WASHINGTON (AP) — Long past its painful peak, inflation in the United States may be heading steadily back toward its pre-pandemic levels, without the need for further interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve.

Such a scenario became more likely, if hardly guaranteed, after Tuesday’s surprisingly tame report on consumer prices for October. The Labor Department’s data showed a broad-based easing of inflation across most goods and services. The price of gas? Down. Appliances? Down. Autos? Down. Same for airfares, hotel rooms and doctors’ fees.

Overall inflation didn’t rise from September to October, the first time that consumer prices collectively haven’t budged from one month to another in more than a year. Compared with a year earlier, prices rose 3.2% in October, the smallest such rise since June, though still above the Fed’s 2% inflation target.

Excluding volatile food and energy prices, so-called core inflation was just 0.2% last month, slightly below the pace of the previous two months. Economists closely track core prices, which are thought to provide a good sign of inflation’s likely future path. Measured year over year, core prices rose 4% in October, down from 4.1% in September, the smallest rise in two years.

“The inflation fever has broken,” said Bill Adams, chief economist at Comerica Bank. “Rising petroleum production is holding down gas prices, house prices are rising more slowly after mortgage rates surged in 2023 and rents are also rising more gradually” as more apartment buildings are completed.

October’s milder-than-expected price figures make it much less likely that the Fed will impose another rate hike. Many economists now say that the Fed’s most likely next move will be to cut rates, likely sometime next year, though that would depend on whether inflation continues to cool.

WHAT’S DRIVING INFLATON LOWER, AND WILL IT CONTINUE?

A major factor has been a big improvement in the supply of many things — workers, housing and components for manufactured goods.

Millions of Americans have come off the sidelines in the past year and flooded back into the workforce, seeking and (mostly) finding jobs. Immigration has increased, too, and with it more people looking for work. With more hires available, businesses haven’t had to raise wages as much to fill jobs, thereby easing the pressure on those businesses to raise their prices.

At the same time, the largest number of new apartment buildings nationwide in decades are being completed, a trend that is helping slow rent increases. Rental costs, after a spike in September, rose at a much more gradual pace last month.

Rents and other housing costs are likely to keep coming down, economists say, as the cost of new leases continues to fall, according to real-time data providers such as Zillow. Those lower prices show up in the government’s data with a lag.

And the supply chains that were badly snarled during the pandemic have pretty much unwound. An ample availability of products, parts and components help keep a lid on their prices. Automakers, for example, are having a much easier time finding semiconductors.

Partly as a result, new car prices declined last month, defying fears that the now-settled autoworkers’ strike would reduce dealers’ inventories and send prices higher. Used car prices, too, are down. They fell for a fifth straight month in October and have tumbled 7% from a year ago.

“We’re finally undoing that and getting the benefits,” Austan Goolsbee, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, said Tuesday in remarks at the Detroit Economic Club.

Separately, consumers are widely expected to pull back on spending after a blowout summer, with credit card debts — and delinquencies — rising and average savings falling. Cooler demand should force businesses to compete more on price.

Gas costs have kept falling this month, with the national average price at the pump averaging $3.35 Tuesday, down 42 cents from a year earlier. Those prices declines could push overall inflation, measured year-over-year, below 3% by December.

BUT AREN’T THINGS STILL PRETTY EXPENSIVE?

Yes, inflation is still painfully apparent in many areas. They include auto and health insurance and some groceries, like beef and bread.

The average cost of auto insurance, which jumped 1.9% just from September to October, has soared nearly 20% from a year earlier. As new and used vehicles have grown more expensive, so has the cost of insuring them. And health insurance prices rose 1.1% last month, though that was largely due to a change in the government’s methodology.

But even as overall price increases slow, it doesn’t mean inflation is reversing or that most prices are falling back to pre-pandemic levels. The consumer price index, the most widely followed measure of inflation, remains about 20% higher than it was before the pandemic.

Milk prices, which have ticked down compared with the past year, are still 23% higher than they were pre-pandemic. Ground beef prices are 31% higher. Gas prices, despite a steep decline from a year ago, are still 46% higher than before the pandemic.

Many economists say a key reason why so many Americans hold a gloomy view of the economy despite very low unemployment and steady hiring is that these prices — on items that they buy regularly — remain much higher than they were three years ago.

ARE PAYCHECKS KEEPING UP?

Barring a deep and painful recession, prices aren’t going to fall to their pre-pandemic levels. Instead, economists say, Americans’ wages need to rise to help pay for the higher costs.

Wages and salaries trailed inflation in 2021 and 2022, exacerbating the pain of higher prices. Yet this year, as inflation has cooled, average pay has pulled ahead of inflation. By most measures, average paychecks, adjusted for inflation, are back to where they were before the pandemic.

