1 big thing: All that...for this

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2. Catch up quick

3. Nvidia's remarkable rise

4. AI for everyday folks

Americans' spending hit a new high in April

5. No eulogy yet for the American consumer 

Happy Tuesday! It’s a new (short) week, and the debt ceiling might soon be raised — the House is expected to vote on a bill tomorrow. Below, Felix Salmon weighs in on where we find ourselves now.

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1 big thing: Food price controls on the menu

3. $1 trillion, briefly 

4. The COVID home price boom isn't going bust

5. Working moms defy expectations

🐪 It’s hump day already, and there’s a debt ceiling vote in the House. The chamber’s leaders are confident the bill will pass, as our Axios colleagues report.

Below, price controls are getting a fresh look from political leaders, and Nvidia has a 13-figure moment.

Today's newsletter is 1,125 words, a 4.5-minute read. 

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Axios Markets is edited by Kate Marino and copy edited by Mickey Meece.

1 big thing: What Yelp and Etsy have in common 

2. Charted: A lot of work still getting done at home

3. Catch up quick

4. Lira's new low 

5. Companies' Pride Month pledges under scrutiny

It's Friday! And another jobs report is due out this morning at 8:30 ET.

🚨Situational awareness: A bill to raise the debt ceiling into 2025 and cut the deficit is on its way to President Biden's desk.

Today's newsletter is 1,085 words, 4 minutes. 

1 big thing: Big Tech muscles the market higher

2. Rise of the megacaps

4. 😅 Charted: Phew...

5. The menopause gap at work

👋 Morning! Jamie Dimon for prez? Some on Wall Street would love to see it…

Oh, and the House passed the debt ceiling bill last night — it’ll head to the Senate soon.

Today's newsletter is 1,023 words, 4 minutes. 

1 big thing: Immigrant workforce reaches a new high

2. Charted: Where the workers are 

4. What the ratings agencies are saying

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5. Where oil's big profits went

🍔🌭☀️ Ladies and gentlemen: The weekend. We're signing off with a jam-packed edition. 

We're out on Monday for Memorial Day (anyone else planning on grilling?) and back in your inbox bright and early on Tuesday morning.

Situational awareness: Multiple outlets are reporting a debt ceiling deal is taking shape that would cap spending for two years and cut IRS funds.

Today's newsletter is 1,118 words, 4.5 minutes.

📺 1 TV thing: A few of you wrote in with your best guesses on what happens in the series finale of "Succession" on HBO Sunday night. A few think cousin Greg will emerge as the winner. 

I'm betting on Kendall — but one assumes it'll be a pyrrhic victory. (You can hear me and Axios' Felix Salmon discuss this on our podcast on Monday.)

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National

Note: Foreign-born describes adults born outside the U.S., where neither parent is a U.S. citizen, and includes legally-admitted immigrants, refugees, temporary residents and undocumented immigrants; Data: Bureau of Labor Statistics; Chart: Axios Visuals

The share of foreign-born workers in the U.S. labor force reached a record high last year, per new data from the Labor Department.

Why it matters: With more Americans aging out of the workforce than entering into it — and at a time of labor shortages — immigrants are playing an increasingly crucial role in the labor market.

State of play: The share of foreign-born people in the workforce has been steadily rising for decades, but dipped during the pandemic — making last year's uptick look a bit more striking than it is, said Abraham Mosisa, a senior economist at the Bureau of Labor Statistics. 

Still, this is a trend that isn't going anywhere. The U.S. labor force participation rate of native born men has been consistently decreasing, he pointed out. And the rate for women has stagnated.

The number of foreign-born workers in the U.S. increased to 29.8 million in 2022, from 27.9 million the previous year — a jump of about 6%. 

The number of native-born workers went from 133.2 million to 134.5 million — up barely 1%.

One key factor is that a bigger share of the immigrant population is of working age (18-64), at 77%, according to the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute (MPI). That compares with about 59% of the native-born population.

Meanwhile: The relative size of the immigrant population has stayed flat over the past two decades — comprising 13.6% of the total U.S. population in 2021, according to the most recently available data from MPI — just below where it was before the pandemic.

Zoom in: Foreign-born workers tend to take different jobs than the native-born (see the chart below), and they typically earn less money.

In 2022, median weekly earnings for foreign-born full-time workers was  $945, or 87% of their native-born counterparts.

