Colleges And Universities Try To Be Like Hogwarts. What Would Carl Jung Say?

Originally posted in 2009.

There was an article in the New York Times recently about how schools tell prospective students how they are just like Hogwarts. It was Taking the Magic Out of College by By LAUREN EDELSON. Here are some things she mentioned about her visits to colleges:

"[at one school they play] a flightless version of J. K. Rowling’s Quidditch game — broomsticks and all."

"So I was surprised when many top colleges delivered the same pitch. It turns out, they’re all a little bit like Hogwarts — the school for witches and wizards in the “Harry Potter” books and movies. Or at least, that’s what the tour guides kept telling me."

"During a Harvard information session, the admissions officer compared the intramural sports competitions there to the Hogwarts House Cup. The tour guide told me that I wouldn’t be able to see the university’s huge freshman dining hall as it was closed for the day, but to just imagine Hogwarts’s Great Hall in its place."

"At Dartmouth, a tour guide ushered my group past a large, wood-paneled room filled with comfortable chairs and mentioned the Hogwarts feel it was known for. At another liberal arts college, I heard that students had voted to name four buildings on campus after the four houses in Hogwarts: Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Hufflepuff and Slytherin."

"[In] Cornell’s fall 2009 quarterly magazine, [it says] that a college admissions counseling Web site had counted Cornell among the five American colleges that have the most in common with Hogwarts. Both institutions, you see, are conveniently located outside cities. The article ended: “Bring your wand and broomstick, just in case.”"

"I’m not the only one who has noticed this phenomenon. One friend told me about Boston College’s Hogwartsesque library, another of Colby’s “Harry Potter”-themed dinner party. And like me, my friends have no problem with college students across the country running around with broomsticks between their legs, trying to seize tennis balls stuffed into socks (each one dubbed a snitch) that dangle off the backs of track athletes dressed in yellow.""

In the same issue of the NY Times, there was a review of a book by the famous psychologist Carl Jung. The review was titled The Symbologist by KATHRYN HARRISON. The book by Jung is titled THE RED BOOK: Liber Novus. One of the passages from the book was was about Jung's belief in the "deep subliminal connections between individual fantasies and world events."

Mixing fantasy and reality. Sounds like what these colleges and universities are doing by comparing themselves to Hogwart

What does conservatism mean? Fewer taxes & regulations or preserving traditional values and communities? A Republican county in Tennessee faces this question when farmers go against land developers

See After a Mayor’s Mysterious Death, a Land Dispute Divides Republicans in Tennessee: A development battle is splitting a deep-red county over what it means to be conservative by Cameron McWhirter of The WSJ. Excerpts: 

"County officials [Coffee County in Tennessee] are pushing hard to limit development across the area’s vast farmlands. In March, the county imposed a three-month moratorium on all large subdivision projects in areas zoned for agriculture. After that ended, officials passed an ordinance ruling that property owners in agricultural areas could only sell land in a minimum of 5-acre-lot increments, effectively halting large subdivisions in those areas. 

On one side: the county’s multigenerational farmers and those seeking to preserve a community where rolled bales of hay still dot open fields. On the other side: developers, builders and real-estate brokers who believe the area is primed for tremendous growth."

"Planning commission meetings, typically mundane affairs where leaders wear jeans and work boots, now draw heated crowds and viewers on streaming. 

In a county where everyone knows everyone else, tensions have strained relations at church, school and shopping centers.

The feud reveals the complexity of modern Republican politics in a place where Donald Trump won 75% of the vote in 2024. Both sides invoke conservative principles. An anti-moratorium sign at a local meeting read: “Vote like a conservative! Less government. Less rules. Less regulations. Lower taxes.”

A pro-moratorium group responded in a post that, “Historically, conservatism has emphasized order, prudence, stewardship, and a deep respect for heritage…It’s about preserving traditional values and communities—not selling them off for short-term gain.”"

"Supporters of the commission’s moves included farmers Jones and Mike Bryan. They had long worried about growth, but became active only after learning about Graham’s project, which they said would overwhelm the area’s infrastructure and roads, impinging on their ability to farm." 

