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    Saudi Arabia reports its first budget surplus in nearly 10 years on higher oil prices

    The 2022 surplus came to 102 billion riyals ($27 billion), constituting 2.6% of Saudi gross domestic product, according to the kingdom’s finance ministry, releasing what it said were preliminary estimates.
    Economists estimate Saudi Arabia needs the price of oil to be between $75 and $80 a barrel in order to balance its budget.
    Geopolitical events, primarily Russia’s war in Ukraine and ensuing sanctions on Russian oil from Western countries, have put pressure on oil supplies, sharply increasing energy prices.

    The Kingdom Tower (center) stands on the skyline above the King Fahd highway in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
    Simon Dawson | Bloomberg | Getty Images

    Saudi Arabia reported its first budget surplus in nearly 10 years, thanks to its revenue being ramped up by elevated oil prices.
    The 2022 surplus came to 102 billion riyals ($27 billion), constituting 2.6% of Saudi gross domestic product, according to the kingdom’s finance ministry, releasing what it said were preliminary estimates.

    Total revenue for this year was estimated at 1.234 trillion riyals, while spending amounted to 1.132 trillion riyals.
    The government of the hydrocarbon-rich country approved a 1.114 trillion riyal budget for 2023 and expects to still see a surplus of 16 billion riyals. That’s a significant reduction from this year’s surplus, amounting to just 0.4% of GDP, but is a surplus nonetheless and is based on an oil price far lower than what many analysts expect for next year.
    “Our analysis suggests the budget is based on an oil price forecast of around USD 75 (per barrel), well below our house forecast of USD 105 (per barrel) for next year,” Daniel Richards, MENA economist at Dubai-based bank Emirates NBD, wrote in a research note.
    Economists estimate Saudi Arabia needs the price of oil to be between $75 and $80 a barrel in order to balance its budget.
    International benchmark Brent crude futures traded up 0.2% at $77.45 a barrel on Thursday afternoon in London, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate futures rose 1.4% at $73.09.

    Growth for the country is forecast to drop significantly compared to this year, however, slowing from 8.5% this year to 3.1% in 2023, the finance ministry said.

    Crude oil storage tanks at the Juaymah Tank Farm in Saudi Aramco’s Ras Tanura oil refinery and oil terminal in Saudi Arabia, in 2018.
    Simon Dawson | Bloomberg | Getty Images

    Many Middle Eastern banks are receiving neutral outlooks from ratings agencies, the ratings agency Fitch reported, which it says reflects “solid economic conditions.” But Saudi Arabia stands out for having positive outlooks on most of its banks’ Issuer Default Ratings, “driven by improvements in its balance sheet given higher oil revenue and fiscal consolidation,” Fitch wrote in a report this week.
    Still, analysts at Goldman Sachs think expenditure will overshoot the budget next year, as Saudi Arabia’s government pursues expensive megaprojects like the futuristic city of NEOM, Vision 2030 investments, and more. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman launched Vision 2030 in 2016 with the aim of dramatically transforming and modernizing Saudi Arabia and reducing its economic reliance on oil revenues.
    Goldman also forecasts a lower oil price for the next year than the analysts at Emirates NBD.
    “Our own projections, based on an average oil price of $90/bbl in 2023, lead to revenues of SAR 1,187bn, slightly below the 2022 estimated out-turn,” a report from Goldman Sachs on Thursday said.
    “With our expenditure forecast at SAR1,213bn (9% above budget), the result would be a deficit of 0.7% of GDP.”

    Visitors watch a 3D presentation during an exhibition on ‘Neom’, a new business and industrial city, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, October 25, 2017.
    Faisal Al Nasser | Reuters

    Spending overshoot took place in 2022, with current expenditure going over budget by 14%, Goldman’s report wrote, citing data from the government’s budget statement. Capital spending, meanwhile, was 64% higher than budgeted and government spending increased by 9% year-on-year.
    “The expenditure overshoot was mainly related to spending on military and security, as well as healthcare,” Goldman’s analysts wrote.
    Geopolitical events, primarily Russia’s war in Ukraine and ensuing sanctions on Russian oil from Western countries, have put pressure on oil supplies, sharply increasing energy prices.
    “Much of the fiscal situation and growth story is of course directly related to high energy prices, and indirectly related to the factors and geopolitical events moving prices,” Robert Mogielnicki, a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, told the AFP.
    “Yet,” he added, “Saudi Arabia does deserve credit for its fiscal consolidation and economic reforms, which have also helped the overall economic picture.”

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    In Appalachia, Margo Miller Leads from “a Place of Courageous Joy”

