Pronatalismthe belief that low birth rates are a problem that must be reversedis having a moment in the U.S.
As birth rates decline in the U.S. and throughout the world, voices from Silicon Valley to the White House are raising concerns about what they say could be the calamitous effects of steep population decline on the economy. The Trump administration has said it is seeking ideas on how to encourage Americans to have more children as the U.S. experiences its lowest total fertility rate in history, down about 25% since 2007.
As demographers who study fertility, family behaviors, and childbearing intentions, we can say with certainty that population decline is not imminent, inevitable or necessarily catastrophic.
The population collapse narrative hinges on three key misunderstandings. First, it misrepresents what standard fertility measures tell us about childbearing and makes unrealistic assumptions that fertility rates will follow predictable patterns far into the future. Second, it overstates the impact of low birth rates on future population growth and size. Third, it ignores the role of economic policies and labor market shifts in assessing the impacts of low birth rates.
Fertility fluctuations
Demographers generally gauge births in a population with a measure called the total fertility rate. The total fertility rate for a given year is an estimate of the average number of children that women would have in their lifetime if they experienced current birth rates throughout their childbearing years.
Fertility rates are not fixedin fact, they have changed considerably over the past century. In the U.S., the total fertility rate rose from about 2 births per woman in the 1930s to a high of 3.7 births per woman around 1960. The rate then dipped below 2 births per woman in the late 1970s and 1980s before returning to 2 births in the 1990s and early 2000s.
Since the Great Recession that lasted from late 2007 until mid-2009, the U.S. total fertility rate has declined almost every year, with the exception of very small post-COVID-19 pandemic increases in 2021 and 2022. In 2024, it hit a record low, falling to 1.6. This drop is primarily driven by declines in births to people in their teens and early 20sbirths that are often unintended.
But while the total fertility rate offers a snapshot of the fertility landscape, it is not a perfect indicator of how many children a woman will eventually have if fertility patterns are in fluxfor example, if people are delaying having children.
Picture a 20-year-old woman today, in 2025. The total fertility rate assumes she will have the same birth rate as todays 40-year-olds when she reaches 40. Thats not likely to be the case, because birth rates 20 years from now for 40-year-olds will almost certainly be higher than they are today, as more births occur at older ages and more people are able to overcome infertility through medically assisted reproduction.
A more nuanced picture of childbearing
These problems with the total fertility rate are why demographers also measure how many total births women have had by the end of their reproductive years. In contrast to the total fertility rate, the average number of children ever born to women ages 40 to 44 has remained fairly stable over time, hovering around two.
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Americans continue to express favorable views toward childbearing. Ideal family size remains at two or more children, and 9 in 10 adults either have, or would like to have, children. However, many Americans are unable to reach their childbearing goals. This seems to be related to the high cost of raising children and growing uncertainty about the future.
In other words, it doesnt seem to be the case that birth rates are low because people are uninterested in having children; rather, its because they dont feel its feasible for them to become parents or to have as many children as they would like.
The challenge of predicting future population size
Standard demographic projections do not support the idea that population size is set to shrink dramatically.
One billion people lived on Earth 250 years ago. Today there are over 8 billion, and by 2100 the United Nations predicts there will be over 10 billion. Thats 2 billion more, not fewer, people in the foreseeable future. Admittedly, that projection is plus or minus 4 billion. But this range highlight another key point: Population projections get more uncertain the further into the future they extend.
Predicting the population level five years from now is far more reliable than 50 years from nowand beyond 100 years, forget about it. Most population scientists avoid making such long-term projections, for the simple reason that they are usually wrong. Thats because fertility and mortality rates change over time in unpredictable ways.
The U.S. population size is also not declining. Currently, despite fertility below the replacement level of 2.1 children per woman, there are still more births than deaths. The U.S. population is expected to grow by 22.6 million by 2050 and by 27.5 million by 2100, with immigration playing an important role.
Will low fertility cause an economic crisis?
