Americans are pulling back as tariff turmoil adds to economic uncertainty
Americans watching the turmoil with tariffs have begun pulling back on spending, as President Donald Trump's trade war continues to stir up economic uncertainty.
Consumer spending growth slowed significantly in the first three months of the year, to 1.2 percent from 4 percent a quarter earlier, according to newly revised gross domestic product data released Thursday. And it's becoming clear that curtailed spending, combined with higher costs from tariffs, is affecting businesses, too. Corporate profits fell sharply, by $118 billion, in the first quarter, the largest drop since early in the pandemic, the GDP report showed.
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CBS News
13 minutes ago
- CBS News
Long Beach and Inland Empire Job Corps centers close
A longtime federal program that provides job training, housing and second chances to hundreds of at-risk youth nationwide is shutting its doors in Long Beach and the Inland Empire today. "I'm kind of nervous going back out there," 20-year-old Jacob Moan said after visiting the Inland Empire Job Corps Center. "I got permission to go back with my family in Los Angeles. The thing is my whole family is gang-related except me, and I didn't want to deal with that." Moan is one of the hundreds of Job Corps students left in limbo. He has until Thursday to find another place to live. "I'll be in a motel for about two weeks until a bed opens up at the shelter," he said. "I don't know where I'm gonna go. It sucks." Dominik Rodriguez just graduated from the certified medical assistant program, but now wonders how he'll actually land a job and get money for his son. "Society just like gave up for people in my situation," he said. "It hurts." Last Thursday, the U.S. Department of Labor announced it would suspend operations at its 99 Job Corps centers due to budget constraints. The federally funded centers provide housing, job training and careers for students 16 to 24 years old. "Job Corps was created to help young adults build a pathway to a better life through education, training, and community," Secretary Lori Chavez-Deremer stated. "However, a startling number of serious incident reports and our in-depth fiscal analysis reveal the program is no longer achieving the intended outcomes that students deserve." According to the Job Corps transparency report from 2023, the program had an average of 38.6%. The total number of serious incident reports at centers was 14,913. On average, one student costs the federal government more than $80,000 a year. "The transparency report that was released was generated by someone from DOGE, who doesn't know the program, who used statistics from 2023, which were statistics that were coming out of the pandemic," said Luis Ramirez, director of the Long Beach center. "We had just over 30% enrollment at the time." Ramirez added that the center went from helping 257 students to 37, all of whom have no place to go. "They're asking if they can come home and the situations are not possible for these students and parents," Ramirez said. "The students that did leave, we're hearing they are reaching out to community services and are struggling." Ramirez is one of the 140 staff members who will be laid off in Long Beach. "When you walk through our center, we're changing lives every day," Ramirez said.
Forbes
16 minutes ago
- Forbes
Fewer Students Stopped Out Of College Last Year, And More Returned
More than one million Americans who had previously dropped out of college returned to school in ... More academic year 2023-2024. Nonetheless, the number of adults who have left college without earning any credential increased nationally. For the second year in a row, the number of students leaving college without earning a credential has declined, according to a new report from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center. Released today, the Some College, No Credential (SCNC) report also found that more students who had previously left college without earning a degree were re-enrolling. More than 1 million SCNC students re-enrolled in the 2023-24 academic year, an increase of 66,000 (+7.0%) over the previous year. The number of students who 'stopped out' of college without a credential also declined from the previous year by about 156,000. The progress was widespread, with 42 states and the District of Columbia realizing increases in the number of students re-enrolling in college compared to the previous year. The gains ranged from a .7% increase in Washington, DC, to a 35.2% surge in Massachusetts. Among states showing a decrease in re-enrollments, Oklahoma experienced the largest decline year-over-year, at 13.8%. 'It is inspiring to see that over one million adults returned to campuses last year—the most we've ever recorded,' said Doug Shapiro, Executive Director of the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, in a news release. 