    “Transforming Spaces” is a new series about women driving change in sometimes unexpected places.Margo Miller, the executive director of the Appalachian Community Fund, describes herself as a “proud Black mountain woman” in a region not widely known for being home to generations of Black people.In her day-to-day work, Ms. Miller, 53, is in charge of financially supporting regional organizations, individuals and groups working to advance social, economic, racial and environmental justice across Appalachia. The largely economically depressed region is a vast swath of land that encompasses some or all of 13 states, including parts of Kentucky, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, the Carolinas, Maryland and all of West Virginia.Support from the fund is sometimes a couple hundred dollars and other times $5,000 or more, depending on the year and the causes.In 2021, the organization gave out more than $600,000 to organizations, individuals and groups in Appalachia, where the often stunning landscape consists of family farms, twisting back roads, steep mountain passes and fairly secluded communities, some with newly revitalized downtowns. Since its inception in 1987, the fund has given away more than $6 million. Ms. Miller said that lately it had been getting a lot more support from a diverse array of donors.“Our range is 50 cents to $50,000,” she said. “We have a donor who would tape quarters inside of an envelope and send it to us.” One year, she added, another regular donor sent a gift of $50,000, “saying, ‘I know the region can really use this gift this year.’”Ms. Miller, who lives in East Knoxville, has become one of the most powerful people in philanthropy in a rapidly evolving region that has long been marred by stereotypes, misunderstanding and, for Black people, erasure, according to academics and leaders of nonprofit groups. Many Black people, including Ms. Miller’s family, have lived in Southern Appalachia and Central Appalachia for at least three generations (she had relatives who worked in Kentucky’s coal mines), but their stories are not often told.Margo Miller, at the Knoxville Botanical Gardens in East Knoxville, a historically Black neighborhood where she has lived since 2008.Jessica Tezak for The New York TimesMs. Miller said she relished having access to the natural beauty that she strives to celebrate as an artist and activist.Jessica Tezak for The New York TimesInstead, the Appalachia portrayed in popular culture tends to be largely associated with stories of white coal miners and their families, a narrative that several scholars, sociologists, artists and residents, Ms. Miller among them, have been working hard to shift.Dr. Enkeshi El-Amin, an assistant professor of sociology at West Virginia University, doesn’t remember exactly when or how she met Ms. Miller, but she does recall hearing about her since her earliest days of living in Knoxville in 2013. “Margo’s name was one of those names that you just knew,” said Dr. El-Amin, whose academic work focuses on how “racial practices shape Black places and how Black people are, in turn, involved in practices that define, contest and reimagine places.” Ms. Miller, she said, “is sort of like an O.G.” She added, “Her name was always there, which tells you a lot.”Ms. Miller, in fact, has always been a natural leader, whether she realized it or not.As a child growing up among the mountains and hollows, or hollers as the valleys are colloquially called, of Roane County, Tenn., and later in North Knoxville, she said, she was “the bossy one who wanted to play the teacher.” In her mostly white elementary school, she was student of the year (the first Black student to receive the title), and in high school she was class president (the first Black student to hold the position). She is a self-professed nerd.“Being a nerd is kind of trendy now, but back then it wasn’t the case,” she said in a recent interview from her office, surrounded by crafting supplies. She’s a big crafter too. “I definitely was a kid who had my nose buried in a book.Standing nearly 5 feet 10 inches, Ms. Miller today knows how to command a room, whether she is speaking or not. But she recalled that the earliest days of her career as an administrator were more challenging, in part, because she is a Black woman. She talks of going on job interviews in the 1990s and white men being surprised when she entered the room. Some would start to say, “I wasn’t expecting you. … ” and she would have a ready comeback.Ms. Miller in 2014, with Rev. Keith Caldwell, left, then the vice president of the N.A.A.C.P. in Tennessee, presented a social justice plan at the Highlander Research and Education Center, which nurtures movements for social, economic and restorative environmental change in disenfranchised communities in Appalachia. Ebony Blevins“Back then, I would laugh and say: ‘I know. You weren’t expecting me to be so tall,” she said. “I would really try to make them feel more comfortable and they’d look at me like, ‘Who are you? I’m waiting for a white Margo Miller.’” Those experiences were demoralizing, but she found joy, support and opportunities to grow in Knoxville’s theater community, where she was surrounded by other Black people. She had immersed herself in theater while in college there and became a performer and stage manager.Ms. Miller said her experiences with racism were not the same today. “I’m currently surrounded by a community of social justice folks who are all about equity and inclusion and anti-racist practice,” she said. “I’m fortunate and do not have the same experience of other sisters who work for mostly white boards and trustees. Many of them have uphill battles.”African Americans make up about 10 percent of Appalachia’s population while those identifying as Hispanic or Latino account for 5.6 percent of the population, a number that is growing, according to the Appalachian Regional Commission. Still, sociologists and historians said, Black and Latino people with roots in Appalachia have a deep connection to the area and their rich history should be studied and appreciated. People like Ms. Miller, who are connected to the region’s history, help with this effort, they said.“You get coal mining stories or you’ll hear of good race relations here because there weren’t many Black folks here, but those stories distort,” Dr. El-Amin, of West Virginia University, said. “Black folks have always been in the region. From slavery on up.”The fund that Ms. Miller heads supports all Appalachians, regardless of race, gender, sexuality or other identities, but under her leadership, which started in 2011, minority Appalachians say they have felt more included. For them, merely seeing a Black woman who is committed to the growth and development of the area is a comfort and source of encouragement.Richard Graves, an artist in Abingdon, Va, a 2021 recipient of $5,000 from the community fund’s fellowship program said that the money made it possible for him to find stability during the first year he worked as an artist full-time. The foundation gave a total of $80,000 to fellows like Mr. Graves. But even more valuable than the financial support, he said, was the community support that came with being in the fund’s network.“Because of how sectioned and pocketed off these rural communities are, doing community work together can be hard,” he said. “It gave me faces and names of people across the region. We met on Zoom every two weeks and continue to keep in touch.”Strengthening community and bringing people together is one of Ms. Miller’s strongest qualities, according to several organizers and beneficiaries of the organization’s fund.“Margo has been a field builder making space for nonwhite voices, nonwhite leadership in the region, in central Appalachia,” Lora Smith, the chief strategy officer for the Foundation for Appalachian Kentucky, said. “She is as unapologetically Appalachian as she is unapologetically a Black woman leading a community fund.”Ms. Miller in the craft room at her home in Knoxville. She retreats there to create and play, finding inspiration in thriftiness and working with various fibers, particularly patchwork.Jessica Tezak for The New York TimesMs. Miller’s fabric shelves in her craft room at her home. She has learned through Appalachian, Japanese, Indian and African methods of mending that great beauty can come out of frugality and being resourceful.Jessica Tezak for The New York TimesMs. Smith, who took over Ms. Miller’s seat as the co-chair of the Appalachian Funders Network, a nonprofit, said that beyond her professional qualifications, Ms. Miller leads with care, openness and vulnerability. She recalled a meeting in which Ms. Miller unexpectedly took words participants had written and combined them into a powerful poem and read it aloud. Ms. Miller has been writing poetry and been an avid crafter since childhood. She’s also a D.J.“It was amazing to then see how people responded to that in a very humanistic way and the vulnerability and openness that her openness brings out in others,” Ms. Smith said. “She leads from a place of courageous joy. The Appalachian Community Fund resources some of the most forward-thinking and radical work in Appalachia and has done so for decades. That takes a courageous leader who is rooted in her values and can take critique and blowback when it comes.”Ms. Miller’s generosity extends beyond the workplace, according to stories from Black activists, organizers and scholars. Dr. El-Amin recalled sharing in early 2021 that she was concerned about whether The Bottom, a space she had created for Black people to gather, study and experience culture together, would survive amid the gentrification of East Knoxville. She was worried that they would not be able to afford to keep the space.“Margo said, ‘I will take the equity out of my house for you all to buy the building,’” Dr. El-Amin recalled. “This is something I will forever remember and she did it.” To Dr. El-Amin, this was yet another example of Ms. Miller’s commitment to fostering Black history, voices and safety in the community.“I’m grateful that I was in a position to make the purchase happen,” Ms. Miller said, adding that the line of equity loan was repaid in less than a year, and that she then signed a deed to remove herself from ownership of the building.Ms. Smith said she judges how good executive directors are by how well-received they are by their younger employees and collaborators. The best leaders, she said, engage with young people who may have different ways of thinking and may push them beyond their comfort zones. Ms. Miller, she said, is one of these leaders.“She embraces next-generation leadership and is actively standing with and supporting younger people,” Ms. Smith said, “especially Black, Brown and queer folks, in stepping into their power and leading the region forward.”For her part, Ms. Miller said she anticipated that she would stay in her role for another year or so, but felt that she was ready to seek out new challenges.“I want to figure out who I want to be when I grow up,” she said. “I think in order to serve in the next leg of whatever I do, I need to take the time to rest and welcome the next generation of philanthropic leaders.”Ms. Miller, a self-proclaimed proud Black mountain woman, centers herself while overlooking the LeConte Meadow at the Knoxville Botanical Gardens.Jessica Tezak for The New York Times More

