strike in May, the alliance reached a deal with directors the next month. But any hope that the writers would be isolated collapsed when SAG-AFTRA, the union representing more than 150,000 actors, went on strike in July.“The playbook was clearly outdated,” said Peter Newman, a longtime independent producer who heads a dual-degree master’s program in business and fine arts at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.Still, Mr. Newman said, the strikes saved the studios hundreds of millions of dollars on shows in the short term as Wall Street was pressuring them to cut costs.The producers’ alliance declined to comment for this article.In Detroit, the three major U.S. automakers had grown accustomed to closed-door negotiations with the United Automobile Workers union, in which the parties did not disclose the potential terms until they reached an overall agreement.But in the run-up to this year’s mid-September strike deadline, the union’s new president, Shawn Fain, appeared to wrong-foot executives at Ford Motor, General Motors and Stellantis — which makes the Chrysler and Jeep brands — by disclosing and deriding the companies’ offers. In one case, he literally threw a Stellantis proposal in the garbage.Automakers have expressed impatience with the leadership style of Shawn Fain, center, the United Automobile Workers union leader.Cydni Elledge for The New York TimesThe companies’ responses — a Stellantis executive sent employees a letter saying that “theatrics and personal insults will not help,” while Ford and G.M. have also expressed impatience — may have further galvanized members and built public support. Polls have found that the public supports the autoworkers over the companies by large margins, and that the margins increased after the U.A.W. began a limited strike.“It doesn’t seem like they were prepared for the direction he was headed with his public comments,” David Pryzbylski, a labor lawyer who represents employers at Barnes & Thornburg, said of the reaction to Mr. Fain. “The way they have responded may have escalated it further versus letting it die out.”Stellantis declined to comment. Auto industry executives argue that they have made historically generous offers, and that they haven’t been put off by Mr. Fain’s outspokenness so much as what they say are the showmanship and the unrealistic expectations he has created.Mr. Pryzbylski emphasized that it was too early to tell whether the landscape had tilted to labor’s advantage for the longer term, or just temporarily. The outcome of the U.A.W. strike remains unclear, and the workers’ resolve could diminish if the strike drags on for weeks. Talks between the sides are ongoing.Other management-side lawyers said that while a handful of executives might have miscalculated of late, there was no broader trend in this direction. They say that employers remain capable of assessing and acting in their self-interest, and that unions are equally capable of miscalculating.“People are sophisticated on both sides,” said Marshall Babson, a longtime management-side lawyer and former member of the National Labor Relations Board. “From my experience, good negotiators don’t get distracted by pyrotechnics.”But in many cases, what has changed is not so much the bluster from union leaders as their willingness to follow through — a potentially disruptive shift after years of often empty threats.When Sean O’Brien, the Teamsters president, ran to succeed his longtime predecessor, James P. Hoffa, in 2021, he promised to raise wages for part-time workers at UPS, many of whom had long felt shortchanged.And yet, according to two people close to the negotiations, the company seemed caught off guard when talks broke down over the issue on July 5 — Mr. O’Brien’s initial deadline.Mr. O’Brien and the union spent the next few weeks publicly attacking UPS over what the union referred to as “part-time poverty” jobs before the company agreed to hourly wage increases for part-timers of more than $7.50 over the life of the new five-year contract.The chief executive of UPS, Carol Tomé, said the company had expected contract talks this year “to be late and loud, and they were.”Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York TimesShortly after a tentative deal was reached in late July, the UPS chief executive, Carol Tomé, said the company had expected the negotiations “to be late and loud, and they were.” The company declined to comment for this article.Part of the challenge for employers is public opinion: Confidence in big business is at its lowest point in decades, according to Gallup, while approval of labor unions is close to its highest. Mr. Fain and Mr. O’Brien appear to have devised their public campaigns to press this advantage.Unions also appear to have benefited from new methods of keeping members focused on shared goals — as when writers erupted on social media over the news that the talk show hosted by Drew Barrymore would return before the strike ended. (Ms. Barrymore soon reversed course.)And rank-and-file members appear to have become more committed to their leaders’ negotiating strategy as unions have become more democratic and involved members more in the push for a contract, said Jane McAlevey, a longtime labor organizer and scholar.But perhaps most important, employers seem to be underestimating the determination of workers, who believe they have little to lose from striking amid rising prices and fundamental shifts in their industry that have sometimes made their jobs more precarious.A few weeks after the writers walked off the job this spring, Mae Smith, a strike captain and former writer on the Showtime series “Billions,” predicted in an interview that the economic pain of a protracted strike against the studios would not discourage the writers because “unfortunately they’ve been training us to live off very few months of work for a long time.”The prediction largely held, in something of a departure from the 2007 writers’ strike. Back then, when streaming felt like a distant threat, there were some splits within the Writers Guild over how aggressive to be, said Chris Keyser, a past president of the union.This time, the writers appeared particularly unified by the looming role of artificial intelligence, an issue on which the studios largely refused to engage for months.“A number of C.E.O.s, when we talked to them later about A.I., said that was a mistake,” recalled Mr. Keyser, a co-chair of the writers’ negotiating committee this year.(The writers did compromise on some key issues in the end — there is no ban on studios’ use of scripts they own to train A.I. tools, though the guild reserved the right to challenge instances of this.)Dr. Kochan of M.I.T. said the concession from studios on artificial intelligence was especially significant because it highlighted another shift: employers’ diminished ability to limit negotiations to conventional issues like wages and benefits while often reserving the right to control other aspects of the job, like technology adoption.“For decades, management has been able to say: ‘These are our decisions, our prerogatives. It’s none of your business,’” he said.With the breakthrough on artificial intelligence, he added, “this is a new day — that’s why the writers’ strike was so important.” More

