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...

EL PASO, Texas—When the Covid-19 pandemic caused the U.S.-Mexico border to shut down in the spring of 2020, many retail and other businesses on the U.S. side lost a swath of customers. Gregoria Flores is still waiting for their return.

Ms. Flores’ store, Novedades Yeya’s, sits a few blocks away from the Paso del Norte port of entry in downtown El Paso. She estimates that before border restrictions banned nonessential travel, about 90% of her customers were Mexican nationals from the neighboring city of Ciudad Juárez  who would regularly cross into El Paso to shop, eat or visit family.

Now, the stretch of South El Paso Street where Ms. Flores’s shop is located sees fewer border crossers than in pre-pandemic times, and further away from the port, foot traffic is sparser, she, other business owners and employees said.

While retail, restaurants and other establishments have been springing back to life across much of the U.S. as more people get...

The metropolitan area competing for the tightest labor market in the nation isn’t a tech hub on the West Coast, or a boomtown in Texas. It is Birmingham, Ala., a southern city with an unemployment rate that is nearly half the national level and similar to Salt Lake City’s.

Birmingham, the most populous metro area in Alabama, had the second-lowest unemployment rate of metropolitan areas with more than one million people in June, according to the Labor Department’s latest rankings. Its seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for that month was 3.1%, near its pre-pandemic level of 2.4% in February 2020, and slightly above Salt Lake City’s 2.8% rate for June. Birmingham’s June unemployment rate was lower than other southern cities such as Atlanta, Charlotte and Houston—and compares with July’s national rate of 5.4%.

Economists say the city’s diversified economy, Alabama’s relatively relaxed Covid-19 restrictions and resilient consumer behavior have helped the...

Many coffee drinkers can expect to pay more for their cup of joe at supermarkets and cafe registers, as producers grapple with higher coffee bean prices, constrained supplies and other costs.

Retail brands like Folgers, as well as independent coffee chains, are raising prices or plan to soon, executives said. Starbucks Corp. and Nestlé SA have said they could increase prices, while other coffee sellers try to hold prices steady, aiming to capture more business.

Coffee roasters and cafe operators are responding to poor harvests in major coffee-growing regions and logistics snarls that executives said have constrained bean supplies, delayed shipments and boosted costs. Companies are also raising wages to recruit and retain workers.

The supply chain issues are likely to worsen as a cold snap in Brazil, the world’s biggest coffee producer, is expected to reduce next year’s crop. The price of coffee futures traded on Intercontinental Exchange Inc. markets...

New applications for jobless benefits declined for the third straight week, showing the labor market continues to heal despite worries about the Delta variant.

First-time applications for benefits, a proxy for layoffs, fell to a seasonally adjusted 375,000 in the week ended Aug. 7, from a revised 387,000 in the prior week, the Labor Department said Thursday. In recent weeks, jobless claims have been hovering just above the lowest level touched since the pandemic took hold in the U.S. in March 2020.

The four-week moving average, which smooths often volatile data, edged up to 396,250 last week. That is well below the roughly 6 million new claims filed in late March and early April 2020, but above the about 220,000 applications filed weekly in the months before the pandemic.

The recent claims data matches with other indicators showing momentum in the labor market and broader economy is continuing despite signs that the recent rise in coronavirus infections...

The first detailed results of the 2020 census show a diversifying nation where the total white population shrank for the first time in its history and where large metropolitan areas, especially in the South and Southwest, saw the strongest growth.

The non-Hispanic white population dropped 2.6% between 2010 and 2020, a decline that puts that group’s share of the total U.S. population below 60%. The number of people who identify as more than one race or ethnicity grew at the fastest rate of any group, partly due to changes that captured more detailed responses.

The nation’s population grew just 7.4% during the decade, the second slowest on record for a decennial census. Only the 1930s—the era of the Great Depression—saw slower growth. Slightly more than half, or 51%, of the total U.S. population growth in the latest period came from increases among Hispanic or Latino residents, the Census Bureau said.