A common rationale for concern about low fertility is that it leads to a host of economic and labor market problems. Specifically, pronatalists argue that there will be too few workers to sustain the economy and too many older people for those workers to support. However, that is not necessarily trueand even if it were, increasing birth rates wouldnt fix the problem.
As fertility rates fall, the age structure of the population shifts. But a higher proportion of older adults does not necessarily mean the proportion of workers to nonworkers falls.
For one thing, the proportion of children under age 18 in the population also declines, so the number of working-age adultsusually defined as ages 18 to 64often changes relatively little. And as older adults stay healthier and more active, a growing number of them are contributing to the economy. Labor force participation among Americans ages 65 to 74 increased from 21.4% in 2003 to 26.9% in 2023 and is expected to increase to 30.4% by 2033. Modest changes in the average age of retirement or in how Social Security is funded would further reduce strains on support programs for older adults.
Whats more, pronatalists core argument that a higher birth rate would increase the size of the labor force overlooks some short-term consequences. More babies means more dependents, at least until those children become old enough to enter the labor force. Children not only require expensive services such as education, but also reduce labor force participation, particularly for women. As fertility rates have fallen, womens labor force participation rates have risen dramaticallyfrom 34% in 1950 to 58% in 2024. Pronatalist policies that discourage womens employment are at odds with concerns about a diminishing number of workers.
Research shows that economic policies and labor market conditions, not demographic age structures, play the most important role in determining economic growth in advanced economies. And with rapidly changing technologies like automation and artificial intelligence, it is unclear what demand there will be for workers in the future. Moreover, immigration is a powerfuland immediatetool for addressing labor market needs and concerns over the proportion of workers.
Overall, theres no evidence for Elon Musks assertion that humanity is dying. While the changes in population structure that accompany low birth rates are real, in our view the impact of these changes has been dramatically overstated. Strong investments in education and sensible economic policies can help countries successfully adapt to a new demographic reality.
Leslie Root is an assistant professor of research at the Institute of Behavioral Science at the University of Colorado Boulder.
Karen Benjamin Guzzo is a professor of sociology and director of the Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Shelley Clark is a professor of sociology at McGill University.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Spain’s black olive exporters, subject to harsh tariffs since U.S. President Donald Trump’s first term, are warning it will be difficult to survive an extra 15% they now face under the European Union’s latest trade deal with the United States.
EU goods now face import tariffs of 15% half of Trump’s threatened rate, but much more than Europeans had hoped for after striking a trade deal with Trump on Sunday.
Spain, the world’s top table olive exporter, has seen its share of the U.S. black olive market plummet from 49% in 2017 to 19% in 2024 after Trump imposed tariffs of more than 30% at the request of Californian olive growers.
The measures only affected black olives and don’t apply to green olives, olive oil or semi-processed olives.
Spanish farmers have taken steps to increase green olive sales and to diversify their markets since the tariffs were first imposed, but warn the additional increase will be hard to swallow.
“It would be unviable (for black table olives),” said Eduardo Martin, secretary of Asaja, a Spanish local farmers’ association in southern Seville province, a region that produces the most olives.
The initial trade measures coincided with a severe drought that forced Spanish producers to cut around 400,000 work shifts for pickers out of a total of 2.5 million, according to industry estimates. Sales of Spanish black olives to the U.S. dropped by 70% in the first year.
“The worst was the first year,” said Gabriel Cabello, president of Andalusia’s Federation of Agricultural Cooperatives in Seville province. “In the second year, we learned that this was here to stay and that we had to do things differently.”
To mitigate losses, Spanish exporters shifted focus to Europe and the Middle East, regions with a tradition of consuming table olives. They also ventured into Asian markets, while switching to shipping more green olives to the U.S. because they are subject to lower tariffs.
Tariffs also spurred innovation, with some Spanish exporters selling black olives stuffed with salmon or cheese for the first time, which helped boost sales in Europe and Asia, Cabello said.
Still, the Spanish Ministry of Agriculture estimates it has lost 239.6 million euros ($278.51 million) in black olive sales since the tariffs were introduced, nearly a third of the 707 million-euro total export value from the last harvest.