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    Even as job creation surges, Americans still think the economy stinks. Here’s why

    If a healthy jobs picture is the the cornerstone of a healthy economy, then why do so many people still think things are terrible?
    The answer is inflation which, while heading lower in terms of its annual pace, is still far more than most people can stand.
    “Aggregate economic statistics sometimes don’t reflect what people are living day to day,” said economist Elizabeth Crofoot.

    People pump gas into their vehicles at a Shell petrol station on October 2, 2023 in Alhambra, California. 
    Frederic J. Brown | Afp | Getty Images

    The U.S. economy has added more than 2.3 million jobs this year, the unemployment rate is still below 4% and there are nearly 10 million open positions out there for anyone still looking for work.
    So if a healthy jobs picture is the the cornerstone of a healthy economy, then why do so many people still think things are terrible?

    It’s because the rent — along with the food, the gas and the appliances — is still too damn high. In a word: Inflation, which while heading lower in terms of its annual pace, is still far more than most people can stand and is making everything else look, if not terrible, at least less wonderful.
    “You see all these high-level headline numbers, and those numbers don’t jibe with your economic reality,” said Elizabeth Crofoot, senior economist at labor analytics firm Lightcast. “I don’t know if there’s a right or wrong, it’s just people’s reality, and aggregate economic statistics sometimes don’t reflect what people are living day to day.”
    The latest batch of seemingly great economic news came Friday, when the Labor Department said nonfarm payrolls rose by 336,000 in September. And that wasn’t all: Revisions to July and August showed an additional 119,000 jobs added, and the unemployment rate held steady at 3.8%.That all came on top of what has been another stellar year for job creation.
    Yet President Joe Biden’s economic approval rating is just 42%, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll. Consumer and business sentiment has shown signs of improving — the latest University of Michigan consumer survey shows confidence has returned to around where it was in late-2021 — but is still well below where it was pre-pandemic.

    That is likely because prices are still at painful levels.

