Minimum wage just went up in 7 states and D.C.—but in 2025, even $20/hour often isn’t enough.
This week, over 880,000 workers got a raise thanks to new minimum wage laws taking effect across the U.S.
📍 Everett, WA: $20.24/hour for large employers
📍 Portland metro: $16.30/hour
📍 D.C.: $17.95/hour
📍 Alaska: $13/hour statewide
📍 And dozens more local updates
But here’s the catch:
📉 To afford basic essentials in every U.S. county, a full-time worker now needs to make at least $17/hour, according to EPI.
📈 Meanwhile, 26% of Americans say they’d need $150,000+ annually just to feel financially secure (Bankrate, 2025).
It’s not just minimum wage that’s shifting—it’s the whole salary expectation curve.
That’s why businesses need to stop guessing and start benchmarking.
Salary benchmark reports allow companies to:
✔️ Determine competitive salary ranges by market
✔️ Plan for wage increases by role and location
✔️ Account for inflation, cost of living, and hiring difficulty
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Your next great hire won’t apply if your offer misses the mark—even by 10%.
Even after the Trump White House dialed back high U.S. tariffs, American manufacturers say they don’t expect much relief soon. Ongoing trade wars have raised costs, curbed demand, and made it hard to plan.
The future, in other words, does not look great.
A closely followed survey of senior executives showed that a slump stemming from the tariffs continued in June for the fourth month in a row, the Institute for Supply Management said.
The ISM manufacturing index totaled 49.0% in June, little changed from a 48.5% reading in the prior month.
Any number below 50% signals contraction.
“Business has notably slowed in the last four to six weeks. Customers do not want to make commitments in the wake of massive tariff uncertainty,” according to one executive at a company that makes metal parts.
Global trade unfroze after the Trump administration in early May scaled back the most extreme tariffs on China and other countries.
Imports rebounded from a 16-year low and exports also partly recovered from a five-year bottom.
Yet trade flows have not completely thawed. Executives were very pessimistic in comments to the ISM. They don’t expect much improvement in the rest of the year.
New orders, a sign of future sales, shrank again to a three-month low of 46.4%. Just one year ago, new orders were strong.
Production turned positive again for the first time in four months — if just barely — as companies filled orders put in place before tariffs were raised.
Employment contracted for the fifth month in a row, with more companies resorting to layoffs.
Prices rose again and are at the highest level since 2022, when inflation raged through the U.S. economy.
The U.S. stock market has roared back to life after the White House dialed back the tariffs, but the real economy hasn’t exactly caught up. It’s growing more slowly, while hiring has tapered off.
The big question is, who pays the tariffs? The White House said it has collected more than $100 billion in extra tariff revenue since it applied higher duties to imports.
Businesses are trying to get foreign suppliers to reduce prices, but if they don’t succeed, they will either have to accept lower profits or try to pass on the price increases to customers. It’s a hot potato.
Companies “need some clarity on tariffs,” said senior economist Jennifer Lee of BMO Capital Markets. “Certainty on what the tariff rates will be and what they will cover. The uncertainty is putting the brakes on business planning. “
Job openings unexpectedly rose in May to hit the highest level since November 2024, according to government data released Tuesday. The report comes as investors closely watch for any signs of slowing in the labor market amid a debate over when the Federal Reserve could cut interest rates again.
New data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed 7.76 million jobs open at the end of May, an increase from the 7.39 million seen the month prior. The April figure was revised higher by 4,000 openings. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg had expected Tuesday's report to show 7.3 million openings in May.
The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) also showed that 5.5 million hires were made during the month, down from the 5.61 million made during April. The hiring rate ticked lower to 3.4% from 3.5%. In one sign that workers remain cautious about labor market conditions, the quits rate, a sign of confidence among workers, moved up to 2.1% from 2% in April.
Still, both the hiring and quit rates are hovering near decade lows, reflecting what economists have described as a labor market in "stasis."
"Hiring remains depressed, but that is less worrisome than it would be otherwise because layoffs continue to be low," Oxford Economics lead US economist Nancy Vanden Houten wrote in a note to clients.
The latest JOLTS data comes as investors continue to watch economic data for any signs of impact from President Trump's tariffs. In May, the labor market showed some signs of cooling with the US labor market adding 139,000 jobs while the unemployment rate held steady at 4.2%.
