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According to a Challenger, Gray & Christmas report, U.S. tech layoffs totaled 33,330 in January-February 2026, up 51% year-over-year. Amazon cut 16,000 positions, and Block plans to reduce its workforce from 10,000 to 6,000, explicitly relying on AI. AI was cited as the reason for 12,304 layoffs, accounting for 8%. Federal Reserve governors, lawmakers, and analysts are debating AI's impact on employment.
Nevin Shetty, former CFO of retail software company Fabric, was sentenced to two years in prison on Thursday for secretly transferring $35 million in company funds to cryptocurrency investments in April 2022. The sentence is lower than the nine years sought by prosecutors, but Shetty must fully repay the funds and is prohibited from serving as a corporate officer or director without permission from the probation office.
The Iran war has triggered a surge in oil prices, with Brent crude briefly topping $117 per barrel on Monday before retreating below $100 after G7 pledged to tap reserves. Analysts warn of potential stagflation, while U.S. consumers face higher gas prices and rising borrowing costs.
A recent study published in the peer-reviewed journal Information Systems Research indicates that earned wage access (EWA) services can significantly help low-income workers save, manage finances, and engage in long-term planning. Data show that moderate and consistent use of EWA can increase monthly savings frequency by 3.7%, raise financial dashboard monitoring frequency by 12%, and increase the proportion of setting financial goals by 1.3%. However, if users fall into a pattern of frequent instant withdrawals, these benefits will noticeably diminish.
AWS announced the general availability of Amazon EC2 general-purpose M8i and M8i-flex instances, powered by custom Intel Xeon 6 processors available exclusively on AWS, with an all-core sustained frequency of 3.9 GHz. Compared to the previous M7i series, the new instances offer up to 15% better price-performance, up to 20% higher performance, 2.5x memory bandwidth, and support up to 384 vCPUs and 1.5 TB of memory.
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) on Thursday released its 2026 'Dirty Dozen' list of tax frauds and scams, adding for the first time artificial intelligence (AI) abuse and fraudulent filings involving undistributed long-term capital gains as new threats. Tax professionals noted that AI has become the 'number one culprit' in current tax scams, with its information-gathering capabilities exacerbating risks of identity impersonation and fraudulent filings.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Friday that the economy unexpectedly lost 92,000 jobs in February, while Middle East hostilities pushed oil prices to their highest levels since 2022, intensifying inflation concerns. The unemployment rate rose by 0.1 percentage point to 4.4%, breaking Fed officials' expectations of a stabilizing labor market. San Francisco Fed President Daly stated that both mandates face risks, while Cleveland Fed President Hammack argued that policy should continue to wait and see. Interest rate futures markets have raised the probability of a June rate cut from 33.3% to 50.3%.
Costco CEO Ron Vachris said on an earnings call that if the company receives tariff refunds, it will be committed to passing the value back to members through measures such as price reductions. This follows the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling that the broad tariffs imposed by the Trump administration under IEEPA were invalid.
More than 20 U.S. states have jointly filed a lawsuit with the Court of International Trade, seeking to block the 10% global additional tariff imposed by President Trump under Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974, and requesting a refund of tariffs already paid.
A joint survey by AICPA and CIMA shows that in the first quarter of 2026, CEO and CFO optimism about the economy and business prospects significantly rebounded from the previous quarter, with 55% of respondents planning to adopt more aggressive expansion strategies. Although the Middle East conflict could push up energy prices and affect inflation, corporate investment intentions have strengthened, and expectations for revenue and profit growth have been revised upward.