Yet that essentially means that Americans, on average, have had scant real pay increases compared with three years ago. And while average pay may be back to pre-pandemic levels, many people have received below-average pay raises and are still behind inflation.

HOW MIGHT THE FEDERAL RESERVE RESPOND?

The Fed will likely welcome Tuesday’s report as evidence of further progress toward getting inflation back to its target of 2%. Fed officials, led by Chair Jerome Powell, are considering whether their benchmark rate is high enough to quell inflation or if they need to impose another increase in coming months.

Powell had said last week that Fed officials were “not confident” that rates were sufficiently high to tame inflation. The Fed has raised its benchmark interest rate 11 times in the past year and a half, to about 5.4%, the highest level in 22 years.

But the central bank has raised its key rate just once since May. Since its last meeting on Nov. 1, a government report showed that hiring cooled in October compared with September, and wage growth slowed, thereby easing pressure on companies to raise prices in the coming months.

Adams, the Comerica economist, said he thinks the Fed’s most likely next move will be to cut rates, likely by mid-2024.

The prospect that the Fed may end its rate hike campaign and eventually cut rates ignited a stock market rally Tuesday. The Dow Jones industrial average soared nearly 1.4% in mid-afternoon trading. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note fell to 4.46%, down from nearly 4.6%, reflecting investors’ expectations that borrowing rates will decline.

The Fed’s rate hikes have increased the costs of mortgages, auto loans, credit cards and many forms of business borrowing, part of a concerted drive to slow growth and cool inflation pressures. The central bank is trying to achieve a “soft landing” — raising borrowing costs just enough to curb inflation without tipping the economy into a deep recession.

“Things are proceeding in a way that is very consistent with what (the Fed) would want to see,” said Eric Winograd, chief economist at AB Global, an asset management firm. “They look like they are on course to generate a soft landing. There’s no guarantee that they will actually manage to accomplish it. But right now, that’s the story that the data are telling.”

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Health care workers, including registered nurses, health technicians, and health care support workers, are at increased risk of suicide compared with workers in other fields, according to a new study by researchers at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health and Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. Until now little was known about suicide risks of the approximately 95 percent of health care workers who are not physicians. The findings are published in JAMA.(link is external and opens in a new window)

“Our results extend earlier research from outside the United States that health care workers compared with non-healthcare workers have greater risks for mental health problems and long-term work absences due to mental disorders,” said Mark Olfson, MD, MPH, professor of Epidemiology at Columbia Public Health and professor of Psychiatry, Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. “The importance of increased suicide risk of health care support workers is underscored by their growth from nearly 4 million in 2008 to 6.6 million in 2021.”

To estimate death by suicide rates among U.S. health care workers, the researchers evaluated a nationally representative cohort from the 2008 American Community Survey including 1,842 000 workers who were observed through 2019. Olfson used modeling techniques to compare rates of suicide for health care workers to other employed adults accounting for differences in their background characteristics. Participants 26 years of age and older were studied.

Suicide rates were estimated for six health care worker groups—physicians, registered nurses,other health care–diagnosing or treating practitioners, health technicians, health care support workers, and social/behavioral health workers, as well as non–health care workers. 

The analysis showed suicide rates per 100,000 person-years of 21 for health care support workers, 16 for registered nurses, 16 for health technicians, 13 for physicians, 10 for social/behavioral health workers, 8 for other health care–diagnosing or treating practitioners, versus 13 for non–health care workers. 

A recent paper by Olfson published in the Annals of Internal Medicine found that registered nurses, social workers and other behavioral health workers, as well as those in health care support are at significantly greater risk for drug overdose death compared to non-health care workers.

The new report also found that health care work overall is more strongly associated with suicide risk among female than male workers. This finding raises the possibility that gender differences in health care work roles, job satisfaction, and occupational stress may contribute to the proportionately greater risks of suicide faced by female than male healthcare workers than non-health care workers.

Co-authors are Candace M. Cosgrove, U.S. Census Bureau; Melanie M. Wall, Columbia Mailman School of Public Health; and Carlos Blanco, National Institute on Drug Abuse. 

The study was supported by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute and National Institute on Aging interagency agreements with the U.S. Census Bureau.

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RENO, Nev. (AP) — Santos Brizuela spent more than two decades laboring outdoors, persisting despite a bout of heatstroke while cutting sugarcane in Mexico and chronic laryngitis from repeated exposure to the hot sun while on various other jobs.

But last summer, while on a construction crew in Las Vegas, he reached his breaking point. Exposure to the sun made his head ache immediately. He lost much of his appetite.

Now at a maintenance job, Brizuela, 47, is able to take breaks. There are flyers on the walls with best practices for staying healthy — protections he had not been afforded before.

“Sometimes as a worker you ask your employer for protection or for health and safety related needs, and they don’t listen or follow,” he said in Spanish through an interpreter.

