Today from me: I wade into the strange world of token economics, in which companies are spending huge sums on a mysterious resource that they can't be sure will deliver a return and might just be a waste of money. www.nytimes.com/2026/08/03/b...

What Are Companies Getting for All That A.I. Spending?

A new field of “tokenomics” has emerged to measure the return on all the money companies are pouring into artificial intelligence.

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Today from me: A.I. companies suddenly have a voracious appetite for electricians and carpenters. I wrote about the hundreds of millions of dollars they're pouring into training as competition sends wages soaring: www.nytimes.com/2026/07/29/b...

A.I. Companies Are Recruiting Electricians and Carpenters by the Thousands

The future of artificial intelligence depends on finding more skilled humans for some very physical jobs.

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Job loss fears have soured many Americans on AI, while Congress and the White House do nothing to cushion the impact. So a bunch of big companies and foundations have ponied up $500m to work with states on building a workforce strategy for the transition: www.nytimes.com/2026/06/25/b...

Big Companies Aim to Ease A.I. Transition for American Workers

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Today from me: America has usually been thought of as a place with relatively "inelastic" gasoline demand. But that is changing, as remote work and hybrids and EVs become more available. Gas sales are down since the war started, and may not fully rebound. www.nytimes.com/2026/06/23/b...

America’s Thirst for Gasoline May Not Recover After Iran War

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Inflation surges to 4.2%, significantly above the 3% that Trump inherited after a campaign in which he vowed to bring down prices starting on day one. @lydiadepillis.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/live/2026/06...

Live Updates: Inflation Jumps as Iran War Intensifies Price Squeeze

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Today from me: The Trump administration is squeezing almost every legal immigration path into the U.S. Except one: H-2A visas for guest farmworkers. That program is getting cheaper and easier to use. The problem is, it's long been plagued with labor abuses.

Americans take birthright citizenship for granted, but most countries don't allow it. I wanted to know what that means for kids who are born in a society without the full right to participate. We found some answers in Ireland and Germany. www.nytimes.com/2026/06/02/b...

What Ireland and Germany Can Teach Us About Birthright Citizenship

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Today from me: Everybody knows that GDP is a flawed metric, blind to the wellbeing of humans and the planet, but we keep chasing it because no alternative measure has gained traction. Inside the fight over how to knock GDP down a peg: www.nytimes.com/2026/05/26/b...

G.D.P. Is a Flawed Measure of Prosperity. Alternatives Are on the Way.

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Personal news: I am writing a book! The conversation around birthrates has grown toxic. The truth is that fertility decline is mostly a consequence of freedom and opportunity, and seems unlikely to reverse. We can deal with the downsides--if we confront them head on, rather than wishing them away.

Today from me: How do gas stations actually set prices at times like these? Sometimes with sophisticated software, sometimes with magnets. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/20/b...

Why Gas Prices Go Up Fast and Take So Long to Fall

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Alongside our inflation coverage today, I line up some stories and some datapoints that show how even those resilient U.S. consumers are starting to run out of gas. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/10/b...

Couple quick charts re: data reliability. First, revisions: Recent revisions have been consistently downward (although note that January was revised UP). The scale of the revisions isn't unprecedented, but they have been quite large. #EconSky #NumbersDay

Ben Casselman@bencasselman.bsky.social · 4mo ago

U.S. employers added 178,000 jobs in March and the unemployment rate ticked down to 4.3 percent. #NumbersDay Data: www.bls.gov/news.release... Full coverage: www.nytimes.com/live/2026/04...

Also today was jobs day and there were lots of jobs! But, you know, caveats. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/03/b...

Job Growth Rebounded in March

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Today from me: Job growth has been tepid over the past year. On the flip side, so has labor force growth, keeping unemployment in check. So what's the problem? www.nytimes.com/2026/04/03/b...

Jobs and Workers Are in Balance. Nobody Is Happy About It.

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Today from me: Opposition to data centers is cropping up all over the country, and stopping hundreds of billions of dollars worth of projects. Is it enough to shake Wall Street's confidence in the hyperscale A.I. companies and their trillion-dollar promises? www.nytimes.com/2026/03/26/b...

