Economy

MOSCOW (Reuters) -Russia’s central bank held its key interest rate at 7.5% on Friday, cautioning that expectations of price rises had grown and that Russia’s partial mobilisation could stoke longer term inflation due to a shrinking labour force.In the immediate aftermath of Moscow sending its armed forces into Ukraine on Feb. 24, the central bank hiked its key rate to 20% from 9.5% in order to mitigate risks to financial stability.Since then it has cut rates six times and omitted forward-looking guidance at its previous meeting in September about studying the need for future reductions. The rate hold was in line with a consensus forecast of analysts polled by Reuters earlier this week.”Inflation expectations of households and businesses are high and have slightly grown relative to the summer months,” the bank said in a statement.”While the partial mobilisation may mainly create disinflationary pressure in the coming months due to subdued consumer demand, its subsequent effects will be pro-inflationary as it adds to supply-side restrictions in the broader economy.”President Vladimir Putin ordered a “partial mobilisation” last month for the military campaign in Ukraine. Hundreds of thousands of men have been called up to the army or fled abroad since Sept. 21. Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina, dressed in black with a dab of floral print, said that the bank wanted to give a neutral signal to the market on rates. Mobilisation, she said, would initially be disinflationary.”But then pro-inflationary effects may appear through changes in the structure of the labour market, a shortage of personnel in certain areas,” Nabiullina said. “It is still difficult to assess all the economic consequences of the shift in employment structure.” INFLATION Inflation, which the central bank targets at 4%, stood at 12.9% as of Oct. 24, according to the economy ministry. The central bank tweaked its year-end inflation forecast to 12-13% from 11-13%.”According to the Bank of Russia’s forecast, given the monetary policy stance, annual inflation will drop to 5.0–7.0% in 2023 to return to 4% in 2024.”Analysts at VTB My Investments said the regulator’s signal remained neutral. “We do not expect key rate changes in the coming months, but at the same time we see pro-inflationary factors dominating the horizon for a year,” they said in a note. The central bank is caught in a bind between high inflation, which dents living standards and has for years been one of Russians’ main concerns, and an economy in need of stimulation in the form of cheaper credit to address the negative effects of sweeping Western sanctions imposed in response to Russia’s intervention in Ukraine.The central bank improved its GDP forecast for this year to a contraction of 3-3.5% from an expected 4-6% decline previously. In late April, it had expected GDP to shrink 8-10%.The bank forecasts a further contraction in 2023 before GDP returns to growth in 2024-25.     The next rate-setting meeting is scheduled for Dec. 16. More

“The SNB welcomes the steps recently announced for the strategic transformation of Credit Suisse,” Schlegel told Swiss newspaper Finanz und Wirtschaft in an interview published online on Friday.”The new focus of the business model will lead to a reduction in risks. At the same time, Credit Suisse is strengthening its capital base,” added Schlegel, who oversees financial stability for the central bank.Credit Suisse on Thursday unveiled plans to raise 4 billion Swiss francs ($4.01 billion) from investors, cut thousands of jobs and shift its focus from investment banking more towards rich clients.The SNB has been following closely the situation at Credit Suisse, which it has designated as one of Switzerland’s two globally systemic banks along with cross-town rival UBS.UBS economists, meanwhile, expect the SNB to post a third-quarter loss of around 50 billion Swiss francs when it reports its results on Monday.Such a loss would halve the SNB’s equity which stood at 103 billion francs at the half-year stage, but this would have no effect on the bank’s policy, Schlegel said.”Directly, this would have no impact on the SNB. We can pursue our tasks and fulfill our mandate even with negative equity capital,” he said.”Nevertheless, it is important that we have enough equity. It helps the credibility of a central bank if it is well capitalized.” ($1 = 0.9964 Swiss francs) More

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The Federal Reserve’s aggressive campaign to rein in inflation leaves it on track for tens of billions, if not more, in losses over the next few years, central bank experts say. Those losses will not impede the central bank’s ability to conduct monetary policy but could over time expose it to friction on the political front. What’s more, getting a handle on how much money the Fed might lose is difficult given the highly unsettled economic outlook. The Fed started losing money last month, sooner than many had expected, including the Congressional Budget Office, who had no Fed losses in a forecast released in September. The Fed accounts for negative income with an accounting measure it calls a deferred asset. The size of that shortfall now stands at nearly $6.3 billion and while there’s great uncertainty about the future size and duration of that loss, there are some ballpark estimates. “The deferred asset account is likely to peak in the zone of $100-200 billion, and will likely take 3-4 years to recover,” said Derek Tang, an economist at research firm LH Meyer Monetary Policy Analytics. A Federal Reserve research paper from July had as its baseline expectation a view that the Fed would operate under a loss for three to four years and book $60 billion deferred asset, based on the monetary policy outlook then in place. But the Fed paper also said that the loss could hit as high as $180 billion if the central bank has to raise rates by a lot more than was expected in mid-summer. The expected path of losses are “bad, but not too bad,” said William English, a former top Fed staffer who is now at Yale University. Graphic: Fed starts to ‘lose’ money – https://graphics.reuters.com/USA-FED/PROFIT/zgvobwarxpd/chart.png FED PAYS TO PARK CASH ON SIDELINESThe