A historic heat wave that began blasting the Southwest and other parts of the country this summer is shining a spotlight on one of the harshest, yet least-addressed effects of U.S. climate change: the rising deaths and injuries of people who work in extreme heat, whether inside warehouses and kitchens or outside under the blazing sun. Many of them are migrants in low-wage jobs.

State and federal governments have long implemented federal procedures for environmental risks exacerbated by climate change, namely drought, flood and wildfires. But extreme heat protections have generally lagged with “no owner” in state and federal governments, said Ladd Keith, an assistant professor of planning and a research associate at the University of Arizona.

“In some ways, we have a very long way to catch up to the governance gap in treating the heat as a true climate hazard,” Keith said.

There is no federal heat standard in the U.S. despite an ongoing push from President Joe Biden’s administration to establish one. Most of the hottest U.S. states currently have no heat-specific standards either.

Instead, workers in many states who are exposed to extreme heat are ostensibly protected by what is known as the “general duty clause,” which requires employers to mitigate hazards that could cause serious injury or death. The clause permits state authorities to inspect work sites for violations, and many do, but there are no consistent benchmarks for determining what constitutes a serious heat hazard.

“What’s unsafe isn’t always clear,” said Juanita Constible, a senior advocate from the Natural Resources Defense Council who tracks extreme heat policy. “Without a specific heat standard, it makes it more challenging for regulators to decide, ‘OK, this employer’s breaking the law or not.’”

Many states are adopting their own versions of a federal “emphasis” program increasing inspections to ensure employers offer water, shade and breaks, but citations and enforcement still must go through the general duty clause.

Extreme heat is notably absent from the list of disasters to which the Federal Emergency Management Agency can respond. And while regional floodplain managers are common throughout the country, there are only three newly created “chief heat officer” positions to coordinate extreme heat planning, in Miami-Dade County, Phoenix and Los Angeles.

Federal experts have recommended extreme heat protections since 1972, but it wasn’t until 1997 and 2006, respectively, that Minnesota and California adopted the first statewide protections. For a long time, those states were the exception, with only a scattering of others joining them throughout the early 2000s.

But as heat waves get longer and hotter, the tide is starting to change.

“There are a lot of positive movements that give me some hope,” Keith said.

Colorado strengthened existing rules last year to require regular rest and meal breaks in extreme heat and cold and provide water and shade breaks when temperatures hit 80 degrees Fahrenheit (26.7 degrees Celsius). Washington state last month updated 15-year-old heat safety standards to lower the temperature at which cool-down breaks and other protections are required. Oregon, which adopted temporary heat protection rules in 2021, made them permanent last year.

Several other states are considering similar laws or regulations.

Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs recently announced new regulations through the heat emphasis program and declared a state of emergency over extreme heat, allowing the state to reimburse various government entities for funds spent on providing relief from high temperatures.

Nevada also adopted a version of the heat emphasis program. But a separate bill that would define what constitutes extreme heat and require employers to provide protections ultimately failed in the final month of the legislative session.

The measure faltered even after the temperature threshold for those protections was increased from 95 degrees Fahrenheit (35 degrees Celsius) to 105 (40.5 degrees Celsius). Democratic lawmakers in Nevada are now trying to pass those protections through a regulatory process before next summer.

The Biden administration introduced new regulations in 2021 that would develop heat safety standards and strengthen required protective measures for most at-risk private sector workers, but the mandates are likely subject to several more years of review. A group of Democratic U.S. Congress members introduced a bill last month that would effectively speed up the process by legislating heat standards.

The guidelines would apply to all 50 states and include private sector and select federal workers, but leave most other public sector workers uncovered. Differing conditions across states and potential discrepancies in how the federal law would be implemented make consistent state standards crucial, Constible said.

For now, protections for those workers are largely at the discretion of individual employers.

Eleazar Castellanos, who trains workers on dealing with extreme heat at Arriba Las Vegas, a nonprofit supporting migrant and low-wage employees, said he experienced two types of employers during his 20 years of working construction.

“The first version is the employer that makes sure that their workers do have access to water, shade and rest,” he said in Spanish through an interpreter. “And the second type of employer is the kind who threatens workers with consequences for asking for those kinds of preventative measures.”

Heat protection laws have faced steady industry opposition, including chambers of commerce and other business associations. They say a blanket mandate would be too difficult to implement across such a wide range of industries.

“We are always concerned about a one-size-fits-all bill like this,” Tray Abney, a lobbyist for the National Federation of Independent Businesses, told Nevada legislators.

Opinions vary on why the Nevada bill failed after passing the Senate on party lines. Some say it was a victim of partisan politics. Others say there were too many bills competing for attention in a session that meets for just four months every other year.

“It all comes down to the dollar,” said Vince Saavedra, secretary-treasurer and lobbyist for Southern Nevada Building Trades. “But I’ll challenge anybody to go work outside with any of these people, and then tell me that we don’t need these regs.”

