.webp)
Experimental statistics partly compiled from a novel data source on online job advertisements (OJA) show that between 2019 (before the COVID-19 pandemic) and 2023, ‘manufacturing labourers’ recorded the largest increase in their job vacancy rate (+4.2 percentage points (pp)) in the EU, implying there were likely more difficulties in recruiting staff. The next occupations that recorded the biggest rises in their job vacancy rates were: ‘sales, marketing and development managers’ (+3.0 pp), ‘other sales workers’ (+2.8 pp), ‘transport and storage labourers’ (+2.5 pp) and ‘other clerical support workers’ (+2.4 pp).
The biggest drops were observed for ‘life science technicians and associate professionals’ (-2.6 pp), followed by ‘database and network professionals’ (-1.7 pp), ‘software and applications developers and analysts’ (-1.5 pp), ‘hotel and restaurant managers’ (-1.1 pp) and ‘handicraft workers’ (-1.0 pp). There were likely fewer difficulties in recruiting staff for those occupations.
Source dataset: jvs_a_isco3_r1
A falling job vacancy rate does not necessarily mean that these occupations are shrinking or vice versa. In the case of ‘database and network professionals’, although there was a decrease (-1.7 pp to 5.1% in 2023), the job vacancy rate remained well above the average across all occupations (2.4%), whereas the share of employees increased by 0.2 pp between 2019 and 2023.
The same holds for ‘software and applications developers and analysts’, which registered a decrease in its job vacancy rate to 6.9% in 2023, but whose share of employees increased by 0.5 pp in the same period.
By contrast, some occupations whose job vacancy rate increased saw their share of employees decrease, for instance, ‘transport and storage labourers’ (-0.2 pp between 2019 and 2023) and ‘other sales workers’ (-0.1 pp).
Source dataset: jvs_a_isco3_r1
McDonald’s focus on value is paying off.
The fast food giant said Wednesday that its global same-store sales — or sales at locations open at least a year — jumped 5.7% in the October-December period. That’s better than the 3.9% Wall Street was expecting, according to analysts polled by FactSet.
Chicago-based McDonald’s fourth-quarter revenue and earnings also beat analysts’ expectations.
McDonald’s cut prices on some U.S. combo meals in September. Those Extra Value Meal promotions came on top of discounts that began earlier in 2025, like the McValue menu. McDonald’s popular Snack Wraps, which returned to menus in July for $2.99, also helped improve value perceptions.
McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski said those changes helped McDonald’s gain share among consumers with household incomes of $45,000 or less, a segment that has been drifting away from the brand.
“McDonald’s is not going to get beat on value and affordability,” Kempczinski said during a conference call with investors.
The company also boosted U.S. traffic in the fourth quarter with marketing schemes, including the return of its Monopoly game in October and a Grinch-themed meal in December. Kempczinski said McDonald’s sold 50 million pairs of Grinch socks with those meals in the first few days of the promotion, briefly making the company the largest seller of socks in the world.
McDonald’s said its same-store sales rose 6.8% in the U.S. in the October-December period. Ian Borden, McDonald’s chief financial officer, said that pace will likely slow in the January-March period, partly because severe winter weather has hurt traffic or forced some restaurants to close or limit their hours.
McDonald’s focus on value and marketing has been similar in international markets. In Germany, for example, lower-priced McSmart snacks have boosted store traffic. Same-store sales in McDonald’s company-operated international markets rose 5.2% in the fourth quarter; Borden also expects that pace to slow in the first quarter due to weather impacts.
“We’re really confident about what’s within our control, really confident about the underlying momentum of the business,” Borden said.
The company said it’s working on new menu items for this year, including beverages inspired by its short-lived CosMc’s restaurant format. McDonald’s said it plans to start selling energy drinks, iced coffees and fruity refreshers under its McCafe brand sometime later this year.
McDonald’s revenue rose 10% to $7.01 billion in the fourth quarter. That beat Wall Street’s forecast of $6.84 billion.
Net income rose 7% to $2.16 billion. Adjusted for one-time items, including restructuring charges, McDonald’s earned $3.12 per share. That also beat analysts’ forecast of a $3.05 per share profit.
McDonald’s shares were flat in after-hours trading.
Other chains have also been focused on their value message over the last year. Taco Bell, which expanded its value menu in January 2025, said last week that its same-store sales jumped 7% in the October-December period.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office’s 10-year outlook projects worsening long-term federal deficits and rising debt, driven largely by increased spending, notably on Social Security, Medicare, and debt service payments.
Compared with the CBO’s analysis this time last year, the fiscal outlook has deteriorated modestly.
Major developments over the last year are factored into the latest report, released Wednesday, including Republicans’ tax and spending measure known as the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” higher tariffs, and the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration, which includes deporting millions of immigrants from mainland U.S.
As a result of these changes, the projected 2026 deficit is about $100 billion higher, and total deficits from 2026 to 2035 are $1.4 trillion larger, while debt held by the public is projected to rise from 101% of GDP to 120% — exceeding historical highs.
Notably, the CBO says higher tariffs partially offset some of those increases by raising federal revenue by $3 trillion, but that also comes with higher inflation from 2026 to 2029.
Rising debt and debt service are important because repaying investors for borrowed money crowds out government spending on basic needs such as roads, infrastructure and education, which enable investments in future economic growth.
