Regulation and Deregulation of Industry

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    Americans Growing Worried About Losing Their Jobs, Labor Survey Shows

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    The New York Fed’s labor market survey showed cracks just as Jerome H. Powell, the Fed chair, prepares for a closely watched Friday speech.Americans are increasingly worried about losing their jobs, a new survey from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York released on Monday showed, a worrying sign at a moment when economists and central bankers are warily monitoring for cracks in the job market.The New York Fed’s July survey of labor market expectations showed that the expected likelihood of becoming unemployed rose to 4.4 percent on average, up from 3.9 percent a year earlier and the highest in data going back to 2014.In fact, the new data showed signs of the labor market cracking across a range of metrics. People reported leaving or losing jobs, marked down their salary expectations and increasingly thought that they would need to work past traditional retirement ages. The share of workers who reported searching for a job in the past four weeks jumped to 28.4 percent — the highest level since the data started — up from 19.4 percent in July 2023.The survey, which quizzes a nationally representative sample of people on their recent economic experience, suggested that meaningful fissures may be forming in the labor market. While it is just one report, it comes at a tense moment, as economists and central bankers watch nervously for signs that the job market is taking a turn for the worse.The unemployment rate has moved up notably over the past year, climbing to 4.3 percent in July. That has put many economy watchers on edge. The jobless rate rarely moves up as sharply as it has recently outside of an economic recession.But the slowdown in the labor market has not been widely backed up by other data. Jobless claims have moved up but remain relatively low. Consumer spending remains robust, with both overall retail sales data and company earnings reports suggesting that shoppers continue to open their wallets.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Michigan Supreme Court Ruling to Raise Minimum Wage in the State

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    The ruling, raising the minimum wage and phasing out a lower wage for tipped workers, said legislators had acted improperly in dodging a referendum.The Michigan Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that legislators had unconstitutionally subverted a voter-sponsored proposal to raise the state’s minimum wage.As a result of the 4-to-3 ruling, labor groups expect Michigan’s hourly minimum wage of $10.33 to increase by at least $2 in February, once the state treasurer calculates inflation adjustments. There will be subsequent cost-of-living increases through 2029.In addition, tipped workers, who currently can be paid as little as $3.84 per hour, will be subject to the same minimum as all other workers by 2029, putting Michigan on a path to be the eighth state to establish a standard wage floor for all workers.Labor activists and union groups celebrated the Michigan court’s decision.“We have finally prevailed over the corporate interests who tried everything they could to prevent all workers, including restaurant workers, from being paid a full, fair wage with tips on top,” Saru Jayaraman, the president of One Fair Wage, a national nonprofit organizing group, said in a statement.Her group is directly cited in the case because of its involvement in gathering the necessary signatures from Michiganders in 2018 to invoke the ballot initiative and send the proposal to the Legislature, which Republicans led at the time.To prevent the wage increase proposal from reaching the 2018 general election ballot, a large cohort of restaurateurs — led by the Michigan Restaurant and Lodging Association — pushed the Legislature to simply adopt the proposal sponsored by One Fair Wage and other groups, which the Legislature did. Legislators then rolled back the law’s provisions after the election.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Is the Labor Market About to Crack? It’s the Key Question for the Fed.

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    Central bankers are paying more attention to the strength of the job market as inflation cools. But it’s a tough time to gauge its resilience.David Gurley Jr.’s bank account benefited from a hot pandemic labor market. Mr. Gurley, a video game programmer, switched jobs twice in quick succession, boosting his salary and nabbing a fully remote position.By late last year, he was worried that a pullback in the tech industry could make his job precarious. But when it comes to the outlook now, “it seems like things are more or less OK,” Mr. Gurley, 35, said. Opportunities for rapid wage gains are not as widespread and some layoffs have happened, but he feels he could find a job if he needed one.Mr. Gurley’s experience — a rip-roaring labor market, then a wobbly one and now some semblance of normality — is the kind of postpandemic roller-coaster ride that many Americans have encountered. After breakneck hiring and wage growth in 2022 and 2023, conditions have moderated. Now economic officials are trying to figure out whether the labor market is settling into a new holding pattern or is poised to take a turn for the worse.The answer will be pivotal for the future of Federal Reserve policy.Central bankers spent 2022 and 2023 focused mainly on wrestling rapid inflation under control. They have left interest rates unchanged at 5.3 percent for more than a year now and are likely to keep them there at their meeting this week, making money expensive to borrow in a bid to restrain consumer demand and weigh down the overall economy.But now that inflation is returning to normal, officials are again concentrating keenly on their second major goal: maintaining a strong job market. They are trying to strike a careful balance in which they fully stamp out inflation without causing unemployment to spike in the process.The labor market still looks solid. Joblessness is low by historical standards, and claims for unemployment insurance have stabilized after moving up earlier this year. A fresh jobs report set for release Friday is expected to show that employers continued to hire in July, albeit at a slower pace.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Small Banks Say Their Commercial Real Estate Loans Are Fine

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    Community banks are big commercial real-estate lenders. But they say their loans are to sturdy local businesses, not those facing vacant office space.Small banks are feeling misunderstood.They see themselves as integral to neighborhoods across the country: backers of local dry cleaners, dentists and sandwich shops. Investors worry that those banks could be a crisis waiting to happen.The pride and the anxiety both reflect the fact that community banks are big lenders in the commercial real-estate market, which has been rocked by falling property values as large office buildings sit empty.But executives at these firms — which number about 4,100 in total — say there is an important distinction, and some industry analysts concur. They caution that small banks are being lumped in with lenders to the owners of half-empty towers in Manhattan, San Francisco and Chicago, which are in the most trouble.Instead, a majority of commercial building loans by community banks are for smaller buildings — like those housing doctors and local businesses — that tend to be fully leased. And while there are concerns about financial pressure on apartment building landlords if interest rates remain high, missed payments on those types of mortgages have not risen substantially.“The focus has been on office as that is the weak category,” said John Buran, the chief executive officer of Flushing Financial, based in Uniondale, N.Y., which operates branches as Flushing Bank in Queens, Manhattan and Brooklyn and on Long Island. “Most community banks don’t have the type of exposure.”All of Flushing Financial’s loans are performing well, said John Buran, the firm’s chief executive.Graham Dickie/The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Judge Refuses to Block F.T.C.’s Noncompete Ban as Lawsuits Play Out

