Raphael Stevens

LAST YEAR net migration to Britain halved. In the final quarter of 2024, 60,000 people, net, moved to Canada, down from 420,000 in mid-2023. In April net migration to America slowed to an annualised pace of 600,000, a huge drop from 4m in 2023. And in March net migration to New Zealand was down by 80% from its peak in late 2023. More

Electricity prices for households have risen quickly and are expected to outpace U.S. inflation in coming years, experts said.
There are many supply and demand factors at play.
Data centers are a major contributor to greater demand for electricity, while the U.S. also has an aging infrastructure for transmission and distribution of power, experts said.

Kilito Chan | Moment | Getty Images

Electricity prices are rising quickly for U.S. households, even as overall inflation has cooled.
Electricity prices rose 4.5% in the past year, according to the consumer price index for May 2025 — nearly double the inflation rate for all goods and services.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimated in May that retail electricity prices would outpace inflation through 2026. Prices have already risen faster than the broad inflation rate since 2022, it said.
“It’s a pretty simple story: It’s a story of supply and demand,” said David Hill, executive vice president of energy at the Bipartisan Policy Center and former general counsel at the U.S. Energy Department.
There are many contributing factors, economists and energy experts said.
At a high level, the growth in electricity demand and deactivation of power-generating facilities are outstripping the pace at which new electricity generation is being added to the electric grid, Hill said.

Prices are regional

U.S. consumers spent an average of about $1,760 on electricity in 2023, according to the EIA, which cited federal data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Of course, cost can vary widely based on where consumers live and their electricity consumption. The average U.S. household paid about 17 cents per kilowatt-hour of electricity in March 2025 — but ranged from a low of about 11 cents per kWh in North Dakota to about 41 cents per kWh in Hawaii, according to EIA data.
Households in certain geographies will see their electric bills rise faster than those in others, experts said.
Residential electricity prices in the Pacific, Middle Atlantic and New England regions — areas where consumers already pay much more per kilowatt-hour for electricity — could increase more than the national average, according to the EIA.

“Electricity prices are regionally determined, not globally determined like oil prices,” said Joe Seydl, a senior markets economist at J.P. Morgan Private Bank.
The EIA expects average retail electricity prices to increase 13% from 2022 through 2025.
That means the average household’s annual electricity bill could rise about $219 in 2025 relative to 2022, to about $1,902 from $1,683, according to a CNBC analysis of federal data. That assumes their usage is unchanged.
But prices for Pacific area households will rise 26% over that period, to more than 21 cents per kilowatt-hour, EIA estimates. Meanwhile, households in the West North Central region will see prices increase 8% in that period, to almost 11 cents per kWh.
However, certain electricity trends are happening nationwide, not just regionally, experts said.

Data centers are ‘energy hungry’

The QTS data center complex under development in Fayetteville, Georgia, on Oct. 17, 2024.
Elijah Nouvelage | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Electricity demand growth was “minimal” in recent decades due to increases in energy efficiency, according to Jennifer Curran, senior vice president of planning and operations at Midcontinent Independent System Operator, who testified at a House energy hearing in March. (MISO, a regional electric-grid operator, serves 45 million people across 15 states.)
Meanwhile, U.S. “electrification” swelled via use of electronic devices, smart-home products and electric vehicles, Curran said.
Now, demand is poised to surge in coming years, and data centers are a major contributor, experts said.
Data centers are vast warehouses of computer servers and other IT equipment that power cloud computing, artificial intelligence and other tech applications.
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Data center electricity use tripled to 176 Terawatt-hours in the decade through 2023, according to the U.S. Energy Department. Use is projected to double or triple by 2028, the agency said.
Data centers are expected to consume up to 12% of total U.S. electricity by 2028, up from 4.4% in 2023, the Energy Department said.
They’re “energy hungry,” Curran said. Demand growth has been “unexpected” and largely due to support for artificial intelligence, she said.
The U.S. economy is set to consume more electricity in 2030 for processing data than for manufacturing all energy-intensive goods combined, including aluminum, steel, cement and chemicals, according to the International Energy Agency.

Continued electrification among businesses and households is expected to raise electricity demand, too, experts said.  
The U.S. has moved away from fossil fuels like coal, oil and natural gas to reduce planet-warming greenhouse-gas emissions.
For example, more households may use electric vehicles rather than gasoline-powered cars or electric heat pumps versus a gas furnace — which are more efficient technologies but raise overall demand on the electric grid, experts said.
Population growth and cryptocurrency mining, another power-intensive activity, are also contributors, said BPC’s Hill.