Fed is losing money due to the mechanics of monetary policy. The federal funds rate target range is its chief tool to achieve its job and inflation goals, but that rate is managed by two other central bank rates. By paying interest to a mix of banks, money funds and others, the Fed keeps the federal funds rate in its desired range. As part its current regime, the Fed is now paying a 3.05% rate on over $2 trillion money funds have been pouring daily into the Fed’s reverse repo facility, for example.That’s a big change from how the Fed managed its policy rate prior to the 2007-2009 financial crisis, when reserve levels were comparatively low and it did not pay any interest on them. The current system was driven by a legal change allowing the Fed to pay interest on reserves and its need to expand its toolkit to manage short-term rates in a system where central bank bond buying stimulus efforts have created much higher levels of reserves in the banking system. The Fed funds its operations through services it provides banks and via interest from bonds it owns. It hands over anything beyond what it needs to operate to the Treasury. Last year, that totaled $109 billion, while in 2020 it was just under $90 billion. The Fed’s challenge now is that its aggressive effort to lower inflation from forty-year highs has lifted the federal funds rate range from effectively zero in March to between 3% and 3.25%, and it is expected to raise rates to somewhere between 4% and 5% next year. It is now paying more interest than it is taking in from its bond holdings and other sources of income, and as it tightens monetary policy further the size of the loss will only grow. Meanwhile, it’s also seeking to shrink the size of its balance sheet, which means reduced interest income from securities. The deferred asset the Fed uses to account for its loss is like an IOU to the government. The Fed expects that when it returns to profitability it will pay down that deferred asset and cover the loss. Officials have been adamant that losing money does not affect the Fed’s ability to operate. POLITICAL FRICTIONFed experts however warn that some political leaders could in the future question the loss, especially as it is being driven by a monetary policy toolkit that’s paying banks to park cash. Many of these banks are foreign, and some believe the Fed could face questions as to why its policies are helping banks at a time when they are making credit more expensive for everyday Americans. English noted that Fed operational losses are “not a significant economic issue” but the political side of the equation could become a flash point. In a June paper he wrote with former Fed second-in-command Donald Kohn, they flagged deficits as a potential flash point. Money the Fed has handed back over the years has been touted as a deficit reduction tool, and the absence of those funds could become an issue. That said, the income situation now facing the Fed is unique. For many years, it has been handing back cash to the government as determined by law, rather than building up a nest egg it could draw on when income turns negative. Some hope Congress will remember this arrangement before they go after the central bank. “The Fed would be sitting on $800 billion in retained earnings if they didn’t have to remit them to Treasury,” Tang said. More

The writer is director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies After the political and market upheaval of the past six weeks, Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt, the new prime minister and chancellor, face two separate but intimately related economic challenges. The first is rampant inflation and the consequent “cost of living crisis”. The second is a slowing economy and consequent deterioration in the fiscal outlook.The latter has taken centre stage of late as the ill-judged “mini” Budget demonstrated all too clearly the constraints within which the government is working. Concurrent large fiscal and current account deficits made markets seriously nervous when big, unfunded tax cuts were announced. Thankfully, most of those cuts have been abandoned and the markets have calmed down. But this was a serious warning shot. Fiscal credibility is going to be high on the government’s priority list.What will constitute such credibility is not yet obvious though. It seems likely that the Office for Budget Responsibility will say that, without policy action, we are perhaps some £30bn away from even stabilising debt as a fraction of national income a few years out. But what to make of that number? After all, £30bn is not much at all when looking three or five years into the future. The uncertainty surrounding such forecasts is huge. The fiscal situation could turn out far better, or far worse, than that. Relatively small changes in inflation or growth could wipe out that gap, or double it.Under those circumstances it would not be unreasonable for the chancellor to say he will “wait and see”, take no precipitate action and promise some unspecified spending cuts or tax increases later on if they prove necessary. Alistair Darling did something similar in 2009. The trouble for Hunt is that, following the disastrous “mini” Budget, markets may require more certainty and more upfront action. That is a desperately hard judgment. Get it wrong in one direction and we risk another damaging rise in interest rates on gilts, and perhaps a fall in the value of sterling bringing yet more inflation. Get it wrong in the other direction and unnecessary pain is visited upon household incomes or public services.This is where the cost of living crisis meets the fiscal challenge. Government has at least three big trade-offs to make.First, what is to be the scale of the package to reduce energy prices or support incomes in the face of surging gas and electricity bills? One of the chancellor’s first actions was to row back on the promise to keep all our energy bills pegged for the next two years. That huge, untargeted intervention could easily have cost more than £100bn, with much of the subsidy going to households which don’t need it. Limiting that intervention to six months and promising a better-designed and more focused package was the right thing to do. The