MoneyWatch

Hiring surged in July, with U.S. employers creating 528,000 jobs last month, the Labor Department said Friday. That far exceeded economist expectations for gains of 250,000 new jobs during the period. It was also a jump from the previous month, when businesses added 372,000 jobs despite the highest inflation in …

Amazon is heading into its annual Prime Day sales event on Tuesday much differently than how it entered the pandemic. Since starting Prime Day in 2015, Amazon has used the event to convince people to sign up for its Prime membership, for which Amazon recently raised the price to $139 …

Americans with stock portfolios or retirement investment plans would likely prefer to forget the last six months. The S&P 500, Wall Street’s broad benchmark for many stock funds, lost 20% through the end of June after starting the year at an all-time high. It’s the worst start to a year …

A measure of inflation closely tracked by the Federal Reserve rose 6.3% in May from a year earlier,  unchanged from its level in April. Thursday’s report from the Commerce Department provided the latest evidence that painfully high inflation is placing financial pressure American households and inflicting particular harm on low-income …

President Joe Biden has called on Congress to suspend the federal gasoline tax, as millions of Americans feel the financial pinch from soaring gas prices. Yet suspending the 18.4 cent levy on regular gas (and 24 cents for diesel) might not do much to lower prices at the pump, say …

Stocks are in a bear market, inflation is at a 40-year high and economists are warning about a possible recession on the horizon. For millions of Americans saving for retirement, the economic turmoil has raised some big questions: Should they sell investments or stay the route?  First, don’t panic, experts say …

Basketball legend LeBron James is known for many athletic records, but he’s now scored one of the most coveted financial achievements: Joining the ranks of the America’s billionaires.  The 37-year-old Los Angeles Lakers star is the first active NBA player to become a billionaire, according to Forbes, which ranks the …

Hyundai is recalling 239,000 cars in the U.S. because the seat belt pretensioners can explode and injure vehicle occupants. Three injuries have been reported, two in the U.S. and one in Singapore. In a letter to the Korean automaker, government regulators said that the driver’s and front passenger’s seat belt …

State transportation officials are tightening the rules on concessions prices at New York City-area airports after finding one vendor charging as much as $27 for a beer at LaGuardia. The policy changes come after a probe prompted by a traveler’s complaint last year on social media about the listed prices …

A Dollar Tree manager is no longer with the company after posting a sign at a Bremen, Indiana, store warning that it wouldn’t hire Generation Z workers. The sign complained that the store was forced to close after two young workers quit.  “My 2 new cashiers quit because I said …