Business News
California’s $20 fast-food wage: mobile phone data reveals staffing cuts started before the law took effect
Mobile phone location data suggests California fast-food restaurants cut on-site staffing by about 8 percent after the $20 wage was announced, with reductions starting months before the law took effect.
What the 2021–2024 unauthorized immigration boom did to U.S. jobs, rents, and welfare spending
A new Dallas Fed working paper uses administrative microdata to measure how the 2021–2024 surge in unauthorized immigration affected local U.S. labor markets, housing prices, and government transfer spending.
Online stores do not fully replace closed bookshops, study finds
When a German bookstore closes, monthly print sales drop by about 744 copies, and online retailers do not pick up the slack. A new study finds physical and digital book channels are imperfect substitutes.
New study finds California’s fast-food wage hike lifted pay without cutting employment
California's $20 fast-food minimum wage was predicted to wipe out jobs. A new working paper finds pay rose about 7 percent while employment barely changed, with quits falling sharply at covered chains.
Minimum wage hikes don’t crush small business profits, tax-records study finds
A study using the universe of U.S. tax returns finds independent businesses absorb minimum wage hikes through higher revenue, not layoffs or lower profits, while fewer new firms enter the market.
When immigration enforcement rises, childcare work moves behind closed doors
A new PNAS study finds that as ICE activity surged in 2025, foreign-born women's employment fell at regulated childcare centers and rose in private homes, reshaping where and how care gets delivered.
Why nominal interest rates bite harder than textbooks suggest
New research argues that fixed nominal mortgage payments and payment-to-income limits mean nominal interest rates directly affect what households can borrow, independent of real rates, with implications for housing markets and macro models.
California’s $20 fast food wage pushed restaurant prices up 3.4% across the state, new analysis finds
A new analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data finds that California's $20 fast food minimum wage pushed restaurant prices up 3.3 to 3.6 percent, with implied fast food price hikes of roughly 5 percent.
Congressional stock trades look a lot like retail investing, new study finds
A new analysis of a decade of congressional stock trades finds lawmakers don't beat the market, and their buy-sell decisions closely track publicly available analyst ratings and retail social media sentiment.
When ICE ramps up, U.S.-born workers don’t fill the gap, study finds
A new working paper finds that in U.S. areas where ICE arrests surged in 2025, likely undocumented immigrants worked less, U.S.-born workers didn't fill the gap, and less-educated U.S.-born men actually lost ground.