    As an economist, Crofoot says the difficulty high prices are posing can be tough to discern from the macro data. As a consumer, though, she says she can feel it when she takes her two kids out to dinner and sees that not only have prices risen for children’s meals, but things like free drinks for them have been taken away as well.
    “It’s the combination of inflation and shrinkflation,” she said. “As a consumer, you feel like you’re being nickeled and dimed at every turn.”
    About 10% of consumer items were downsized from 2015-2021, while 4% were upsized, according to the Labor Department. Again, though, the data often don’t seem to match experiences, and the shrinkflation phenomenon — less of a product, with the same or higher prices — seems to be getting worse.
    “Consumers just feel like they can’t win, and of course you’re going to feel down on the economy because of that,” Crofoot said.

    Higher housing

    It hasn’t just been gas and groceries that are making it feel like the cost of living is out of control.
    Home prices soared in Covid’s aftermath, pushing people out of urban centers and into outlying regions. The median home sales price has surged 27% since the end of 2019, making owning a home particularly difficult for younger buyers such as millennials.
    The median age of a homebuyer in the U.S. is 36, the oldest-ever in data going back to 1981, according to the National Association of Realtors. At the same time, the share of income as a percentage of home prices is at its highest ever, according to government data that goes back to 1987.

    “Even though millennials are the largest adult generation in the U.S., they had a shrinking share of buyers in the market last year,” NAR deputy chief economist Jessica Lautz wrote in a recent blog post. “This is at odds with what could happen as the largest number of millennials is at an age they traditionally have entered the market or at least had household formation. This year, baby boomers overtook millennials.”
    Higher prices have been one problem. Higher interest rates are another, with 30-year mortgages running at an average 7.83% loan rate, according to Bankrate. Financial markets are on edge that the Federal Reserve could take rates even higher if inflation doesn’t cool.
    “This has very significant implications for wealth building,” Crofoot added.

    Are the jobs numbers really that good?

    Beyond the housing costs, there’s some evidence that the jobs numbers may not be all they’re cracked up to be, either.
    After all, more than a quarter of the job creation for September came from lower-wage occupations in the leisure and hospitality industry.
    Real career advancement opportunities are tougher to get these days, and Census Bureau surveys have shown growing despair among teens and the Gen Z cohort, who worry about their future on an economic level.

    “Inflation continues to be a major source of concern for young adults, offsetting [Friday’s] potentially good employment news,” said William Rodgers III, director of the Institute for Economic Equity at the St. Louis Fed. “It, too, may be contributing to their heightened mental health distress.”
    So even as the good macro data continues to pour in, high prices likely will continue to serve as an offsetting factor.
    While the consumer price index may show inflation running at a 3.7% annual rate now, it’s about 20% higher than it was since early in the pandemic. The CPI numbers for September will be released Wednesday.
    “Prices are high relative to what they were before,” Crofoot said. “So you’re spending more than you can save, and so retirement is going to be further off for you than it was for previous generations.” More