‘All about infrastructure’

Thianchai Sitthikongsak | Moment | Getty Images

As electricity demand is rising, the U.S. is also having problems relative to transmission and distribution of power, said Seydl of J.P. Morgan.
Rising electricity prices are “all about infrastructure at this point,” he said. “The grid is aged.”
For example, transmission line growth is “stuck in a rut” and “way below” Energy Department targets for 2030 and 2035, Michael Cembalest, chairman of market and investment Strategy for J.P. Morgan Asset & Wealth Management, wrote in a March energy report.
Shortages of transformer equipment — which step voltages up and down across the U.S. grid — pose another obstacle, Cembalest wrote. Delivery times are about two to three years, up from about four to six weeks in 2019, he wrote.

“Half of all US transformers are near the end of their useful lives and will need replacing, along with replacements in areas affected by hurricanes, floods and wildfires,” Cembalest wrote.
Transformers and other transmission equipment have experienced the second highest inflation rate among all wholesale goods in the US since 2018, he wrote.
Meanwhile, certain facilities like old fossil-fuel powered plants have been decommissioned and new energy capacity to replace it has been relatively slow to come online, said BPC’s Hill. There has also been inflation in prices for equipment and labor, so it costs more to build facilities, he said. More

Fed Governor Christopher Waller said Friday that he doesn’t expect tariffs to boost inflation significantly so policymakers should be looking to lower interest rates as early as next month.
“If you’re starting to worry about the downside risk [to the] labor market, move now, don’t wait,” he said.
Most Fed policymakers prefer a wait-and-see approach, with market pricing indicating the next rate cut won’t come until September.
San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly, in a CNBC interview later in the day, said she would be more comfortable with waiting until there’s more clarity on the impact of tariffs.

Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller said Friday that he doesn’t expect tariffs to boost inflation significantly so policymakers should be looking to lower interest rates as early as next month.
In a CNBC interview, the central banker said he and his colleagues should move slowly but start to ease as inflation is not posing a major economic threat, which he expects to continue.

“I think we’re in the position that we could do this as early as July,” Waller said during a “Squawk Box” interview with CNBC’s Steve Liesman. “That would be my view, whether the committee would go along with it or not.”
The comments come two days after the Federal Open Market Committee voted to keep its key interest rate steady, the fourth straight hold following the last cut in December.
President Donald Trump, who nominated Waller as a governor during his first term in office, has been hectoring the Fed to lower interest rates to reduce borrowing costs on the $36 trillion national debt.
In his remarks, Waller said he thinks the Fed should cut to avoid a potential slowdown in the labor market.
“If you’re starting to worry about the downside risk [to the] labor market, move now, don’t wait,” he said. “Why do we want to wait until we actually see a crash before we start cutting rates? So I’m all in favor of saying maybe we should start thinking about cutting the policy rate at the next meeting, because we don’t want to wait till the job market tanks before we start cutting the policy rate.”

Stock market futures saw gains after Waller’s remarks.
Whether Waller will be able to marshal much support for his position is unclear.
The FOMC, Waller included, voted unanimously to hold at this week’s meeting, keeping the benchmark federal funds rate locked in a target range of 4.25%-4.5%.

Daly says wait until the fall

San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly, in a CNBC interview later in the day, said she would be more comfortable with waiting until there’s more clarity on the impact of tariffs.
“I think we want to be thoughtful enough to collect the information, and we do have these three scenarios that could unfold. So I’m for me, I look more to the fall, and by then we’ll have quite a bit more information,” she said during a “Closing Bell” interview. ”
“Businesses are telling me that’s what they’re going to look to for some resolution to some of the uncertainty,” added Daly, who does not vote this year on the FOMC. “So I think unless we saw a faltering in the labor market that was meaningful, and we thought it would be persistent, then I would say the fall looks more appropriate to me.”