Tuesday's data comes ahead of another update on the labor market expected for release on Thursday morning. Consensus expects the June jobs report to show hiring slowed further, with nonfarm payroll additions projected to fall to 110,000 and the unemployment rate expected to tick higher to 4.3%.
As of Tuesday, markets were pricing in a roughly 23% chance the Fed will cut interest rates at its July meeting and a 96% chance that at least one cut happens by the end of its September meeting, per the CME FedWatch Tool.
- U.S. stock futures were down marginally by 0.2% this morning following another all-time high by the S&P 500 index yesterday. Macro data is starting to look weaker. Consumer spending was down in May, and the job market is getting worse for employees. That suggests the Fed may cut rates in September, analysts say, which would be good for stocks.
Consumer spending is weakening. The job market is getting worse for workers. And U.S. stock investors are loving it.
The S&P 500 rose 0.52% yesterday, hitting an all-time high for the second day in a row. S&P 500 futures were down marginally by 0.2% this morning, premarket, indicating that investors don’t anticipate anything dramatic like a mass selloff.
Why the joy amid so much impending misery? Because the deteriorating macro picture suggests that the U.S. Federal Reserve may cut interest rates sooner rather than later. And cheap money is usually good for stocks.
The stock market is climbing “the wall of worry,” as Goldman Sachs put it in a note seen by Fortune. A key event will be this week’s U.S. jobs report.
Pantheon Macroeconomics expects it to be not great: “We’re looking for a 100K increase in June nonfarm payrolls, due Thursday, with private jobs rising at the same pace, as well as an uptick in the unemployment rate to 4.3%, from 4.2% in May. This would signal the labor market is cooling, albeit too slowly for the FOMC to rush ahead and ease policy this month, before it has had more time to gauge the size of the uplift to inflation from the tariffs,” Samuel Tombs and Oliver Allen told clients, referring to the Federal Open Market Committee.
Consumer spending is softening too. It decreased by 0.3%, month on month, in May.
If inflation remains low, the Fed may move in September, Goldman said.
“We are pulling forward our forecast for the next [Fed rate] cut to September. We had previously expected a cut in December because we thought that the peak summer tariff effects on monthly inflation would make it awkward to cut sooner. But the very early evidence suggests that the tariff effects look a bit smaller than we expected, other disinflationary forces have been stronger, and we suspect that the Fed leadership shares our view that tariffs will only have a one-time price level effect. And while the labor market still looks healthy, it has become hard to find a job, and both residual seasonality and immigration policy changes pose near-term downside risk to payrolls,” Jan Hatzius and his team told clients in a note.
President Trump said Tuesday that DOGE could investigate Elon Musk, the latest indicator that his patience with the Tesla CEO is running thin.
The two men have engaged in a war of words in the past 24 hours, with Musk taking to X to vent his objections to the president's "big, beautiful bill" and the estimated trillions of dollars it would add to the national debt.
- Trump posted to Truth Social overnight that DOGE may need to take a "good, hard look" at Musk's companies, and he doubled down on the notion when he spoke to reporters Tuesday.
- "We might have to put DOGE on Elon. You know what DOGE is? DOGE is the monster that might have to go back and eat Elon," he said before boarding Marine One.
When asked if he would consider deporting Musk, Trump said he didn't know.
- "We'll have to take a look," he said.
Musk is a naturalized U.S. citizen. While the Justice Department has recently directed attorneys to prioritize denaturalization in cases where naturalized citizens commit crimes, Trump did not suggest that Musk had committed any crime.
Musk swiftly responded Tuesday morning, writing that while it is "[s]o tempting to escalate this," he would "refrain for now."
Upon his arrival in Florida, Trump doubled down, saying that DOGE is "going to look at Musk."
- "If DOGE looks at Musk, we're going to save a fortune," Trump added.
- On Musk's criticism for the GOP megabill, Trump told reporters, "I don't think he should be playing that game."
The relationship between Trump and his former chainsaw-wielding DOGE head publicly unraveled last month, as Musk aired an avalanche of grievances over the president's signature tax and spending bill.
- In the following weeks, he's continued to lash out against the legislation.
- "It is obvious with the insane spending of this bill, which increases the debt ceiling by a record FIVE TRILLION DOLLARS, that we live in a one-party country – the PORKY PIG PARTY!!" Musk wrote on X Monday, floating the idea of a new political party.
- He later doubled down, saying lawmakers who backed the bill "should hang their heads in shame," adding, "they will lose their primary next year if it is the last thing I do on this Earth."