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    US Proposes Global Green Steel Club That Would Put Tariffs on China

    A concept paper sent to the European Union suggests a new trade approach to tax metal made with higher carbon emissions in countries like China.WASHINGTON — The Biden administration on Wednesday sent a proposal to the European Union suggesting the creation of an international consortium that would promote trade in metals produced with less carbon emissions, while imposing tariffs on steel and aluminum from China and elsewhere, according to a copy viewed by The New York Times.The document, a concept paper drafted by the Office of the United States Trade Representative, provides the first concrete look at a new type of trade arrangement that the Biden administration views as a cornerstone of its approach to trade policy.The proposed group, known as the Global Arrangement on Sustainable Steel and Aluminum, would wield the power of American and European markets to try to bolster domestic industries in a way that also mitigated climate change. To do so, member countries would jointly impose a series of tariffs against metals produced in environmentally harmful ways.The levies would be aimed at China and other countries that did not join the group. Countries that did join would enjoy more favorable trade terms among themselves, especially for steel and aluminum produced more cleanly.To join the arrangement, countries would have to ensure that their steel and aluminum industries met certain emissions standards, according to the document. Governments would also have to commit to not overproduce steel and aluminum, which has pushed down global metal prices, and to limit activity by state-owned enterprises, which are often used to funnel subsidies to foreign metal makers. While the concept paper does not mention China, these requirements appear likely to bar it from becoming a member.The United States and European Union have been in talks about a climate-related trade deal for the steel and aluminum industries since last year. No U.S. trade agreement has ever included specific targets on carbon emissions, and negotiators have had much ground to cover to try to reconcile the varying U.S. and E.U. economic approaches to mitigating climate change.It is unclear what type of reception the proposal, which is still in its early stages, will receive from European leaders, as well as whether U.S. industry and politicians will support the idea. An E.U. official declined to comment on Wednesday on the details of an active negotiation, but said the two sides were discussing ways to continue and deepen their work on the arrangement.In recent weeks, trade tensions between the United States and Europe have risen to their highest levels since President Biden entered office, with leaders sparring over U.S. legislation aimed at encouraging the production of electric vehicles in North America. European leaders say the measures will put their industries at a disadvantage and have demanded changes that they say unfairly exclude European firms.A senior trade official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the paper was not yet public, said that the spat over electric vehicles was unlikely to spill over into negotiations over steel and aluminum, and that the governments were closely aligned on the goal of taking carbon intensity into account when it came to trade.After a meeting with European officials outside Washington this week, Katherine Tai, the U.S. trade representative, called the steel and aluminum effort “one of the most consequential things that we’re working on between the U.S. and the E.U. with respect to trade.” She said it was “on track” to meet a previous goal of completion by next year.“It is an important part of the track record that we have, Washington to Brussels, in terms of taking some of the most challenging issues of our time, some of the things that have been really challenging between us, and demonstrating that we can exercise leadership with a vision for the future,” Ms. Tai said during a news conference Monday.Valdis Dombrovskis, the European commissioner for trade, said the methods that the United States and Europe were developing to measure the carbon footprint of steel and aluminum could be expanded to other products, as part of a new trans-Atlantic initiative on sustainable trade that the governments had agreed to launch.“It will provide a common language for understanding many things,” he said.It’s also unclear how much support the plan will have from domestic makers of steel and aluminum. While some have voiced support for the broader strategy, company executives and labor union leaders are still reviewing the plans, and say the potential impact on U.S. industry would hinge on details that had yet to be determined..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}What we consider before using anonymous sources. Do the sources know the information? What’s their motivation for telling us? Have they proved reliable in the past? Can we corroborate the information? Even with these questions satisfied, The Times uses anonymous sources as a last resort. The reporter and at least one editor know the identity of the source.Learn more about our process.The U.S. steel industry is already among the cleanest in the world, as a result of the country’s stronger environmental standards and a focus on recycling scrap metal. The agreement is designed to capitalize on those advantages and help American companies withstand competition from heavily subsidized steel and aluminum manufacturers in China and elsewhere.But the United States is also home to many industries that buy foreign steel and aluminum to make into other products. They could object that the move would increase their costs.If the United States and Europe move forward with the structure, there is likely to be an intense fight over where tariffs are set and how carbon emissions are measured.The development of a method for figuring out the amount of greenhouse gas emissions in the production of any particular product is still in the early stages, and much more data would need to be gathered at the level of specific products and companies, people familiar with the plans said.Both the United States and Europe have expressed interest in expanding the consortium’s membership to any country that can meet its high standards. But the arrangement could rankle American allies in the short term, if countries like Japan and South Korea are initially left out.The measure could also trigger retaliation from China, or be challenged at the World Trade Organization, which includes China and requires its members to treat one another equally in trade.It’s also still unclear what legal authority the Biden administration would use to impose the tariffs. The senior trade official said the Biden administration hoped to involve Congress in setting up the policy. But analysts speculated that the administration could also resort to the same national security-related executive authority that the Trump administration used in imposing its steel and aluminum tariffs.And while it will please the administration’s allies in labor unions and environmental advocacy groups, the proposal is likely to disappoint advocates of freer trade, who had hoped the Biden administration would reject the more protectionist approach of the Trump administration. Instead of getting rid of the global levies on steel and aluminum that the Trump administration introduced in 2018, this effort would replace them with a new global system of tariffs structured around climate concerns.The concept paper proposes a tiered system of tariffs that would rise with the level of carbon emitted in the production of a particular steel or aluminum good. Additional tariffs would be levied on any product coming from countries outside the consortium.The tariff rate would start at 0 for the cleanest products from member countries. Beyond that, the paper does not specify rates, instead representing them as X, Y or Z.The proposal to impose tariffs on steel from China and other countries as part of the arrangement was previously reported by Bloomberg.The thresholds for the tariff rates, and for membership in the consortium, are designed to increase over time to encourage countries to continue cleaning up their industries. The arrangement would “incentivize industry globally to decarbonize as a condition of market access,” the paper says.Todd Tucker, the director of industrial policy and trade at the Roosevelt Institute, compared the approach to “a carbon tariff imposed on countries that are outside the carbon club.”The United States and European Union appear to be going for “a higher-ambition route” to address global steel trade, Mr. Tucker said. “What that means is leveraging the power of the U.S. and European markets to drive decarbonization in the global steel market.” More