According to the “dot plot” of individual officials’ expectations for interest rates this year, seven of the 19 meeting participants said they see rates holding steady this year, two saw just one cut likely, while the remaining 10 expect two or three reductions. The dispersion reflected a sense of uncertainty around policymakers about where rates should head, though the median outlook pointed to a total of two cuts.
Trump has called for dramatic moves, saying he thinks the benchmark rate should be at least 2 percentage points lower and even suggested it should be 2.5 percentage points below the current level of 4.33%. In remarks Wednesday before the Fed meeting, Trump called Fed Chair Jerome Powell “stupid” for not pushing to cut.
However, Waller said he thinks the committee should move slowly. Powell’s term as chair expires in May 2026, and Waller is considered a contender for the job. Trump has said he plans on making his intentions known soon.
“You’d want to start slow and bring them down, just to make sure that there’s no big surprises. But start the process. That’s the key thing,” Waller said. “We’ve been on pause for six months to wait and see, and so far, the data has been fine. … I don’t think we need to wait much longer, because even if the tariffs come in later, the impacts are still the same. It should be a one-off level effect and not cause persistent inflation.”
Other officials have been reluctant to cut as they wait to see what longer-term impact Trump’s tariffs have, primarily on inflation but also on the labor market and broader economic growth.
“We’ve been on pause for six months, thinking that there was going to be a big tariff shock to inflation. We haven’t seen it. We follow the data,” Waller said. “I’ve been arguing since a year ago that central banks should be looking through this.”
Powell said repeatedly at his post-meeting news conference Wednesday that he believes the Fed can stay in its wait-and-see mode as the labor market continues to hold up. Inflation data of late has shown little pass-through so far as companies burn off inventory accumulated in the run-up to the tariff announcement, and amid concerns that consumer demand is slowing and reducing pricing power.
Futures market pricing indicates virtually no chance of a rate cut at the July 29-30 meeting, with the next move expected to come in September, according to the CME Group’s FedWatch measure.

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JPMorgan Chase on Friday is set to unveil new tools that allow investors to research and purchase bonds and brokered CDs through its mobile app, CNBC is first to report.
Users can set up customized screens and compare bond yields on the same banking app or web portal that they use to check balances, according to JPMorgan executives.
The moves are part of a concerted effort to beef up the bank’s credentials among investors who trade a few times a month.

Jamie Dimon, chief executive officer of JPMorgan Chase & Co., during a Bloomberg Television interview on the sidelines of the JPMorgan China Summit in Shanghai, China, on Thursday, May 22, 2025.
Qilai Shen | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Once a laggard in the online investing game, JPMorgan Chase now believes it is a leader.
The bank on Friday is set to unveil new tools that allow investors to research and purchase bonds and brokered certificates of deposit through its mobile app, CNBC is first to report.

Users can set up customized screens and compare bond yields on the same banking app or web portal that they use to check their account balances, according to JPMorgan executives. The moves are part of a concerted effort to beef up the bank’s credentials among investors who trade a few times a month.
“Our goal was to create an experience that makes it extremely simple for clients that want to buy fixed income,” said Paul Vienick, head of online investing at JPMorgan’s wealth management arm. “We’ve taken that exact thought process for the simplicity of [buying] stocks and ETFs and moved that into the fixed-income space.”
JPMorgan, the biggest U.S. bank by assets and a leader across most major categories of finance, is relatively puny compared with other online brokerages. Despite seeing steady gains in recent years as it added functions including the ability to buy fractional stock shares, the bank has only recently crossed $100 billion in assets under management, CNBC learned.
That pales in comparison to online investing giants including Charles Schwab, Fidelity or E-Trade, which have had decades to accumulate investors and acquire competing platforms.

‘Driving that thing’

The bank first attempted to snare more of the trillions of dollars that self-directed investors hold by launching a free trading service in 2018. JPMorgan called it “You Invest” and marketed the new name in a push that included prominent placement at the U.S. Open in tennis.

But by 2021, JPMorgan saw the brand wasn’t connecting the way it had hoped and pivoted to simply calling it the Self-Directed Investing platform.
That year, with the business managing about $55 billion in assets, CEO Jamie Dimon called out the firm’s product in his usual blunt way.
“We don’t even think it’s a very good product yet,” Dimon told analysts at a financial conference. “So we’re driving that thing.”
Part of JPMorgan’s pivot was to hire Vienick, a veteran of TD Ameritrade, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America, in October 2021 to overhaul the bank’s efforts.
“There was a recognition that in wealth management, we have some catching up to do overall,” Vienick said in a recent interview at the bank’s midtown New York headquarters.

Arrows pointing outwards

Source: J.P. Morgan

That also includes managing more money for wealthy Americans through financial advisors at physical locations, a push that was helped by JPMorgan’s 2023 acquisition of First Republic. JPMorgan banks half of the country’s 19 million affluent households but has just a 10% share of their investing dollars.
The industry now recognizes that providing good online tools is table stakes, even if the emphasis had previously been on human financial advisors who earn more revenue by providing more services.
Around half of those who use a financial advisor also invest on their own with online tools, Vienick said.

Next stop: $1 trillion?