scale of the new policy will need to weigh support for those households that need it and demand in the economy on the one hand, and higher borrowing on the other.Second, there has been much speculation about whether pensions and working age benefits will rise in line with inflation next year. Between them these cost more than £200bn a year, so each 1 per cent difference in uprating is serious money. If we were to uprate all such benefits in line with earnings rather than prices for two years that could save around £20bn — perhaps closing a good chunk of any forecast fiscal gap in one fell swoop. At the same time, though, that would expose some of the poorest in the country to serious hardship. Because of the lag between inflation and when benefits actually increase, even if they are to rise next April in line with September’s inflation as is normal practice, they will still be 6 per cent lower in real terms than they were two years ago. Additional real terms cuts, at least for working age benefits, feel implausible, especially given the need to support people in coping with their energy bills.Third, government directly employs more than 4mn public sector workers. Current public finance forecasts are based on spending decisions made a year ago when inflation was expected to be running at between 2 and 3 per cent, with pay rising at a similar rate. Instead, most public settlements have averaged around 5 per cent this year — both a big real-terms cut for workers and a lot more than was budgeted for by their employers. A very similar trade-off will exist next year. The idea that we can cut real public pay by 10 per cent over two years, on top of what have been significant real cuts since 2010, seems extraordinary. If we don’t, and if no more money is made available, then big public sector job losses look all but inevitable.The truth, of course, is that Brexit, Covid-19, the energy crisis and political dysfunction have made us much poorer than we might otherwise reasonably have expected. When we are poorer, everything gets harder. While there is huge uncertainty over the scale of what needs to be done, it is clear that there is no escaping some tough choices: namely, how to distribute the pain between taxpayers, benefit recipients and those who work in and use public services.If we have learnt one thing over the past month it is that the option to push much more of the pain on to future generations by increasing borrowing is, if not closed, then certainly not costless. More

A new city law going into effect on Tuesday will require companies with at least four employees to post salary ranges for openings, even if the jobs involve remote or hybrid work.For years, companies of all sizes have closely guarded the potential pay for their job openings, keeping applicants in the dark about possible compensation and preventing employees from discovering that their colleagues make more than they do.But that dynamic, which has long benefited corporations in salary negotiations and has been blamed for exacerbating gender and racial pay gaps, will soon end in New York City, one of the largest job markets in the world.Under a new city law that goes into effect on Tuesday, nearly every company will be required to include salary ranges for job postings, both those shared on public sites and on internal bulletin boards, and even for those jobs that offer a hybrid schedule or can be performed fully remote.Here’s what the law will mean for employers and workers in New York City.What information will companies have to divulge?The sweeping New York City rules will apply to almost all companies except for the smallest firms. Any business with at least four workers, assuming at least one of them is based in the city, must include the lowest and highest salaries for any job it posts — a requirement that will force some of the biggest companies in the world with offices in New York City, from Google to Pfizer to Verizon, to divulge pay information.The salary ranges must be provided in “good faith,” the city says, which means that they must accurately reflect what the company would be ready to give a new employee. The ranges are for base salary, excluding the cost of other benefits like overtime, paid vacation and health insurance.Is this new salary transparency a requirement in other parts of the country?The new requirements put New York City among a growing number of places in the United States that require salary transparency from private employers. The trend has taken hold during the pandemic as leverage in the American workplace has increasingly shifted toward workers.Colorado implemented salary requirements for job openings earlier this year, and California and Washington State will mandate similar rules in 2023. The New York State Senate passed a salary transparency law in June that is similar to the one in New York City, but it has yet to be signed into law by Gov. Kathy Hochul.Some of the biggest employers in New York City are complying with the new pay disclosure requirements for all of their jobs openings nationwide, not just their postings in the city.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesIn the city, the salary requirements were passed nearly a year ago by the City Council during the last days of the administration of then-Mayor Bill de Blasio. Company executives and business groups were caught off guard, complaining that they were not consulted on the legislation and were unaware of it until just before it was approved.That criticism led the city to delay the start date to November from May and to make some tweaks, including removing the fine for a first-time offense; subsequent offenses, however, can cost up to $250,000. The new law will be enforced by the city’s Commission on Human Rights.Will companies comply?Several large companies in the financial and tech industries have already updated their job postings to be in compliance. Some corporations have gone further, such as Citigroup, which added salary information this month to all of its openings in the United States, not just those in New York City, where the bank is one of the city’s largest private employers.The changes have been reflected in active job openings. At Citigroup, a senior associate at the bank’s New York City offices can earn more than $125,000 annually. A director at American Express will make at least $130,000. And a software engineer at Amazon can earn a salary as high as $213,800.Earlier this year, the real estate company Zillow, as well as its New York City listings site StreetEasy, started to include salary information on openings in the city, the company said. One recent listing, for a strategic communications manager at StreetEasy, offered a salary of at least $99,300.A spokeswoman at Citigroup said that the bank added salary ranges not just for jobs in New York City but throughout the country as part of a company initiative focused on pay fairness and employee retention.