WEATHERED THE STORM
Among the 25 Spanish exporters active before the tariffs, only four major players remain, according to Asemesa, Spains Association of Table Olive Exporters.
Agro Sevilla, one of the larger players with the financial resources to lobby the U.S. for lower rates, expanded green olive exports and managed to reduce black olive tariffs to 10% from 31%. The company successfully demonstrated that they received fewer European subsidies than the U.S. had estimated. Its U.S. sales have been gradually growing since 2023.
“We cannot give up on the world’s largest consumer market for black olives,” said Agro Sevilla CEO Julio Roda.
In a twist, Aceitunas Guadalquivir, another major Spanish olive producer, acquired Bell-Carter Foods, one of the two leading U.S. companies that had advocated for the tariffs, according to a statement issued in 2022.
The company is among several Californian companies that have imported raw olives from Spain, which are exempt from the tariffs, according to Asemesa.
Aceitunas Guadalquivir did not reply to a Reuters request for comment about such exports.
“When California has low production, they import raw olives to finish processing them in the United States, mostly from Spain,” said Asemesas Secretary General Antonio de Mora.
Spain exported 6,300 tonnes of semi-processed olives in 2024 alongside 36,000 tonnes of green olives and 9,800 tonnes of black olives.
The U.S. measures failed to bolster domestic growers.
Imports of table olives surged by 40% in the first eight months of 2024 compared to the same period in 2017, trade data shows, with Egypt, Portugal, and Turkey increasing exports the most.
Spanish exports of green olives to the U.S. grew by 18% during the same period, partially offsetting a decline in black olive exports.
However, Spanish producers remain concerned about the new tariffs.
“It’s like adding rain to wet ground,” Asaja’s Martin said.
($1 = 0.8603 euros)
Additional reporting by Miguel Gutierrez
Corina Pons, Reuters
Health-related stocks are not having a good day. First, Americas largest health insurance provider, UnitedHealth Group (NYSE: UNH), saw its stock drop more than 4% this morning after the company announced disappointing second-quarter results and a full-year 2025 forecast that concerned investors. And now, the Danish pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk A/S, whose shares (NYSE: NVO) trade on the New York Stock Exchange, is seeing its stock price plunge, too.
Currently, NVO shares are down more than 20% at the time of this writing. But unlike UnitedHealth Group, Novo Nordisk has not reported its most recent quarterly results. So whats sending its shares lower? Heres what you need to know.
Novo Nordisk cuts full-year 2025 guidance
The main driver of Novo Nordisks significant share price fall today is the companys announcement that it is revising its previously published sales growth and operating profit growth for its full fiscal year 2025.
On May 7, Novo Nordisk stated that it expected full-year fiscal 2025 sales growth to be between 13% and 21%. At the same time, it said it expected its operating profit growth to be between 16% and 24%.
Now, however, the company had drastically cut both forecasts. Novo Nordisk now says it expects full-year fiscal 2025 sales growth to be between 8% and 14% and operating profit growth to be between 10% and 16%.
In a statement, the company said its lowered sales outlook for 2025 is driven by lower growth expectations for the second half of 2025.
This lowered growth is due to lower growth expectations for its GLP-1 weight loss and diabetes drugs, Wegovy and Ozempic, in the U.S. market.
For Wegovy in the US, the sales outlook reflects the persistent use of compounded GLP-1s, slower-than-expected market expansion and competition, the company said. It added that as far as Ozempic was concerned, the updated outlook is negatively impacted by competition in the U.S.
Novo Nordisks main competitor in the GLP-1 arena is the American pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly, who makes the drugs Mounjaro and Zepbound.
Novo Nordisk names new CEO
Besides revising its 2025 growth forecasts downward, Novo Nordisk also made another announcement today: It named a new CEO.