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NEW YORK (AP) — As concerns grow over increasingly powerful artificial intelligence systems like ChatGPT, the nation’s financial watchdog says it’s working to ensure that companies follow the law when they’re using AI.

Already, automated systems and algorithms help determine credit ratings, loan terms, bank account fees, and other aspects of our financial lives. AI also affects hiring, housing and working conditions.

Ben Winters, Senior Counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said a joint statement on enforcement released by federal agencies last month was a positive first step.

“There’s this narrative that AI is entirely unregulated, which is not really true,” he said. “They’re saying, ‘Just because you use AI to make a decision, that doesn’t mean you’re exempt from responsibility regarding the impacts of that decision. This is our opinion on this. We’re watching.’”

In the past year, the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau said it has fined banks over mismanaged automated systems that resulted in wrongful home foreclosures, car repossessions, and lost benefit payments, after the institutions relied on new technology and faulty algorithms.

There will be no “AI exemptions” to consumer protection, regulators say, pointing to these enforcement actions as examples.

Consumer Finance Protection Bureau Director Rohit Chopra said the agency has “already started some work to continue to muscle up internally when it comes to bringing on board data scientists, technologists and others to make sure we can confront these challenges” and that the agency is continuing to identify potentially illegal activity.

Representatives from the Federal Trade Commission, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and the Department of Justice, as well as the CFPB, all say they’re directing resources and staff to take aim at new tech and identify negative ways it could affect consumers’ lives.

“One of the things we’re trying to make crystal clear is that if companies don’t even understand how their AI is making decisions, they can’t really use it,” Chopra said. “In other cases, we’re looking at how our fair lending laws are being adhered to when it comes to the use of all of this data.”

Under the Fair Credit Reporting Act and Equal Credit Opportunity Act, for example, financial providers have a legal obligation to explain any adverse credit decision. Those regulations likewise apply to decisions made about housing and employment. Where AI make decisions in ways that are too opaque to explain, regulators say the algorithms shouldn’t be used.

“I think there was a sense that, ’Oh, let’s just give it to the robots and there will be no more discrimination,’” Chopra said. “I think the learning is that that actually isn’t true at all. In some ways the bias is built into the data.”

EEOC Chair Charlotte Burrows said there will be enforcement against AI hiring technology that screens out job applicants with disabilities, for example, as well as so-called “bossware” that illegally surveils workers.

Burrows also described ways that algorithms might dictate how and when employees can work in ways that would violate existing law.

“If you need a break because you have a disability or perhaps you’re pregnant, you need a break,” she said. “The algorithm doesn’t necessarily take into account that accommodation. Those are things that we are looking closely at … I want to be clear that while we recognize that the technology is evolving, the underlying message here is the laws still apply and we do have tools to enforce.”

OpenAI’s top lawyer, at a conference this month, suggested an industry-led approach to regulation.

“I think it first starts with trying to get to some kind of standards,” Jason Kwon, OpenAI’s general counsel, told a tech summit in Washington, DC, hosted by software industry group BSA. “Those could start with industry standards and some sort of coalescing around that. And decisions about whether or not to make those compulsory, and also then what’s the process for updating them, those things are probably fertile ground for more conversation.”

Sam Altman, the head of OpenAI, which makes ChatGPT, said government intervention “will be critical to mitigate the risks of increasingly powerful” AI systems, suggesting the formation of a U.S. or global agency to license and regulate the technology.

While there’s no immediate sign that Congress will craft sweeping new AI rules, as European lawmakers are doing, societal concerns brought Altman and other tech CEOs to the White House this month to answer hard questions about the implications of these tools.

Winters, of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said the agencies could do more to study and publish information on the relevant AI markets, how the industry is working, who the biggest players are, and how the information collected is being used — the way regulators have done in the past with new consumer finance products and technologies.

“The CFPB did a pretty good job on this with the ‘Buy Now, Pay Later’ companies,” he said. “There are so may parts of the AI ecosystem that are still so unknown. Publishing that information would go a long way.”

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During the first two years of the pandemic, the number of people working from home in the United States tripled, home values grew and the percentage of people who spent more than a third of their income on rent went up, according to survey results released Thursday by the U.S. Census Bureau.

Providing the most detailed data to date on how life changed in the U.S. under COVID-19, the bureau’s American Community Survey 1-year estimates for 2021 showed that the share of unmarried couples living together rose, Americans became more wired and the percentage of people who identify as multiracial grew significantly. And in changes that seemed to directly reflect how the pandemic upended people’s choices, fewer people moved, preschool enrollment dropped and commuters using public transportation was cut in half.