“This initiative supports our pay equity goals and reinforces many key principles such as being more transparent as an organization and simplifying our processes,” the spokeswoman said.Glenn Grindlinger, an employment lawyer at the firm Fox Rothschild, said that many large corporations may follow the path of Citigroup and add salary ranges on all jobs in the country. Doing so would ensure compliance with New York City law, which also covers remote jobs that could be performed in the city, he said.But Mr. Grindlinger said he was concerned about small- and medium-size companies in the city, especially those outside Manhattan, that may be unaware of the new law, as well as firms in other parts of the country that do not know that their remote jobs, if they can be performed in New York City, will also have to comply.“It’s a pretty big deal,” Mr. Grindlinger said. “And the outreach, it has not been where it is needed, which is in the other boroughs.”How could this change affect job seekers?Stephanie Lewin, 39, works as a sales associate at a clothing and home goods store in Lower Manhattan and has been looking for a new job. She has noticed an increase in compensation disclosures on Indeed’s online job listings, but some of the salary bands are too far apart to be helpful, she said, like listings that propose a range of $17 to $50 an hour.But overall, she said the disclosures have been helpful in weeding out jobs for which the upper salary range falls below her expectation of earning at least $25 an hour. “It definitely at least takes away one element of surprise or decision-making upfront,” said Ms. Lewin, who has worked in the retail industry for 16 years.Mr. Grindlinger said he believed the new salary ranges would lead applicants to negotiate for a salary at the higher end of the scale. “The economy and inflation has swung the pendulum toward the employee,” he said.A spokeswoman at Indeed said that an increasing number of openings on its site across the country now included possible salaries provided by employers. (The company did not have data for New York City-based jobs.) About 37 percent of jobs posted in the third quarter of 2022 included pay information from the employer, the spokeswoman said.New York’s new pay transparency law will force some of the biggest companies in the world with offices in the city, from Google to Pfizer to Verizon, to divulge salary information. John Smith/VIEWpress, via Getty ImagesJoe Stando said if the salary transparency law had been in effect earlier in the pandemic, it would have saved him time and disappointment during his job search. Mr. Stando said he had at least three job opportunities over the past year that fell apart over salary negotiations. Each time, the companies’ offers were below what he had requested.“I would much rather have it coming out early on so that I can know before applying or early on in the conversation that we are maybe not aligned,” said Mr. Stando, 33, who lives in Queens and has worked in office administrative roles. “You can’t really negotiate unless they have all their cards on the table.”Instead of disclosing salaries for New York City jobs, some companies might exclude workers in the city from applying for positions. When Colorado’s salary transparency law went into effect in January, some major employers, including the real estate firm CBRE and the drug distributor McKeeson, stated that Colorado residents would not be considered for remote jobs. (McKeeson now posts salary ranges for remote openings in Colorado.)Mr. Grindlinger said he had talked to company executives outside New York City who might avoid having to comply with the city’s law by barring new employees from working there.“Clients that are not based in New York, they just don’t know what they are going to do, or some say if that’s the requirements, we are not going to consider anyone working in New York City,” he said.How could this help address long-lingering inequities in compensation such as the gender pay gap?Tae-Youn Park, an associate professor of human resource studies at Cornell University, said that research into salary disclosure laws that have been implemented elsewhere, including in Denmark, has shown that they help narrow the pay gap between men and women.In the United States, women made about 82 cents for every $1 men earned in 2020, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, which said that pay inequity is constant across almost all occupations. The gap is larger for women of color.Mr. Park said that the salary disclosures in New York City would likely force managers to compare their salaries to those offered at other companies and make adjustments. Also, employees might feel empowered to confront their bosses if the ranges showed they were underpaid.“It will give them an opportunity to raise their voice with objective data,” Mr. Park said.Nicole Hong More