Related posts:

People gave up a chance to win money in order to avoid hearing from those with opposing political views (2017) 

People say the president can control gas prices if the president belongs to the other party (2017)

Are some blue jeans really Democratic and others Republican? (2019)

Adam Smith Meets Jonathan Haidt (on political polarization and the animosity of hostile factions)  (2023)

Why Tribalism Took Over Our Politics: Social science gives an uncomfortable explanation: Our brains were made for conflict (2023) 

Democrats and Republicans say economy is improving, but mostly only when someone from their party is president (2024) 

Did Fracking in Pennsylvania Turn Democrats Into Republicans and Republicans Into Democrats? (2024)

Are fewer Democrats buying Teslas because of Elon Musk's political views? (2024)

Partisanship deeply colors how Americans think about trade policy, especially tariffs (2024) 

Would you give up some income in order to get a job at a firm whose workers share your political opinions? (2024)

Republicans Are Feeling Good Again, Driving Up Consumer Sentiment: Democrats’ sentiment slips, but overall index ticks higher (2024)

Causes and Extent of Increasing Partisan Segregation in the U.S. – Evidence from Migration Patterns of 212 Million Voters (2025)

Red vs. Blue Is Dividing Stock Portfolios Like Never Before: A political gap in optimism about markets is translating into trading decisions (2025) 

See also Americans start caring more about deficits and the national debt when the party they oppose runs them up by John V. Kane of New York University and Ian G. Anson of The University of Maryland. Excerpt:

"In the past two decades, US budget deficits have skyrocketed, and the national debt is now over $22 trillion. But do Americans care about the size of deficits and the national debt? In new research, John V. Kane and Ian G. Anson find that people tend to care more about the deficits and debts when they are increased by presidents from the party that they oppose. Both Republicans and Democrats, they write, become less concerned about governments running deficits when their President is in charge." 

Trump’s Tariffs Are Being Picked Up by Corporate America

Neither consumers nor foreign countries are assuming much of the tariff burden. At least not yet.

By Jeanne Whalen and Sarah Nassauer of The WSJ. Excerpt:

"The import price index, which tracks what importers pay for many foreign-produced goods before tariffs are levied, has held steady in recent months, in what some economists call a sign foreign suppliers aren’t broadly slashing their prices to offset costs for their U.S. customers. 

Goldman Sachs conducted what it called a more granular analysis of import prices and concluded that foreign companies, particularly those in China, appear to be absorbing around 20% of tariff costs through price cuts.

Broader hits to consumers could be on the way. In May, Walmart said that it had started raising some product prices to offset the cost of tariffs and that more price increases would come this summer. For example, in May, Walmart executives said tariffs on goods from South and Central America had lifted the price of bananas, one of the most frequently purchased items at Walmart, to 54 cents a pound, from 50 cents."

Related posts:

Are Businesses Absorbing the Tariffs or Passing Them On to Their Customers? (2025) (This one has supply and demand curves that show that businesses usually can't pass all of a tax like tariffs on to the buyers and that how much gets passed along depends on the price elasticity of demand for the different products) 

Trump’s Tariffs Are Unique in History: U.S. trade policy went through three eras, focused on ‘revenue, restriction and reciprocity,’ economist Douglas Irwin says. The 47th president likes all three Rs, and a fourth, ‘retribution.’ (2025) 

Can Trump’s Tariff Offensive Deliver New American Jobs? (2025)

Americans Are Stockpiling Ahead of Trump’s Tariffs (2025)

Powell Warns of ‘Challenging Scenario’ for Fed as Trade War Rages (2025) 

How Much Do Tariffs Raise Prices? (2025)

Politicians talk about creating manufacturing jobs but do people really want them? (2025)

How some of Trump's policies might affect the economy (2024)

Tariffs are regressive: they fall more heavily on lower-income families who tend to spend more of their income on cheap imported goods (2024)

Americans Are Stockpiling to Get Ahead of Tariffs: Some consumers are snapping up computer parts, vacuum cleaners, coffee and olive oil before levies take effect (2024)

Life is full of tradeoffs: If we support American workers with trade restrictions it might mean more inflation (2023)

Will Anyone Take the Factory Jobs Trump Wants to Bring Back to America?