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    A federal judge in Pennsylvania denied a request to delay the rule, siding with the agency and diverging from another court’s decision earlier this month.A federal judge in Pennsylvania on Tuesday declined to block the Federal Trade Commission’s ban on noncompete agreements, diverging from another judge’s recent finding that the agency’s move was on shaky legal ground.The decision clears one obstacle to the F.T.C.’s move to prohibit virtually all noncompete agreements, which prohibit employees from switching jobs within an industry and affect roughly one in five American workers. The rule is set to take effect on Sept. 4.Several business groups sued to block the ban as soon as the F.T.C. voted to adopt it in April, saying it would limit their ability to protect trade secrets and confidential information. ATS Tree Services, a tree-removal company, filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, arguing that it used noncompetes to “provide its employees with necessary and valuable specialized training while minimizing the risk that employees will leave and immediately use that specialized training and ATS’s confidential information to benefit a competitor.”But on Tuesday, Judge Kelley Brisbon Hodge ruled that ATS had not proved that it would suffer irreparable harm from the rule. Denying the company’s motion for a preliminary injunction, she said the lawsuit was unlikely to ultimately prevail on the merits.Judge Hodge’s decision “fully vindicates” the F.T.C.’s authority to ban noncompete clauses, “which harm competition by inhibiting workers’ freedom and mobility while stunting economic growth,” Douglas Farrar, a commission spokesman, said in a statement.A lawyer representing ATS, Josh Robbins of the Pacific Legal Foundation, a libertarian law group, said the firm was disappointed by the court’s decision and would “continue to fight the F.T.C.’s power grab.” Mr. Robbins declined to say whether the firm intended to appeal.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Antitrust Regulator Tells Chains: Back Off Your Franchisees

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    After a yearlong inquiry, the Federal Trade Commission warned brands not to gag their small business operators or charge them extra fees.In the long-simmering conflict between franchisers and franchisees, the federal government has weighed in on behalf of the smaller guys.In a business relationship that has become fundamental to American commerce, franchisers — brands like McDonald’s and Jiffy Lube — license the right to operate their concept to individual entrepreneurs, who provide start-up capital and may own one location or many.On Friday, the Federal Trade Commission issued a policy statement and staff guidance that cautioned franchisers not to restrict their franchisees’ ability to speak to government officials or to tack on fees that weren’t disclosed in documents provided to prospective franchise buyers.In a news release, the commission said it was acting amid “growing concern about unfair and deceptive practices by franchisers — to ensure that the franchise business model remains a ladder of opportunity to owning a business for honest small business owners.”The agency has been scrutinizing the industry, which includes 800,000 business establishments, since issuing a request for information early last year that asked several questions about the franchisee-franchiser relationship. Around the same time, the Government Accountability Office issued a report finding that franchisees lacked control over crucial business decisions and that they often did not understand all the risks they faced before purchasing a license.Across the more than 2,200 comments posted in response to the F.T.C. request, a central theme emerged: A majority of franchisees wanted changes to the rules that governed the industry, while a majority of franchisers did not.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Here’s Where Climate Change Is Driving Up Home Insurance Rates

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    Source: Keys and Mulder, National Bureau of Economic Research (2024) Note: State average is shown in counties with few or no observations. Enid, Okla., surrounded by farms about 90 minutes north of Oklahoma City, has an unwelcome distinction: Home insurance is more expensive, relative to home values, than almost anywhere else in the country. Enid […] More

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    One Obstacle for Trump’s Promises: This Isn’t the 2016 Economy

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    Donald J. Trump slapped tariffs on trading partners and cut taxes in his first term. But after inflation’s return, a repeat playbook would be riskier.When Donald J. Trump became president in 2017, prices had risen roughly 5 percent over the previous four years. If he were to win the race for the White House in 2024, he would be entering office at a time when they are up 20 percent and counting.That is a critically different economic backdrop for the kind of policies — tariffs and tax cuts — that the Republican contender has put at the center of his campaign.Mr. Trump regularly blames the Biden administration for the recent price surge, but inflation has been a global phenomenon since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020. Supply chain problems, shifting consumer spending patterns and other quirks related to pandemic lockdowns and their aftermath collided with stimulus-fueled demand to send costs shooting higher.The years of unusually rapid inflation that resulted have changed the nation’s economic picture in important ways. Businesses are more accustomed to adjusting prices and consumers are more used to those changes than they were before the pandemic, when costs had been quiescent for decades. Beyond that, the Federal Reserve has lifted interest rates to 5.3 percent in a bid to slow demand and wrestle the situation under control.That combination — jittery inflation expectations and higher interest rates — could make many of the ideas Mr. Trump talks about on the campaign trail either riskier or more costly than before, especially at a moment when the economy is running at full speed and unemployment is very low.Mr. Trump is suggesting tax cuts that could speed up the economy and add to the deficit, potentially boosting inflation and adding to the national debt at a time when it costs a lot for the government to borrow. He has talked about mass deportations at a moment when economists warn that losing a lot of would-be workers could cause labor shortages and push up prices. He promises to ramp up tariffs across the board — and drastically on China — in a move that might sharply increase import prices.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More