Sales of euro-denominated bonds by U.S. companies—including Alphabet, Fiserv, PepsiCo, Verizon, and Visa—have notched a record $100 billion this year through mid-September as European interest rates remain attractive and the dollar loses its luster, Reuters reported.
The economic landscape has presented an array of challenges that will profoundly affect the business community this year.
The labor market continues to see layoffs as companies cut budgets and AI takes over human jobs.
On 17 September, the U.S. Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee shaved a quarter point from its policy interest rate, dropping the rate charged on loans to 4.25 percent in its first rate reduction since December 2024 and to its lowest in almost three years.
Demand for cardboard boxes has plummeted this year, an economic danger signal.
New home construction dropped about 8.5 percent in August, month over month, to 1.307 million units as mortgage interest rates remained above 6.5 percent. The figure was down 6 percent from a year earlier.
Officials in the Trump administration are considering using $550 billion from Japan to build factory buildings in the U.S. as an incentive for key industries to expand or relocate in America, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The U.S. unemployment rate has held at just above 4 percent for more than a year. However, underneath that headline figure, the number of people out of work for at least 26 weeks—the “long-term unemployed”—has reached 26 percent of jobless workers, the most in more than three years.
The U.S. has two economies that are becoming more and more separate from each other.
In the week ending 13 September, 33,000 fewer people filed new claims for unemployment insurance than during the week before. The number fell from 264,000 to 231,000. In a Wall Street Journal poll, economists had forecasted 240,000 claims.