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    Computer Science Students Face a Shrinking Big Tech Job Market

    A new reality is setting in for students and recent graduates who spent years honing themselves for careers at the largest tech companies.Ever since she was a 10th grader in Seattle, Annalice Ni wanted to develop software for a prominent tech company like Google. So she went to great lengths to meet the internship and other résumé criteria that make students attractive hires to the biggest tech firms.In high school, Ms. Ni took computer science courses, interned at Microsoft and volunteered as a coding teacher for younger students. She majored in computer science at the University of Washington, earning coveted software engineering internships at Facebook. After graduating from college this year, she moved to Silicon Valley to start her dream job as a software engineer at Meta, Facebook’s parent company.Then last month, Meta laid off more than 11,000 employees — including Ms. Ni.“I did feel very frustrated and disappointed and maybe a bit scared because all of a sudden, I didn’t know what to do,” Ms. Ni, 22, said of her unexpected career setback. “There’s not much I could have done, especially in college, more than I already did, better than I already did.”Over the last decade, the prospect of six-figure starting salaries, perks like free food and the chance to work on apps used by billions led young people to stampede toward computer science — the study of computer programming and processes like algorithms — on college campuses across the United States. The number of undergraduates majoring in the subject more than tripled from 2011 to 2021, to nearly 136,000 students, according to the Computing Research Association, which tracks computing degrees at about 200 universities.Ms. Ni spends her days interviewing for jobs and brushing up on her skills.Jason Henry for The New York TimesTech giants like Facebook, Google and Microsoft encouraged the computing education boom, promoting software jobs to students as a route to lucrative careers and the power to change the world.But now, layoffs, hiring freezes and planned recruiting slowdowns at Meta, Twitter, Alphabet, Amazon, DoorDash, Lyft, Snap and Stripe are sending shock waves through a generation of computer and data science students who spent years honing themselves for careers at the largest tech companies. Tech executives have blamed a faltering global economy for the jobs slowdown.The cutbacks have not only sent recent graduates scrambling to find new jobs but also created uncertainty for college students seeking high-paying summer internships at large consumer tech companies.In the past, tech companies used their internship programs to recruit promising job candidates, extending offers to many students to return as full-time employees after graduation. But this year, those opportunities are shrinking.Amazon, for instance, hired about 18,000 interns this year, paying some computer science students nearly $30,000 for the summer, not including housing stipends. The company is now considering reducing the number of interns for 2023 by more than half, said a person with knowledge of the program who was not authorized to speak publicly.More on Big TechMicrosoft: The company’s $69 billion deal for Activision Blizzard, which rests on winning the approval by 16 governments, has become a test for whether tech giants can buy companies amid a backlash.Apple: Apple’s largest iPhone factory, in the city of Zhengzhou, China, is dealing with a shortage of workers. Now, that plant is getting help from an unlikely source: the Chinese government.Amazon: The company appears set to lay off approximately 10,000 people in corporate and technology jobs, in what would be the largest cuts in the company’s history.Meta: The parent of Facebook said it was laying off more than 11,000 people, or about 13 percent of its work forceBrad Glasser, an Amazon spokesman, said the company was committed to its internship program and the real-word experience that it provided. A Meta spokeswoman referred to a letter to employees from Mark Zuckerberg, the company’s chief executive, announcing the company’s layoffs last month.Hiring plans are also changing at smaller tech firms. Roblox, the popular game platform, said it planned to hire 300 interns for next summer — almost twice as many as this year — and was expecting more than 50,000 applications for those spots. Redfin, which employed 38 interns this summer, said it had canceled the program for next year.There are still good jobs for computing students, and the field is growing. Between 2021 and 2031, employment for software developers and testers is expected to grow 25 percent, amounting to more than 411,000 new jobs, according to projections from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But many of those jobs are in areas like finance and the automotive industry.“Students are still getting multiple job offers,” said Brent Winkelman, chief of staff for the computer science department at the University of Texas at Austin. “They just may not come from Meta, from Twitter or from Amazon. They’re going to come from places like G.M., Toyota or Lockheed.”College career centers have become sounding boards for anxious students on the cusp of entering the tech job market. In career counselors’ offices, the search for a Plan B has heightened.Some students are applying to lesser-known tech companies. Others are seeking tech jobs outside the industry, with retailers like Walmart or with government agencies and nonprofits. Graduate school is also an option.“This particular class has been a lot more savvy than previous classes,” said Hazel Raja, senior director of the career development office at Pomona College in Claremont, Calif. “Even those who have secured job offers, they’re still making sure they’re networking and staying engaged in campus recruiting opportunities.”Helen Dong, 21, a senior majoring in computer science at Carnegie Mellon University, interned at Meta twice, in 2021 and 2022. So she was surprised at the end of this summer, she said, when she did not receive a job offer from the company. Meta’s recent layoffs prompted her to apply for jobs outside tech, at automotive and financial companies. Last month, she posted videos on TikTok advising her peers to adjust their job expectations.Helen Dong, 21, a senior majoring in computing at Carnegie Mellon University, interned at Meta but did not receive a job offer. Now she is looking in the finance and automotive industries.Helen Dong“I chose to major in computer science so that I could get a ton of offers after college and make bank,” Ms. Dong joked in one TikTok, as she sang along to “Reduce Your Expectations to 0.” In this job market, she wrote at the bottom of the video, “be grateful with 1 offer.”In interviews, 10 college students and recent graduates said they were not prepared for a slowdown in jobs at the largest tech companies. Until recently, those companies were fiercely competing to hire computer science majors at top schools — with some students receiving multiple job offers with six-figure starting salaries and five-digit signing bonuses. An entire genre of TikTok videos had sprung up dedicated to young techies extolling their job perks and their annual compensation, with at least one highlighting a $198,000 package, complete with stock options and relocation expenses.Dozens of people who were recently laid off, or whose tech job offers were rescinded, have posted details of their plights on LinkedIn. To alert recruiters, some have added the hashtag #opentowork to their LinkedIn profile photos.Tony Shi, 23, who majored in computer science and business at Western University in London, Ontario, is one of them. After graduating this year, he began working as a product manager at Lyft in August. In November, the ride-hailing company laid off about 650 employees, including Mr. Shi.Now he is on a tight deadline to find a new job. Mr. Shi is Canadian, from Waterloo, Ontario, and obtained a visa to move to San Francisco for his job at Lyft. Under the visa, he has 60 days to find a new job. He said he had become more sensitive to the businesses and balance sheets of potential employers.“I need to be a little more risk-averse. I definitely don’t want to get laid off again,” he said. Instead of his taking a company for its word, he added, “now, the product needs to make a lot of sense.”Meta rescinded its job offer to Rachel Castellino, 22, weeks before she was scheduled to start work.Jason Henry for The New York TimesSome recent graduates did not get the chance to start their new tech jobs.Rachel Castellino, a statistics major at the California Polytechnic State University, worked to land a job at a major tech company. During college, she interned as a project manager at PayPal, received a data science fellowship funded by the National Science Foundation and founded a data science club at her school.Ms. Castellino, 22, knew she would have to grind to pass companies’ technical interviews, which typically involve solving programming problems. Last year, she spent much of the fall job hunting and preparing for coding assessments. For four days a week, from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., she studied probability concepts and programming languages. Even so, she said, the interview process was brutal.In November 2021, Meta offered her a job as a data scientist, starting in December 2022. Last month, Meta rescinded the offer, she said.“I worked so hard for those interviews. It felt really good to earn something of a high caliber,” she said. “I had so much to look forward to.”The setback has been disheartening. “I was upset,” Ms. Castellino said. “It wasn’t good to hear.”As for Ms. Ni, she now views losing her dream job as an opportunity to broaden her career horizons. Over the last month, she has applied to midsize tech firms and start-ups that she finds innovative — potential employers she had not previously considered.“I’m exploring opportunities that I didn’t before,” Ms. Ni said. “I feel like I’ve already learned some things.”Karen Weise More