Data: Bureau of Labor Statistics; Chart: Rahul Mukherjee/Axios

Worth noting: Immigration opponents might see the record number of foreign-born workers and argue that foreign born workers are somehow stealing jobs from Americans — but that's not what's happening. 

Although was a big increase in net immigration in 2022 — essentially catching up from the COVID slump — there were plenty of jobs to go around. 

At times last year there were actually two jobs available for every job-seeker. And this year, the unemployment rate has continued to hover around a record low.

Zoom out: As wealthier nations contend with shrinking workforces, many are crafting new immigration policies to find more workers — and combat inflation, as the Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month.

Policies that encourage immigration "will determine the extent and persistence of labor supply challenges," as a note from Moody's Investors Service pointed out a few weeks ago.

Immigration law in the U.S., meanwhile, remains a contentious and fairly intractable political issue.

What they're saying: "If you want a growing workforce, without immigration, that isn't going to happen," said Phillip Connor, a senior demographer at FWD.US, an immigration advocacy group.  

Immigrant workforce reaches a new high

With labor still in short supply, foreign-born workers are crucial for the economy.

Immigration

Jobs

The share of foreign-born workers in the <a class="gtmContentClick" data-vars-link-text="U.S. labor force" data-vars-click-url="https://www.axios.com/2022/06/06/pandemic-new-labor-market" data-vars-item="in_content_link" href="https://www.axios.com/2022/06/06/pandemic-new-labor-market" target="_self">U.S. labor force</a> reached a record high last year, per new data from the <a class="gtmContentClick" data-vars-link-text="Labor Department" data-vars-click-url="https://www.bls.gov/news.release/forbrn.htm" data-vars-item="in_content_link" href="https://www.bls.gov/news.release/forbrn.htm" target="_blank">Labor Department</a>.Why it matters: With more Americans <a class="gtmContentClick" data-vars-link-text="aging out" data-vars-click-url="https://www.axios.com/2023/05/08/us-labor-shortage-older-workers" data-vars-item="in_content_link" href="https://www.axios.com/2023/05/08/us-labor-shortage-older-workers" target="_self">aging out</a> of the workforce than entering into it — and at a time of labor shortages — immigrants are playing an increasingly crucial role in the labor market.

After a record economic expansion, the coronavirus pandemic sent the U.S. economy into a recession as unemployment soared to staggering heights. The country now faces urgent questions about how much stimulus is needed for reeling consumers and businesses, and what a recovery might look like.

Economy & Business

Data: U.K. Office for National Statistics; Chart: Axios Visuals

The U.K. is mulling voluntary price controls on essential food items, as the country grapples with sky-high inflation at the grocery store.

Why it matters: Persistent inflation is changing the conversation around price controls. Once waved off as an affront to capitalism, they're starting to look more appealing — especially to politicians who want to avoid headlines about people who can't afford to eat.

Price controls emerged last year as a way to deal with rising energy prices.

Catch up fast: Food prices in the U.K. rose 19% over the last year, even as headline inflation cooled slightly, according to government figures out last week.

That's the highest rate since 1977 when the nation's food inflation hit 21.9%. 

The latest: Over the weekend, the Telegraph reported that aides for Prime Minister Rishi Sunak were talking to supermarkets about a short-term policy, similar to one enacted in France in March, in which retailers agree to use standardized prices on certain essential items like bread and milk. 

Officials are emphasizing that any kind of price caps would be voluntary.

"This is about having constructive discussions with supermarkets about how we work together, not about any element of compulsion,” the U.K. health secretary told the BBC.

That's distinct from the last time the U.K. put mandatory price controls on food — also under a conservative government — back in the 1970s in a move that's seen as a failure.

Meanwhile, Hungary in April said it would force retailers to cut prices on 20 basic items. 

State of play: Business groups condemned the idea, Bloomberg reported.

“Rather than recreating 1970s-style price controls, the government should focus on cutting red tape so that resources can be directed to keeping prices as low as possible,” Andrew Opie, director of food and sustainability at the British Retail Consortium, told the news outlet.

Yet, Brexit has added red tape to the process of buying food — one paper from the London School of Economics finds that the country's departure from its free trade pact is responsible for a third of food price inflation.