The data release offers the first reliable glimpse of life in the U.S. during the COVID-19 era, as the 1-year estimates from the 2020 survey were deemed unusable because of problems getting people to answer during the early months of the pandemic. That left a one-year data gap during a time when the pandemic forced major changes in the way people live their lives.

The survey typically relies on responses from 3.5 million households to provide 11 billion estimates each year about commuting times, internet access, family life, income, education levels, disabilities, military service and employment. The estimates help inform how to distribute hundreds of billions of dollars in federal spending.

Response rates significantly improved from 2020 to 2021, “so we are confident about the data for this year,” said Mark Asiala, the survey’s chief of statistical design.

While the percentage of married-couple households stayed stable over the two years at around 47%, the percent of households with unwed couples cohabiting rose to 7.2% in 2021 from 6.6% in 2019. Contrary to pop culture images of multigenerational family members moving in together during the pandemic, the average household size actually contracted from 2.6 to 2.5 people.

People also stayed put. More than 87% of those surveyed were living in their same house a year ago in 2021, compared to 86% in 2019. America became more wired as people became more reliant on remote learning and working from home. Households with a computer rose, from 92.9% in 2019 to 95% in 2021, and internet subscription services grew from 86% to 90% of households.

The jump in people who identify as multiracial — from 3.4% in 2019 to 12.6% in 2021 — and a decline in people identifying as white alone — from 72% to 61.2% — coincided with Census Bureau changes in coding race and Hispanic origin responses. Those adjustments were intended to capture more detailed write-in answers from participants. The period between surveys also overlapped with social justice protests following the killing of George Floyd, who was Black, by a white Minneapolis police officer in 2020 as well as attacks against Asian Americans. Experts say this likely lead some multiracial people who previously might have identified as a single race to instead embrace all of their background.

“The pattern is strong evidence of shifting self-identity. This is not new,” said Paul Ong, a professor emeritus of urban planning and Asian American Studies at UCLA. “Other research has shown that racial or ethnic identity can change even over a short time period. For many, it is contextual and situational. This is particularly true for individuals with multiracial background.”

The estimates show the pandemic-related impact of closed theaters, shuttered theme parks and restaurants with limited seating on workers in arts, entertainment and accommodation businesses. Their numbers declined from 9.7% to 8.2% of the workforce, while other industries stayed comparatively stable. Those who were self-employed inched up to 6.1% from 5.8%.

Housing demand grew over the two years, as the percent of vacant homes dropped from 12.1% to 10.3%. The median value of homes rose from $240,500 to $281,400. The percent of people whose gross rent exceeded more than 30% of their income went from 48.5% to 51%. Historically, renters are considered rent-burdened if they pay more than that.

“Lack of housing that folks can afford relative to the wages they are paid is a continually growing crisis,” said Allison Plyer, chief demographer at The Data Center in New Orleans.

Commutes to work dropped from 27.6 minutes to 25.6 minutes, as the percent of people working from home during a period of return-to-office starts and stops went from 5.7% in 2019 to almost 18% in 2021. Almost half of workers in the District of Columbia worked from home, the highest rate in the nation, while Mississippi had the lowest rate at 6.3% Over the two years, the percent of workers nationwide using public transportation to get to work went from 5% to 2.5%, as fears rose of catching the virus on buses and subways.

“Work and commuting are central to American life, so the widespread adoption of working from home is a defining feature of the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Michael Burrows, a Census Bureau statistician. “With the number of people who primarily work from home tripling over just a two-year period, the pandemic has very strongly impacted the commuting landscape in the United States.” 

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Car buyers might not get the vehicle they want on time, commuter rail lines could see service disrupted, and shipments from everything from oil to livestock feed could be snarled.

Those are just a few of the wide-ranging impacts a walkout by U.S. rail workers would have on the country’s industries and economy. A strike could happen if the railroads and unions can’t settle their differences before an early Friday walkout deadline.

Here’s how some industries are gauging the potential impacts and getting ready for the possible work stoppage.

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AUTO INDUSTRY

Nearly all new vehicles that travel more than a couple hundred miles from the factory to their destination are shipped by rail because it’s more efficient, said Michael Robinet, an executive director for S&P Global Mobility. So it’s almost a certainty that new vehicles coming to the U.S. from Mexico or other countries will be delayed, he said.

“It’s not like there’s extra truck capacity to take all the vehicles that the railroads can’t carry,” Robinet said.

Automakers might be hampered in building vehicles, too, because some larger parts and raw materials are transported by rail. But Robinet said automakers will go to great lengths to get the parts to keep their factories running as much as possible.

Mike Austin, senior mobility analyst for Guidehouse Research, said the strike could make new vehicles even more scarce, driving prices up beyond current record levels. That could raise inflation “as other goods aren’t moving through the rails.”

Carlos Tavares, CEO of Stellantis, said Wednesday at the Detroit auto show that his company will wind up apologizing to customers because their orders may not arrive on time.

