Inflation in the United States hit 3.8% in April, its highest in nearly three years. The Iran war sent energy costs soaring 18% year over year. Gasoline has jumped more than 28%, and diesel has surged nearly 50% since the conflict began. Food-at-home prices are...
For millions of consumers, surviving this economy is no longer about opening the wallet less often or drawing the purse strings ever tighter. It’s about finding more ways to keep up. The latest spending and income data suggest the Cutback Economy is moving into a...
Lower-income Americans are facing high levels of economic insecurity and financial strain, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. These pressures have contributed to consumer sentiment dropping to levels near or below those seen during the Great Recession and the pandemic, New York...
Gas prices and worries about war-related inflation caused consumer confidence to fall in May. The latest edition of The Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index showed that confidence dipped 0.7 points to 93.1 this month, down from an upwardly revised 93.8 in April, according to a...
Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller says interest rates should remain steady amid continued inflation. “With regard to future rate cuts, I am going to need to see improvement on inflation or a significant deterioration in the labor market before I would consider reducing the policy...
Teenage job-seekers could be facing a cruel summer thanks to inflation and rising fuel prices. In fact, the summer of 2026 could end up being the worst summer for teenage employment since the U.S. federal government began monitoring such data in 1948, The Wall Street...
High gas prices drove consumer sentiment down to a new low in May. The University of Michigan’s Index of Consumer Sentiment dropped by five points during the month, to 44.8, according to the Surveys of Consumers’ final results for May. The reading came a month...
Business activity in the United Kingdom is declining amid a “perfect storm” of economic factors, said Chris Williamson, chief business economist at S&P Global Market Intelligence. The S&P Global Flash UK PMI composite output index, which gauges activity in the private manufacturing and services sector,...
Business uncertainty remained elevated in March, with 27% of payment executives reporting high uncertainty levels even as optimism about the next 12 months rose, according to new PYMNTS Intelligence data. Executives appear increasingly willing to accept that volatility is no longer an occasional disruption but...