'They're reviving college aspirations that had been put on hold years before. And states and institutions are working to make it even easier for more students to do so in the future.' The report defines SCNC individuals as people between the ages of 18 and 64 years of age who stopped out of college for at least three terms prior to the start of the academic year and had not earned any credential. At the start of the 2023-2024 academic year, there were nearly 43.1 million SCNC students; of those, 37.6 million were working-age adults. Even with the recent increases in re-enrollment, the report cautions that the improvement represents less than 3% of working-age SCNC adults. So while it's true that fewer students stopped out of college year over year, that has not been enough to stem the overall growth of the SCNC population, which has risen in all 50 states and the District of Columbia over the last three years. Among those SCNC students returning to school in 2023-2024, 4.7% earned a credential — including certificates, associate's and bachelor's degrees — within their first year of re-enrollment, a slight improvement over the prior year; 14.1% did so within two years of their return. More women than men re-enroll in college after stopping out, but men have a slight advantage in the two-year rate of earning their first credential (14.2%) vs. 13.9% among women. Black and Hispanic students return to college after stopping out at equal or greater rates than their Asian and white peers. However, white and Asian returnees earn a credential after returning at higher rates than other racial/ethnic groups. The report recommends that states seeking to increase the percentage of adults with a post-secondary credential focus on two subgroups of students who've demonstrated better re-enrollment and completion outcomes than the SCNC group overall. Those are potential completers and recent stop-outs. Potential completers have already completed at least two years' worth of academic credits in the past decade; they constitute about 2.7 million (or 7.2%) of the SCNC population. Recent stop-outs are newly identified SCNC individuals — those students who have stopped out between January, 2022 and July, 2023; roughly 2.1 million students (about 5.6% of SCNC individuals) are in this group. Across the past three years, potential completers demonstrate a number of advantages in their college outcomes compared to the rest of the SCNC population. For example they are about three times more likely to re-enroll in college than other SCNC students. They are also more likely to earn a credential in their first year of return (8.4%) than the rest of the SCNC group (3.8%), an edge that grows when considering second-year credential rates (22% versus 12.2%). Recent stop-outs are much more likely to re-enroll than students who have been stopped out for a longer period, and they are also more likely to enroll at the same institution they previously attended rather than transfer to another school. This pattern suggests that outreach strategies might be targeted at these relatively recent students, particularly by community colleges, which is the sector to which SCNC students most often return. According to the report, about one out of four SCNC students earned a credential without ever re-enrolling in college. Although it does not quantify the reasons for this outcome, it's likely due primarily to the reverse transfer policies adopted by several states allowing students who've dropped out of two-year colleges to add the credits they later earn at a four-year school and then be retroactively awarded an associate's degree. A similar program is the Colorado Re-Engaged (CORE) initiative, where former students who've completed at least 70 credits towards their bachelor's degree but then dropped out of college are awarded an associate's degree. The report found that, despite having the twentieth-largest SCNC population, Colorado had the seventh-highest number of first credential earners, aided by the large number of associate degrees earned by SCNC individuals who had not re-enrolled. In other cases, colleges have removed barriers that may have prevented awarding degrees to students who've already earned the required credits. For example. some schools have ended their policy of withholding degrees from students who have unpaid fines or tuition bills. The report's bottom line is a mixture of good and bad news. It's encouraging to see an increase in students' re-engagement with college, but in the big scheme of things, that improvement represents only a relatively tiny share of the SCNC working adult population. Fewer students might be stopping out year over year, but their retention and the return of former drop-outs has not been enough to stop the growth of the SCNC population, which continues to rise nationwide. The NSCRC is the research arm of the National Student Clearinghouse. It collaborates with higher education institutions, states, school districts, high schools, and educational organizations to gather accurate longitudinal data that can be used to guide educational policy decisions. NSCRC analyzes data from 3,600 postsecondary institutions, which represented 97% of the nation's postsecondary enrollment in Title IV degree-granting institutions in the U.S., as of 2020. The 2025 Some College, No Credential report, the sixth in a series, was created with the support of Lumina Foundation.
Bloomberg
23 minutes ago
- Bloomberg
EU Braces for Tough US Trade Talks
Welcome to the Brussels Edition, Bloomberg's daily briefing on what matters most in the heart of the European Union. EU trade officials face tough talks today in Paris with the US as the threat of a tit-for-tat tariff fight looms large. A day earlier, President Donald Trump signed a directive formally doubling steel and aluminum tariffs to 50%. That's likely to cast a pall over a meeting of G-7 trade chiefs in the French capital, where the EU's Maros Sefcovic and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer will also hold talks. The aim is to chart progress ahead of a July 9 deadline, when Trump's so-called reciprocal duties are due to kick in. Meanwhile, the EU and China's plan for a reset in ties also hit a snag after Beijing yesterday slammed the bloc's plan to curb Chinese medical device manufacturers' access to public procurement contracts. Sefcovic met Chinese Commerce Minister Wang Wentao yesterday and the pair agreed to work together on trade issues ahead of an EU-China summit next month, we're told. — Samuel Stolton and Jorge Valero
