The financial news that actually matters
Between early April and mid-May 2026, the S&P 500 climbed roughly 10%, a surge that in calmer times would have felt like vindication for the bulls. Instead it landed like a headline from a parallel universe. At the same moment, the national average price of gasoline sat at $4.52 a gallon according to AAA as…
Cloudflare was not struggling when it eliminated roughly 1,100 jobs in May 2026. The company had just posted record quarterly revenue of $639.8 million, a 34% jump from the same period a year earlier. But according to CEO Matthew Prince and co-founder Michelle Zatlyn, the internet security giant’s own AI tools had become so capable,…
Three pounds of ground beef for taco night, weeknight burgers, and a pot of pasta sauce. That weekly shopping list now runs about $20, up from roughly $15 two years ago, because a pound of regular ground beef has hit a price never recorded in more than four decades of federal tracking. The Bureau of…
The U.S. economy added 115,000 jobs in April 2026, enough to beat most Wall Street forecasts and keep the unemployment rate pinned at 4.3%. By the simplest measure, the labor market is still holding together. But the paychecks attached to those jobs are telling a less reassuring story. Average hourly earnings for private-sector workers rose…
If you paid a penalty or interest on a federal tax balance at any point between early 2020 and mid-2023, the IRS may owe you money. The National Taxpayer Advocate believes the pool of affected filers could number in the tens of millions, a figure the Advocate treats as an upper-bound projection rather than a…
For the first time, millions of tipped workers, overtime earners, and car-loan holders are claiming brand-new federal tax deductions this filing season, and the early results are showing up in refund checks. Through the week ending March 20, 2026, the average federal refund reached $3,571, according to IRS filing-season statistics. That is $3,571 minus last…
A teacher in suburban Dallas who drives 45 minutes each way to work told a local CBS affiliate in May 2026 that she now spends more on gasoline every month than on her car payment. She is not an outlier. Since the United States launched military operations against Iran in late February, American households have…
Somewhere right now, a college senior is building a post-graduation budget around an $80,000 salary. They are picking apartments, estimating student loan payments, and mapping out a life that assumes nearly $6,700 a month before taxes. The problem: most employers have a very different number in mind. The Class of 2026 expects to earn an…
Cape Coral, Florida, once one of the most sought-after housing markets in the country, now holds a distinction no homeowner wants: the steepest price decline of any major U.S. metro. Median sale prices in the Cape Coral-Fort Myers area fell about 9% year over year in early 2026, according to quarterly data from ATTOM, a…
Turn 67 in 2025, file for Social Security with a perfect earnings record, and the government will send you $4,018 a month. That is the absolute ceiling for a worker who earned at or above the taxable maximum for 35 straight years and claimed right at full retirement age. After a 2.5 percent cost-of-living adjustment,…