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    in Economy

    In Provence, Winemakers Confront Climate Change

    “You can taste the climate change.”Frédéric Chaudière, a third-generation winemaker in the French village of Mormoiron, took a sip of white wine and set down his glass.The tastes of centuries-old varieties are being altered by spiking temperatures, scant rainfall, snap frosts and unpredictable bouts of extreme weather. The hellish summer was the latest reminder of how urgently the $333 billion global wine industry is being forced to adapt. Temperature records were set in Europe, the United States, China, North Africa and the Middle East as hail, drought, wildfires and floods on a biblical scale inflicted damage.Grape vines are some of the most weather-sensitive crops, and growers from Australia to Argentina have been struggling to cope. The imperative is particularly great in Europe, which is home to five of the world’s top 10 wine-producing countries and includes 45 percent of the planet’s wine-growing areas.Chêne Bleu is one of the highest vineyards in Provence, France. Winegrowers have been increasingly searching for higher altitudes for cooler temperatures. For many vineyards, new weather patterns are resulting in smaller grapes that produce sweeter wines with a higher alcohol content.A tractor driver loading grapes picked by harvesters. Chêne Bleu is one of the region’s leaders in developing adaptations for cultivation and processing that are regenerative and organic.Mr. Chaudière is the president of an association of wine producers in Ventoux. His winery, Château Pesquié, is in the Rhône Valley, where the impact of climate change over the past 50 years on winegrowers has been significant.The first burst of buds appear 15 days earlier than they did in the early 1970s, according to a recent analysis. Ripening starts 18 days earlier. And harvesting begins in late August instead of mid September. Change was expected, but the accelerating pace has come as a shock.For many vineyards, the new weather patterns are resulting in smaller grapes that produce sweeter wines with a higher alcohol content. These developments, alas, are out of step with consumers who are turning to lighter, fresher tasting wines with more tartness and less alcohol.For other vineyards, the challenges are more profound: Dwindling water supplies threaten their existence.How to respond to these shifts, though, is not necessarily clear.A harvester clipping clusters by hand and dropping them into round baskets, which are then moved into trucks.Emergency irrigation, for example, can save young vines from dying when the heat is scorching. Yet over the long haul, access to water near the surface means the roots may not drill down deep into the earth in search of the subterranean water tables they need to sustain them.Chêne Bleu, a small and relatively new family winery on La Verrière, the site of a medieval priory above the village of Crestet, is one of the region’s leaders in developing adaptations for cultivation and processing that are regenerative and organic.“We’re all going to get whacked by similar weather challenges,” said Nicole Rolet, who inaugurated the winery in 2006 with her husband, Xavier.In her view, there are two responses to climate change: You can fight it with chemicals and artificial additives that battle nature, she said, or “you can create a balanced functioning of the ecology through biodiversity.”Gardeners tending to the fruit and vegetable quarter. Scientists have found that expanding the variety of plants and animals can reduce the impact of shifting climate on crops. Between the rows, grasses blanket the ground. They help manage erosion, retain water, enrich the soil, capture more carbon and control pests and disease.There is a bee colony on the property to increase cross-pollination. The natural approach was on display one morning as harvesters slowly inched down the rows of vines, clipping plump purple clusters of Grenache grapes by hand.Stationary wooden pickets have been replaced by a trellising system that can be adjusted upward as vines grow so that their leaves can be positioned to serve as a natural canopy to shade grapes from a burning sun.Between the rows, grasses blanket the ground. They are just some of the cover crops that have been planted to help manage erosion, retain water, enrich the soil, capture more carbon and control pests and disease.Scientists have found that expanding the variety of plants and animals can reduce the impact of shifting climate on crops, highlighting, as one study put it, “the critical role that human decisions play in building agricultural systems resilient to climate change.”Surrounding Chêne Bleu’s emerald fields are wildflowers, a wide range of plant species and a private forest. There is a bee colony to increase cross-pollination and a grove of bamboo to naturally filter water used in the winery.Sheep provide the manure for fertilizer. The vineyard also dug a muddy pool — nicknamed the “spa” — for roaming wild boar, to lure them away from the juicy grapes with their own water supply.The Rolets have teamed up with university researchers to experiment with cultivation practices. And they are compiling a census of animal and plant species, including installing infrared equipment to capture rare creatures like a genet, a catlike animal with a long, ringed tail.