Members of President Biden’s economic team generally support nominating Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell to a second term, but growing resistance from prominent Democrats including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) could lead to his replacement, according to people familiar with the matter.

Mr. Powell, who was appointed to his first term by former Republican President Donald Trump, has received high marks from some Democrats for steering the central bank toward a paradigm shift that has placed greater attention on reducing unemployment. That coincided last year with a forceful response to the coronavirus pandemic.

But some progressives are unhappy with his bent toward easing financial regulations that were put in place after the 2008 crisis and think the central bank should have someone more in sync with Democratic politics in charge.

If Mr. Powell isn’t given a new four-year term next February, when his current term expires, the leading contender...

WASHINGTON—President Biden is expected to nominate María Luisa Pagán, a longtime government trade negotiator, as a deputy U.S. trade representative and ambassador to the World Trade Organization, a critical role for accelerating the administration’s engagement with the multilateral organization that has faced multiple challenges in recent years.

According to administration officials, Mr. Biden is also expected to name Christopher Wilson, another veteran of the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, as the agency’s chief negotiator for innovation and intellectual property, a job tasked with solving increasingly thorny IP disputes in digital and pharmaceutical industries.

Their nominations will come as frustration builds over the slow pace of the appointments of key trade officials among business executives and trading partners who are eager to see disputes resolved and new agreements initiated. Katherine Tai, U.S. trade representative, has been working...

WASHINGTON—President Biden is expected to nominate María Luisa Pagán, a longtime government trade negotiator, as a deputy U.S. trade representative and ambassador to the World Trade Organization, a critical role for accelerating the administration’s engagement with the multilateral organization that has faced multiple challenges in recent years.

According to administration officials, Mr. Biden is also expected to name Christopher Wilson, another veteran of the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, as the agency’s chief negotiator for innovation and intellectual property, a job tasked with solving increasingly thorny IP disputes in digital and pharmaceutical industries.

Their nominations will come as frustration builds over the slow pace of the appointments of key trade officials among business executives and trading partners who are eager to see disputes resolved and new agreements initiated. Katherine Tai, U.S. trade representative, has been working...

China’s producer-price index is expected to remain elevated in July after rising at its highest pace in nearly 13 years in May. Economists polled by The Wall Street Journal are forecasting the PPI, a gauge of factory-gate prices, will increase 8.8% from a year earlier, the same as the prior month. The consumer-price index is expected to drop 0.8% on year due to plunging pork prices, compared with June’s 1.1% expansion.

U.S. jobless claims fell slightly to 385,000 last week, as worker filings for new unemployment benefits settled this summer at a level that is nearly double the pre-pandemic average.

The decrease in filings reported by the Labor Department on Thursday comes as the economic recovery faces risks from the Covid-19 surge driven by the Delta variant, supply-chain constraints and a shortage of available workers. The four-week moving average, which smooths out volatility in the weekly figures slightly decreased to 394,000.

So far, business and government responses to the Delta variant aren’t triggering an increase in U.S. layoffs, according to the Labor Department department report. The U.S. economy has experienced robust growth this year with the availability of vaccines, business reopenings, pent-up consumer demand and government aid, though economists say Delta poses a risk to growth should it cause widespread disruptions.

Continuing claims for regular and...

U.S. jobless claims fell slightly to 385,000 last week, as worker filings for new unemployment benefits settled this summer at a level that is nearly double the pre-pandemic average.

The decrease in filings reported by the Labor Department on Thursday comes as the economic recovery faces risks from the Covid-19 surge driven by the Delta variant, supply-chain constraints and a shortage of available workers. The four-week moving average, which smooths out volatility in the weekly figures slightly decreased to 394,000.

So far, business and government responses to the Delta variant aren’t triggering an increase in U.S. layoffs, according to the Labor Department department report. The U.S. economy has experienced robust growth this year with the availability of vaccines, business reopenings, pent-up consumer demand and government aid, though economists say Delta poses a risk to growth should it cause widespread disruptions.