Volkswagen has warned that supply chain hold-ups are becoming a permanent problem and downgraded its delivery targets citing a lack of parts that has left it with 150,000 unfinished cars.Europe’s largest carmaker on Friday said it would deliver as many cars this year as last, backtracking from a target of 5 to 10 per cent growth that it had announced in the summer.“Challenges to our supply chains will become the rule, not the exception,” said chief executive Oliver Blume in his first earnings call since taking over nearly two months ago.Since early in the pandemic, the automotive industry has been plagued by an undersupply of chips, which are used for vital vehicle control, sensing and safety features. Rivals Ford and Volvo also highlighted ongoing semiconductor shortages in results this week, with the former trimming its profit forecast and the latter its delivery target.“There are worrying geopolitical developments, particularly the rise of nationalism and protectionism. This includes growing barriers to technology transfer between the east and west,” said Blume, in reference to recent US sanctions on chip exports to China.VW said it had now set up a unit to monitor threats to supply chains and improve its forecasting of potential shortages. It added that the semiconductor problems, which have eased since last year, were expected to “improve further” in the fourth quarter.The company’s share price, which has fallen by a third in the past year, was down just under 3 per cent on Friday morning.Revenues in the quarter ending September grew to €70.7bn, compared with €56.9bn in the same period last year when semiconductor supply constraints were higher. Operating profits jumped to €4.3bn, compared with €2.6bn last year.VW said that it would book proceeds of its partial initial public offering of Porsche in the next quarter. The sports car maker, which this month overtook its parent company as Europe’s most valuable car brand, on Friday reported a 41 per cent rise in group operating profits to €5.1bn. It attributed this to “significantly” higher revenues per car, more sales and beneficial exchange rates.VW also logged a €1.9bn non-cash impairment charge related to Argo AI, a US-based driverless car venture that it had backed jointly with Ford, which abruptly shut this week. Blume said VW would continue research and development in the field of autonomous driving with Bosch in Europe and cited its recent €2.4bn investment in Chinese AI chip specialist Horizon Robotics. He added that VW was currently in talks with a further partner in the race to develop self-driving cars. More

Just before 4 o’clock on a Tuesday morning, the sky still black save for the reddish glow of the freeway, Marshawn Jackson rolls over in his bed at his home in Southern California and reaches for his iPhone.He clicks on an app used by truck drivers seeking assignments. The notification he absorbs is both familiar and disheartening: “No jobs available.”Mr. Jackson is paid per delivery. No work means no income. His day is already booked with two assignments, but the rest of his week is dead. Over the next 15 hours, he refreshes the app constantly, desperate to secure more jobs — an exercise in vigorous futility.He refreshes after he pulls his tractor-trailer into a nearby storage yard to pick up an empty shipping container, and again while he rolls down the freeway, toward the Port of Los Angeles — one hand on the wheel, one hand on his phone.He refreshes as he drops off the empty box, and a dozen more times while he waits for a crane to deposit another container on the chassis behind his rig, this one loaded with toys from factories in Asia. He refreshes while he fuels his truck.Each time, the same result.“You reach a point where you’re like, ‘Man, am I even making money?’” Mr. Jackson says. “Is it worth even getting up in the morning?”The sudden disappearance of work is an unexpected turn for Mr. Jackson, 37, and the rest of Southern California’s so-called dray operators — the drivers who transport shipping containers between the twin ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach and the sprawl of warehouses filling out the Inland Empire to the east.For much of the pandemic, as the worst public health crisis in a century tore at daily life, these drivers were inundated with work, even while they contended with excruciating delays at the ports. Americans sequestered in their homes filled bedrooms with office furniture and basements with exercise equipment, summoning record volumes of goods from factories in Asia. The flow overwhelmed the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, the gateway for roughly two-fifths of the nation’s imports.As dozens of ships sat at anchor miles off the coast, awaiting their chance to unload, dray operators like Mr. Jackson idled for hours on land before they could enter port gates. They waited hours more to pick up their containers, and yet again before they could drop them off at warehouses.These days, the lines are mostly gone, and loading and unloading goes smoothly. But the same truck drivers who endured the worst of the Great Supply Chain Disruption are now suffering another affliction as the docks reverts to a semblance of normalcy. The frenzied chaos that dominated the first years of the pandemic has been replaced by an uneasy stillness — not enough work.Like many truck drivers, Mr. Jackson works long hours.Brandon Pavan for The New York TimesHe checks his phone many times during the day to try to secure more jobs for his two employees and himself.Brandon Pavan for The New York TimesIncoming shipments are diminishing at Southern California’s two largest ports. This is partly because American demand for kitchen appliances, video game consoles and lawn furniture is finally waning. It also reflects how major retailers are bypassing Southern California, instead shipping to East Coast destinations like Savannah, Ga., to avoid potential upheaval as West Coast dockworkers face off with port managers over a new contract.Mr. Jackson’s journey through a maze of traffic-choked freeways exemplifies the bewildering, often-perilous road confronting tens of millions of workers in a global economy still grappling with the volatile effects of the pandemic along with soaring inflation.As central banks raise interest rates to choke off demand for goods and services in an effort to lower consumer prices, they are reducing income for legions of workers who are paid per assignment. The situation is especially fraught for the nation’s 75,000 dray operators and other foot soldiers of the supply chain.Dockworkers, who wield equipment to load and unload containers at ports, are protected by fierce and disciplined unions that have succeeded in commanding some of the higher wages in blue collar American life. Dray operators work primarily as independent contractors, buying their