Congressional Budget Office projections also indicate that inflation doesn’t hit the Federal Reserve’s 2% target rate until 2030.
Jonathan Burks, executive vice president of economic and health policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center said “large deficits are unprecedented for a growing, peacetime economy” though “the good news is there is still time for policymakers to correct course.”
“We encourage lawmakers to work together to explore options for raising revenue, trimming spending, and slowing the growth of the major cost drivers,” Burks said, “Congress and the administration should seize the opportunity to act now before the available menu of choices becomes much more painful.”
Lawmakers have recently addressed rising federal debt and deficits primarily through targeted spending caps and debt limit suspensions, as well as deploying “extraordinary measures” when the U.S. is close to hitting its statutory spending limit, though these measures have often been accompanied by new, large-scale spending or tax policies that maintain high deficit levels.
And President Donald Trump, at the start of his second term, deployed a Department of Government Efficiency, which set a goal to balance the budget by cutting $2 trillion in waste, fraud and abuse; however, budget analysts estimate that DOGE cut anywhere between $1.4 billion to $7 billion, largely through workforce firings.
Michael Peterson, CEO of the Peterson Foundation, said the CBO’s latest budget projection “is an urgent warning to our leaders about America’s costly fiscal path.”
“This election year, voters understand the connection between rising debt and their personal economic condition. And the financial markets are watching. Stabilising our debt is an essential part of improving affordability, and must be a core component of the 2026 campaign conversation.”
'INTERSTELLAR AMBITIONS'
The IRS erroneously shared the taxpayer information of thousands of people with the Department of Homeland Security, as part of the agencies’ controversial agreement to share information on immigrants for the purpose of identifying and deporting people illegally in the U.S, according to a new court filing.
The revelation stems from a data-sharing agreement signed last April by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, which allows U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to submit names and addresses of immigrants inside the U.S. illegally to the IRS for cross-verification against tax records.
A declaration filed Wednesday by IRS Chief Risk and Control Officer Dottie Romo stated that the IRS was only able to verify roughly 47,000 of the 1.28 million names ICE requested.
For less than 5% of those individuals, the IRS gave ICE additional address information, potentially violating privacy rules created to protect taxpayer data.
Romo added that Treasury notified DHS in January of the error and requested DHS’s assistance in “promptly taking steps to remediate the matter consistent with federal law,” which includes “appropriate disposal of any data provided to ICE by IRS based on incomplete or insufficient address information.”
The IRS-DHS agreement set off litigation between advocacy groups and the federal government last year.
Public Citizen filed a lawsuit against the Treasury secretary, the Homeland Security secretary and their respective agencies on behalf of several immigrant rights groups shortly after the agreement was signed.
Most recently, a Massachusetts federal court ordered the IRS to stop sharing residential addresses with ICE. And last November, a federal court blocked the IRS from sharing information with DHS, saying the IRS illegally disseminated the tax data of some migrants last summer.
The news of the erroneous disclosure was initially reported by The Washington Post. A spokesperson from the IRS did not respond to an Associated Press request for comment.
Advocates fear that the potential unlawful release of taxpayer records could be used to maliciously target Americans, violate their privacy and create other ramifications.
Lisa Gilbert, co-president of Public Citizen, said that “this breach of confidential information was part of the reason we filed our lawsuit in the first place. Sharing this private taxpayer data creates chaos and, as we’ve seen this past year, if federal agents use this private information to track down individuals, it can endanger lives.”
Tom Bowman, policy counsel for the Centre for Democracy & Technology, said that “the improper sharing of taxpayer data is unsafe, unlawful, and subject to serious criminal penalties.”
“Once taxpayer data is opened to immigration enforcement, mistakes are inevitable, and the consequences fall on innocent people,” Bowman said. “The disclosure of thousands of confidential records, unfortunately, shows precisely why strict legal firewalls exist and have — until now — been treated as an important guardrail.”
Anthropic's Mrinank Sharma warned of a world “in peril” in an ominous resignation letter posted on the social platform X that has been viewed more than a million times. Sharma, who led a team that researches AI safety, started working at Anthropic in August 2023, and now says he would prefer to "contribute in a way that feels fully in my integrity." A study Sharma recently published examined the frequency with which AI chatbots can create a distorted sense of reality for users.
Apple's long-awaited Siri overhaul has run into some hiccups, delaying the AI-infused digital assistant's debut scheduled for March, Bloomberg reports, citing anonymous sources. Instead, the iPhone maker is considering dispersing Siri's new Gemini-enhanced features over multiple software updates, including the launch of iOS 26.5 in May and iOS 27 in September. The revamped Siri, first teased back in June 2024, has been delayed several times, as engineers aim to rebuild it to be a more advanced, more conversational digital aide.
Billionaire hedge fund boss Bill Ackman is doubling down on Meta despite bubbling investor concerns about the social giant's growing AI costs, The Wall Street Journal reports. Ackman's fund, Pershing Square, purchased a $2 billion stake in the company on Wednesday, attributing its sizable bet to the potential of Meta's artificial intelligence-enhanced ads, content and wearables. Earlier this year, Meta said it anticipates AI-related expenditures to reach as high as $135 billion this year. Its shares have fallen roughly 13% since August.