However, this announcement probably had little to do with the stocks fall this morning. Back in May, Novo Nordisk announced that its longtime CEO Lars Fruergaard Jrgensen would be stepping aside. At the time, the company cited its declining share price as one of the reasons for the CEO shakeup. It also said Jrgensen would stay on as CEO until a successor was found.
Now, one has been. Today, Novo Nordisk announced that Maziar Mike Doustdar will be assuming the position of president and chief executive officer, effective August 7, 2025. Doustdar is currently the companys executive vice president of international operations.
Announcing Doustdars ascent to the CEO role, Novo Nordisk chair Helge Lund said: This is an important moment for Novo Nordisk. The market is developing rapidly, and the company needs to address recent market challenges with speed and ambition. I believe Novo Nordisk will build on its strengths as a global leader in obesity and diabetes, and Mike has a clear vision of how to unlock the full potential of the opportunities ahead.
Doustdar will officially take over as CEO one day after the company reports its second quarter 2025 results on August 6.
Novo Nordisk shares have fallen dramatically since last summer
While the GLP-1 drugs Wegovy and Ozempic have been a massive source of growth and profits at Novo Nordisk in the first half of this decade, recently, the company has faced increased competition in the GLP-1 marketplace, which has partly contributed to investor concerns.
Partially as a result, Novo Nordisk stock has steadily declined since last summer. Over the past year, NVO shares are down more than 57%. And since the beginning of 2025, the companys share price has declined more than 35%.
As of the time of this writing, NVO shares are down just over 20% this morning to $55.17 per share.
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Heres a stat that would likely make financial adviser and radio personality Dave Ramseywho has long advocated for Americans to pay off their mortgages early as a key pillar of his debt-free philosophyat least somewhat pleased: A staggering 39.8% of U.S. owner-occupied housing units in 2023 were mortgage-free, marking a new high for this data series. Thats up from 39.3% in 2022 and 32.8% in 2010.
Among the 85.7 million U.S. homeowner occupied households, 34.1 million are mortgage-free. The other 51.6 million have an outstanding mortgage.
So why did I say itd only make Dave Ramsey somewhat pleased?
Well, the reason is that a higher percentage of Americans are mortgage-free isnt necessarily because so many are paying off their mortgages faster. Instead, it reflects a powerful underlying demographic shift: the aging composition of the American population.
As Americans live longer, the U.S. fertility rate declines, and the massive baby boomer generation ages into their senior years, the U.S. population has skewed older. Since older homeowners are more likely to have paid off their mortgages, the aging composition of the American population means a larger share of homeowners are achieving mortgage-free status each year.
The other thing is that when older Americans sell their house and buy another home, theyre more likely to rollover their equity and purchase that next home in all-cash.
Given that most demographic forecasts expect the composition of the American population to continue shifting upward in age, the share of mortgage-free households could also continue rising in the years to come. The wild card? If reverse mortgages get more popular and more older Americans take on mortgage debt again to tap into their equity.
The notoriously unrealistic beauty standards for women are about to get even less realistic.
The star of a new ad for Guess in the latest issue of Vogue is a willowy, AI-generated model, whose synthetic status is only called out in a a fine-print caveat. Now that AI has hit the ads of fashions bible, it seems only a matter of time before similarly unrealistic models proliferate throughout its editorial pagesmaybe even the cover.
AI-powered marketing agency Seraphinne Vallora is behind the design of Guesss corporeally challenged vixen. According to the BBC, the process for generating such a model involves five AI-specialist employees, takes about a month to complete, and costs up to somewhere in the low six figures. The result is a glossy, golden-tressed Aphrodite; an Animorph at the precise midpoint between Kate Upton and Margot Robbie, strapped into a striped maxi dress. What might be more striking than who she looks like, though, is who she doesnt look likeand why.
Beyond a six-figure price tag, offering no real savings from a typical photo shoot that employs real photographers, hairstylists, and makeup artists, it also threatens to further unravel the progress the fashion world has made in diversity over the past 15 years.