own fuel and insurance.Their status leaves them subject to constant shifts in economic fortune. In good times, like last year, dray operators command whatever the market must pay to keep them rolling. In lean times, they are guaranteed nothing.As he navigates five lanes of traffic on the way to the port, Mr. Jackson dons headphones to conduct a series of phone calls.More on CaliforniaBullet Train to Nowhere: Construction of the California high-speed rail system, America’s most ambitious infrastructure project, has become a multi-billion-dollar nightmare.A Piece of Black History Destroyed: Lincoln Heights — a historically Black community in a predominantly white, rural county in Northern California — endured for decades. Then came the Mill fire.Warehouse Moratorium: As warehouse construction balloons nationwide, residents in communities both rural and urban have pushed back. In California’s Inland Empire, the anger has turned to widespread action.He talks to his wife, sharing worries that they might not be able to close on their purchase of a newly built home. His income has fluctuated wildly in recent months. The mortgage company is demanding more documents, filling him with dread.He speaks with two men who drive a pair of trucks that he owns. He coordinates their schedules and helps them navigate unfamiliar shipping terminals. He frets that they may not bring in enough to cover the expenses on his other rigs.He passes billboards for beachfront homes in Baja, flights to Las Vegas, spa resorts. He wonders when he will be able to take his wife and 13-year-old daughter on a vacation.He contemplates the tenuous nature of American upward mobility, the forces tearing at the life he has constructed.“The way we’re living is hard times right now,” Mr. Jackson says. “You’ve still got to smile through it. You’ve still got to be positive. But, man, I’m dealing with a lot right now.”Container ships waited to enter the Port of Los Angeles during a large backlog last year.Erin Schaff/The New York Times‘Pray you can make it out.’Raised in South Central Los Angeles, Mr. Jackson says he embraced trucking as a form of liberation from a community he described as chronically short of good jobs and bedeviled by gang violence.“You get used to seeing things,” he says. “All you can do is pray you can make it out.”Growing up, he helped his grandmother with a hair care products business, packing boxes in a warehouse when he was only 10. But when the company failed in the aftermath of the long recession that began in 2007, Mr. Jackson sought a reliable way to support his partner and their then-infant daughter.A friend told him there were good jobs in long-haul trucking. He signed up for a training program arranged by Swift, a giant in the industry.He hopped the Greyhound to Phoenix for the three-week program, sharing a motel room full of scorpions with two other trainees. They practiced on aging rigs that lacked air conditioning despite summer heat reaching 117 degrees.He was soon earning $1,000 a week hauling trailers from a Dollar Store distribution center in Southern California to Phoenix and back.But as the routes grew longer, the strains on his family life intensified. He was hauling refrigerated trailers full of lettuce from the fields of central California to a distribution center in North Carolina. He was routinely away for two and three weeks at a stretch.When his daughter graduated from kindergarten in 2016, he pleaded with the company to schedule him to be home, just for that day. One dispatcher — a gruff, former Marine — mocked him.“This is what you signed up for,” he said.Mr. Jackson did not make it to the ceremony.“I felt like I was letting my whole family down,” he says. “It changed my whole outlook.”He drove back to California and turned in the keys on the truck he leased from the company. He used savings to buy a used rig and began picking up routes as an independent contractor, limiting his time away to no more than three days.Then he figured out how to sleep at home every night. He began working in and out of the port.He eventually bought the other trucks and took on the pair of drivers, paying them a share of the proceeds on the loads they deliver.“It was one of those things where you’ve got to take a risk,” he says. “Why wouldn’t I bet it all on myself? It was something I knew I could do.”He and his family moved into a rented apartment in the Inland Empire, east of Los Angeles, and then into a modest house they bought just off the freeway. They vacationed in Mexico and Hawaii.His daughter’s name, Bailey Jackson, is painted in white letters on the door of his rig. She is the reason he keeps rolling, he says. He takes her shopping — for clothes, for books.“That girl is always reading,” he says. “Some days, she’ll finish more than one book.”This year, he signed off on buying a four-bedroom home with space for a swimming pool in a quiet community carved into the desert in Riverside County.It was a five-minute drive from the yard where he parks his truck.It was a lifetime away from South Central Los Angeles.Dray operators like Mr. Jackson have to idle for hours on land before they can enter port gates.Brandon Pavan for The New York Times’We’ve got to survive.’Though the Inland Empire lies roughly 60 miles from the ports, its clusters of warehouses are an extension of the docks.Here, major retailers stash the bounty delivered from Asia via container ships. Distribution centers supply consumers across much of the American West.In the same way that massive slaughterhouses turned Chicago into a rail hub in the late 19th century, the Inland Empire has burgeoned into a dominant center of warehousing in the age of big box retail and e-commerce.At 5:43 a.m., the sun still a vague suggestion to the east, Mr. Jackson sits behind the wheel of his enormous blue Kenworth tractor. He guides it into a Shell station and climbs down to the pavement.Diesel is selling for $6.19 a gallon, an eye-popping number. He puts $100 in the tank, enough to get to Los Angeles to drop off the empty trailer he has picked up this morning from a warehouse for a home appliance company.Fifteen minutes later, as the sun glimmers through hazy skies, he is headed west on I-60.He wonders what the day