The financial news that actually matters
A pound of steak has never cost this much. The Bureau of Labor Statistics recorded the average retail price of uncooked beef steaks at $12.74 per pound in its latest reading, the highest value in more than 60 years of federal grocery tracking. For a household picking up two pounds for a weeknight dinner, that…
By the time most Americans had finished their morning coffee on May 10, 2026, roughly 38,000 of their neighbors had already received layoff notices that month. The running tally, compiled by outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas from public company announcements, marks the third consecutive month in which employers cited artificial intelligence as the single…
A 3.6% raise sounds decent until the price tags move faster. That is exactly what happened in April 2026: average hourly earnings on private nonfarm payrolls rose to $37.41, up 3.6% from a year earlier, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But the Consumer Price Index climbed 3.8% over the same period, and the…
A homeowner in Austin who bought at the 2022 peak has likely watched their property lose value for the better part of two years. A seller in Tampa who expected to cash in on pandemic-era gains is discovering that buyers have leverage again. And across the country, the numbers confirm what these anecdotes suggest: the…
When a Denver-area homeowner who goes by Sarah on a local housing forum bought her three-bedroom ranch in early 2021, she locked in a 2.87% fixed rate that keeps her monthly payment at $1,480. She and her husband have spent the past year talking about moving closer to her aging parents in Phoenix. Every time…
The monthly payment on a $400,000 mortgage just crossed another threshold that most first-time buyers cannot comfortably afford. Freddie Mac’s Primary Mortgage Market Survey for the week ending May 15, 2026, puts the average 30-year fixed rate at 6.37%, up for the second consecutive week and roughly a quarter-point higher than where it sat in…
When the Supreme Court struck down tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act this past February, Maria Delgado figured some relief was coming. The Houston mother of three had watched the price of her kids’ school supplies, shoes, and winter coats climb steadily over the past several years. “I kept thinking, these tariffs…
A retiree collecting the average Social Security check of roughly $1,976 a month could see about $70 more per payment starting in January 2027 (1,976 x 0.035 = roughly $69.16, rounded to about $70), and the reason showed up in this morning’s inflation data. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the April 2026 Consumer…
If you checked your mortgage statement this morning and hoped a new Federal Reserve chair might bring relief, the Senate just gave you an answer: not yet, and probably not this year. Senators confirmed Kevin Warsh to the Fed’s Board of Governors on Monday, May 12, 2026, then immediately cleared a procedural vote to advance…
The 10-year Treasury yield surged past 4.60% on Tuesday, May 13, 2026, its highest close in roughly a year, after a Consumer Price Index report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics came in far hotter than Wall Street expected. By the end of the week, the damage had reached the housing market: the average 30-year…