How fashion got less homogenous
If the Greek chorus of Doves Real Beauty ads didnt spell it out clearly enough, racial and body diversity made huge strides in fashion throughout the 2010s. In a decade-ending retrospective from late-2019, Vogue traced the turning of the tide back to Michelle Obama. The former First Lady championed diverse American design talent, while global fashion houses clamored to outfit her. As the Vogue piece puts it, An arbiter of style in Washington and beyond . . . Michelle Obamas presence in the fashion world became a part of her image and American history.
Around the same time, models like Jourdan Dunn and Chanel Iman started to speak openly about the indignity of being the only Black model at fashion shows. Bethann Hardison, a pioneering Black model, went a step further. After noticing the pitiful diversity on display at New York Fashion Week in 2013, she sent an open letter to each of the major fashion design councils in New York, London, Paris, and Milan, calling out the abundance of houses featuring only one Black model or none at all. Although many of the letters recipients responded without much enthusiasm to the suggestion, a change came anyway in the years ahead.
The back half of the decade was full of diversity wins in fashion. A 2017 report from The Fashion Spot assessed 241 shows at that years New York Fashion Week, and found 27.9% of the models were minorities. That figure represents a near doubling from the 15.3% the publication found in its first report two years earlier. At the same time in 2017, semiretired pop star Rihanna introduced her forcefully inclusive Fenty Beauty brand and its lingerie line, Savage x Fenty, offering a high-profile showcase for models of all races, sizes, abilities, and gender expressionsincluding trans and nonbinary models. The brands enormous success seemed to confirm that this approach was perhaps something worth emulating.
By January 2020, Ashley Graham had become Vogues first plus-size cover model, while body positivity advocate Lizzo followed suit that September. Considering how quickly Vogue ended up repeating its milestone cover move, though, it might come as a surprise that the magazine hasnt had another plus-size cover model in the five years since.
Goodbye body diversity, hello Ozempic
Lizzos appearance on the Vogue cover in fall 2020 reflects the social justice reckoning that followed George Floyds murder at the hands of police that summer. (The cover copy hovering near the knee-line of her dazzling red dress reads: Lizzo on hope, justice, and the election.) In retrospect, that cover appears to be a product of its momenta moment that quickly faded.
In December 2023, Vogue Business described the preceding 12 months as the year fashion backtracked on diversity, citing post-pandemic macroeconomic challenges, a brewing backlash to DEI, and a handful of major fashion brands such as Alexander McQueen and Gucci choosing white men as their new creative directors. (Indeed, it was the uncontroversial nature of those hiring decisions that seemed to signal a return to the old ways.) DEI backlash has since been felt everywhere in the business world, including the fashion industry. As a Forbes reporter wrote of New York Fashion Week in fall 2023, Black designers made up approximately 15% of the weeks calendar, and the stereotype of the thin, white model prevailed on many of the runways.
Meanwhile, the emergence of Ozempic may have quelled the appetite for plus-size fashion inclusivity that had been building throughout the 2010s. The earlier drumbeat of body positivity has now been replaced by a conga line celebrating sudden, miraculous weight loss. With the increasing visibility of GLP-1 meds and their effects, self-acceptance no longer seems culturally aspirational; instead, looking like your most chiseled possible self once again does.
Of the 8,703 looks shown during fashion week this past spring, 0.3 % per cent were plus-size, dropping from an already low 0.8% the previous season. Body diversity may have peaked in fall 2022 at 2.34%, two months before the New York Post surveyed the fashion industry and the broader landscape of prominentfemale bodies and concluded in a headline: Bye-bye booty: Heroin chic is back.
Now, fashions retrenchment is coinciding with the proliferation of increasingly sophisticated AI image-generation tools.
Deep learning models vs. supermodels
Although the first digital supermodel, a Black woman named Shudu Gram, was created in 2017, the age of the AI model only began recently. Fast-fashion retail giant Mango launched its first advertising campaign featuring purely AI-generated models last summer, while H&M started developing digital twins of models like Mathilda Gvarliani this past March. Proponents say the growing use of AI in fashion modeling showcases diversity in all shapes and sizes, Associated Press reported in 2024, allowing consumers to make more tailored purchase decisions that in turn reduces fashion waste from product returns.