"[W]hile there is clearly a legitimate role for price controls in situations where economies are experiencing huge supply shocks — notably in times of war — they are, by design, distortionary and should only be used in extreme circumstances," Capital Economics' group chief economist Neil Shearing wrote in a research note on Tuesday.

"The current food price shock does not warrant such an intervention," he wrote, adding that food inflation will likely fall in the coming months as lower energy costs start to trickle through.

Zoom out: Controlling the price of food is much more complex than setting oil prices.

The food sector is exceptionally diverse — filled with all kinds of foods at a multitude of price points. Take a category like bread — there's Wonder Bread and then there's organic whole wheat sourdough, among a litany of options.

But plans that are limited in scope, like the one in France, might make sense, Isabella Weber, an economist at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, told Axios earlier this month. 

That's in part because the traditional tool to fight inflation — where a central bank raises interest rates to cool demand — might be too blunt an instrument for tackling rising food prices, she said. 

The bottom line: Central bankers can only cool demand for food so much, after all. People still need to eat.

Food price controls on the menu in the U.K.

A new proposal from the Conservative government would standardize prices for certain essentials.

Inflation

The U.K. is mulling voluntary price controls on essential food items, as the country grapples with sky-high <a class="gtmContentClick" data-vars-link-text="inflation" data-vars-click-url="https://www.axios.com/2023/05/24/inflation-rate-uk-economy" data-vars-item="in_content_link" href="https://www.axios.com/2023/05/24/inflation-rate-uk-economy" target="_self">inflation</a> at the grocery store.Why it matters: Persistent inflation is changing the conversation around price controls. Once waved off as an affront to capitalism, they&#x27;re starting to look more appealing — especially to politicians who want to avoid headlines about people who can&#x27;t afford to eat.

There's a big disconnect between employers and women over a somewhat taboo topic: menopause. 

Driving the news: 76% of human resources benefits managers said they discuss menopause-related issues with employees, but just 3% of women employees would say they've talked about these issues with HR, finds a pair of surveys released by Bank of America on Thursday morning.  

Why it matters: There's increasing awareness that menopause and its symptoms can push women out of the workforce just as they're at the top of their fields.

Over the past year, the issue has gained attention from employers who are rethinking the health benefits they offer women, as Axios' Tina Reed reported.

It doesn't look like employees are getting the message.

Zoom in: BofA, in partnership with the nonprofit National Menopause Foundation, conducted two surveys in February and March. 

One survey targeted 500 HR benefits managers at companies with at least 1,000 employees; the second polled 2,000 women, ages 40–65, employed full time at a company with 1,000 or more employees.

What they found: 71% of HR benefits managers feel positive about their company's menopause culture compared to 32% of employees.

Employers say they do offer some menopause-specific benefits, but women are often unaware they exist.

For example, health insurance might cover treatments like hormone replacement therapy but women aren't aware, said Lorna Sabbia, head of retirement and personal wealth solutions at Bank of America, who worked on the report.

She said that BofA offers support and resource advice, through Maven Clinic, a virtual healthcare app.

Of note: This is an issue that comes with a lot of stigma, which could explain some of the disconnect. 

58% of women surveyed said they don't feel comfortable talking about menopause in the workplace because it feels too personal — and they're also concerned about being judged as "old."

The menopause gap at work

It's a somewhat taboo topic that affects women just as they're at the top of their fields.

Employment

There&#x27;s a big disconnect between employers and women over a somewhat taboo topic: menopause. Driving the news: 76% of human resources benefits managers said they discuss <a class="gtmContentClick" data-vars-link-text="menopause" data-vars-click-url="https://www.axios.com/2022/11/23/the-growing-menopause-at-work-market" data-vars-content-id="d59a1e1b-62f8-4bf3-b16a-6f87836c833f" data-vars-headline="The menopause gap at work" data-vars-event-category="story" data-vars-sub-category="story" data-vars-item="in_content_link" href="https://www.axios.com/2022/11/23/the-growing-menopause-at-work-market" target="_self">menopause</a>-related issues with employees, but just 3% of women employees would say they&#x27;ve talked about these issues with HR, finds a pair of surveys released by Bank of America on Thursday morning.

Online review site Yelp is closing two offices that very few employees have actually been using — affirming its commitment to a remote-first workplace, the company announced Thursday.

Why it matters: While employers like Amazon are grabbing headlines by pushing unwilling employees back to the office, many others are leaning into remote work — making permanent changes to the way they operate.