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COMMUTING

Metra commuter rail service, which operates in the Chicago area, said Wednesday that it would suspend operations on four of its 11 lines on Friday if a work stoppage occurs. Some disruption on those lines would begin after rush hour Thursday night. In Minnesota, the operators of a commuter rail line that carries workers along a densely populated corridor from Minneapolis to northwestern suburbs and towns warned that service could be suspended as early as Friday.

In the Puget Sound region of Washington state, any strike would cancel the rail service until employees return to work, said David Jackson, a spokesman for the regional transit agency Sound Transit. Some Caltrain riders in the San Francisco Bay Area could be impacted by a rail strike, officials said.

The Maryland Transit Administration warned this week that a strike would mean the immediate suspension of service on two of its three MARC commuter rail lines.

Amtrak, meanwhile, said that starting Thursday, all its long-distance trains are canceled to avoid possible passenger disruptions while en route.

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ENERGY

A strike could have a significant impact on the energy industry, and could hurt consumers who would likely end up paying more for gasoline, electricity and natural gas. Refineries might have to halt production if they can’t get the deliveries they need, or if they don’t have access to rail to ship gasoline.

No one wants to risk leaving flammable chemicals stranded on the railroad tracks if a strike occurs. That’s why railroads began curtailing shipments of hazardous materials on Monday to protect that dangerous cargo.

Roughly 300,000 barrels of crude oil move by rail each day, which could supply about two mid-size refineries, according to AFPM. And about 5 million barrels of propane, representing a third of U.S. consumption, are moved by rail monthly, the group said.

Roughly 70% of ethanol produced in the U.S. is shipped by rail, and ethanol accounts for about a tenth of U.S. gasoline volume, according to S&P Global Commodity Insights. Nearly 75% of the coal moved to electric utilities in the first half of 2022 was moved by rail, the group said.

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AGRICULTURE

Livestock producers could see problems almost immediately if shipments of feed abruptly ended, according to the National Grain and Feed Association.

Meat and poultry groups noted the reliance on rail for shipments of feed and called for a quick resolution of the rail dispute. Every week, the nation’s chicken industry receives about 27 million bushels of corn and 11 million bushels of soybean meal to feed chickens, said Tom Super, senior vice president of the National Chicken Council.

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RETAIL

Experts say retailers have been shipping goods earlier in the season in recent months as a way to protect themselves from potential disruptions. But this buffer will only slightly minimize the impact from a railroad strike, which is brewing during the critical holiday shipping season, said Jesse Dankert, vice president of supply chain at the Retail Industry Leaders Association, a retail trade group that counts more than 200 retailers like Best Buy as its members. She noted that retailers are already feeling the impact from the uncertainty as some freight carriers are limiting services.

Dankert noted that retailers, noticing a slowdown in shipments, are now making contingency plans like turning to trucks to pick up some of the slack and making plans to use some of the excess inventory that it has in its distribution centers.

But she noted that there are not enough trucks and drivers to meet their needs. That scarcity will only drive up costs and make inflation worse, she said.

“As we have seen in the past two and half years, if there is a breakdown anywhere along the supply chain, one link falters, you see that ripple effect pretty quickly and those effects just spread from there,” Dankert said.

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DON THOMPSON | Associated Press

California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday signed a nation-leading measure giving more than a half-million fast food workers more power and protections, despite the objections of restaurant owners who warned it would drive up consumers’ costs.

The landmark law creates a 10-member Fast Food Council with equal numbers of workers’ delegates and employers’ representatives, along with two state officials, empowered to set minimum standards for wages, hours and working conditions in California.

Newsom said he was proud to sign the measure into law on Labor Day.

“California is committed to ensuring that the men and women who have helped build our world-class economy are able to share in the state’s prosperity,” he said in a statement. “Today’s action gives hardworking fast food workers a stronger voice and seat at the table to set fair wages and critical health and safety standards across the industry.”

The law caps minimum wage increases for fast food workers at chains with more than 100 restaurants at $22 an hour next year, compared to the statewide minimum of $15.50 an hour, with cost of living increases thereafter.

The state legislature approved the measure on Aug. 29. Debate split along party lines, with Republicans opposed.

Sen. Brian Dahle, the Republican nominee for governor in November, had called it “a steppingstone to unionize all these workers.”

Supporters had said they hoped the measure would inspire similar efforts elsewhere.

The measure’s author, Assemblyman Chris Holden, D-Pasadena, said it would “a new way to ensure marginalized workers have a voice in the workplace.”

Restaurant owners and franchisers opposed the law, citing an analysis they commissioned by the UC Riverside Center for Economic Forecast and Development saying that the legislation would increase consumers’ costs.

The International Franchise Association called it a “fork in the eye” of people who run restaurant franchises and said it could raise consumer prices as much as 20%.

