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How the U.S. economy is super weird right now · Apple News Today

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  Shumita Basu, Narrating: Good morning! It's Thursday, July 7. I'm Shumita Basu, this is "Apple News Today." Each morning, hear about some of the most fascinating stories in the news, and how the world's best journalists are covering them.
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  Something pretty weird is going on in the U.S. economy these days.
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  Jon Hilsenrath: We live in very unusual times, and there's a lot of talk about recession right now.
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  Jon Hilsenrath has spent a long time on the economics beat for "The Wall Street Journal." He's covered multiple recessions, including the technically-only-two-month-long recession we had in 2020 when the pandemic first hit. He says, there isn't consensus on whether we're going through another one right now. He points out that economic growth did slip earlier this year. That's a key component of a recession. But…
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  Hilsenrath: When you look at other aspects of how the economy is performing, it doesn't indicate a recession at all. So we decided to take a closer look at that, and really the big mystery right now is the job market. The job market is exceptionally strong.
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  Even though growth is slowing, unemployment is low. That's never happened in 12 recessions going all the way back to World War II. Hilsenrath calls this moment a "jobful downturn."
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  Hilsenrath: This is a phrase that I actually made up because there aren't any phrases in the economic lexicon to describe what's going on right now. So, we had a downturn, economic output fell, but employment was rising during the first half of the year. So, it's a downturn that's full of jobs, which is very unusual in the American experience.
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  We've got plenty of jobs but not enough people to fill them. Part of this dynamic is explained by a shrinking labor force, with baby boomers retiring. Meanwhile, companies are seeing record profit margins and they're trying to hire more people.
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  Economists don't all agree on what's going on and where it might go. Hilsenrath quotes a wide range of perspectives in this article. We get another piece of the puzzle tomorrow, when job numbers for June come out. That data will add to the debate over what the Fed and policymakers should be doing right now. But as Hilsenrath points out, there's one thing economists can agree on: if this is a recession, it doesn't look like any other in our recent history.
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  U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson is leaving. He resigned today as the leader of his party and will step down as prime minister.
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  Boris Johnson: The process of choosing that new leader should begin now, and the time table will be announced next week. And I today appointed a cabinet to serve, as I will, until a new leader is in place.
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  Who takes his place will come down to a series of votes among Conservative members of Parliament and, finally, the wider party. Johnson hung on to power through scandals and setbacks that might've already brought down a more conventional politician. He finalized Brexit, he made it through the pandemic, but the pressure piled up. Investigations revealed his administration broke COVID lockdown rules with boozy office parties. His Conservative party lost recent key races, and many blamed him. He faced a confidence vote in his own party last month, and he won, but not by much.
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  The last straw for many came this week, with new revelations about what he knew and how he handled sexual-misconduct allegations against a high-ranking party member. Dozens resigned from his administration, and big names called on him to step down. At first, Johnson refused, but he ultimately resigned under pressure.
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  One of the most colorful and unpredictable prime ministers in British history is now on his way out. But British politics looks to be very volatile in the days ahead.
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  A student sitting at home opens their laptop, starts a new doc and types out something alarming: they're having suicidal thoughts. A flag gets raised at the district level, the parents are notified and given resources, a team of faculty step in to support the child. A crisis seems to be averted.
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  This is a real example out of a Texas school district that's hired a digital surveillance company to monitor their students. It's one way that schools are trying to figure out how to prevent violent tragedies. Texas schools now lead the country in purchasing these types of contracts. But privacy experts warn that there can be unintended consequences for students.
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  Brian Lopez: This causes them to not want to open up about things. This research shows that it affects their studies, academics, their grades.
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  That's "Texas Tribune" reporter Brian Lopez. He told us he spoke with multiple security researchers who said when students know that they're being monitored, it can make them feel like suspects, which creates a bad learning environment. There's also evidence that students of color are more likely to be flagged and disciplined for minor offenses that schools might not have punished them for before.
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  The key question is, does digital surveillance work? Does it actually prevent violence? And the answer is, it's imperfect in many ways. After all, you can only surveil what you can see. Take Uvalde, which had a contract with one of these surveillance companies. That software didn't flag the Uvalde shooter's social media because he was sending messages in private chats. Lopez told us how incidents like Uvalde are usually followed by an increase in security measures. Here's what he told us about the trend in Texas.
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  Lopez: In the last decade, there has been a spending of $68 per student to 113 per student on surveillance programs. And on the flip side of that, school spending on social services increased only from 25 per student to just to 32.
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  The CEO of one of these surveillance companies, Navigate360, told the "Texas Tribune," digital tracking services are not meant to be a cure-all for school safety. It's just one part of a plan to keep kids safe.
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  Black bears have figured out when "trash day" is. Coyotes know to look before crossing the street. Raccoons can remove bungee cords to get into garbage cans. These are just a couple of the ways that wild animals are adapting to urban life as humans expand more and more into natural spaces. A story in "National Geographic" pulls together new research and photojournalism showing how urbanization is forcing a variety of species to change.
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  Studies show 93% of urban mammals behave differently than their rural counterparts. For example, many of them have become nocturnal, coming out at night to avoid people, they've expanded their diets to include human food, city raccoons are more social and they tend to travel in pairs more often than rural ones. Coyotes have proven to be very adaptable. Quick learners. And the more they cohabitate with humans, the less scared they are of us.
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  This story is about how clever and surprising animals can be. But it's also a reminder that humans are harmful. Research on urban bears found that they weigh more and have more cubs than rural bears. But they're also at higher risk of being hit by cars.
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  Be sure to check out the full story in the Apple News app where you can see some of these photos. They're really striking. It is "Nat Geo," after all. There's a photo of raccoons standing at attention waiting to be fed by a human in a San Francisco park and a pair of bear cubs playing with a tire swing that was installed by their human neighbors in Asheville, North Carolina.
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  And when you're in the app, keep listening to hear narrated articles from our News+ partners. I'll talk with you again tomorrow.
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