What headers

Starbucks and the union representing employees at about 400 of its U.S. stores announced Tuesday that they were beginning discussions on a "fundamental framework" that would help the company reach labor agreements with unionized workers and resolve disputes between the two set off.The union hailed the development as a major shift in strategy for Starbucks, which has taken steps to resist union organizing at the company since the campaign began in 2021, moves that federal labor regulators said violated the right of work hundreds of times.Starbucks, which has denied the allegations, said in a statement that it hopes to negotiate and ratify contracts by the end of the year and that it would agree to a “fair organizing process” — something the union has been calling for for years. It said tha...

The Federal Reserve may have a housing problem. At the very least, it has a housing conundrum.Overall inflation has eased significantly over the past year. But real estate has proven to be a tenacious – and surprising – exception. According to the Department of Labor, the cost of housing increased 6% in January from a year earlier, and on a monthly basis it increased faster than in December. This acceleration was a major reason for the recovery in overall consumer prices last month.The persistence of housing inflation poses a problem for Fed officials as they weigh when to reduce interest rates. Housing is by far the largest monthly expense for most families, which means it factors heavily into inflation calculations. Unless property costs fall, inflation as a whole will be difficult...

The December day in 2021 that set off a revolution across the videogame industry appeared to start innocuously enough. Managers at a Wisconsin studio called Raven began meeting one by one with quality assurance testers, who vet video games for bugs, to announce that the company was overhauling their department. Going forward, managers said, the lucky testers would be permanent employees, not temps. They would earn an extra $1.50 an hour.It was only later in the morning, a Friday, that the catch became apparent: One-third of the studio’s roughly 35 testers were being let go as part of the overhaul. The workers were stunned. Raven was owned by Activision Blizzard, one of the industry’s largest companies, and there appeared to be plenty of work to go around. Several testers had just worked la...

“No society can be fully understood apart from the residences of its members.”I have that quote (from "Crabgrass Frontier," the seminal history of the American suburbs) taped to the wall behind my desk. It sums up why I love covering housing for the New York Times and never seems to run out of things to write about. Accommodation is everything. It's where we live and raise our families. It is the greatest store of wealth for most people. Whether you own, rent, or sleep outside, where you lay your head defines much of your existence.In recent decades, and especially after the pandemic, the real estate sector has gone from a symbol of American strength to an everyday crisis. Aspiring homeowners are becoming lifelong renters. People are living in increasingly crowded households, the su...