“This bill has been built on a lie, and now small business owners, their employees, and their customers will have to pay the price,” IFA President and CEO Matthew Haller said in a statement. “Franchises already pay higher wages and offer more opportunity for advancement than their independent counterparts, and this bill unfairly targets one of the greatest models for achieving the American Dream and the millions of people it supports.”

However, Holden urged opponents to give the law a chance.

“Speaking as a former franchise owner, I would have welcomed this inclusive process, that in reality benefits not only the the worker but franchisee as well,” he said in a statement.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Responding to an increasing number of threats borne of conspiracy theories that agents were going to aggressively target middle income taxpayers, the Internal Revenue Service announced Tuesday that it was conducting a comprehensive review of safety at its facilities.

The climate, healthcare and tax legislation signed into law by President Joe Biden last week included $80 billion in funding for tax collection efforts. Although Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen specifically directed the agency to not focus its attention on taxpayers with middle class incomes, misinformation spread rapidly on line that agents were going to crack down on taxpayers of all earnings levels.

The baseless assertions also said the IRS would distribute firearms to employees authorized to used deadly force, prompting threats to the IRS employees.

Now agency leadership has launched an examination of agency safety.

“We are conducting a comprehensive review of existing safety and security measures,” said Chuck Rettig, IRS commissioner about the agency’s 600 office locations nationwide. “This includes conducting risk assessments,” he said, by monitoring perimeter security, designations of restricted areas, exterior lighting, security around entrances of facilities and other measures.

“For me this is personal. I’ll continue to make every effort to dispel any lingering misperceptions about our work,” Rettig said in a Tuesday letter to employees. “And I will continue to advocate for your safety in every venue where I have an audience.”

Rettig, whose term at the IRS ends in November, is tasked with developing a plan on how to spend the new infusion of funds included in the Inflation Reduction Act.

Along with anonymous online forums, high-ranking Republican politicians have spread falsehoods about the IRS workforce and how the newly allocated funds would be spent.

Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., sent an August 16 open letter to Americans, calling on them not to take any new IRS positions, reinforcing false information about open roles at the agency and their access to firearms.

“The IRS is making it very clear that you not only need to be ready to audit and investigate your fellow hardworking Americans, your neighbors and friends, you need to be ready and, to use the IRS’s words, willing, to kill them,” he said in the letter.

Tony Reardon, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, said members have been vocal about their fears and worries about their safety.

“IRS employees are certainly very hard working and honest, they do the business of funding the government. They’re saying they don’t deserve to be treated as the enemy of the government,” he said.

He added that members who are of retirement age have expressed a greater desire to retire due to the increased attention on their jobs. More than half of the IRS’ enforcement workforce of 80,000 is retirement eligible.

Reardon said several workers have talked about being reminded of the 2010 Austin, Texas suicide attack, where Andrew Joseph Stack III deliberately crashed his single engine plane into the Echelon office building, killing himself and Internal Revenue Service manager Vernon Hunter.

“The rhetoric we’re hearing now is dangerous” Reardon said. “It’s putting these patriotic Americans at risk.”

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PHILADELPHIA (AP) — President Joe Biden told the largest federation of labor unions on Tuesday that he’s working to rebuild the U.S. economy around workers, an attempt to draw a contrast with Republicans who have increasingly attracted blue-collar votes.

“We should encourage unions,” Biden said. “I’m not just saying that to be pro-union. I’m saying it because I’m pro-American.”

The speech before the AFL-CIO convention in Philadelphia was the president’s attempt to reset the terms of the debate on the economy as the president’s own approval ratings have slid while consumer prices and the cost of gasoline have surged.

Inflation at a more than 40-year high has caused voters to sour on the economy, despite a recovery after the pandemic-induced downturn that has led to robust hiring and a healthy 3.6% unemployment rate. The president on Tuesday tried to remind his audience of the food lines and layoffs during the coronavirus pandemic that preceded his presidency, contrasting that with the improvements in household balance sheets under his watch.

But even as the economy has quickly amassed jobs, inflation has left many workers feeling worse off as wages have not kept up with the costs of living. The Labor Department said Friday that average hourly earnings, after adjusting for inflation, have fallen 3% over the past year.

Inflation has left Biden and Democrats’ control of the House and Senate vulnerable in the upcoming midterm elections. Republican lawmakers have blamed the president’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package for causing inflation to start rising last year. GOP lawmakers also say the Biden administration has been too restrictive on domestic oil production.

“Working families’ budgets took a back seat to the far-left’s wish list,” Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said in a Monday speech.

Biden says the GOP is focused on cutting taxes for companies and the wealthy. Republicans argue that their 2017 tax overhaul created a firmer base for growth by reducing corporate tax rates, making U.S. companies more competitive. They say enabling companies and individuals to hold on to more of what they earn will boost growth, while Biden counters that laws enabling unionization and boosting child care benefits for families will lead to growth through a stronger middle class.