Now, the bank is looking to target more engaged investors, those who research and buy stocks a few times per month and who are more inclined to purchase bonds directly rather than owning them through mutual funds.
It currently offers customers up to $700 for moving funds to its self-directed platform.
Up next, the bank is working on providing users the ability to execute after-hours stock trades, Vienick said.
It’s all part of the bank’s efforts to convince customers who bank with JPMorgan already or have its credit cards to consolidate more of their wallet with the firm. Doing so will allow an investor to have a single view of their finances and move money instantaneously between accounts, Vienick said.
The bank’s advantages — its vast branch network, deep balance sheet and reputation under Dimon — have Vienick confident that JPMorgan will eventually join the other large players among online brokerages.
“I have every belief the self-directed business outside of core wealth management can be a trillion-dollar business,” Vienick said. “It’s going to take hard work. It’s going to mean we’re delivering what clients are asking for.”
Read more: JPMorgan Chase is heading upmarket to woo America’s millionaires

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Fed Governor Christopher Waller said Friday that he doesn’t expect tariffs to boost inflation significantly so policymakers should be looking to lower interest rates as early as next month.
“If you’re starting to worry about the downside risk [to the] labor market, move now, don’t wait,” he said.
Most Fed policymakers prefer a wait-and-see approach, with market pricing indicating the next rate cut won’t come until September.

Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller said Friday that he doesn’t expect tariffs to boost inflation significantly so policymakers should be looking to lower interest rates as early as next month.
In a CNBC interview, the central banker said he and his colleagues should move slowly but start to ease as inflation is not posing a major economic threat, which he expects to continue.

“I think we’re in the position that we could do this and as early as July,” Waller said during a “Squawk Box” interview with CNBC’s Steve Liesman. “That would be my view, whether the committee would go along with it or not.”
The comments come two days after the Federal Open Market Committee voted to hold its key interest rate steady, the fourth straight hold following the last cut in December.
President Donald Trump, who nominated Waller as a governor during his first term in office, has been hectoring the Fed to lower interest rates to reduce borrowing costs on the $36 trillion national debt.
In his remarks, Waller said he think the Fed should cut to avoid a potential slowdown in the labor market.
“If you’re starting to worry about the downside risk [to the] labor market, move now, don’t wait,” he said. “Why do we want to wait until we actually see a crash before we start cutting rates? So I’m all in favor of saying maybe we should start thinking about cutting the policy rate at the next meeting, because we don’t want to wait till the job market tanks before we start cutting the policy rate.”

Stock market futures saw gains after Waller’s remarks.
Whether Waller will be able to marshal much support for his position is unclear.
The FOMC, Waller included, voted unanimously to hold at this week’s meeting, keeping the benchmark federal funds rate locked in a target range of 4.25%-4.5%.
According to the “dot plot” of individual officials’ expectations for interest rates this year, seven of the 19 meeting participants said they see rates holding steady this year, two saw just one cut likely, while the remaining 10 expect two or three reductions. The dispersion reflected a sense of uncertainty around policymakers about where rates should head, though the median outlook pointed to a total two cuts.
Trump has called for dramatic moves, saying he thinks the benchmark rate should be at least 2 percentage points lower and even suggested it should be 2.5 percentage points below the current level of 4.33%. In remarks Wednesday before the Fed meeting, Trump called Fed Chair Jerome Powell “stupid” for not pushing to cut.
However, Waller said he thinks the committee should move slowly.
“You’d want to start slow and bring them down, just to make sure that there’s no big surprises. But start the process. That’s the key thing,” he said. “We’ve been on pause for six months to wait and see, and so far, the data has been fine. … I don’t think we need to wait much longer, because even if the tariffs come in later, the impacts are still the same. It should be a one-off level effect and not cause persistent inflation.”
Other officials have been reluctant to cut as they wait to see what longer-term impact Trump’s tariffs have, primarily on inflation but also on the labor market and broader economic growth.
“We’ve been on pause for six months, thinking that there was going to be a big tariff shock to inflation. We haven’t seen it. We follow the data,” Waller said. “‘I’ve been arguing since a year ago that central banks should be looking through this.”
Powell said repeatedly at his post-meeting news conference Wednesday that he believes the Fed can stay in its wait-and-see mode as the labor market continues to hold up. Inflation data of late has shown little pass-through so far as companies burn off inventory accumulated in the run-up to the tariff announcement, and amid concerns that consumer demand is slowing and reducing pricing power.
Futures market pricing indicates virtually no chance of a rate cut at the July 29-30 meeting, with the next move expected to come in September, according to the CME Group’s FedWatch measure. More