The president has pledged to bring more factory work back to U.S., but many manufacturing jobs are already going unfilled

By Chao Deng and Te-Ping Chen of The WSJ. Excerpts:

"America has nearly half a million unfilled manufacturing jobs, according to the U.S. Labor Department. Nearly half of manufacturing companies say their biggest challenge is recruiting and retaining workers, according to a survey this year by the National Association of Manufacturers.

Manufacturers usually assign workers to shifts with rigid hours and pay 7.8% lower on average than the private sector as a whole, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In 1980, manufacturing wages were 3.8% higher. A decline in union representation in the sector hasn’t helped.

Factory employers face other headwinds, said Susan N. Houseman, an economist at the Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. These include misconceptions that all factory work is dirty and dangerous, or lingering trauma from the wave of manufacturing layoffs in the 1990s and early 2000s as factories moved abroad. “People saw what happened in their communities and may not think it’s stable employment,” Houseman said. 

Carolyn Lee, president of the Manufacturing Institute, a nonprofit focused on workforce development for the sector, said the labor shortage makes it challenging to scale up production on a dime. “You can’t just plop a factory down and hope people will miraculously appear,” she said.

Manufacturers will have to add in new inducements to attract workers, she said, including greater levels of scheduling flexibility"

Related posts:

Politicians talk about creating manufacturing jobs but do people really want them? (2025) 

Manufacturing jobs are increasingly requiring some college education (2019) 

Historical trends in manufacturing (2018)

What if you had to spend alot of money just to be offered the chance buy a luxury item?

See Trying to Dethrone the Birkin? Make Fewer Bags: Chanel has taken a less effective approach to competing with the Hermès bag than American luxury brand The Row by Carol Ryan of The WSJ. Excerpts: 

"The wish to mimic the Birkin is understandable, as the bag is a gold mine for Hermès. The brand limits how many it produces, so demand far outstrips supply. Hermès could easily jack up the price but has found a smarter way to profit from the Birkin’s popularity that is less likely to alienate loyal clients.

To get a Birkin, shoppers must build a relationship with one of the brand’s sales assistants and wait to be offered a purse. This creates a perception that the biggest spenders get access to Birkins and encourages customers to splurge on other goods to build the equivalent of an “Uber rating” at the Hermès store. 

Although the brand says shoppers aren’t obliged to buy other goods to be considered for a Birkin, collectors of the bags call this the “pre-spend.” To get their hands on a Birkin 25 in basic Togo leather, shoppers might have to shell out $10,000 or more on other goods they don’t necessarily want."

"Because the supply of Birkins is restricted at the Hermès store, people are willing to pay up extravagantly for used bags. A Birkin 25 in Togo leather that cost $11,400 to buy new in 2024 sells for more than double that amount on resale platform Fashionphile."

Related posts:

Has Luxury Lost Its Shine? Customers are complaining that they are getting less bang for their buck at the luxury store (a case of Veblen goods) (2024) 

Is Starbucks coffee no longer a Veblen good? (2024)

China's Government Cracks Down On Displays Of Wealth On Social Media (2022)  

(See In China, Bragging About Your Wealth Can Get You Censored: Online posts by users showing off their receipts, over-ordering food or scattering money have been deemed vulgar. Regulators say such content leads young people astray by Vivian Wang and Joy Dong of The New York Times.)

Payless sold its discount shoes for $600 a pair at mock luxury influencer event (2018)

Federal Reserve Economists May Have Discovered Another Cause Of Bankruptcy (if a neighbor wins the lottery people start spending more on consumption to keep up) (2016)

Conspicuous Consumption, Conspicuous Virtue, Thorstein Veblen (and Adam Smith, too!) (2007)

Life is full of tradeoffs: Will sea mining destroy bottom-dwelling sea life?

See The Science Behind Mining for Riches on the Deep-Sea Floor by Eric Niiler of The WSJ. Excerpts:

"Ocean scientists are racing to determine whether marine life can coexist with machines that rake their habitat for undersea treasure."

"The aim is to vacuum up rocks containing cobalt, nickel, copper and manganese—elements used in electric-vehicle batteries, smartphones, medical devices and artificial-intelligence hardware."

