Nike waited almost four years to give its most marketable athlete her own shoe. The delay tells you more than the launch does. Nike unveiled the Caitlin 1 on June 17, Caitlin Clark’s first signature basketball shoe, set to launch October 1 at $140 in adult sizes. The announcement followed a deliberate weeks-long tease —…
Real wages fell for the second straight month, and the gap between paychecks and prices just hit its widest point since the inflation shock of 2022. Average hourly earnings rose 3.4% over the year ending in May, while the Consumer Price Index rose 4.2% over the same period, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported. That…
Two cities stopped debating whether reparations should happen and started building the housing infrastructure to deliver them. Santa Monica and Evanston have both moved past the symbolic phase of reparations into actual program design, according to the Center for Law and Social Policy. Evanston’s Restorative Housing Program, funded by a $10 million reparations fund seeded…
Companies are increasingly reducing labor through attrition, allowing workforce cuts to happen quietly and with fewer political costs. Reuters reported on June 19 that BMW is preparing discussions with employee representatives as the automaker pursues additional efficiency measures after issuing another profit warning. Analysts expect headcount to decline by as much as 5%, or roughly 7,700 jobs,…
Governments, central banks, and businesses are making trillion-dollar decisions before the data can settle one of the decade’s biggest economic questions. In 2020, two economists made a bet. Stanford’s Erik Brynjolfsson wagered that artificial intelligence would push U.S. labor productivity growth above 1.8% annually through 2030. Northwestern’s Robert Gordon took the other side. Six years…
Old comments don’t disappear anymore. The bigger question is whether they still cost anything. Former NBA player Etan Thomas posted a screenshot to X on June 19, pairing Candace Owens’ 2023 comment that Juneteenth is “still ghetto and made up” with his own reply from that year — “You just love to tap dance for…
Roughly half of Americans have a passport. The geography of passport ownership closely mirrors the geography of income, revealing who can easily participate in a world built around mobility. SSC News Desk | Social Storytellers Collective The 2026 World Cup opened this week with 48 nations competing across 16 host cities in the most globally expansive tournament in the competition’s history….
The BBC will cut 550 jobs across its news and content divisions, Reuters reported, as part of new director-general Matt Brittin’s plan to save £500 million over the next three years — the first phase of a downsizing that’s expected to eliminate 1,800 to 2,000 positions total. The cuts will close several long-running programs, including some…
As companies pour billions into AI infrastructure, workforce reductions are increasingly becoming part of the financing equation. Tech-sector employers announced 123,653 job cuts through the first five months of 2026, a 66% increase over the same period last year, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas data reported by Yahoo Finance, with artificial intelligence cited as the…
Five NPHC fraternity presidents speak collectively as attacks on Black women escalate across federal policy and public discourse. SSC News Desk | Social Storytellers Collective The presidents of five historically Black fraternities have issued a rare joint statement through the National Pan-Hellenic Council (NPHC), publicly condemning what they describe as a pattern of escalating attacks…