Continuing claims for regular and...

The Biden administration is extending the pause on federal student loan payments and interest through early 2022.

The Education Department said that it would uphold the moratorium, which the administration first extended earlier this year and suspends loan payments, interest accrual, and collections on defaulted loans. The pause was set to expire at the end of September 2021.

Here are the details on the extension, who will benefit and what lies ahead when it comes to student-debt legislation.

WASHINGTON—The Senate passed a roughly $1 trillion infrastructure package with broad bipartisan support Tuesday, advancing a central piece of President Biden’s economic agenda that will amount to one of the most substantial federal investments in roads, bridges and rail in decades.

The vote was 69 to 30.

The product of weeks of painstaking negotiations between a bipartisan group of 10 senators and the White House, the legislation both reauthorizes spending on existing federal public-works programs and pours an additional $550 billion into water projects, the electrical grid and safety efforts, among many other projects.

While lawmakers and presidents of both parties have said for years that they wanted to come together on a major package on infrastructure, an agreement consistently eluded them.

With passage in the Senate on Tuesday, Mr. Biden bucked that trend, though the bill still faces a potentially rocky path in the House. House Speaker Nancy...

American gas-station owners are facing a tough decision over whether to invest in electric-vehicle charging stations, a costly bet that currently makes little financial sense but might help future-proof their businesses.

Some gas stations, convenience stores and truck stops are adding chargers to test the technology and protect their market share for the long run. Others say they crunched the numbers and decided they can’t justify the cost, given the small share of electric-vehicle drivers. Charging units and installation typically cost upward of $100,000 each, and might entail the expense of tearing up pavement to lay conduit.

Auto makers including General Motors Co. and Ford Motor Co. are aggressively expanding their lineups of electric vehicles, and President Biden last week set a target to increase U.S. sales of electric, plug-in hybrid and hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles to 50% by 2030. However, electric vehicles made up only about 2% of new U.S. sales last...

Zhang Jianli used to hire only male workers on his construction sites throughout Chifeng, Inner Mongolia, specifying in online job ads, “Women workers please don’t contact us.” Now with abundant work but not enough hands, Mr. Zhang says he has relented.

He now offers daily wages of about 160 yuan, roughly $25, for women workers to move wood and bricks, about one-fifth less than their male peers, and up to 200 yuan a day for urgent jobs. His ads say that both men and women can apply.

“They work hard and have few complaints,” Mr. Zhang said of the women he hires, most in their 40s and 50s.

Chinese women are increasingly taking on heavy-labor jobs long dominated by men in construction, transportation and other sectors, bucking traditional gender roles in China’s vast workforce.

A labor shortage caused by low birthrates and an aging population is pushing employers to recruit more women to build high-rises, maintain rail tracks and drive trucks, among...

Walmart Inc. is offering special bonuses to many warehouse employees to work every hour they are scheduled and, in some cases giving temporary pay raises, as the country’s biggest retailer ramps up for the holiday shopping season with a tight labor market and stretched supply chains.

The majority of Walmart’s 190 U.S. warehouses are offering the weekly bonus or pay raises. The bonuses and raises vary by location and job type, according to a person familiar with the situation.

Some workers have been offered $1,000 over four weeks for not skipping any scheduled shifts during the second half of the summer. Last week, some workers were also offered temporary pay raises of several dollars an hour through January 2022, said this person.

Walmart aims to acknowledge the efforts of employees with incentives, and provide opportunity in a competitive job market, a Walmart spokesman said. The retailer’s distribution warehouses “continue to see high volume as we...

Members of President Biden’s economic team generally support nominating Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell to a second term, but growing resistance from prominent Democrats including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) could lead to his replacement, according to people familiar with the matter.