Companies are shuttering under-utilized spaces or redesigning them with an eye towards a hybrid work model.

Despite the noise we hear from “the desk-banging CEOs,” there are plenty of companies “that lean into remote-first or more radical flexibility," said Erin Grau, co-founder of Charter, a media and services company.

State of play: Last year, Yelp closed offices in New York, Chicago and Washington. The closures announced Thursday will shutter its Phoenix and Hamburg, Germany spaces on July 1.

On average last month, fewer than 6% of the desks in those offices were being used, the company told Axios.

Yelp now has one remaining U.S. office in San Francisco, as well as locations in Toronto and London.

The closures mean that a few office-dependent employees — like security providers — will lose their jobs, the company said. 

The office closures and space reductions completed so far — the company downsized its San Francisco office — are saving Yelp around $26 million to $28 million in annual expenses in 2023 and 2024, it said.

Zoom in: The office closures are part of Yelp's commitment to "fully embrace remote work," the company's chief people officer Carmen Whitney Orr said in a blog post. 

"Our employees overwhelmingly favor remote remote work," Orr told Axios in an interview.  

Yelp, which now has 4,900 employees globally, said it's expanded remote-friendly employee benefits, including a travel reimbursement for healthcare where a procedure like abortion or gender-affirming care might be banned in an employee's state. 

It also beefed up a wellness stipend that workers use for gym memberships or workout apps. "They're able to spend the time they don't spend commuting working on things like their health," Orr said. 

"[F]orcing people back to the office, even in a hybrid model, is the wrong approach," Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman wrote last year.

It's a stark contrast to Amazon, where employees staged a walkout this week over the company's return to office policy, which requires employees to come in three days a week.

The big picture: Yelp's certainly not alone — plenty of other companies are also still embracing remote work. 

In May, 28% of companies of the 4,000 companies tracked by a new data report called the Flex Index were fully flexible, either with no offices or leaving it up to employees to decide whether or not to come to work.

30% of companies were doing some kind of structured hybrid plan where workers come in a minimum number of days a week. And 42% were fully in-office — down from 49% in February.

The index, run by a software company called Scoop, uses public sources and a survey to amass information on what companies are doing — and then cross-checks the data with employers, said CEO Robert Sadow.

Nearly a third of the companies in the database are public; 80% have 10,000 or fewer employees. And 20% have more than 10,000 workers. Smaller companies are more likely to be flexible, according to the report.

Online retailer Etsy has also leaned into remote work — redesigning its Brooklyn headquarters for a more hybrid model, the company's CEO Josh Silverman told Axios. 

There are permanent desks for workers who live nearby and come in often, as well as more open areas for collaboration when big groups come in for meetings.

"Most people I think are coming to a conclusion that we've got to find a different way of working. I'm not trying to go back to any past. We're trying to lean forward to how work is going to happen," Silverman said.

Zoom out: The average national office occupancy rate is just 49% of what it was during the pandemic, according to office swipe-in data from Kastle. 

What to watch: Who gets promoted. For companies that mix remote and in-office set-ups, Grau and others worry that those who aren't coming in for face time could be left behind.

"One thing we're watching is how many of those companies are shoring up their internal practices to be sure that if they're offering more flexibility, it's not preventing [employees] from advancing their careers," Grau said.

Yelp is down to one office in the U.S., as it leans into remote work

The San Francisco-based company is fully leaning into remote work.

Illustration of an office chair with a "closed" sign hanging from it. 

Remote work

Online review site Yelp is closing two offices that very few employees have actually been using — affirming its commitment to a remote-first workplace, the company announced Thursday.Why it matters: While employers like <a class="gtmContentClick" data-vars-link-text="Amazon" data-vars-click-url="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/31/business/work-home-return-office-amazon.html" data-vars-content-id="d9a6add3-09ab-4c99-9a83-8a6dc23fc9b7" data-vars-headline="Yelp is down to one office in the U.S., as it leans into remote work" data-vars-event-category="story" data-vars-sub-category="story" data-vars-item="in_content_link" href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/31/business/work-home-return-office-amazon.html" target="_blank">Amazon</a> are grabbing headlines by pushing unwilling employees back to the office, many others are leaning into remote work — making permanent changes to the way they operate.

Wages will likely play a bigger role in the fight against inflation going forward.