"Assessing the value of these minerals is difficult because the cost of bringing them to the surface is unknown and market prices fluctuate."

A study "put the potential commercial value of the undersea minerals at $20 trillion."

"A 2023 survey of marine life in the proposed mining area by the Natural History Museum of London found that 90% of marine creatures living near the nodules are new species, challenging the idea that the vast mining area is an ecological wasteland."

"Conservationists say that sea mining will destroy this bottom-dwelling sea life, while mud and debris from the mining process will disturb shallower parts of the ocean."

"Thomas Peacock, professor of mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, . . . measured the plumes of sediment stirred up by mining machines and found that the sediment didn’t travel as far as originally believed, and might do less damage to some kinds of marine life."

"life is returning to areas of the Clarion-Clipperton Zone that underwent similar tests in 1979, suggesting that the environmental impact might be limited to the mining site."

Related posts:

Life is full of tradeoffs: If we want more solar panels do we have to give up some pine trees? And cause inbreeding and birth defects in bears due to reduced habitat? (2025) 

Life is full of tradeoffs: We can have more data centers and local tax revenue or less tourism and a dirtier environment (2025) 

Life is full of tradeoffs: Seafloor mining could bring us metals used in the making of electric-vehicle batteries at the cost of harming the environment (2025) 

Life is full of tradeoffs: If we want a cleaner environment in Massachuesetts do we have to give up sand used to make concrete? 2024 (this one has another 20 posts on this topic that are not linked here)

Life is full of tradeoffs: If we want a cleaner environment in Minnesota do we have to give up metals needed for green energy? (2024) 

Life is full of tradeoffs: If we want to protect Hawaii's marine life and tuna fisheries we will have fewer rare minerals for defense applications (2024) 

Life is full of tradeoffs: If we want to keep gas prices low we might have to reduce sanctions on Russia (2024)

Life is full of tradeoffs: if we want more "big data" and artificial intelligence then we might have less green energy (2024)

Life is full of tradeoffs: if we want more nickel to make EV batteries we might have to use more coal (2024)

Life is full of tradeoffs: it costs money to keep chemicals out of our water systems (2024)

Life is full of tradeoffs: reaching net zero emissions by 2050 vs. the costs of the transition (2023) 

China’s New Plan to Encourage More Births: $500 a Year

Beijing plans to pay the amount per child until the age of 3, as falling birthrates reverberate through economy

By Liyan Qi of The WSJ. Excerpts:

"Local governments in China have tried mostly in vain to lift the country’s shrinking birthrate with perks, cash rewards and housing subsidies. Now, the central government is stepping in. 

Beijing plans to pay a basic national subsidy of 3,600 yuan (about $500) per child each year until the age of 3"

"China’s fertility rate—the number of children a woman has over her lifetime—is around one now, one of the world’s lowest."

"The number of newborns in China had plunged for six straight years before a slight, short-term rebound last year following Beijing’s end to Covid-19 restrictions. But only 6.1 million couples registered their marriages in 2024, a 21% fall from the previous year, the latest official data show, marking a record low since the government started releasing such statistics in 1986. 

The number of newborns will likely drop further this year, below nine million, demographers say, less than half the level of 2016."

"Skyrocketing costs of child rearing in China discourage couples from having children. 

So do health scares, such as a recent lead poisoning scandal at a private kindergarten in the western province of Gansu, where 233 children were found to have abnormal blood lead levels"

"Beijing’s expenditures on developing AI and other technologies it considers important for national security leaves less to spend on improving social welfare, [a reminder that life is full of tradeoffs] which in the long term should help lift births, she said." [Ilaria Mazzocco, senior fellow at the Washington-based think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies.]

Related posts:

 

Babies and the Macroeconomy (2025) 

 

There’s little evidence that subsidies and protections have substantially raised the number of children women have over their lifetime (2025) 

 

Would you and your significant other get married if the government paid you $14,000? What if they paid the two of you to have children? (2025)

 

Worldwide Efforts to Reverse the Baby Shortage Are Falling Flat: Subsidized minivans, no income taxes: Countries have rolled out a range of benefits to encourage bigger families, with no luck (2024) 

 

Can you choose when to have your baby born if it brings you some money? (2024)

 

A number of women who put off having babies after the 2007-09 recession are forgoing them altogether; more educated women and student debt also contribute to decline in birth rates (2018)

 

Did The Recession Help Lower The Birth Rate? (2011)

The Economy Affects The Birth Rate (2010)

Should the Government Pay People to Have Sex? (2007)

The surprising link between science fiction and economic history

Originally posted in 2016.