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    Global Car Supply Chains Entangled With Abuses in Xinjiang, Report Says

    A new report on the auto industry cites extensive links to Xinjiang, where the U.S. government now presumes goods are made with forced labor.The global auto industry remains heavily exposed to the Xinjiang region of China for raw materials, components and other supplies, a new report has found, despite a recent U.S. law intended to restrict purchases from the area, where the Chinese government has committed human rights abuses against mostly Muslim minorities.The report, from a team of researchers led by Laura T. Murphy, a professor of human rights and contemporary slavery at Britain’s Sheffield Hallam University, details the links between Chinese companies with deep ties to Xinjiang and the automakers that use their supplies, such as metals, batteries, wiring and wheels.The report identifies major Chinese companies that the researchers determined have participated in coercive labor programs in Xinjiang, or have recently sourced their materials and products from the region, where China has engaged in mass internment of Uyghurs and other minorities. Those Chinese firms are major participants in the global supply chain for auto parts, the report says, raising the likelihood that automakers like Volkswagen, Honda, Ford Motor, General Motors, Mercedes-Benz Group, Toyota and Tesla have sold cars containing raw materials or components that have at some point touched Xinjiang.“There was no part of the car we researched that was untainted by Uyghur forced labor,” Dr. Murphy said. “It’s an industrywide problem.”Such links could pose serious problems for the international auto brands. The Biden administration, like the Trump administration before it, has taken an increasingly aggressive posture toward Chinese trade violations and imports of goods made with forced labor, which the United Nations estimates affects 28 million people worldwide.Under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act, products made wholly or partly in Xinjiang are now assumed to have been produced with forced labor, making them vulnerable to seizure by the federal government if they are brought into the United States. Customs officials say that since the law went into effect in June, they have stopped roughly 2,200 shipments — valued at more than $728 million — that were suspected of having Xinjiang content. More than 300 of those products were ultimately released into the United States.Federal officials did not disclose what kinds of products have been seized. But the new rules have been particularly disruptive for companies making clothing and solar panels, which source raw materials like cotton and polysilicon from Xinjiang.The New York Times has not independently verified the entire contents of the new report, which names roughly 200 companies, both Chinese and international, with potential direct or indirect links to Xinjiang. Many of the Chinese industrial giants named in the report have multiple production sites, meaning they could be supplying international automakers with metal, electronics or wheels made from their factories outside Xinjiang.The global supply chain for auto parts is vast and complex. According to estimates by McKinsey and Company, the average automotive manufacturer may have links to as many as 18,000 suppliers in its full supply chain, from raw materials to components.Many of those suppliers run through China, which has become increasingly vital to the global auto industry and the United States, the destination for about a quarter of the auto parts that China exports annually. Xinjiang is home to a variety of industries, but its ample coal reserves and lax environmental regulations have made it a prominent location for energy-intensive materials processing, like smelting metal, the report says.Chinese supply chains are complicated and opaque, which can make it difficult to trace certain individual products from Xinjiang to the United States. Over the past three years, Xinjiang and other parts of China have been intermittently locked down to keep the coronavirus at bay. Even before the pandemic, the Chinese government tightly controlled access to Xinjiang, especially for human rights groups and media outlets.Determining the extent of coercion that any individual Uyghur worker may face in Xinjiang’s mines or factories is also difficult given the region’s restrictions. But the overarching environment of repression in Xinjiang has prompted the U.S. government to presume that any products that have touched the region in their production are made with forced labor unless companies can prove otherwise.Workers in the region “don’t have a chance to say no,” said Yalkun Uluyol, a Xinjiang native and one of the report’s authors. Goods coming from Xinjiang “are a product of the exploitation of the land, of the resources and of the people,” he said.The report’s researchers identified numerous documents — including Chinese-language corporate filings, government announcements and ocean import records — indicating that international brands, at the very least, have multiple potential exposures to programs in Xinjiang that the U.S. government now defines as forced labor.Dr. Murphy said her team had identified nearly 100 Chinese companies mining, processing or manufacturing materials for the automotive industry operating in the Uyghur region, at least 38 of which had publicized their engagement in repressive state-sponsored labor programs through their social media accounts, corporate reports or other channels.International automakers contacted by The Times did not contradict the report but said they were committed to policing their supply chains against human rights abuses and forced labor.G.M., Volkswagen and Mercedes said their supplier codes of conduct prohibited forced labor. Honda said its suppliers were required to follow global sustainability guidelines. Ford said it maintained processes to ensure that its global operations, including in China, complied with all relevant laws and regulations.Toyota, in a statement, said, “We expect our business partners and suppliers to follow our lead to respect and not infringe upon human rights.”Tesla did not respond to repeated requests for comment.The Chinese government has insisted that there are no human rights violations in Xinjiang, and has called accusations of forced labor in Xinjiang “the lie of the century.”“‘Forced labor’ in Xinjiang is a lie deliberately made up and spread by the U.S. to shut China out of the global supply and industrial chains,” Liu Pengyu, the spokesman at the Chinese Embassy in Washington, said in a statement.Some of the Chinese companies named in the report are enormous industry suppliers that have proudly advertised their role in carrying out the Chinese government’s policies toward Uyghurs in social media postings, or in glossy annual reports.They include China Baowu Steel Group, the world’s largest steel maker, which has a subsidiary in Xinjiang that accounts for at least 9 percent of its total steel production, according to the report. Baowu and its subsidiaries make springs for car suspension systems, axles and body panels, as well as various kinds of steel that feed the supply chains of most international carmakers.In its 2020 corporate social responsibility report, which pledges adherence to China’s leader and the Communist Party, Baowu Group said that its subsidiary had “fully implemented the party’s ethnic policy” and that 364 laborers from poor families from villages in southern Xinjiang had “been arranged with employment.” Human rights advocates say the terms are euphemisms for organized mass transfers of Uyghur laborers into factories.According to the report, Baowu Group subsidiaries have participated in other transfers of workers from poor regions of Xinjiang, and in so-called poverty alleviation programs, which the United States now recognizes as a guise for forced labor. Under the new law, companies that participate in such programs can be added to a blacklist that blocks the products they make anywhere — even outside Xinjiang — from coming to the United States.The new report also builds on a June investigation published by The Times into Xinjiang’s role in producing electric vehicle battery minerals like lithium and nickel, as well as previous research by a firm called Horizon Advisory into the aluminum industry in Xinjiang. The report identifies recent transfers of Uyghur laborers at some of the world’s biggest aluminum companies, and traces these products to major auto industry suppliers, some of whom made shipments to the United States, Canada or Europe as recently as November, shipping records show.It also documents ties to Xinjiang and transfers of Uyghur workers for dozens of other significant auto industry suppliers, such as Double Coin, a tire maker that sells widely in the United States, including online at Walmart and Amazon.And it documents a recent investment by CATL — a Chinese firm that produces roughly a third of the world’s electric vehicle batteries and supplies Tesla, Ford, G.M., Volkswagen and other brands — in a major new lithium processing company in Xinjiang.Zhang Yizhi, a spokesman for CATL, said the company was a minority shareholder in the Xinjiang company and was not involved in its operations or management. CATL is committed to building a responsible supply chain and strictly opposes and prohibits any form of forced labor in its suppliers, he said.Baowu Group, Double Coin and its parent, Shanghai Huayi Group, did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Amazon declined to comment about its sale of Double Coin tires, while Walmart did not respond.The research suggests that the United States still has far to go in stopping the flow of goods linked to Xinjiang. Customs officials say they are working to enforce a ban on such products, but they are still hiring aggressively and working to build out the department’s capacity to identify and stop these goods.“We’re still in an upward trajectory,” said AnnMarie R. Highsmith, the executive assistant commissioner of the Office of Trade at Customs and Border Protection, in an interview in October.“Unfortunately,” she added, “the situation globally is such that we are going to have full employment for a while.” More

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    Are You Applying for Tech Jobs or Internships? We Want to Hear About It.

    Layoffs and hiring freezes at companies like Amazon and Meta are changing the job market for recent grads and college students. Tell us about your experiences.November was a bleak month for tech workers. Meta, Amazon, Lyft, Stripe and Twitter laid off thousands of employees. Microsoft and Google announced hiring slowdowns.The cutbacks and hiring freezes affected not only veteran employees. Some tech companies laid off recent college graduates or rescinded their job offers. Some firms are also cutting their summer internship programs for college students next year.The industry slowdown is sending shock waves through a generation of computer science and data science students who spent years preparing themselves for careers at the largest tech companies. Many recent grads and college seniors are now seeking tech jobs outside the tech industry, in industries like retail, banking and finance.I’m a technology reporter at The New York Times who investigates the societal impacts of tech innovations and tech company business practices. And I am reporting a story about the implications of the industry jobs slowdown for people in the early stages of their tech careers.If you are a college student or recent grad applying for tech internships or jobs, I’d like to hear from you.We may use your contact information to follow up with you. If we publish your submission, we will not include your name without first contacting you and obtaining your permission.Tell us about your experiences applying for tech jobs and internships More

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    If There Is a ‘Male Malaise’ With Work, Could One Answer Be at Sea?

