GoKawiil
Tech News
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' latest consumer price index shows grocery costs climbed 2.7% between August 2025 and August 2026. Over a longer stretch, the same basket of food items now costs 33% more than it did in August 2019, reflecting a sustained multi-year rise in food expenses.
Fresh government data show U.S. wage growth trailing inflation, with the Employment Cost Index revealing a 0.4% year-over-year drop in real wages and salaries through June. Meanwhile, labor's share of nonfarm business income hit a record low of 52.8% in the second quarter, prompting economists to ask whether AI is beginning to squeeze pay even before it eliminates jobs outright. Research from Apollo Global Management suggests workers in AI-exposed occupations are already seeing slower real-wage gains.
A Wall Street Journal report cites experts recommending anthropology, mathematics and philosophy as college majors better suited to an AI-driven job market than computer science, whose recent graduates face a 6.1% unemployment rate versus a 5.7% overall rate. The experts argue these fields build distinctly human skills—like understanding behavior and abstract reasoning—that AI cannot easily replicate, even as long-term demand for software developers remains strong.
The Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity (LISEP) has developed the True Rate of Unemployment, a metric built from Bureau of Labor Statistics data that counts people without full-time work, those earning below a living wage of roughly $26,000 a year, and those with no job at all. The measure aims to give a fuller picture of financial hardship than the official unemployment rate captures.