By Sebastian Buckup. He is Head of Programming, Global Programming Group, Member of the Executive Committee, World Economic Forum. Today is National ScienceFiction Day. Excerpt: 

"Exactly 200 years ago, in 1816, a teen-aged girl called Mary Shelley began writing the story of Frankenstein in a villa in Cologny, a short walk from where the World Economic Forum now has its offices. Her ghoulish but subtle tale featured a scientist bringing a sentient, suffering creature to life from parts found in the “dissecting room and the slaughter-house".

“Frankenstein” was written at the end of the First Industrial Revolution, capturing the fears and squeamishness of a society going through massive transformations whilst making its first forays into surgery. The book took inspiration from earlier critics of the dawn of industrialisation, among them John Milton and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Today, Shelley’s Frankenstein is seen as the start of a genre, the first work of science fiction. By imaginatively combining the rigour of science with the freedom of fiction, the genre plays a big role in expressing the hopes and fears we project into our creations.

The best sci-fi stories mix two ingredients. The first is great science which sometimes leads to surprising accuracy: Jules Verne imagined a propeller-driven aircraft in the early 19th century, when balloons were the best that aviation had to offer. In the 1960s, Arthur C. Clarke envisioned the iPad, and Ray Bradbury the Mars landing. It may just be a matter of time until “Samantha”, the AI voice in Spike Jonze’s film Her, will be real, or until we bump into a version of “Ava”, the humanoid robot from Alex Garland’s “Ex Machina”.
 

The second ingredient is a keen understanding of contemporary hopes and fears. This is what makes these books and films great tools for dissecting the sentiments of an era. The two most successful sci-fi stories ever, George Lucas’ Star Wars and Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek, are amongst the best examples of how pop culture combined perceptions of technological progress with contemporary hopes and fears."

Other history related posts:

MONKS, GENTS AND INDUSTRIALISTS: THE LONG-RUN IMPACT OF THE DISSOLUTION OF THE ENGLISH MONASTERIES 

Did Tea Drinking Cut Mortality Rates in England?

Both numeracy and literacy were invented in the service of finance and commerce

Pre-market societies could sometimes have alot of violence

Was 1800 (approximately) A Pivotal Year In Human History? Robert Fogel, Francis Fukuyama, And Deirdre McCloskey All Seem To Think So

Some History of Insurance

The surprising link between science fiction and economic history

What happened in some earlier U.S. trade Wars?  

Did the industrial revolution cause children to take on adult roles later and later? 

Were The Pilgrims Capitalists Or Socialists? 

Primitive communism: Marx’s idea that societies were naturally egalitarian and communal before farming is widely influential and quite wrong (plus Ruth Benedict on property rights)  

When workers were paid twice a day and given half-hour shopping breaks (Germany, 1923) 

In 1923, Germany printed money to pay workers who were told to stay at home  

The short history of global living conditions and why it matters that we know it

Can testosterone shift political preferences?

See Testosterone shifts political preferences in weakly affiliated Democratic men, study finds by Eric W. Dolan. He is the founder, publisher, and editor of PsyPost. Excerpts:

"A new study has found that administering testosterone to weakly affiliated Democratic men reduced their identification with the Democratic Party and made them feel significantly warmer toward Republican presidential candidates. The hormone had no similar effect on strongly affiliated Democrats or Republicans. These findings suggest that short-term changes in biology can influence political preferences—at least for those who are less firmly attached to their political identity.

The research was published in the journal Brain and Behavior and adds to a growing body of work examining how neuroactive hormones shape human behavior in subtle but measurable ways. In this case, the hormone under investigation was testosterone, which is best known for its role in shaping male traits such as muscle growth and sexual function but also influences behavior through its action in the brain."