That sunny projection does not seem to line up, however, with the reality of the process that birthed the new Guess ad. According to the BBC article, Seraphinne Vallora created 10 draft models for Guess cofounder Paul Marciano to choose from, with Marciano selecting one brunette and one blonde, which the agency further refined. That description makes it seem as though the agency isnt intentionally perpetuating the stereotype of models as unattainably fit, white goddesses, but rather that this is simply how that particular iteration shook out. The agencys Instagram, however, is a talent pool teeming with similar models.
Asked by the BBC about its social media homogeny, the owners threw their Instagram followers under the bus. “We’ve posted AI images of women with different skin tones, but people do not respond to them, cofounder Valentina Gonzales told the outlet, we don’t get any traction or likes.”
Incredibly, the agency seems more willing to suggest that its fans are low-key racist than it is to admit that Seraphinne Valloras tech might be bad at generating AI approximations of women of color. But that’s the excuse the founders use to explain the lack of body diversity more broadly, claiming they have not yet experimented with creating plus-size models because “the technology is not advanced enough for that.
This line offers a blueprint for other companies exploring the AI fashion model space in the near future. Its a cop-out explanation that absolves anyone on the agency side or client side of intentionally dialing back diversity in fashion to pre-2010 levels. Either group can now just say that theyd love to feature people of color or plus-size models in a campaign, but sadly their hands are tied. With DEI now thoroughly demonized, the chances of anyone in either company flagging it as a problem are considerably smaller than an AI models waist size.
Most U.S. adults say they use artificial intelligence to search for information, but fewer are using it for work, drafting email, or shopping.Younger adults are most likely to be leaning into AI, with many using it for brainstorming and work tasks.The new findings from an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll show that 60% of Americans overall and 74% of those under 30 use AI to find information at least some of the time.The poll highlights the ubiquity of AI in some areas as well as its limits in others. Only about 4 in 10 Americans say they have used AI for work tasks or coming up with ideas, a sign that the tech industry’s promises of highly productive AI assistants still haven’t touched most livelihoods after years of promotion and investment.At the same time, wider AI adoption by younger Americans shows that could change.There’s a particularly large age divide on brainstorming: About 6 in 10 adults under age 30 have used AI for coming up with ideas, compared with only 2 in 10 of those age 60 or older. Young adults are also more likely to use AI to come up with ideas at least “daily.”
Young adults are most likely to use AI
Bridging the generations are people like Courtney Thayer, 34, who’s embracing AI in some parts of her life and avoiding it in others.Thayer said she is regularly using ChatGPT to come up with ideas about planning what to eat, while also having it calculate the nutritional value of the pumpkin-banana-oat bread she’s been baking for years.“I asked it to make a meal prep for the week, then to add an Asian flair,” said Thayer, of Des Moines, Iowa. “It wasn’t the most flavorful thing I’ve ever had in my life, but it’s a nice stepping off point. More importantly, I use it for the amount so that I’m not over-serving myself and ending up with wasted food.”The audiologist has embraced AI at work, too, in part because AI technology is imbued in the hearing aids she recommends to patients but also because it makes it easier and faster to draft professional emails.She avoids it for important information, particularly medical advice, after witnessing chatbots “hallucinate” false information about topics she spent years studying.Roughly 4 in 10 Americans say they use AI for work tasks at least sometimes, while about one-third say they use it for helping to write emails, create or edit images, or for entertainment, according to the poll. About one-quarter say they use it to shop.Younger adults are more likely than older ones to say they have used artificial intelligence to help with various tasks, the poll shows.