Biden has tried to take specific aim at a proposal by Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., that suggests all Americans should owe federal income taxes. Many Republican lawmakers have either disowned the proposal or offered caveats, since tax credits are a means of financial support for poorer and middle class U.S. families.

“Republicans have it all backwards: Their plan literally calls for increasing taxes on middle class and working people and cutting taxes on corporations and wealthy Americans,” Biden said. “I believe in bipartisanship, but I have no illusions about this Republican Party, the MAGA party.”

The president faces an uphill battle in restoring union membership, which has declined for decades as it became harder to organize workers and many factory jobs moved away from communities with a history of unionization. Only 10.3% of U.S. workers belonged to a union last year, down from 20.1% in 1983, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The nature of who belongs to unions has also changed over time as nearly half of union members work for the government. Just 7.7% of manufacturing workers and 12.6% of construction workers hold a union card, as the movement’s blue-collar roots have diversified into white-collar professions.

Despite the decline in unionization, the movement still generates value. Government figures show that the median unionized worker earns about $10,000 more annually than a worker without a union.

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Between 2017 and 2020 Northern California’s Wine Country was battered by successive years of devastating wildfires. Images of vineyard workers toiling under smokey skies circulated widely. Various labor and civil society groups organized to ensure agricultural workers were not forced to work in unsafe conditions — smothered by smoke and standing in the path of blazing fires. 

Because of the nature of agriculture though, many vineyards, orchards, and farms needed workers to tend and harvest crops in smoky conditions hazardous to human health. As extreme heat and wildfires look set to continue in California this year, questions remain as to whether workers in Sonoma County will have to choose between a paycheck or their health.

In 2017, the first of several years of devastating wildfires, agriculture alone accounted for nearly a billion dollars in economic activity in Sonoma County. That same year Sonoma County introduced an “ag pass” system, which allows farm and vineyard owners and workers into areas under mandatory evacuation to continue agricultural work. 

According to a recent study released by researchers at UC Davis, even healthy individuals are at risk of developing lung disease from exposure to wildfire smoke. “Compared with these later samples, blood collected during the wildfire season showed significantly elevated levels of inflammatory markers,” the study found. Researchers also showed the activation of immune cells called dendritic cells. 

According to North Bay Jobs with Justice, a newly formed advocacy group which has been pushing for greater protections for ag workers, many vineyard workers in Sonoma County feel they can’t refuse to work in smoky conditions and in evacuation zones, for fear of losing their job. According to the group, workers are subject to strenuous conditions, oftentimes running for hours to maximize earnings because of pay by weight or quantity schemes. Investigating the threat to worker health is central to this project’s goals, as well as investigating what knowledge the workforce has of the dangers wildfire conditions present to their health.

With a vineyard workforce that ranges between 6,000 and 11,000 according to estimates, Sonoma County’s agricultural sector is large and diverse, and includes over 1,000 workers on temporary visas according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. What access to health care do the various groups of workers have? What type of care or provider do they have access to? How many workers seek treatment for smoke inhalation or complications from smoke inhalation? Who works in what conditions? Are they provided protective equipment while on the job? 

For my 2022 California Fellowship, I hope to investigate the effects these hazardous conditions are having on workers in Sonoma County’s agricultural sector. Through interviews with workers, health care providers, local officials, worker advocates, and agricultural employers I aim to examine what precautions, actions, and treatments are taken by and for agricultural workers. I plan to examine admissions records at various health care facilities, and explore how patients are diagnosed after suffering from the effects of wildfire smoke inhalation. 

I hope to take a comprehensive look at agricultural worker health, looking into the role of ag worker advocacy groups like North Bay JwJ, UFW, Corazon Healdsburg, and the Sonoma County Grape Growers Foundation. I also plan to examine the role of industry groups, like the newly formed Sonoma Wine Industry for Safe Employees, which disputes many of the claims and demands made by North Bay Jobs with Justice. 

My first task will be to contact advocacy groups like North Bay Jobs with Justice and UFW to hear about the health and health care of workers from groups that speak directly for agricultural workers. I plan to speak with a cross section of workers about working in hazardous conditions and the effects on their health. Sonoma County has a large Latino population — around a quarter of the county’s population, according to the Sonoma County Economic Development Board. A large proportion work in labor and service industries. It is also not uncommon for college-educated white workers to work in agriculture in Sonoma County. Examining the disparities in health outcomes, workplace health and safety protections, and health care accessibility between these two groups will be an important area of focus for my reporting.

As part of a small radio news team, so often much of my reporting is reactive, but as a fellow, my goal is to proactively inform residents and listeners about the effects wildfire smoke can have on their health, highlight who has access to health care, and hopefully add information to the conversation for advocates pushing for protections for at-risk workers.

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