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☆ The lunch rush is dead as Americans live for the weekend
▼ + stars: | 2024-05-19 | by ( J.J. Mccorvey | Haley Messenger | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +6 min

These signs point to a new normal for Americans' post-pandemic leisure spending, which has stayed resilient despite the higher costs of going out. In 2023, 1.88% of the food and drink transactions Square processed took place between 11 a.m. and noon on Saturdays, up from 1.60% in 2019. Nowhere was the shift toward evening and weekend spending starker than in Boston, one of 23 major cities Square analyzed. There, a 10.1% decline in weekday lunch transactions was more than offset by 10.3% and 1.6% increases in weekend and happy hour transactions, respectively. "I don't really prioritize drinking during the weekdays," Louie said, and his weekend leisure spending "is quite inconsistent."

Persons: That's, Ara Kharazian, Brunch, Kharazian, Sara Senatore, AJ Kurban, Kurban, it's, Soojin Lee, Cornell University's Nolan, Young, They're, Senatore, I'm, Nicholas Louie, Louie Organizations: University of Toronto, ARA, Bank of America, Cornell University's, Cornell University's Nolan School of Hotel Administration, Covid Locations: U.S, workdays, Boston, Brooklyn, Manhattan, York

☆ ‘I am so scared of them now’: Burned from overspending, some ‘buy now, pay later’ users warn others away
▼ + stars: | 2024-03-30 | by ( J.J. Mccorvey | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +8 min

But the $6,000 in BNPL loans she'd racked up over roughly two years felt frivolous, she said, especially because they're planning to buy their first home. Many are seeking cover from high credit card interest rates. After trimming her discretionary spending and sticking to home-cooked meals, she said she's been able to whittle down her BNPL debt to about $1,200. Klarna said it had responsible spending limits for its users, whose average outstanding balance is $150, compared to the more than $6,000 for credit card users. Baird, for her part, acknowledged BNPL services can make inflation and high interest rates feel "easier" for those who can keep their shopping impulses under control.

Persons: Tia Whiteside, Whiteside, she'd, Dyson, she's, Marcus, whittle, Ben Lourie, Lourie, aren't, I've, Amy Baird, Baird, Kevin Mahoney, Mahoney, —, Afterpay, Klarna, Sen, Sherrod Brown, Raphael Warnock, John Fetterman, Brown Organizations: LexisNexis, Solutions, University of California, UC Irvine, Singapore Management University, PayPal, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Financial, D.C, Sens, NBC News Locations: Greenville , South Carolina, Irvine, Stanford, Dallas, Washington, Ohio

☆ Tyson plant closures prompt economic soul-searching in the Ozarks
▼ + stars: | 2023-11-06 | by ( J.J. Mccorvey | Brian Cheung | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +7 min

When Tyson Foods announced in August that it was closing its 1,500-worker chicken plant in Noel, Missouri, residents knew the rural town would be hit hard. Tyson didn't immediately comment on its compensation of former Noel employees. said Corina Chinchilla, 32, who worked for 13 years at the Noel plant, ultimately becoming a production supervisor for packaging chicken breasts and tenders. Other Tyson workers, like Ryan Coulter, 27, declined to move. State and federal officials, wary of economic fallout in the region, have pressed Tyson to sell some of the sites it's vacating.

Persons: Tyson, —, Jimi Lasiter, I'm, Lasiter, hadn't, Tyson didn't, Noel, Joe Biden, Corina Chinchilla, I've, didn't, Chinchilla, David Handy, Handy didn't, Ryan Coulter, Coulter, Terry Lance, Harry S, he'd, Lance, Sen, Josh Hawley, Andrew Bailey, Hawley, Donnie King Organizations: Tyson Foods, Bowling, NBC News, Value Foods, Amazon, Costco, Truman Coordinating Council, Missouri Independent Locations: Noel , Missouri, Danville , Virginia, Bowling Green , Kentucky, Monett , Missouri, Noel, Neosho, Ozark, Rock , Arkansas, Arkansas, Little Rock, Missouri, Texas, Somalia, United States, Dexter

☆ UPS workers vote to authorize strike while cheering unexpected progress on heat safety
▼ + stars: | 2023-06-16 | by ( Adiel Kaplan | J.J. Mccorvey | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +7 min

UPS acknowledged the vote outcome and noted that Friday's strike authorization doesn't automatically trigger a work stoppage. While many union members at UPS cast their votes on the strike authorization before the heat safety deal was announced, some drivers said afterward that other big priorities remain. Heat safety experts praised the preliminary agreement on air conditioning but cautioned that addressing the threat of extreme temperatures would take time. Seth Harris, a law and policy professor at Northeastern University who served as President Joe Biden's top labor policy adviser, said progress on heat safety at UPS could have broader ripple effects. Already, though, the concessions have jolted UPS workers and their allies with a dose of optimism.