    Before dawn on a recent day in the port of Seattle, dense autumn fog hugged Puget Sound and ship-to-shore container cranes hovered over the docks like industrial sentinels. Under the dim glimmer of orange floodlights, the crew of the tugboat Millennium Falcon fired up her engines for a long day of towing oil barges and refueling a variety of large vessels, like container ships.The first thing to know about barges is that they don’t move themselves. They are propelled and guided by tugs like the Falcon, which is owned by Centerline Logistics, one of the largest U.S. transporters of marine petroleum. Such companies may not be household names, but the nation’s energy supply chain would have broken under the pandemic’s pressure without the steady presence of their fleets — and their crews.“We’re a floating gas station,” said Bowman Harvey, a director of operations at Centerline, as he stood aboard the Falcon, his neck tattoo of the Statue of Liberty pivoting from the base of his flannel whenever he gestured at a machine or busy colleague nearby. Demand is solid, he said, and the enterprise is profitable. The company’s client list, which includes Exxon Mobil and Maersk, the global shipping giant, is robust. But manning the fleet has become a struggle.Multiyear charter contracts for key lines of business — refueling ships, transporting fuel for refineries and general towing jobs — are locked in across all three coasts, plus Hawaii, Alaska and Puerto Rico, Mr. Harvey said. Yet as pandemic-related staffing shortages have eased in other industries, Centerline is still short on staff. “Hands down,” Mr. Harvey said, “our biggest challenge right now is finding crew.”Safely moving, loading and unloading oil at sea requires both simple and high-skill jobs that cannot be automated. And the labor supply issues in merchant marine transportation are emblematic of the conundrum seen in a variety of decently paying, male-heavy jobs in the trades.Overall Labor Force Participation Has Fallen Among Men