“People are formally and informally doing experimental work, promoting best practices,” Ms. Rolet said, as she sat in a grand dining hall topped by stone archways at the restored priory. “It’s surprisingly hard to do.”“No one has time or money to take nose off the grindstone to look at what someone is doing on the other side of the world,” she explained.Harvesters sifting through grapes on a conveyor belt in the winery, looking to pick out stray leaves or bad grapes.At the winery, the morning’s harvest is emptied onto a conveyor belt, where workers pick out stray leaves or damaged berries before they are dropped into a gentle balloon press. The golden juice drips down into a tray lined with dry ice, producing vaporous swirls and tendrils. The ice prevents bacterial growth and eats up the oxygen that can ruin the flavor.Chêne Bleu has several advantages that many neighboring vineyards don’t. Its 75 acres are relatively isolated and located in a Unsesco biosphere reserve, a designation aimed at conserving biodiversity and promoting sustainable practices. Because it is situated on a limestone outcropping on the ridge of a tectonic plate, the soil contains ancient seabeds and a rich combination of minerals. And, at 1,600 feet, it is one of the highest vineyards in Provence.Winegrowers have been increasingly searching for higher altitudes because of cooler nighttime temperatures and shorter periods of intense heat. In Spain’s Catalonia region, the global wine producer Familia Torres has in recent years planted vineyards at 3,000 to 4,000 feet up.An assistant winemaker. A cellar assistant cleaning equipment.The wine cellar with barrels made of French oaks.Chêne Bleu has other resources. Mr. Rolet, a successful businessman and former chief executive of the London Stock Exchange, has been able to finance the vineyard’s cutting edge equipment and experiments. A larger marketing budget enables the vineyard to take chances others might not want to risk.The Rolets, for example, chose to sometimes bypass traditional appellations — legally defined and protected wine-growing areas — to experiment with more varieties for their high-end offerings.Although the wine map has changed, France’s strict classification system has not. Appellations were instituted decades ago to ensure that buyers knew what they were purchasing. But now, those definitions can limit the type of varieties that farmers can use as they search for vines that can better withstand climate change.Dry ice being added to the press pan to help protect the juice from oxygen. The juice drips down into a tray lined with dry ice, which prevents bacterial growth and eats up the oxygen that can ruin the flavor.“There is a big, frustrating lag time between what the winemakers are experiencing and what the authorities are doing,” said Julien Fauque, the director of Cave de Lumières, a cooperative of roughly 50 winegrowers who farm 450 hectares of land in the Ventoux and Luberon areas.Climate change may mean that growers must reconsider once unthinkable practices.Adding tiny amounts of water could reduce the alcoholic content and prevent fermentation from stalling, he said, but the practice, strictly forbidden across the European Union, could land a winemaker in prison. California, by contrast, allows such additions.There is flexibility in the system, said Anthony Taylor, the director of communications at Gabriel Meffre in Gigondas, one of the larger wineries in southern Rhône. But “they’re on a wire,” he said of official regulators. “They want to preserve as much as possible a profile that is successful, and they’re also listening to the other side, which argues we need to change things or introduce new varieties.”The pace of change, though, is accelerating, Mr. Taylor said: “The speed at which we’re moving is quite frightening.”A chef uses only local products, mainly from the vegetable garden on the estate.Harvesters taking a lunch break before returning to work.Chêne Bleu is on La Verrière, the site of a medieval priory. More