The new data show an overall aging of the nation’s...

Home prices surged in almost every corner of the U.S. in the second quarter as robust demand continued to overwhelm the supply of homes for sale.

While the homebuying frenzy has shown signs of a slowdown in recent months, home-price growth has yet to cool.

The median sales price for single-family existing homes was higher in the second quarter compared with a year ago for 182 of the 183 metro areas tracked by the National Association of Realtors, the association said Thursday. In 94% of those metro areas, median prices rose by more than 10% from a year earlier.

Nationwide, the median single-family existing-home sales price rose 22.9% in the second quarter to $357,900 from a year ago, a record in data going back to 1968, NAR said.

Home prices have climbed in the past year as low interest rates and increased remote work spurred new homebuying demand. At the same time, the inventory of homes on the market has dropped as potential sellers canceled or...

New applications for jobless benefits declined for the third straight week, showing the labor market continues to heal despite worries about the Delta variant.

First-time applications for benefits, a proxy for layoffs, fell to a seasonally adjusted 375,000 in the week ended Aug. 7, from a revised 387,000 in the prior week, the Labor Department said Thursday. In recent weeks, jobless claims have been hovering just above the lowest level touched since the pandemic took hold in the U.S. in March 2020.

The four-week moving average, which smooths often volatile data, edged up to 396,250 last week. That is well below the roughly 6 million new claims filed in late March and early April 2020, but above the about 220,000 applications filed weekly in the months before the pandemic.

The recent claims data matches with other indicators showing momentum in the labor market and broader economy is continuing despite signs that the recent rise in coronavirus infections...

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...

By Gerald F. SeibAug 11, 2021 9:30 am

Senate Democrats’ $3.5 trillion jobs and infrastructure plan is a sprawling piece of legislation. WSJ's Gerald F. Seib gives a rundown of the handful of provisions that figure to be the most popular, and the ones seen as most controversial. Photo illustration: Todd Johnson

The U.S. budget deficit narrowed to $2.5 trillion during the first 10 months of the fiscal year from $2.8 trillion in the same period a year earlier, with the gap between spending and revenue shrinking as the recovery from the pandemic-induced slump boosted tax collection.

Outlays for the 10-month period rose 4% to a record $5.9 trillion, the Treasury Department said Wednesday. Spending has been boosted by pandemic-related costs that included tax credits, expanded unemployment compensation, emergency small-business loans and stimulus checks to households, but Treasury officials said such outlays are generally decelerating.

Federal revenue during the period rose 18% from the same period the previous year to a record $3.3 trillion, largely due to higher receipts from individual and corporate income taxes.

Revenue declined 54% to $262 billion in July from the same month last year. Treasury officials said revenue was unusually high last July because many...

More than seven months after it was launched, the biggest rental assistance program in U.S. history has delivered just a fraction of the promised aid to tenants and landlords struggling with the impact of the Covid-19 crisis.

Since last December, Congress has appropriated a total of $46.6 billion to help tenants who were behind on their rent. As of June 30, just $3 billion had been distributed, though a senior official said the Biden administration hoped at least another $2 billion had been distributed in July.

While the program is overseen by the Treasury, it relies on a patchwork of more than 450 state, county and municipal governments and charitable organizations to distribute aid. The result: months of delays as local governments built new programs from scratch, hired staff and crafted rules for how the money should be distributed, then struggled to process a deluge of applications.

Often, tenants and landlords didn’t know money was available, and...

The metropolitan area competing for the tightest labor market in the nation isn’t a tech hub on the West Coast, or a boomtown in Texas. It is Birmingham, Ala., a southern city with an unemployment rate that is nearly half the national level and similar to Salt Lake City’s.

Birmingham, the most populous metro area in Alabama, had the second-lowest unemployment rate of metropolitan areas with more than one million people in June, according to the Labor Department’s latest rankings. Its seasonally adjusted unemployment rate for that month was 3.1%, near its pre-pandemic level of 2.4% in February 2020, and slightly above Salt Lake City’s 2.8% rate for June. Birmingham’s June unemployment rate was lower than other southern cities such as Atlanta, Charlotte and Houston—and compares with July’s national rate of 5.4%.