Mr. Powell, who was appointed to his first term by former Republican President Donald Trump, has received high marks from some Democrats for steering the central bank toward a paradigm shift that has placed greater attention on reducing unemployment. That coincided last year with a forceful response to the coronavirus pandemic.

But some progressives are unhappy with his bent toward easing financial regulations that were put in place after the 2008 crisis and think the central bank should have someone more in sync with Democratic politics in charge.

If Mr. Powell isn’t given a new four-year term next February, when his current term expires, the leading contender...

WASHINGTON—Nearly three dozen of the nation’s most influential business groups—representing retailers, chip makers, farmers and others—are calling on the Biden administration to restart negotiations with China and cut tariffs on imports, saying they are a drag on the U.S. economy.

The tariffs on electronics, apparel and other Chinese goods, which are paid by U.S. importers, were kept in place in part to ensure that China fulfills its obligations under its 2020 Phase One trade pact with the U.S.

In a Thursday letter to U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, the business groups contend that Beijing had met “important benchmarks and commitments” in the agreement, including opening markets to U.S. financial institutions and reducing some regulatory barriers to U.S. agricultural exports to China.

“A worker-centered trade agenda should account for the costs that U.S. and Chinese tariffs impose on Americans here and at...

WASHINGTON—The U.S. trade deficit widened to a record in June as the resurgent American economy drove strong demand for foreign-made goods ahead of the Covid-19 Delta-variant surge.

The trade gap in goods and services expanded 6.7% from May to a seasonally adjusted $75.7 billion, the Commerce Department said Thursday. Before the pandemic, the monthly trade deficit had hovered for years between $40 billion and $50 billion.

The trade report is another example of how American consumers and businesses have stepped up spending and investment as the economy has recovered to its pre-Covid-19 size, fueling demand for imports. Purchases from overseas climbed 2.1% in June to $283.4 billion, also a monthly record.

Exports have grown more slowly, reflecting weaker recoveries in some other regions that have made less progress against Covid-19. Exports rose in June by just 0.6% to $207.7 billion.

The trade data, and separate labor-market readings, come as the...

The number of available jobs since May has outnumbered Americans looking for work. One factor is a mismatch between where people want to work and which industries are hiring.

The hardest-hit industries have yet to recover to prepandemic levels, when 63% of Americans were in the labor force. In July, there were 5.7 million fewer jobs, on a seasonally adjusted basis, than there were in February 2020, according to Labor Department data.

The number of people trying to get back into the workforce has rebounded since the early days of the pandemic. The share of adults working or looking for a job has increased slightly from a low of 60.2% in April of last year to 61.7% in July.

Leisure and hospitality workers have seen the highest hiring rates and a boost in weekly earnings as easing restrictions allowed restaurants to reopen and travel to resume. However, the rise in cases from the Delta variant could loom over the rebound.

Hiring in manufacturing...

U.S. household spending bounced back in June as consumers shelled out more on services at the start of the summer, but a current upswing in Covid-19 cases related to the Delta variant is injecting uncertainty into the economic outlook.

Personal-consumption expenditures—a measure of household spending on goods and services—increased a seasonally adjusted 1% last month, the Commerce Department reported Friday. That followed a downwardly revised 0.1% drop in May, when consumers pulled back on purchases of goods but boosted spending on services.

The spending report reflects that the “economy is still very much on track,” said Scott Brown, chief economist at Raymond James Financial. He said any potential impact of the Delta variant’s spread is difficult to predict, but added it would pose a significant risk to economic growth if consumers curtail activities such as traveling and dining out.

Americans’ personal income rose 0.1% in June, as wages and salaries...

WASHINGTON—The U.S. trade deficit widened to a record in June as the resurgent American economy drove strong demand for foreign-made goods ahead of the Covid-19 Delta-variant surge.

The trade gap in goods and services expanded 6.7% from May to a seasonally adjusted $75.7 billion, the Commerce Department said Thursday. Before the pandemic, the monthly trade deficit had hovered for years between $40 billion and $50 billion.

