The financial news that actually matters
Minimum wages are rising in 19 states as 2026 begins, giving millions of hourly workers a pay increase at a time when household budgets remain under pressure from rent, food and transportation costs. Among states, Washington will lead the pack at $17.13 an hour, followed closely by Connecticut at $16.94 and California at $16.90. The…
Used-car shoppers are finally seeing a market that feels more manageable than the one that defined the post-pandemic years. Dealer lots are fuller, more listings are available across price points, and the panic-buying atmosphere that once turned ordinary late-model vehicles into hard-to-find commodities has largely faded. That does not mean the market has snapped back…
Walmart has done something no retailer had ever managed before. On February 3, the company’s market value climbed past $1 trillion, putting the Bentonville, Arkansas-based chain into a club that has been dominated almost entirely by technology giants. The milestone says as much about how investors now see Walmart as it does about the stock’s…
Savers heading into 2026 have a real opportunity-cost problem. Leaving $10,000 in a sleepy branch savings account can mean earning next to nothing, while a better cash account can generate a few hundred dollars over the same stretch with little added effort. That makes the high-yield savings versus money market debate more than a technical…
Claudia Sahm’s recession indicator is back in the conversation, and that alone is enough to make investors and workers pay attention. The Sahm Rule has one of the cleanest reputations in macroeconomics because it was designed to spot the early stage of a recession using something simple and hard to fake: a meaningful rise in…
For decades, the case for college was sold as a near-certainty: earn a four-year degree, land a better job, and make more money over time. That promise has not disappeared, but for young Americans entering the workforce, it is looking far less automatic than it once did. New graduates are running into a job market…
SpaceX appears to be moving closer to one of the most anticipated public offerings in years, with four of Wall Street’s biggest banks now in the frame for senior roles on a potential 2026 IPO. The company has not publicly filed to go public, and the process is still subject to market conditions and internal…
The Supreme Court on Wednesday appeared deeply skeptical of giving the White House broad power to remove Federal Reserve board members, a signal that could preserve one of the central bank’s most important institutional protections. Over roughly two hours of argument in Trump v. Cook, justices across the bench pressed the administration on a basic…
Amazon has cut about 16,000 corporate jobs in what amounts to the biggest layoff round in the company’s history, deepening a restructuring push that had already eliminated roughly 14,000 similar roles just three months earlier. The latest move brings Amazon’s total corporate reductions since October to about 30,000, a sharp rollback for a company that…
Twenty-one states raised their minimum wages on January 1, 2026, with Washington state claiming the highest statewide rate in the country at $17.13 per hour. The wave of increases, driven largely by automatic cost-of-living adjustments written into state law, reflects a growing reliance on inflation-indexed formulas that tie wage floors to federal price data. For…