"The study, “Testosterone Administration Induces a Red Shift in Democrats,” was authored by Rana Alogaily, Giti Zahedzadeh, Kenneth V. Pyle, Cameron J. Johnson, and Paul J. Zak." 

The article has alot of details on how the study was done and what it might mean. Very interesting and worth reading all of it.

Related posts:

People gave up a chance to win money in order to avoid hearing from those with opposing political views (2017) 

People say the president can control gas prices if the president belongs to the other party (2017)

Are some blue jeans really Democratic and others Republican? (2019)

Adam Smith Meets Jonathan Haidt (on political polarization and the animosity of hostile factions)  (2023)

Why Tribalism Took Over Our Politics: Social science gives an uncomfortable explanation: Our brains were made for conflict (2023) 

Democrats and Republicans say economy is improving, but mostly only when someone from their party is president (2024) 

Did Fracking in Pennsylvania Turn Democrats Into Republicans and Republicans Into Democrats? (2024)

Are fewer Democrats buying Teslas because of Elon Musk's political views? (2024)

Partisanship deeply colors how Americans think about trade policy, especially tariffs (2024) 

Would you give up some income in order to get a job at a firm whose workers share your political opinions? (2024)

Republicans Are Feeling Good Again, Driving Up Consumer Sentiment: Democrats’ sentiment slips, but overall index ticks higher (2024)

Causes and Extent of Increasing Partisan Segregation in the U.S. – Evidence from Migration Patterns of 212 Million Voters (2025)

Red vs. Blue Is Dividing Stock Portfolios Like Never Before: A political gap in optimism about markets is translating into trading decisions (2025) 

See also Americans start caring more about deficits and the national debt when the party they oppose runs them up by John V. Kane of New York University and Ian G. Anson of The University of Maryland. Excerpt:

"In the past two decades, US budget deficits have skyrocketed, and the national debt is now over $22 trillion. But do Americans care about the size of deficits and the national debt? In new research, John V. Kane and Ian G. Anson find that people tend to care more about the deficits and debts when they are increased by presidents from the party that they oppose. Both Republicans and Democrats, they write, become less concerned about governments running deficits when their President is in charge."

The Cross of Gold: Brazilian Treasure and the Decline of Portugal (due to the resource curse)

By Davis Kedrosky and Nuno Palma. Published in The Journal of Economic History.

In the book The Economics of Macro Issues which I used as a supplemental text, they mention that Russia has many resources but its per capita income is less than that of Luxembourg which has few resources. The book suggests that the economic system matters more that how many resources a country has. 

"Abstract

As late as 1750, Portugal had a high output per head by Western European standards. Yet just a century later, Portugal was this region’s poorest country. In this paper, we show that the discovery of massive quantities of gold in Brazil over the eighteenth century played a key role in the long-run development of Portugal. The country suffered from an economic and political resource curse. A counterfactual based on synthetic control methods suggests that by 1800 Portugal’s GDP per capita was 40 percent lower than it would have been without its endowment of Brazilian gold."

Related posts:

The Resource Curse (2018). Excerpt:

"Striking gold or discovering oil would seem to guarantee instant fortune. Instead, it often leads to conflict, corruption and poverty. History is full of examples of countries whose natural-resource wealth led to less economic success. Revenue from extracting raw materials might be mismanaged or embezzled by government officials, or siphoned off by foreign corporations. The bonanza might crowd out investment in other parts of the economy and make goods and services more expensive. And the country’s fiscal and economic fate might hang on volatile global commodity prices, especially for smaller and less diverse economies." 

Economic benefits from mega-events like the Olympics are often overstated (2021). Excerpt:

"The IOC will tend to favor the city that makes the most lavish offer of gleaming new facilities and infrastructure improvements, so the bidding process can give way to a "winner’s curse" effect. The city that wins tends to be the one that overestimated the value of hosting the Olympics the most, and hence the one that went furthest overboard in their bid." 

The Biggest Companies Across America Are Cutting Their Workforces

It isn’t just Amazon. There’s a growing belief that having too many employees will slow a company down—and that anyone still on the payroll could be working harder.

By Chip Cutter and Lauren Weber. Excerpts:

"U.S. public companies have reduced their white-collar workforces by a collective 3.5% over the past three years"

"Over the past decade, one in five companies in the S&P 500 have shrunk."