Local Opposition Is Slowing A.I. Data Centers. Wall Street Has Noticed.

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Today from me: The SBA is struggling to collect on a $378 billion Covid loan portfolio as businesses who took out huge amounts never recovered. Treasury is now tacking on hefty fees and hiring debt collectors to pursue people who say they can't repay. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/24/b...

Covid Relief Loans Are Haunting Small Businesses

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Today from me: The Middle East war is the biggest-ever global oil disruption and will boost prices around the world. But the U.S. is in a much better position to weather it than it was decades ago. Here's why. www.nytimes.com/2026/03/14/b...

America Depends Less on Oil Than Ever

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Today from me, a deeper look at the only industry that's been creating any jobs, and what it means for the people and the communities adjacent to it: www.nytimes.com/2026/03/06/b...

Health Care Has Become the Lifeblood of the Labor Market

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What does the war-without-end in Iran mean for the U.S. economy? Honestly who knows yet, but here's how things could go: www.nytimes.com/2026/03/05/b...

How War in the Persian Gulf Could Spill Into the U.S. Economy

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A little explainer from me today on the relationship between climate change and inflation: www.nytimes.com/2026/02/23/c...

Is Climate Change Making Inflation Worse?

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Also from me today: Like the old ones, the new versions of prediction markets are looking pretty accurate relative to professional forecasters. Just with a lot more money involved. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/11/b...

Thousands of Amateur Gamblers Are Beating Wall Street Ph.D.s

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Two months of heavy ICE presence in the Twin Cities are crushing the metro area's retail, food, and entertainment industries -- like Covid, business owners told me, except without the federal aid. www.nytimes.com/2026/02/02/b...

‘It’s Been Brutal’: Twin Cities Economy Suffers Under ICE Crackdown

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The great @anaswanson.bsky.social and I took a look back on what a year of Trump policy hath wrought for manufacturing. Short version: No big resurgence, but some interesting stuff going on under the surface. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/29/b...

Trump’s Trade Policies Sort Manufacturers Into Winners and Losers

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Today from me: Bill Pulte has made a lot of headlines for going after Trump's opponents and proposing far-fetched housing affordability ideas. But the agency he runs, FHFA, has taken steps that make it harder for low-income people to buy homes. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/14/b...

As Trump Pushes Housing Affordability, His Mortgage Chief Undermines It

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Early last year, a study came out in Nature that forecasted climate change would cause truly shocking economic damages at the end of the century if left unabated. Today, the journal retracted it. I explain why and what it means: www.nytimes.com/2025/12/03/b...

Top Journal Retracts Study Predicting Catastrophic Climate Toll

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Did some videosplaining of the jobs situation that we learned about yesterday: www.nytimes.com/video/busine...

Video: What the Jobs Report Tells Us About the Economy

What does the September jobs report, delayed by six weeks because of the government shutdown, say about the economy? Lydia DePillis, our economics reporter, describes how the report, which was better ...

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Our final pass on today's jobs report, the first since early September and the last until mid-December. In a twist, job growth is healthy but unemployment is rising: www.nytimes.com/live/2025/bu...

Hiring Increased in September, but So Did the Unemployment Rate

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Since the pandemic, private equity firms have been aggressively rolling up home remodeling and roofing companies. A couple of weeks ago, one of the largest platforms abruptly collapsed. I found out what happened, and explain what it means: www.nytimes.com/2025/11/13/b...

How Private Equity’s Vision for a Roofing Conglomerate Went Bust

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Today from me: Come for the cat picture, stay for the exploration of how specialty grocery stores serving immigrant diasporas are seeing the most concentrated impact from super-high tariffs on places like Myanmar and Bangladesh. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/11/b...

Where the Taste of Home Comes With a Tariff Charge

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For an effective tariff rate that's now at about 9%, pass through to consumer prices has been somewhat muted. But if you listen to earnings calls, that's a mirage: Businesses are saying they'll have to keep raising prices to make up for the new costs. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/24/b...

Companies Have Shielded Buyers From Tariffs. But Not for Long.

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