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    in Economy

    U.A.W. Will Not Expand Strikes at G.M., Ford and Stellantis as Talks Progress

    The United Automobile Workers reported improved wage offers from the automakers and a concession from General Motors on workers at battery factories.The United Automobile Workers union said on Friday that it had made progress in its negotiations with Ford Motor, General Motors and Stellantis, the parent of Chrysler, and would not expand the strikes against the companies that began three weeks ago.In an online video, the president of the union, Shawn Fain, said all three companies had significantly improved their offers to the union, including providing bigger raises and offering cost-of-living increases. In what he described as a major breakthrough, Mr. Fain said G.M. was now willing to include workers at its battery factories in the company’s national contract with the U.A.W.G.M. had previously said that it could not include those workers because they are employed by joint ventures between G.M. and battery suppliers.“Here’s the bottom line: We are winning,” said Mr. Fain, wearing a T-shirt that read, “Eat the Rich.” “We are making progress, and we are headed in the right direction.”Mr. Fain said G.M. made the concession on battery plant workers after the union had threatened to strike the company’s factory in Arlington, Texas, where it makes some of its most profitable full-size sport-utility vehicles, including the Cadillac Escalade and the Chevrolet Tahoe. The plant employs 5,300 workers.G.M. has started production at one battery plant in Ohio, and has others under construction in Tennessee and Michigan. Workers at the Ohio plant voted overwhelmingly to be represented by the U.A.W. and have been negotiating a separate contract with the joint venture, Ultium Cells, that G.M. owns with L.G. Energy Solution.Ford is building two joint-venture battery plants in Kentucky and one in Tennessee, and a fourth in Michigan that is wholly owned by Ford. Stellantis has just started building a battery plant in Indiana and is looking for a site for a second.G.M. declined to comment about battery plant workers. “Negotiations remain ongoing, and we will continue to work towards finding solutions to address outstanding issues,” the company said in a statement. “Our goal remains to reach an agreement that rewards our employees and allows G.M. to be successful into the future”Shares of the three companies jumped after Mr. Fain spoke. G.M.’s stock closed up about 2 percent, Stellantis about 3 percent and Ford about 1 percent.The strike began Sept. 15 when workers walked out of three plants in Michigan, Ohio and Missouri, each owned by one of the three companies.The stoppage was later expanded to 38 spare-parts distribution centers owned by G.M. and Stellantis, and then to a Ford plant in Chicago and another G.M. factory in Lansing, Mich. About 25,000 of the 150,000 U.A.W. members employed by the three Michigan automakers were on strike as of Friday morning.“I think this strategy of targeted strikes is working,” said Peter Berg, a professor of employment relations at Michigan State University. “It has the effect of slowly ratcheting up the cost to the companies, and they don’t know necessarily where he’s going to strike next.”Here Are the Locations Where U.A.W. Strikes Are HappeningSee where U.A.W. members are on strike at plants and distribution centers owned by Ford, General Motors and Stellantis.The contract battle has become a national political issue. President Biden visited a picket line near Detroit last month. A day later, former President Donald J. Trump spoke at a nonunion factory north of Detroit and criticized Mr. Biden and leaders of the U.A.W. Other lawmakers and candidates have voiced support for the U.A.W. or criticized the strikes.When negotiations began in July, Mr. Fain initially demanded a 40 percent increase in wages, noting that workers’ pay has not kept up with inflation over the last 15 years and that the chief executives of the three companies have seen pay increases of roughly that magnitude.The automakers, which have made near-record profits over the last 10 years, have all offered increases of slightly more than 20 percent over four years. Company executives have said anything more would threaten their ability to compete with nonunion companies like Tesla and invest in new electric vehicle models and battery factories.The union also wants to end a wage system in which newly hired workers earn just over half the top U.A.W. wage, $32 an hour now, and need to work for eight years to reach the maximum. It is also seeking cost-of-living adjustments if inflation flares, pensions for a greater number of workers, company-paid retirement health care, shorter working hours and the right to strike in response to plant closings.In separate statements, Ford and Stellantis have said they agreed to provide cost-of-living increases, shorten the time it takes for employees to reach the top wage, and several other measures the union has sought.Ford also said it was “open to the possibility of working with the U.A.W. on future battery plants in the U.S.” Its battery plants are still under construction and have not hired any production workers yet.The union is concerned that some of its members will lose their jobs, especially people who work at engine and transmission plants, as the automakers produce more electric cars and trucks. Those vehicles do not need those parts, relying instead on electric motors and batteries.Stellantis’ chief operating officer for North America, Mark Stewart, said the company and the union were “making progress, but there are gaps that still need to be closed.”The union is also pushing the companies to convert temporary workers who now make a top wage of $20 an hour into full-time staff.Striking at only select locations at all three companies is a change from the past, when the U.A.W. typically called for a strike at all locations of one company that the union had chosen as its target. Striking at only a few locations hurts the companies — the idled plants make some of their most profitable models — but limits the economic damage to the broader economies in the affected states.It also could help preserve the union’s $825 million strike fund, from which striking workers are paid while they’re off the job. The union is paying striking workers $500 a week.G.M. said this week that the first two weeks of the strike had cost it $200 million. The three automakers and some of their suppliers have said that they have had to lay off hundreds of workers because the strikes have disrupted the supply and demand for certain parts.Santul Nerkar More

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    in Economy

    Hispanic unemployment rate declines in September

    Among Hispanic workers, the jobless rate decreased to 4.6% from 4.9%.
    Broken down, it dipped to 4.3% from 4.4% among Hispanic women and held steady at 4.3% for Hispanic men.
    The jobless rate among Hispanic workers still lags that of white and Asian workers.

