Thursday, September 10
More Americans filed for unemployment benefits last week, but U.S. layoffs remain in the same historically healthy range of the past few years. Applications for unemployment benefits for the week ending Aug. 16 rose by 11,000 to 235,000, the Labor Department reported Thursday. That's slightly more than the 229,000 new applications that economists had forecast. Weekly applications for jobless benefits are seen as a proxy for layoffs and have mostly settled in a historically healthy range between 200,000 and 250,000 since the U.S. began to emerge from the COVID-19 pandemic more than three years ago. The four-week average of claims, which softens some of the week-to-week swings, rose by 4,500 to 226,500. The total number of Americans collecting unemployment benefits for the previous week of A
Sony on Wednesday said it is bumping up the price of PlayStation 5 video game consoles by $50 in the United States due to a "challenging economic environment."Tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump hike the cost of goods brought into the US, leaving companies like Japan's Sony to decide whether to pass that on to consumers."Similar to many global businesses, we continue to navigate a challenging economic environment," Sony Interactive Entertainment vice president of global marketing Isabelle Tomatis said in a post.After initially being threatened with a 25 percent hike, Japan negotiated a 15 percent tariff with the Trump administration."As a result, we've made the difficult decision to increase the recommended retail price for PlayStation 5 consoles in the US."The new price for PS5 will
Sweeping changes to the goods and services tax (GST) in the next few weeks could also include big relief on health and life insurance premiums. On top of the expected rate rationalisation, a group of ministers (GoM) set up by the GST Council has proposed exempting health and life insurance premiums for individuals from the levy, people familiar with the development said. This followed the Centre’s suggestion to this effect to the panel of state finance ministers as part of GST 2.0 reforms.Addressing the GoM tasked to examine rate rationalisation, the future of the compensation cess and insurance, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman said the three-pronged GST reforms will seek to provide greater relief to consumers, farmers, the middle class and MSMEs while ensuring a simplified regime. P
