2. We Need Jobs. U.S. employers added 209,000 jobs in May, the Labor Department reported on Friday.
At 6.7 percent, the unemployment rate is the lowest since February 2001, but the number of jobs lost in the recession aren’t being restored quickly enough, according to most economists. The jobless rate is low because fewer Americans are looking for work.
Some tech giants, including Amazon and Apple, have announced they will increase the pay of their U.S. employees and provide bonuses, in part because of the tax bill passed by the Republican Congress and signed by President Trump. Other companies, including Toyota and American Airlines, are increasing wages for workers.
Click through to read more about which companies gave their employees a bonus in the wake of the tax cut.
3. Airline Passengers Have Gotten a Better Deal. Airlines are trying to return to profits, but it’s going to take a lot of effort, they said at an industry conference in Florida on Thursday. “Budget pricing alone will not lead to revenue,” said SkyWest Chief Executive Dave Davis. United Airlines, American Airlines and Delta Air Lines also expect their margins to improve.
That said, U.S. airlines still haven’t been able to keep up with European rivals in the battle over prices. “The European airlines have gotten much more aggressive,” said John Tague, the chief executive of JetBlue Airways.
4. Our Cities Are Becoming Too Small For People. Chicago, Houston, Dallas, Los Angeles, San Diego and San Francisco are among the cities with populations that are becoming too small to comfortably house the 10 million Americans living in them.
In Chicago, the percentage of workers living in the central city, plus nearby suburbs, fell from 52 percent in 1990 to about 40 percent today, according to a 2016 report by the Harvard Business School. That means many workers live in large, sprawling apartments that leave little room for growing children or children’s activities.
Growing cities have no room for tourism, which is responsible for about 20 percent of the nation’s jobs, and for a robust economy. And big city businesses face increased competition from bigger, more efficient cities where people live within easy reach of transportation options.
5. Tech Companies Are Moving Operations Out of America. Just this week, Amazon, Google and Apple announced they would open new offices in Canada, taking more than 1,000 highly paid jobs with them.
But a Bloomberg View columnist suggested other reasons for tech companies choosing Canada: Migrant workers are allowed to enter Canada at the same time, as opposed to the temporary visa program that Amazon ended up employing a million foreigners since 2014. Americans also get to work on Sundays in Canada. And for more American workers looking for affordable housing, it’s cheaper to rent an apartment in Toronto than it is in Silicon Valley.
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