Searching for information is AI’s most common use
Of the eight options offered in the poll questions, searching for information is the most common way Americans have interacted with AI. And even that may be an undercount, since it’s not always apparent how AI is surfacing what information people see online.For more than a year, the dominant search engine, Google, has automatically provided AI-generated responses that attempt to answer a person’s search query, appearing at the top of results.Perhaps defying emerging media consumption trends, 28-year-old Sanaa Wilson usually skips right past those AI-generated summaries.“It has to be a basic question like, ‘What day does Christmas land on in 2025?'” said the Los Angeles-area resident. “I’ll be like, ‘That makes sense. I trust it.’ But when it gets to specific news, related to what’s happening in California or what’s happening to the education system and stuff like that, I will scroll down a little bit further.”Wilson, a freelance data scientist, does use AI heavily at work to help with coding, which she said has saved her hundreds of dollars she would have had to pay for training. She also occasionally uses it to come up with work-related ideas, an attempt to bring back a little of the collaborative brainstorming experience she remembers from college life but doesn’t have now.When it first came out, Wilson said she also used ChatGPT to help write emails, until she learned more about its environmental impact and the possibility it would erode her own writing and thinking skills over time.“It’s just an email. I can work it out,” she said. “However many minutes it takes, or seconds it takes, I can still type it myself.”
Most don’t use AI for companionship but it’s more common for young adults
The least common of the eight AI uses was AI companionship, though even that showed an age divide.Just under 2 in 10 of all adults and about a quarter of those under 30 say they’ve used AI for companionship.Wilson has no interest in AI companions, though she isn’t surprised that others do because of the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on her generation’s social experiences.“I totally understand and sympathize behind why people in my age group are leveraging it in that way,” Wilson said.Thayer, the audiologist, also has no interest in AI companionship, though she tries to be polite with chatbots, just in case they’re keeping track.“I mean, I am nice to it, just because I’ve watched movies, right?” Thayer said, laughing. “So I’ll say, ‘Can you make me a meal plan, please?’ And, ‘Can you modify this, please?’ And then I’ll say, ‘Thank you.'”
The AP-NORC poll of 1,437 adults was conducted July 10-14, using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 3.6 percentage points.
Matt O’Brien and Linley Sanders, Associated Press
As a child, Heidi Barley watched her family pay for groceries with food stamps. As a college student, she dropped out because she couldn’t afford tuition. In her twenties, already scraping by, she was forced to take a pay cut that shrunk her salary to just $34,000 a year.But this summer, the 41-year-old hit a milestone that long felt out of reach: She became a millionaire.A surging number of everyday Americans now boast a seven-figure net worth once the domain of celebrities and CEOs. But as the ranks of millionaires grow fatter, the significance of the status is shifting alongside perceptions of what it takes to be truly rich.“Millionaire used to sound like Rich Uncle Pennybags in a top hat,” says Michael Ashley Schulman, chief investment officer at Running Point Capital Advisors, a wealth management firm in El Segundo, California. “It’s no longer a backstage pass to palatial estates and caviar bumps. It’s the new mass-affluent middleweight class, financially secure but two zeros short of private-jet territory.”Inflation, ballooning home values and a decades-long push into stock markets by average investors have lifted millions into millionairehood. A June report from Swiss bank UBS found about one-tenth of American adults are members of the seven-digit club, with 1,000 freshly minted millionaires added daily last year.Thirty years ago, the IRS counted 1.6 million Americans with a net worth of $1 million or more. UBS using data from the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund and central banks of countries around the globe put the number at 23.8 million in the U.S. last year, a nearly 15-fold increase.The expanding ranks of millionaires come as the gulf between rich and poor widens. The richest 10% of Americans hold two-thirds of household wealth, according to the Federal Reserve, averaging $8.1 million each. The bottom 50% hold 3% of wealth, with an average of just $60,000 to their names.Federal Reserve data also shows there are differences by race. Asian people outpace white people in the U.S. in median wealth, while Black and Hispanic people trail in their net worth.Barley was working as a journalist when her newspaper ended its pension program and she got a lump-sum payout of about $5,000. A colleague convinced her to invest it in a retirement account, and ever since, she’s stashed away whatever she could. The investments dipped at first during the Great Recession but eventually started growing. In time, she came to find catharsis in amassing savings, going home and checking her account balances when she had a tough day at work.Last month, after one such day, she realized the moment had come.