New Federal Reserve research examines the relationship between high tariffs and reduced inflation. The research note from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, published Monday (Jan. 5), pointed out that past instances of steep tariff rates led to lower inflation, while examining possible causes...
British consumers reportedly pulled back on their debit and credit card spending this year. It marks the first decline in card spending since the COVID pandemic, Bloomberg News reported Tuesday (Dec. 30), citing data from Barclays which showed consumers were still willing to shell out for small luxuries and...
White-collar layoffs at firms like McKinsey and Amazon grab headlines for their implications about artificial intelligence and tariff pressures replacing plum jobs. But there’s another canary in the economic coal mine. What PYMNTS Intelligence calls the Labor Economy® — the roughly 60 million warehouse packers,...
Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan is forecasting an easing of tariff-related tensions next year. Moynihad said during an interview Sunday (Dec. 28) with CBS News that he thinks the President Donald Trump administration will commit to “de-escalation, not escalation,” with an average of 15%...
There was a decline in initial claims for unemployment together with an increase in insured employment last week. Observers said this combination reflected a continuation of a “no hire, no fire” labor market. During the week ended Saturday (Dec. 20), there were 214,000 initial claims,...
By year-end, one conclusion from PYMNTS Intelligence’s The Certainty Project series is hard to miss: Uncertainty rarely arrives as a single shock. It compounds, as we saw this year, jumping from cyber risk to payment fraud to shifting trade rules. Then it shows up in...
Who could’ve predicted the run that prediction markets have had in 2025? These novel platforms, which let participants trade contracts tied to the outcomes of real-world events, entered a decisive phase of commercial and regulatory expansion over the past year. Formerly forced offshore, 2025 saw...
Two new sets of data show consumers are spending strongly but not feeling confident. U.S. gross domestic product climbed at a seasonal and inflation-adjusted 4.3% annual rate in the quarter running from July through September, the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics said Tuesday (Dec....
U.S. middle-market companies are making high-stakes decisions with less visibility and less time, as tariffs collide with delayed economic data and cooling demand, forcing product leaders into defensive mode. That is the central finding of “Tariffs Turn Up the Heat as Product Leaders Confront Peak Uncertainty,”...