will bring.A year ago, he could take his pick from scores of jobs at the Dray Alliance, the online platform where he secures assignments. Not anymore. Whenever a new job appears, he clicks immediately, knowing that dozens of other drivers are also keeping vigil on the site.The uncertainties of the trade are wearying. Three times in the past week, Mr. Jackson has wound up on so-called dry runs — journeys aborted because of a glitch. Sometimes, the paperwork is not in order. Other times, a pickup appointment has been made incorrectly. He heads home with a $100 fee from the shipper. It barely covers the cost of gas.Last year, when dozens of container ships were waiting their turns to unload, he sometimes sat parked in lines for as long as five hours to pick up and drop off, even as the Dray Alliance’s app steered him to jobs with the least congestion. He would grab his neck pillow and pass out in the front seat.Now, no app can redress a basic reduction in demand. Not only are jobs scarce, but compensation has fallen.Less than a year ago, Mr. Jackson was earning about $700 to haul a container from San Bernardino to the port of Los Angeles, a 70-mile journey that can take more than two hours when traffic is bad. This morning’s job brings $500, even though the price of fuel has increased.Trucks waiting to enter a terminal at the Port of Los Angeles in June.Stella Kalinina for The New York TimesStill, every job draws fierce interest, because drivers are stuck with bills.“They know we’ve got to keep working,” Mr. Jackson says. “That’s how they take advantage. We’ve got to survive.”At 7:20, a vivid sun gathering force, Mr. Jackson pulls into the container storage yard near the port, rumbling over bumpy pavement. He backs into a space between two other containers, steps out of the cab, and turns a crank handle to lower the landing gear on the chassis. Then he detaches the box.He quickly finds the empty container he is picking up. But he notices that the chassis below it is painted pale yellow — an indication that it is old. This could trigger an inspection.He drives to port, entering the gates of APM Terminals at 7:40. The terminal is controlled by Maersk, a Danish company that is one of the two largest container shipping operations on earth.The security guard waves him through. A few minutes later, a dockworker driving a top loader — a machine that lifts containers — motions for Mr. Jackson to pull up to an appointed space so he can pluck the box off the rig and add it to a stack.Mr. Jackson scans the app on his phone for his next destination: space E162, the letters painted white on the dock. He pulls in tight, his passenger-side mirror grazing the container to his right. A crane lifts a box off the stacks and deposits it onto his chassis. It lands with a thunderous boom.The morning is proceeding so smoothly that Mr. Jackson indulges visions of dropping the container, at a Mattel warehouse, with time enough to spare for a proper meal — his first of the day — before heading back to the port.But then a dockworker notices the old chassis. He diverts him to a special maintenance area. There, Mr. Jackson sits for more than an hour while a mechanic administers a repair.He pulls in to a truck stop in Long Beach, and adds another $400 worth of diesel to his tank.He walks across the lot, stepping between other tractor-trailers, on his way to the restroom — his first pit stop since dawn.One of his drivers calls to report that he has accepted an assignment from Dray Alliance to drop off an empty container at the port, and is now headed back to the Inland Empire, pulling nothing.Mr. Jackson is distressed. He had arranged for the driver to pick up a load at the port this evening. He should have waited to do both jobs on a single journey. Instead, he is burning gas on two round trips — at Mr. Jackson’s expense.“How does that cover the cost of me paying you?” Mr. Jackson asks. “The rates are down. It’s slow, bro’.”Mr. Jackson is an independent contractor who owns his truck and two others.Brandon Pavan for The New York Times‘I’m taking care of business.’At 11 in the morning, he is on the freeway again, headed back to the Inland Empire to drop off the container. He shovels a handful of popcorn into his mouth. Then he puts the bag on his console, and picks up his iPhone to refresh. No jobs.Fat clouds hang low over the Arrowhead Mountains as Mr. Jackson arrives at the Mattel warehouse just after noon. He drops the container, picks up an empty, and returns to the freeway, headed back to the port for the second half of his long day.Many truck drivers obsessively consume caffeine, perpetually fearful that they might otherwise descend into a dangerous state known as highway hypnosis.Mr. Jackson abstains. “I drink a lot of this,” he says, taking a swig from a bottle of Fiji water.To stay alert, he relies on the vibrations of his $6,000 sound system. He cranks up the dial on an old Isley Brothers classic, “Work to Do.” “I’m taking care of business, woman can’t you see. I’ve gotta make it for you, and gotta make it for me.”He rolls past a billboard for Fastevict.com, past tent cities full of homeless people, past self-storage units.He makes it to the port in time for a meal before his 3 p.m. pickup.He winds through the cracked streets of Long Beach, looking for a curb long enough to park a tractor-trailer. He finds a spot around the corner from the truck stop. He waits for an Uber Eats driver, who arrives bearing a Chipotle bowl — brown rice, chicken and avocado.He drops the container, picks up another, and parks again in Long Beach, taking a nap in the back in the cab while waiting for rush hour traffic to ease.At 6:30 in the evening, twilight settling over the parched land, he rolls toward home while again on the phone with his wife.The mortgage underwriter does not understand the division between Mr. Jackson’s personal finances and his business — a blurry line. The closing appears in danger. (He will eventually pull it off, though that will leave him staring at mortgage payments with diminished income.)Darkness fills his cab. Brake lights flicker ahead. He and his wife struggle to understand where their road leads.“People are like, ‘If you get through this point, you’ll be OK,’” Mr. Jackson says. “And I’m like, ‘How long is this point going to last?’”Major retailers are bypassing Southern California, instead shipping to East Coast destinations like Savannah, Ga., shown here, to avoid potential upheaval.Erin Schaff/The New York Times More