    The U.S. unemployment rate held steady in September but ticked down among Hispanic workers, according to data released Friday by the U.S. Department of Labor.
    September’s nonfarm payrolls report showed a blockbuster month of higher numbers across the board. The economy added 336,000 jobs last month, blowing past the 170,000 estimate from economists polled by Dow Jones. The unemployment rate held steady at 3.8% and came in slightly ahead of a 3.7% forecast.

    Among Hispanic workers, the jobless rate decreased to 4.6% from 4.9%. Broken down, it dipped to 4.3% from 4.4% among Hispanic women and held steady at 4.3% for Hispanic men.
    Meanwhile, the labor force participation rate, which measures the percentage of people working or actively searching for employment in a population, rose to 67.3% from 67.1% in August.

    The combination of a downtick in unemployment and increase in labor force participation is a “best of both worlds” scenario for the group, according to Michelle Holder, associate economics professor at John Jay College in New York.
    “Latinos — with this report — fared pretty well, and job growth in leisure and hospitality could explain part of that,” she said, noting that this population tends to be overrepresented in that sector.
    Elise Gould, a senior economist at The Economic Policy Institute, called the data surrounding Hispanic workers a “mild sign” of an improving labor market, but cautioned reading too much into the month-to-month metrics poised for volatility.

    The jobless rate among Hispanic workers still lags that of white and Asian workers at 3.4% and 2.8%, respectively. However, it does mark a stark difference from the depths of the Covid-19 pandemic when the group experienced the highest unemployment rate, according to Gould.
    “It speaks to the resilience of the labor market,” she said. “Even in the face of rising interest rates, to be able to stay strong, and have it stay strong for so long that you’re really pulling in many historically marginalized groups back into the labor market.”
    However, the jobless rate did tick higher among Black workers, rising to 5.7% from 5.3% in August. Among Black men, the unemployment rate increased to 5.6% from 5%, and fell to 4.5% from 4.7% among Black women.

    Despite these discrepancies, Gould noted that the jobless rate for this group does hover near year-ago levels and remains well below where it stood prior to the pandemic.
    “I always take pause when I see the Black unemployment rate increase, but on the other hand, we’ve seen some volatility in the Black unemployment rate for the last few months,” said Holder.
    Broken down, the labor force participation rate for Hispanic men ticked up to 79.5% from 79.2% in August and held steady at 61.8% among Hispanic women.
    Labor force participation also rose among Black workers, inching up to 62.9% from 62.6% in August. For Black men, labor force participation rose to 68.6% from 68.4%, and slipped to 62.6% from 62.7% among Black women.
    — CNBC’s Gabriel Cortes contributed reporting. More

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    in Economy

    Strong U.S. Job Growth Shows Economy Is Defying Challenges

    Employers added 336,000 jobs in September, almost double what experts had forecast and the biggest gain since January. Markets welcomed the report.In a sign of continued economic stamina, American payrolls grew by 336,000 in September on a seasonally adjusted basis, the Labor Department said on Friday.The increase, almost double what economists had forecast, confirmed the labor market’s vitality and the overall hardiness of an economy facing challenges from a variety of forces.It was the 33rd consecutive month of job growth, and the increase was the biggest since January.The unemployment rate, based on a survey of households, was steady at 3.8 percent. It has been below 4 percent for nearly two years, a stretch not achieved since the late 1960s.Unemployment was unchanged in SeptemberUnemployment rate More