    Note: The overall labor force, as defined by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, includes all Americans age 16 and older who are classified as either working or actively looking for work.Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics By The New York TimesOver the past 50 years, male labor force participation, the share of men working or actively looking for work, has steadily fallen as female participation has climbed.Some scholars have a grim explanation for the trend. Nicholas Eberstadt, the conservative-leaning author of “Men Without Work,” argues that there has been a swell in men who are “inert, written off or discounted by society and, perhaps, all too often, even by themselves.” Others, like the Brookings Institution senior fellow Richard V. Reeves, put less emphasis on potential social pathologies but say a “male malaise” is hampering households and the economy.“Hands down, our biggest challenge right now is finding crew,” said Bowman Harvey, a director of operations at Centerline.Members of the Millennium Falcon crew.Centerline employees are among about 75,000 categorized by the Department of Labor as water transportation workers, a group in which men outnumber women five to one.The State of Jobs in the United StatesEconomists have been surprised by recent strength in the labor market, as the Federal Reserve tries to engineer a slowdown and tame inflation.October Jobs Report: U.S. employers continued to hire at a fast clip, adding 261,000 jobs in the 10th month of the year despite the Fed’s push to cool the economy.A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy?: Employees seeking wage increases to cover their costs of living amid rising prices could set off a cycle in which fast inflation today begets fast inflation tomorrow.Disabled Workers: With Covid prompting more employers to consider remote arrangements, employment has soared among adults with disabilities.A Feast or Famine Career: America’s port truck drivers are a nearly-invisible yet crucial part of the global supply chain. And they are sinking into desperation.Though the gender split in the industry is more even for onshore office roles, workers and applicants for jobs on the water are predominantly male. Centerline says it has roughly 220 offshore crew members and about 35 openings. Captains and company managers agree that changing attitudes toward work among young men play a part in the labor shortage. But the strongest consensus opinion is that structural demographic shifts are against them. “We’re seeing a gray wave of retirement,” said Mr. Harvey, who is 38.Even though replacements are needed and, on the whole, lacking, there are new young recruits who are thriving, such as Noah Herrera Johnson, 19, who has joined Centerline as a cadet deckhand, an entry-level role.On a Thursday morning out in the harbor, Mr. Herrera Johnson deftly unknotted, flipped and refastened a series of sailing knots as the crew unmoored from a sister boat that was aiding the refueling of a Norwegian Cruise Line ship. A small crowd of curious cruise passengers peeked down as he bopped through the sequences and the sun’s glare began to pierce the fog, bouncing off the undulating waves.“I enjoy it a lot,” Mr. Herrera Johnson said of his work, as he sliced some meat in the galley later on. (Some kitchen work and cleaning are part of the gig and the fraternal ritual of paying dues.) “I get along with everyone — everyone has stories to tell,” he said. “And I was never good at school.”Mr. Herrera Johnson, who is Mexican American and whose mother is from Seattle, spent most of his life in Cabo San Lucas, in Baja California, until he moved back to the United States shortly after turning 18.Though entry-level roles aboard don’t require college credentials, new regulations have made at least briefly attending a vocational maritime academy a necessity for those who want to rise quickly up the crew ladder. Because he is interested in becoming a captain by his late 20s, he began a two-year program at the nearby Pacific Maritime Institute in March, and he earns course credits for work at Centerline between classes.Noah Herrera Johnson, left, preparing to throw a line to Andrew Nelson, right, as the Millennium Falcon docked in Seattle.Mr. Herrera Johnson, right, joined the Falcon crew as a cadet deckhand, an entry-level role.He got his “first tug” in May: an escapade from New Orleans through the Panama Canal to San Francisco, patched with some bad weather. “Two months, two long months — it was fun,” he said. “We had a few things going on. We lost steering a few times. But it was cool.”In short, the industry needs far more Noahs. Many Centerline employees have informally become part-time recruiters — handing out cards, encouraging seemingly capable young men who may be between jobs, undecided about college or disillusioned with the standard 9-to-5 existence to consider being a mariner instead.“When I’m trying to get friends or family members to come into the business,” Mr. Harvey said, “I make sure to remind them: Don’t think of this as a job, think of it as a lifestyle.”Internet connections aboard are common these days, and there is plenty of downtime for movies, TV, reading, cooking and joking around with sea mates. (On slow days, captains will sometimes do doughnuts in the water like victorious racecar drivers, turning the whole vessel into a Tilt-a-Whirl ride for the crew: sea legs required.)Of course, those leisurely moments punctuate days and nights of heaving lines, tying knots, making repairs, executing multiple refueling jobs and helping to navigate the tugboat: rain or shine, heat or heavy seas.It’s “an adventurous life,” Mr. Harvey said, one that he and others acknowledge has its pros and cons. Mariners in this sector — whether they are entry-level deckhands, midtier mates and engineers, or crew-leading tankermen and captains — are usually on duty at sea in tight quarters and bunk beds for a month or more.On the bright side, however, because of an “equal time” policy, full-time crew members are given roughly just as much time off for the same annual pay.