Dog insurance is expensive. I’ve just received the renewal quote for the older of my two dogs, Barnaby. It’s an eye-watering, dog-howling £328.42 a month. That’s nearly £4,000 a year.Perhaps an old dog with multiple ailments should be dispatched to the doggy equivalent of Dignitas. That would save a fortune. But hang on. Yes, he struggles to get up and down stairs and a slow potter to the post box is about as much as he can manage but he seems happy enough. He’ll greet you with a tail wag and a woof. I’d prefer it if he didn’t woof at me.His breath is abominable. But you become incredibly attached to your furry friends. If they have a decent quality of life, surely as an owner you have an obligation to keep them happy, healthy and alive — whatever the cost?Dog ownership in the UK has jumped from 7.6mn in 2010 to an estimated 13mn last year, according to Statista. The vast majority are insured and two of them live with me. On paper, owning a dog doesn’t make sense. They make lots of mess, with muddy footprints a speciality. Their hair gets everywhere, they consume huge amounts of your time and require expensive food. If your back is turned they’ll steal your dinner. In the early years they’ll often chew furniture, electric cables or skirting boards. If it’s howling with wind and tipping down with rain, they’ll need a walk even if you don’t want one. Prepare for massive kennel bills every time you go away. They disobey your commands not to sleep on a sofa or the bed and ruin your carpets and soft furnishings. Worse still, you have to pick up their poo, clean up their sick and, the older they get, the more they smell. Dog odour pervades your house, car and clothes. No matter how well they’re trained, you’ll have the occasional indoor “incident”. This doesn’t sound like a great sales pitch for owning a dog. But the debate isn’t about whether to have a dog. They’re amazing. Nor is it about the substantial expense of ownership. It’s whether the astronomical cost of insurance is worth the money.

Like many of you, I’ve been looking through my household expenditure to make savings. I nearly cancelled the dogs’ respective policies to divert the money spent into a savings account to use if required. But given how many visits to the vet I’ve had to make, would this be a false economy? Our two dogs are a hoot. Stanley is a three-year-old working cocker spaniel, although I’ve yet to see much evidence of his work, unless his job is to chase balls or wag his tail. Last week, he got a hacking cough. It wasn’t Covid and he doesn’t smoke. Usually, I apply a three-day rule before I go to the vet. But his eyes told me he was upset, so I booked an appointment. After a 12-minute consultation, prescription drugs and injection, I’d dropped £262. All, thankfully, claimable on insurance. As was the recent treatment for a wound sustained from a wooden breakwater after an enthusiastic ball chase. He didn’t notice the gouge or care for the stitches and cone of shame required to stop him opening up the gash. Hundreds of pounds and a few visits to the vet later and he’s back on form. His policy equates to just over £1,000 a year. And his claims have topped that this year. For a younger dog, insurance tends to be cheaper, and makes sound financial sense.Older dogs are a conundrum. Barnaby is nearly 15. He’s a Basset Fauve de Bretagne. If you don’t know what one of those looks like, ask a 10-year-old to draw you a picture of a dog. He’s a medium-sized urban hound with a very deep bark. Given their life expectancy of 11 to 13 years, he’s doing well. But as the years have advanced, so his insurance premiums have escalated. Back in 2008 when he was a pup, Direct Line charged just £29 a month. For every advancing year expect it to multiply. Should I shop around for a cheaper policy? Actually I’ve tried. Most new policies won’t cover existing conditions. Or, if they do, significant excesses apply. The older a dog, the fewer policies exist that will fully cover your pet. The safest bet is to pick a company from day one and run with them until the end. The internet tells me that if I switched, the cheapest insurance would be £293.80 a month but even they recommend staying with the existing provider. Should I just take that £4,000 and shove it in a bank account instead? Do this and you, in effect, become your own insurer. In theory, you could save money in the accident- and sickness-free years and use it when trouble strikes, as it inevitably will.Well, this year Barnaby’s treatments have already cost over £3,000 and that’s without any unscheduled claims. He’s got pills for his arthritis, dental care for his teeth, specialist shampoo for his scaly skin, a liquid food supplement for his urinary incontinence and his vet has prescribed a monthly injection for his joints.This general doggy maintenance costs hundreds of pounds a month and is covered by his insurance, so it’s not as if I’m hugely out of pocket. It’s the unscheduled surgery one needs to protect against. A few years ago, a complicated hernia operation cost nearly £5,000 and who knows when the next major operation may arise? He’s had stitches, teeth out, cuts on his paws and a few other ailments to treat, costing hundreds if not thousands of pounds a pop.

Speak to any dog owner and they’ll tell you tales of swallowed balls, splintered sticks, snake bites, fevers, unexplained bleeding, cuts, scrapes, back trouble and sickness — all requiring expensive treatments or surgery. Dog ownership is not for the faint-hearted or indeed a challenged budget. And if you have a dog, you’ll want the very best care for them no matter what the cost might be. For all the unconditional love and laughter they bring, they must have the best. And that, I’ve concluded, means insuring them for any and every eventuality. Household savings will have to come from elsewhere. James Max is a broadcaster on TV and radio and a property expert. The views expressed are personal. Twitter: @thejamesmax More