"New technologies like generative artificial intelligence are allowing companies to do more with less."

"there’s a growing belief that having too many employees is itself an impediment."

"Anyone still on the payroll could be working harder."

"the workforce cuts in recent years coincide with a surge in sales and profits" 

"about one in five S&P 500 companies have fewer employees today in both offices and the field than a decade ago"

"The downsizing has caused employees to rapidly lose the leverage they enjoyed during the pandemic, when jobs were plentiful and companies were bidding up for white-collar talent."

"workers are contending with bigger workloads, more responsibilities" 

"Managers have been an especially ripe target for cutting"

"The number of managers dropped 6.1% between May 2022 to May 2025. Executive-level roles fell 4.6%."

"When Lattice wanted to add a payroll function to its line of HR software products, executives calculated they would need 40 or 50 new staff since customers’ pay issues often require immediate attention."

"Ultimately, Lattice added fewer than 10 people, CEO Sarah Franklin said, because current AI models are so much more sophisticated than chatbots from just a year or two ago. They “can take bespoke requests, bespoke querying and match them to give you an answer,” she said. “That’s what we as humans do.”" 

The Seasonally Adjusted CPI Was Up 0.287% In June

Here are the changes in the seasonally adjusted CPI each of the last six months:

Jan  0.4669%

Feb 0.2160%

Mar -0.0500%

April 0.2209%

May  0.0810%

June 0.2870% 

 

The last decline before March 2025 was June 2024 when it was down 0.0029%.

 

See Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers: All Items in U.S. City Average from FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data) compiled by the Research Division at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis for data on the seasonally adjusted CPI.

 

That site shows a graph but if you click on the Download button you will get the actual numbers in Microsoft Excel.

 

The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers: All Items in U.S. City Average (CPIAUCSL) was 321.500 in June and 320.580 in May. Since 321.500/320.580 = 1.00287, that means it was up 0.287%. If we had that every month for 12 months it would be up 3.50%. 

It was 313.131 in June 2024. Since 321.500/313.131 = 1.0267, that means it was up 2.67% over the last 12 months.

The non-seasonally adjusted CPI was 322.561 in June and 314.175 in June 2024. That was up 2.67%. So pretty close to the seasonally adjusted CPI. This is still above the Fed's target of 2.0% (although they prefer to use the Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index which was 2.3% higher in May 2025 than May 2024).

For more information, see Inflation picks up again in June, rising at 2.7% annual rate by Jeff Cox of CNBC. Excerpts:   

"Consumer prices rose in June as President Donald Trump’s tariffs began to slowly work their way through the U.S. economy.

The consumer price index, a broad-based measure of goods and services costs, increased 0.3% on the month, putting the 12-month inflation rate at 2.7%, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Tuesday. The numbers were right in line with the Dow Jones consensus, though the annual rate is the highest since February and still above the Federal Reserve’s 2% target.

Excluding volatile food and energy prices, core inflation picked up 0.2% on the month, with the annual rate moving to 2.9%, with the annual rate in line with estimates. The monthly level was slightly below the outlook for a 0.3% gain.

Before June, inflation had been on a generally downward slope for the year, with the headline CPI at a 3% annual rate back in January and progressing gradually slower in the subsequent months despite fears that Trump’s trade war would drive prices higher." 

The article also discusses what types of products are going up in price and what is going down. There is a graph of the monthly year-over-year percent change in prices and core prices going back almost 4 years. 

Other related links:

 

Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers: All Items Less Food and Energy in U.S. City Average (CPILFESL) This is also from from FRED (Federal Reserve Economic Data), compiled by the Research Division at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. It has the seasonally adjusted core CPI.

 

Consumer Price Index Data from 1913 to 2025

 

Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index 

 

The Bureau of Labor Statistics makes seasonal adjustments. See Consumer Price Index Summary.

 

The table below has the annual inflation rate since 1914 in the columns labeled CPI %Ch. or CPI percentage change. It is from Consumer Price Index Data from 1913 to 2025 and is not seasonally adjusted. It is also the December to December change in the CPI. That site also looks at how the 12 month average for the CPI changed from one year to the next.