Economists say the city’s diversified economy, Alabama’s relatively relaxed Covid-19 restrictions and resilient consumer behavior have helped the...

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...

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...

The conclusion of the latest report by the United Nations advisory body on climate—that temperatures are rising, and some effects are irreversible—wasn’t surprising. Those views are largely in line with its latest report, in 2013.

More interesting and potentially more significant is that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has become more confident in those views.

Because climate change is so complex, uncertainty is intrinsic to its study: uncertainty over its underlying drivers, their magnitudes and how they interact; over its consequences, such as on weather patterns; and over the costs and benefits of mitigation. It is why the IPCC, which helps shape its 195 member governments’ mitigation plans, assigns varying levels of confidence to its findings, which are based on reviews of thousands of studies and modeling by numerous independent scientists.

The increased confidence the IPCC shows in its findings in its latest report has both...

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

Inflation remained elevated in July as the economic recovery continued, but prices showed evidence of cooling amid pandemic-related supply problems and signs that the recent rise in coronavirus infections is starting to crimp some business activity.

Consumer prices rose 5.4% in July from a year earlier, the same pace as in June, the highest 12-month rate since 2008, the Labor Department reported Wednesday.

On a monthly basis, however, price pressures weakened. The department’s consumer-price index climbed a seasonally adjusted 0.5% in July from June, a significantly slower pace than its 0.9% increase in June from May, though well above the average 0.2% rate from 2000 to 2019.

The CPI measures what consumers pay for goods and services, including groceries, clothes, restaurant meals, recreation and vehicles.

The so-called core price index, which excludes the often volatile categories of food and energy, increased 4.3% from a year before, down from...

Mortgage finance giant Fannie Mae is making it easier to include rent-payment history as part of the mortgage approval process, a move intended to help borrowers with limited credit histories get better access to home loans.

Fannie Mae said that starting next month it will help lenders factor in borrowers’ history of rent payments when weighing those applicants’ qualifications.

Fannie Mae doesn’t require lenders to consider rent history, if a borrower has a credit report and score that meet the company’s criteria. But credit reports often don’t include residential-rent payments because most landlords don’t report the data to credit-reporting firms. Renters’ credit scores, which are based on information in their credit reports, as a result also don’t reflect that data.

The issue has been problematic for consumers with limited borrowing histories, who have difficulty getting approved for affordable credit.

“In some markets, it’s just as expensive...

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.

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...

The conclusion of the latest report by the United Nations advisory body on climate—that temperatures are rising, and some effects are irreversible—wasn’t surprising. Those views are largely in line with its latest report, in 2013.

More interesting and potentially more significant is that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has become more confident in those views.

Because climate change is so complex, uncertainty is intrinsic to its study: uncertainty over its underlying drivers, their magnitudes and how they interact; over its consequences, such as on weather patterns; and over the costs and benefits of mitigation. It is why the IPCC, which helps shape its 195 member governments’ mitigation plans, assigns varying levels of confidence to its findings, which are based on reviews of thousands of studies and modeling by numerous independent scientists.

The increased confidence the IPCC shows in its findings in its latest report has both...

More than seven months after it was launched, the biggest rental assistance program in U.S. history has delivered just a fraction of the promised aid to tenants and landlords struggling with the impact of the Covid-19 crisis.

Since last December, Congress has appropriated a total of $46.6 billion to help tenants who were behind on their rent. As of June 30, just $3 billion had been distributed, though a senior official said the Biden administration hoped at least another $2 billion had been distributed in July.

While the program is overseen by the Treasury, it relies on a patchwork of more than 450 state, county and municipal governments and charitable organizations to distribute aid. The result: months of delays as local governments built new programs from scratch, hired staff and crafted rules for how the money should be distributed, then struggled to process a deluge of applications.

Often, tenants and landlords didn’t know money was available, and...

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