“When I go home, you know, I’m taking essentially 35 days off,” said Capt. Ryan Buckhalter, 48, who’s been a mariner for 20 years. For many, it’s a refreshing work-life balance, he said: None of the nettlesome emails or nagging office politics in between shifts often faced by the average modern office worker trying to get ahead.Still, Captain Buckhalter, who has a wife and a young daughter, echoed other crew members when he admitted that the setup could also be “tough at times” for families, including his own.Capt. Ryan Buckhalter piloted the Millennium Falcon on Elliott Bay.A checklist in the wheelhouse of the tugboat.Crew members say they value knowing that their work, unlike more abstract service jobs, is essential to world trade. And average starting salaries for deckhand jobs are $55,000 a year (or about $26 an hour) and as high as $75,000 in places like the San Francisco area, with higher living costs.The company also offers low-cost health, vision and dental care for employees, and a 401(k) plan with a company match. So the chief executive, Matt Godden, said in an interview that he didn’t feel that wages or benefits were a central reason that his company and competitors with similar offerings had struggled to hire.“Right now a lot of companies are really hurting,” Captain Buckhalter said. “You kind of got a little gap here with the younger generation not really showing up.”If the labor market, like any other, operates by supply and demand, managers within the maritime industry say the supply side of the nation’s education and training system is also at fault: It has given priority to the digital over the physical economy, putting what are often called “the jobs of the future” over those society still needs.Mr. Harvey adds that his industry is also grappling with increased Coast Guard licensing requirements for skilled roles, like boat engineers or tankermen, who lead the loading and discharging of oil barges. The regulations help ensure physical and environmental safety standards, Mr. Harvey said, but reduce the already limited pool of adequately credentialed candidates.Women remain a rare sight aboard. Some captains make the case that this stems from hesitance toward a life of bunking and sharing a bathroom with a crop of guys at sea — a self-reinforcing dynamic that company officials say they are working to alleviate.“We actually do have women that work on the vessels!” said Kimberly Cartagena, the senior manager for marketing and public relations at Centerline. “Definitely not as much as men, but we do have a handful.”Several economists and industry analysts suggested in interviews that another way for companies like Centerline to add crew members would be to expand their digital presence and do social media outreach. Mr. Godden, Centerline’s chief executive, said he remained wary.“If you did something very simple, like you set up a TikTok account, and you sent somebody out every day to create varied little snippets, and you get viral videos of strong men pulling lines and big waves and big pieces of machinery,” Mr. Godden said, then a company would risk introducing an inefficient churn of young recruits who would “like the idea of being on a boat” but not be a fan of the unsexy “calluses” that come with the job.Crew members say they value knowing their work is essential to world trade. But in the long term, he said, there is reason for optimism. He pointed to the recent establishment of the Maritime High School, which opened a year ago just south of the Seattle-Tacoma airport with its first ninth-grade class.“I think their first class is looking to graduate a hundred people, and then they got goals of getting up to 300, 400 graduates a year,” Mr. Godden said. He has been meeting with the school’s leaders this fall and is convinced they will help create the next pipeline in the profession.“Yes, labor shortages may increase or decrease depending upon how the market works — but I always have this sense that there’s always going to be this sort of built-in group of folks who cannot — just cannot — stand seeing themselves sitting at a desk for 30, 40, 50 years,” he said. “It’s this hands-on business almost like, you know, when you’re a kid and you’re playing with trucks or toys, and then you get to do it in the life-size version.” More

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    ‘Innovation Hubs’ Aim to Lift Distressed Areas. Congress Just Has to Fund Them.

    A new report suggests where 20 newly created research centers could best revitalize struggling economies and accelerate new technologiesWASHINGTON — Included in the bipartisan industrial policy legislation that President Biden signed into law this summer was a $10 billion effort to jump-start economically sputtering regions across the country: a series of “innovation hubs” across 20 metropolitan areas.Supporters of targeted federal efforts to revitalize struggling areas are eager for the Commerce Department to start picking the sites for those hubs. Researchers from a Washington think tank, the Economic Innovation Group, are set to release a comprehensive report on Monday that draws on a wide array of economic data to calculate where the hubs could best achieve their dual goals. Those include helping areas in need of an economic jolt and accelerating technological advancements that lift the U.S. economy as it competes on a global stage, and the list of potential sites is heavy on cities in the Mountain West, the Carolinas and Ohio.“The stakes here are really high,” said Kenan Fikri, director of research at the Economic Innovation Group. “They’re high in the competition between the United States and China, and they’re high for the future of place-based policies.”But before the Commerce Department can start the process of deciding where to put the hubs, Congress must actually fund their creation. The need for Congress to greenlight actual money extends to many of the key provisions in the new law, the CHIPS and Science Act, which authorized lawmakers to fund a variety of new programs without actually laying out the money for them.As Mr. Biden prepares to fly to Arizona on Tuesday to celebrate investments in semiconductor manufacturing catalyzed by the CHIPS Act, the immediate fate of the innovation hubs is in flux. Lawmakers are debating whether they will be able to pass a comprehensive spending bill before the end of the year, or just a stopgap one, which would be less likely to include money for the hubs.Inflation F.A.Q.Card 1 of 5What is inflation? More