Author: Brian Lund
-
Trump’s beef order asks importers to sell at a 25 percent discount, and nothing in it requires them to
President Trump signed a proclamation in late August that temporarily lets more imported beef into the United States at a lower tariff rate, and the White House says the point is a 25 percent price cut on that beef. But read the actual text of the order, and there is no line that forces an…
-
Electricity is up 37 percent in five years, more than rent, gasoline or groceries
Electricity has quietly become the household bill nobody can shop around, and the government’s own price data now backs that up in hard numbers. Comparing Consumer Price Index figures from July 2021 to July 2026, the cost of residential electricity climbed faster than rent, gasoline or the weekly grocery bill — the four largest recurring…
-
Regulators barred four bank employees, one at Truist, from ever working in banking again
Federal regulators quietly closed the book on four bank employees this summer, permanently barring each of them from ever holding a job at a federally insured bank again. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation released the decisions as part of its routine monthly enforcement list, and one of the four worked at Truist Bank, a bank…
-
Credit card balances rose $21 billion last quarter, and 6.97 percent of that debt is newly 90 days late
Households added $21 billion in credit card debt during the second quarter of 2026, even as total household borrowing edged down for the first time in months. Credit card balances now stand at $1.263 trillion nationwide, and the share of that debt sliding into serious delinquency has ticked higher too. The numbers come from the…
-
Federal law still allows no overtime on a $35,568 salary, while California’s line rises to $72,384
Two salaried workers doing the same job for the same pay can have very different rights to overtime, depending only on which state they live in. Under federal law, a salaried employee who earns as little as $35,568 a year can be classified as “exempt” and denied overtime pay entirely, no matter how many extra…
-
The EEOC says Family Dollar fired a pregnant worker over a doctor’s note she could not get
A federal agency says a North Carolina store manager gave a pregnant employee hours to produce a doctor’s note on New Year’s Eve, then fired her when she couldn’t get one in time. The case, filed as a lawsuit rather than settled quietly, is a reminder of a federal law many hourly workers and their…
-
Artificial intelligence was the top stated reason for layoffs for a fifth straight month
For the fifth month in a row, U.S. employers explaining why they cut jobs pointed to artificial intelligence more than any other reason. That isn’t a worker survey or an economist’s estimate — it’s what companies themselves wrote down when they announced the cuts, tracked by the outplacement firm that has logged layoff reasons since…
-
Hiring in professional and business services fell by 188,000 in a single month
The federal government’s monthly read on the job market flagged something narrower than the usual headline this week: hiring in professional and business services — the broad category covering law firms, accounting practices, consultants, administrative support and temp-staffing agencies — dropped by 188,000 in July, even as most other parts of the report barely moved.…
-
The IRS is warning about fake calculators built around the new tax law’s deductions
Fake tax-refund calculators are circulating online this year, dressed up to look like legitimate tools for the new Working Families Tax Cuts deductions — and the IRS says some of them exist only to collect personal and financial information. The agency’s fact sheet on the scheme, FS-2026-09, lays out how the fake tools work and…
-
The IRS lists 71 occupations that qualify for the tip deduction, and it stops at $25,000
Tip income only qualifies for the federal “no tax on tips” deduction if the job that earned it appears, by name, on a specific federal list — and that list just got longer than a lot of workers realize. Treasury and the IRS finalized the roster this spring at 71 occupations spread across eight industry…