Persons: Sean O'Brien, Zakk Luttrell, We've, it's, Luttrell, Amit Mehrotra, Mehrotra, Juley Fulcher, Fulcher, —, Seth Harris, Joe Biden's, Theresa Klenk, Klenk, — Annie Probert Organizations: Teamsters, UPS, NBC, Occupational Safety, Health Administration, Deutsche Bank, Logistics, FedEx, U.S . Postal, Public Citizen, Northeastern University, New, New Jersey UPS Locations: New Jersey

☆ Black Tech Twitter, trans users and more marginalized groups flock to Bluesky
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-08 | by ( Daysia Tolentino | J.J. Mccorvey | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +9 min

Her first objective was to get her community, Black tech Twitter, onto Bluesky. Once Black Twitter users started moving to Bluesky, Aveta said, others wanted to follow. Some signs indicate a slowdown among Black Twitter users that predates Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter last year. Aveta said she prioritized moving the Black tech community to Bluesky first to combine social appeal with technical knowledge. Pariss Chandler, the organizer of Black Tech Twitter and the founder of the recruitment platform Black Tech Pipeline, said diversity, equity and inclusion should be considered early in a platform's launch.

That was up from 10% in January 2022, but the pessimists were far outnumbered, with 71% of tech workers feeling positive. Many people spent Covid-19 lockdowns developing their digital skills, and plenty wound up switching from other sectors, like retail or education, into tech roles elsewhere. Professional and business services roles, which include engineering and “computer services,” were down 6,000 last month from November. Even so, employers’ broad appetite for tech skills could put something of a floor under wages — and prop up the appeal of tech roles in general — even as the economy slows. Experienced tech workers, rather than those new to the field, largely drove those pay gains, the jobs platform Hired found in research published in September.

Car buyers are watching the clock tick down for the Inflation Reduction Act’s updated electric vehicle tax incentives to kick in. If you shop right nowState and federal EV incentives already exist. Their car was built in Tennessee and qualified for the full $7,500 federal tax credit, which they were able to combine with a Massachusetts EV tax exemption of $2,500, effectively knocking $10,000 off the price. Plus, caps on how many vehicles can qualify for existing tax incentives have kept some buyers on the sidelines. If you shop in 2024After next year, the IRA makes an important change to how consumers apply their tax credit.

Black users have long been one of Twitter’s most engaged demographics, flocking to the platform to steer online culture and drive real-world social change. But a month after Elon Musk took over, some Black influencers are eyeing the exits just as he races to shore up the company’s business. And while there is no hard data on how many Black users have either joined or left the platform over that period, some prominent influencers say they’re actively pursuing alternatives. Some signs indicate a slowdown among Black Twitter users that predates Musk. “It’s crippling to the economies of cities when Black folks leave, platforms when Black folks leave, entertainment sites when Black folks leave,” she said.

To combat high inflation, the Federal Reserve has raised interest rates this year at the fastest clip in 40 years. But analysts warn that high interest rates and potentially unfavorable terms can trip up shoppers, eroding the hoped-for savings. That’s the highest interest rate since the credit card marketplace began tracking it for store cards in 2018. Using credit cards can help build credit. And with fees and rates for new store cards even higher than the current record levels for traditional credit cards, “many people’s financial margin for error is basically zero,” Schulz says.

Both have highlighted policies that limit health care access in Georgia, such as its new six-week abortion ban and a decision by Republican Gov. Georgians have witnessed health services dwindle before and during the pandemic, straining the state’s medical system even as regional health care costs rise. Nearly half of Georgia’s 159 counties have no OB-GYN, according to the Georgia Board of Health Care Workforce. Some see the shutdowns as exacerbating racial disparities in health care access in Atlanta, where a 2018 Trulia analysis found 25.3 health care providers per 10,000 residents in the city’s majority-white census tracts, compared with 9.8 in majority-Black tracts. “I’m looking at somebody that is going to be for the community,” she says, “that’s going to help us with the health care — bring it closer to us.”

They heat their home mainly with fuel oil, which costs them $4.57 a gallon, up from around $3.10 last year. Duke Energy customers in Indiana were recently hit with a 7% hike after a temporary 16% increase just this summer. Fuel oil customers often must pay for deliveries up front, and many suppliers have been less willing to offer payment plans because of market volatility, experts said. “I don’t have savings, period.”Brickey and Parks applied for LIHEAP assistance through District Three, a government cooperative geared toward senior citizens in southwest Virginia. They had three months of electricity paid for this past summer, along with $800 worth of fuel oil assistance last winter.

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