Why it matters: According to a widely discussed new paper from powerhouse economics duo former Fed chair Ben Bernanke and former IMF chief economist Olivier Blanchard, the Fed might need to do more to cool down the labor market before prices are under control.

Details: The paper, presented at the Brookings Institution where Bernanke is a senior fellow, attempts to settle the debate over what caused the most recent bout of inflation.

Using a model to tease out the effect of wages, prices and inflation expectations on price increases, they find that supply shocks pushed prices up early on in the pandemic — and then consumer demand started playing a big role, fueled by stimulus and a strong labor market.

In other words, everyone was sort of right about what caused inflation. "There's something for everyone in their paper," writes former Fed economist Claudia Sahm of their findings.

Of note: The authors find that price markups — i.e., profit margins — weren't a major factor, throwing cold water on an increasingly popular theory.

The intrigue: The tight labor market, measured by the ratio of job vacancies to unemployed workers, has begun to assert itself over time.

"Now that the rest is gone, this is what dominates," said Blanchard, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, at the presentation last week.

Workers both expect to see inflation and are demanding pay that catches up to the price hikes they've already lived through.

Between the lines: The authors conclude that to get inflation back down to 2%, the Fed will have to further cool the economy — and that could mean a rise in the unemployment rate.

In their most extreme scenario, they write, unemployment would have to rise to 4.3% (it was 3.4% in April). Of course, that percentage point increase would translate into job losses for a lot of people.

The bottom line: Bernanke and Blanchard aren't quite suggesting immaculate disinflation is possible but something fairly close to it.

What to watch: The May jobs report is out this Friday.

New paper predicts rising wages will keep inflation high

The Fed might need to do more to cool down the labor market before prices are under control, according to a new paper.

Illustration of an open briefcase with an upwards trending line popping out.  

Wages will likely play a bigger role in the fight against <a class="gtmContentClick" data-vars-link-text="inflation" data-vars-click-url="https://www.axios.com/2023/05/13/us-inflation-fed-prediction" data-vars-content-id="f933ce03-dfa7-4dd2-972a-2b7db053715e" data-vars-headline="New paper predicts rising wages will keep inflation high" data-vars-event-category="story" data-vars-sub-category="story" data-vars-item="in_content_link" href="https://www.axios.com/2023/05/13/us-inflation-fed-prediction" target="_self">inflation</a> going forward.Why it matters: According to a widely discussed <a class="gtmContentClick" data-vars-link-text="new paper" data-vars-click-url="https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Bernanke-Blanchard-conference-draft_5.23.23.pdf" data-vars-content-id="f933ce03-dfa7-4dd2-972a-2b7db053715e" data-vars-headline="New paper predicts rising wages will keep inflation high" data-vars-event-category="story" data-vars-sub-category="story" data-vars-item="in_content_link" href="https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Bernanke-Blanchard-conference-draft_5.23.23.pdf" target="_blank">new paper</a> from powerhouse economics duo former Fed chair Ben Bernanke and former IMF chief economist Olivier Blanchard, <a class="gtmContentClick" data-vars-link-text="the Fed" data-vars-click-url="https://www.axios.com/2023/05/23/what-the-federal-reserve-might-do-next" data-vars-content-id="f933ce03-dfa7-4dd2-972a-2b7db053715e" data-vars-headline="New paper predicts rising wages will keep inflation high" data-vars-event-category="story" data-vars-sub-category="story" data-vars-item="in_content_link" href="https://www.axios.com/2023/05/23/what-the-federal-reserve-might-do-next" target="_self">the Fed</a> might need to do more to cool down the <a class="gtmContentClick" data-vars-link-text="labor marke" data-vars-click-url="https://www.axios.com/2023/05/05/labor-market-still-holding-strong" data-vars-content-id="f933ce03-dfa7-4dd2-972a-2b7db053715e" data-vars-headline="New paper predicts rising wages will keep inflation high" data-vars-event-category="story" data-vars-sub-category="story" data-vars-item="in_content_link" href="https://www.axios.com/2023/05/05/labor-market-still-holding-strong" target="_self">labor marke</a>t before prices are under control.

Emily Peck

Stories

Yelp is down to one office in the U.S., as it leans into remote work

The menopause gap at work

Food price controls on the menu in the U.K.

New paper predicts rising wages will keep inflation high

Immigrant workforce reaches a new high

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