Six months into tariffs, businesses have no idea how to price anything

In NYC, for the first 6 months of 2025, 994 new private sector jobs were created [1]. During the same period last year, there were 66,000 new jobs created.

Higher cost of doing business from tariffs has frozen hiring. With a frozen job market, there’s less revenue coming in.

NYC is a leading indicator for the rest of the country.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/13/nyregion/nyc-jobs.html

New York is teeming with what appear to be newly arrived "immigrants" who do no speak a word of English (and frankly are rather aggressive about their refusal to do so) yet are employed in various crafts. We had fairly substantial renovation recently in our building. Every single worker was clearly a recent arrival. How do we know how many jobs were actually created if so many of them are not "officially recorded"?

(I am an immigrant myself (via the legal means) lest you take my observation as a xenophobic expression.)

The U.S. has no official language, and no one who moves here is required to learn English. Especially in NYC, where so many neighborhoods predominantly speak a language that is not English (Brighton Beach, Sunset Park, Flushing, Chinatown, etc.)

Assuming someone speaking another language is both a “recent arrival” and working illegally is… something. Apparently it’s not xenophobic, but it’s not a good look.