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Stocks rose Friday as Treasury yields eased, resulting in a winning week for Wall Street despite heightened volatility. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 294.04 points, or 0.58%, to end at 50,579.70. The 30-stock index hit an intraday all-time high and posted another record close. The S&P 500 rose 0.37% to settle at 7,473.47. The Nasdaq Composite climbed 0.19%, ending at 26,343.97.

Mary, a veteran Silicon Valley marketer who can’t find a job, considers herself a victim of an H-1B visa program run amok. Her story, a U.S. native replaced by a foreign-born employee who is willing to work at a significantly lower wage, has become commonplace, particularly in the tech industry. Adding insult to injury, she says, her CEO, who hails from India, told her to train the man he selected to replace her before laying her off.Despite stints at Google and Cisco and two years of job hunting, Mary can no longer compete in a job market saturated with foreign-born...

When a state starts floating an exit tax, it is telling you something more important than any campaign slogan: the people running the place know their model is not working. They may not say it that way. They will call it fairness, responsibility, or making the wealthy “pay what they owe.” But the meaning is the same. If families, entrepreneurs, and investors are leaving, the state can either ask why its policies are pushing them out, or it can try to tax them for escaping. An exit tax chooses punishment over reform. I understand why these proposals resonate with some...

It's a bit weird to think of dating or marriage as a market — but this is a newsletter that tries to make sense of the world through economics. And, like any market, shifts in supply and demand can reshape romantic outcomes in pretty profound ways. First, a dating story that illustrates this dynamic. Then we'll get to a fascinating new study that may help explain why getting married has become harder for many American women. But first, the story. If you haven't heard of him, Jack Antonoff is a musician and super-producer. He, for example, produced a slew of...

European negotiators agreed late on Tuesday to implement the controversial trade agreement concluded last summer with the US. However, the deal — signed in the Scottish city of Turnberry — remains fragile as long as US President Donald Trump continues to use tariffs as a tool of political pressure. Diplomats and MEPs reached an agreement late on Tuesday to implement the contentious EU-US agreement, which eliminates duties on most US industrial goods imported into Europe. The negotiations concluded two weeks after US President Donald Trump threatened to impose 25% tariffs on EU cars if Europeans did not implement the agreement...

A large Coca-Cola bottling plant in Southern California will shut down permanently this summer, ending a longstanding relationship between the company and the city. Reyes Coca-Cola Bottling made the announcement in a May 8 WARN (Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification) notice – a legally required 60-day "heads-up" that employers must give to workers before a major layoff or office closure. "We regularly assess our locations, products, and services to ensure we can continue driving sustainable growth and innovation across our business," a spokesperson for Reyes Coca-Cola Bottling wrote to SFGATE. "As such, we have announced the closure of our Ventura...

Don’t cure cancer because it would devastate the cancer industry! Don’t improve healthcare access because you’ll hurt the funeral industry! That’s the kind of brain hurt logic NPR employed to decry President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration as a devastating blow to the U.S. economy. “The economic chilling effect of Trump's immigration crackdown,” read NPR reporter Greg Rosalsky’s incoherent May 12 headline. Rosalsky flailed over Trump’s ICE raids in Little Village, Chicago: “Many in the community seemed to be scared to go about business as usual. There seemed to be a clear ‘chilling effect’ on their economic activity —...

US stocks rallied to record highs on Wednesday as investors shrugged off a hotter-than-expected reading of wholesale inflation. Meanwhile, Kevin Warsh was confirmed by the Senate to be the next Fed chair. The S&P 500 (^GSPC) rose 0.6%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC) climbed 1.2% to hit fresh record highs. The tech sector lifted the market, led by semiconductors and the “Magnificent Seven” stocks. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI) fell just below the flat line.

Kevin Warsh took another step towards becoming Federal Reserve chair on Tuesday, clearing a key Senate vote that puts him on the central bank Board of Governors. The upper chamber voted to approve Warsh’s nomination by a 51-45 vote, on a mostly party-line basis. Only Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., crossed lines to vote for President Donald Trump’s pick. Next up for the nominee, who sat on the board previously, is the vote to be chair, which is expected Wednesday.

The consumer price index rose at a seasonally adjusted 0.6% for the month, putting the one-year pace at 3.8%, the highest since May 2023. Excluding food and energy, the core CPI increased 0.4% and 2.8%, respectively, keeping inflation well above the Federal Reserve's 2% goal. Though energy and in particular gasoline has been much of the headline story, inflation pressures also came from a variety of other areas. The report also contained bad news for workers, as real average hourly wages slipped 0.5% for the month and fell 0.3% annually. "Inflation is the key drag on the U.S. economy now,"...