The trade report is another example of how American consumers and businesses have stepped up spending and investment as the economy has recovered to its pre-Covid-19 size, fueling demand for imports. Purchases from overseas climbed 2.1% in June to $283.4 billion, also a monthly record.

Exports have grown more slowly, reflecting weaker recoveries in some other regions that have made less progress against Covid-19. Exports rose in June by just 0.6% to $207.7 billion.

The trade data, and separate labor-market readings, come as the...

Law school was once considered a surefire ticket to a comfortable life. Years of tuition increases have made it a fast way to get buried in debt.

Recent graduates of the University of Miami School of Law who used federal loans borrowed a median of $163,000. Two years later, half were earning $59,000 or less. That’s the biggest gap between debt and earnings among the top 100 law schools as ranked by U.S. News & World Report, a Wall Street Journal analysis of federal data found.

Graduates from a host of other well-regarded law schools routinely leave with six-figure student loans, then fail to find high-paying jobs as lawyers, according to the Journal’s analysis of the latest federal data on earnings, for students who graduated in 2015 and 2016.

When Miami students asked for financial assistance, some graduates told the Journal, school officials often offered this solution: Take more loans.

“I had no work experience, life experience, anything...

WASHINGTON—The U.S. trade deficit widened to a record in June as the resurgent American economy drove strong demand for foreign-made goods ahead of the Covid-19 Delta-variant surge.

The trade gap in goods and services expanded 6.7% from May to a seasonally adjusted $75.7 billion, the Commerce Department said Thursday. Before the pandemic, the monthly trade deficit had hovered for years between $40 billion and $50 billion.

The trade report is another example of how American consumers and businesses have stepped up spending and investment as the economy has recovered to its pre-Covid-19 size, fueling demand for imports. Purchases from overseas climbed 2.1% in June to $283.4 billion, also a monthly record.

Exports have grown more slowly, reflecting weaker recoveries in some other regions that have made less progress against Covid-19. Exports rose in June by just 0.6% to $207.7 billion.

The trade data, and separate labor-market readings, come as the...

Even more encouraging than the better-than-expected growth in jobs and fall in unemployment in July were signs of the improving underlying health of the labor market. First, the broadest measure of unemployment, which includes people who want to work but aren’t looking, or working part time because they can’t find full time work, is falling much more quickly than the official unemployment rate. It dropped to 9.2% in July from 9.8%, just 2.2 points higher than before the pandemic began. Second, the number of people unemployed 27 weeks or longer fell 560,000 to 3.4 million, down 793,000 from its March peak. Among the unemployed, just 2.9 million had lost their jobs permanently, down 600,000 since its April peak. These trends all militate against “scarring” of the labor force, that is people left unemployed or underemployed for years because of the recession. —Greg Ip

Even more encouraging than the better-than-expected growth in jobs and fall in unemployment in July were signs of the improving underlying health of the labor market. First, the broadest measure of unemployment, which includes people who want to work but aren’t looking, or working part time because they can’t find full time work, is falling much more quickly than the official unemployment rate. It dropped to 9.2% in July from 9.8%, just 2.2 points higher than before the pandemic began. Second, the number of people unemployed 27 weeks or longer fell 560,000 to 3.4 million, down 793,000 from its March peak. Among the unemployed, just 2.9 million had lost their jobs permanently, down 600,000 since its April peak. These trends all militate against “scarring” of the labor force, that is people left unemployed or underemployed for years because of the recession. —Greg Ip

WASHINGTON—The clock is ticking for Congress to reach a deal to raise the federal borrowing limit, or debt ceiling, before the government runs out of money to pay its bills some time over the coming months. The ceiling was suspended in 2019 and was reinstated automatically at the beginning of this month. Top Senate Republicans, who object to President Biden’s spending agenda, have said the GOP may line up against any effort to raise the limit this year.

Here’s a guide to what that means, and how the issue may be resolved: