According to the New York Federal Reserve, labor conditions for recent college graduates have 'deteriorated noticeably' in the past few months, and the unemployment rate now stands at an unusually high 5.8 percent. Even newly minted M.B.A.s from elite programs are struggling to find work. Meanwhile, law-school applications are surging'an ominous echo of when young people used graduate school to bunker down during the great financial crisis. The first theory is that the labor market for young people never fully recovered from the coronavirus pandemic'or even, arguably, from the Great Recession. 'Young people are having a harder time finding a job than they used to, and it's been going on for a while, at least 10 years,' David Deming, an economist at Harvard, told me. The Great Recession led not only to mass layoffs but also to hiring freezes at many employers, and caused particular hardships for young people. After unemployment peaked in 2009, the labor market took time to heal, improving slowly until the pandemic shattered that progress. And just when a tech boom seemed around the corner, inflation roared back, leading the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates and cool demand across the economy. White-collar industries'especially technology'were among the hardest hit. The number of job openings in software development and IT operations plunged. The share of jobs posted on Indeed in software programming has declined by more than 50 percent since 2022. For new grads hoping to start a career in tech, consulting, or finance, the market simply isn't that strong....

That wasn't true then, and it's even less true now. As Trump hits his 100th day in office today, pollsters have been releasing new surveys, and the results are ugly. NBC News finds that 55 percent of Americans disapprove of the president's handling of the job, but that's rosy compared with the 59 percent in a CNN poll. An ABC News/Washington Post poll finds that just 39 percent of Americans approve of Trump's performance'the lowest ever recorded, going back to 1945, and smashing through the previous record of 42 percent, set by one Donald Trump in 2017. More than half of Americans say that Trump is a 'dangerous dictator whose power should be limited before he destroys American democracy,' according to the Public Religion Research Institute. Asked by NPR to give Trump a letter grade for his first 100 days, a full 45 percent of Americans gave the president an F, including 49 percent of independents. Sixty percent believe that the country is on the wrong track, per NBC. These numbers also extend into specific issues. Immigration is historically one of Trump's strongest issues, but the ABC/Post poll finds that more voters now disapprove of his handling than approve. The economy was perhaps the decisive issue in November, but now fewer than four in 10 people approve of Trump's handling, according to NPR. Relatedly, consumer confidence is at its worst level since the early weeks of the coronavirus pandemic. Trump has frequently promised a historic presidency, and he's delivering it....

While many companies may be hesitant to launch new products during an economic downturn, research shows that doing so can be a successful marketing strategy for some types of products. Evidence from the automotive and fast-moving consumer goods sectors points to opportunities to capture market attention and willingness to buy, particularly late in a recession, when competitors have pulled back due to uncertainty. Economic cycles are a fact of life for managers: Despite government policies that seek to promote growth and stability, events ' such as the COVID-19 pandemic ' and other types of financial shocks can drive a country into recession. While there's a fair amount of advice for business leaders on managing during difficult times, the questions that have received little attention are whether to launch new products during a recession and, if so, when and which ones. We set out to investigate why it might be advisable for companies to launch products during a recession, what types of products might be successfully launched, and at what stage in a downturn the launch should occur. In our research, we analyzed 63 years of data in the U.S. automotive industry that covered 1,071 product launches. We chose to focus on this sector because it is highly competitive, and new products greatly increase such companies' long-term financial performance and business value whereas price promotions and rebates do not. We subsequently analyzed 18 years of data for 20 categories of fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) in the U.K., covering 8,981 product launches (including crisps, breakfast cereals, yogurt, shampoos, cat food, dog food, salad dressing, butter, and margarine, among others) and obtained similar results....

Receiving a COVID-19 booster vaccine in the same arm as the first vaccine dose leads to a faster, more effective immune response than having it in the opposite arm, according to a study in mice and people. The results are described in Cell today1. 'The outcome is important if we did find ourselves in a pandemic setting again, with some other virus that we may then have a new vaccine for,' says co-author Mee Ling Munier, a vaccine researcher at the Kirby Institute at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. The question of which arm produces a more effective immune response from vaccination has persisted for a long time, says Munier. 'Most people get their vaccine in their non-dominant arm because that doesn't affect their day-to-day life.' But experiments in mice suggest that where a vaccine is given can affect the body's immune response, she adds. When a booster vaccine was administered in the same location as the initial dose, the mice's subcapsular sinus macrophages were already primed. They reactivated immune cells called memory B cells more quickly than did the cells of mice whose second vaccination was administered in a different limb....