Job creation topped muted expectations in though the plodding U.S. labor market sent up several flags for a potential slowdown this year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday. Nonfarm payrolls rose by a seasonally adjusted 115,000 for the month, down from the 185,000 created in an unusually strong March, but better than the 55,000 forecast in the Dow Jones consensus estimate. The unemployment rate held at 4.3%, further proof that the labor market has reached a point where only modest job creation is needed to keep the jobless level steady, given little growth in the labor force. Average hourly...

US employers added 115,000 jobs in April and the unemployment rate remained steady at 4.3%, a surprisingly robust gain to the labor market as the US-Israel war with Iran continued to drive up economic uncertainty. Economists projected about 55,000 new jobs and a 4.3% unemployment rate. A day earlier, the labor department announced 200,000 people filed for weekly unemployment benefits, a slight increase from the week before. Jobs gains were concentrated in healthcare, transportation and warehousing, retail and social assistance. Altogether, 106,000 new jobs were added to those four industries. Meanwhile, job losses were seen in federal government employment –...

The number of Americans filing claims for unemployment benefits increased less than expected last week amid low layoffs that are helping to anchor the labor market. Initial claims for ‌state unemployment benefits rose 10,000 to a seasonally adjusted 200,000 for the week ended May 2. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast 205,000 claims for the latest week. Government data on Tuesday showed there were 0.95 job openings for every unemployed person in March versus 0.91 in February, consistent with a stable labor market. Despite a raft of layoff announcements by big technology firms related to the adoption of artificial intelligence...

The video “AI Execs are Running a 1948 Circus Trick…” by Brendan Dell argues that AI companies are utilizing the **Barnum Effect**—a psychological phenomenon where individuals believe generic descriptions are highly specific to them—to inflate their valuations and influence policy through “fear-based marketing.”

[...] The Fashion District, a sub-neighborhood of Downtown LA that envelops Santee Alley, has long been home to thousands of family-owned retail shops (some of which operate as wholesale only) and more than 70 restaurants that include everything from casual taquerias to Middle Eastern spots to an acclaimed Hawaii restaurant to high-end options like Italian stunner Rossoblu. Many of the businesses are immigrant-, Latino- and Asian-owned. Until recently, throngs of shoppers would crowd the alley on weekdays and weekends alike. But in the past year, the area has felt much more muted, and at times even deserted, due at least...

The IMF estimates that Israel’s economy will grow by 3.5% this year, compared to 2.3% for the United States and 1.3% for the EU. It also means Israel’s GDP is forecast to outperform all G7 countries in 2026. Israel has a much lower debt-to-GDP ratio than many other developed countries, with the IMF forecasting a rate of 69.8% this year. Although a slight uptick from 2025, it’s much lower than the G7′s rate of 123.7%. The country’s unemployment rate also edged marginally higher to reach 3.2% in March, but falls below America’s 4.3% unemployment rate and the euro zone’s 6.2%....

A groundbreaking Harvard study has found that AI systems outperformed human doctors in high-pressure emergency medicine triage, diagnosing more accurately in the potentially life and death moments when people are first rushed to hospital. The results were described by independent experts as showing “a genuine step forward” in the clinical reasoning of AIs and came as part of trials that tested the responses of hundreds of doctors against an AI. The authors said the results, published in the journal Science, showed large language models (LLMs) “have eclipsed most benchmarks of clinical reasoning”. One experiment focused on 76 patients who arrived...

U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) jumped in the first quarter of 2026, compared to the previous quarter’s growth, the Commerce Department reported Thursday – a sign that the nation’s economy remains solid. Real (inflation-adjusted) GDP increased at an annual rate of 2.0% in the first quarter after rising just 0.5% in the last three months of 2025, according to the report providing an advanced estimate of GDP. A second, updated estimate will be published May 28, to eventually be followed by the third (and final) estimate. "The core of the economy remained solid in Q1, driven by the AI buildout...

Existential crises tend to arrive when the gap between how life feels and how we thought it would feel becomes too wide to ignore.For a growing number of Americans, 2026 hasn’t just been hard. It’s been disorienting. A Talker Research survey of 2,000 U.S. adults found that one in three people (32%) say they’re currently experiencing an existential crisis, with younger adults far more likely to feel that way than older generations. Nearly four in ten (37%) say their entire lives feel out of their control... A separate survey of 5,000 Americans, conducted by Talker Research for Current in December...

Gas prices: New 2026 high set nine days after energy secretary said prices ‘likely peaked’ By Washington Examiner Staff