“Did you know that we’re millionaires?” she asked her husband.“Good job, honey,” Barley says he replied, unfazed.It brought no immediate change. Like many millionaires, much of her wealth is in long-term investments and her home, not easy-to-access cash. She still lives in her modest Orlando, Florida, house, socks away half her paycheck, fills the napkin holder with takeout napkins and lines trash cans with grocery bags.Still, Barley says it feels powerful to cross a threshold she never imagined reaching as a child.“But it’s not as glamorous as the ideas in your head,” she says.All wealth is relative. To thousandaires, $1 million is the stuff of dreams. To billionaires, it’s a rounding error. Either way, it takes twice as much cash today to match the buying power of 30 years ago.A net worth of $1 million in 1995 is equivalent to about $2.1 million today, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.A seven-figure net worth is, to some, as outdated a yardstick as a six-figure salary. Nonetheless, “millionaire” is peppered in everything from politics to popular music as shorthand for rich.“It’s a nice round number but it’s a point in a longer journey,” says Dan Uden, a 41-year-old from Providence, Rhode Island, who works in information technology and who hit the million-dollar mark last month. “It definitely gives you some room to breathe.”No other country comes close to the U.S. in the sheer number of millionaires, though relative to population, UBS found Switzerland and Luxembourg had higher rates.Kenneth Carow, a finance professor at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business, says commonalities emerge among today’s millionaires. The vast majority own stocks and a home. Most live below their means. They value education and teach financial responsibility to their children.“The dream of becoming a millionaire,” Carow says, “has become more obtainable.”Jim Wang, 45, a software engineer-turned finance blogger from Fulton, Maryland, says even if hitting $1 million was essentially “a non-event” for him and his wife, it still held weight for him as the son of immigrants who saved money by turning the heat off on winter nights.The private jets he envisioned as a kid may not have materialized at the million-dollar threshold, but he still sees it as a marker that brings a certain level of security.“It’s possible, even with a regular job,” he says. “You just have to be diligent and consistent.”The resilience of financial markets and the ease of investing in broad-based, low-fee index funds has fueled the balances of many millionaires who don’t earn massive salaries or inherit family fortunes.Among them is a burgeoning community of younger millionaires born out of the movement known as FIRE, for Financial Independence Retire Early.Jason Breck, 48, of Fishers, Indiana, embraced FIRE and reached the million-dollar mark nine years ago. He promptly quit his job in automotive marketing, where he generally earned around $60,000 a year but managed to stow away around 70% of his pay.Now, Breck and his wife spend several months a year traveling. Despite being retired, they continue to grow their balance by sticking to a tight budget and keeping expenses to $1,500 a month when they’re in the U.S and a few hundred dollars more when they travel.Hitting their goal hasn’t translated to luxury. There is no lawn crew to cut the grass, no Netflix or Amazon Prime, no Uber Eats. They fly economy. They drive a 2005 Toyota.“It’s not a golden ticket like it was in the past,” Breck says. “For us, a million dollars buys us freedom and peace of mind. We’re not yacht rich, but for us, we’re time rich.”
Matt Sedensky can be reached at msedensky@ap.org and https://x.com/sedensky
Matt Sedensky, AP National Writer
Collaborative design software company Figma has increased the price target for its highly anticipated initial public offering (IPO). Shares are now expected to be priced between $30 and $32 each, up from the previously disclosed price target range of $25 and $28 each.
The cloud-based interface design tool is aiming for a valuation of around $18.8 billion, dramatically higher than last week’s projection but still below the $20 billion that Adobe had planned to pay for the company a few years ago.
Figma disclosed the expected price target increase on Monday in an amended registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
The San Francisco-based company confidentially filed an initial S-1 form with the SEC in April. On July 1, Figma announced its registration statement was available to the public.
IPO market is heating up this year
Figma will trade on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the ticker FIG. The listing, reportedly expected this week, could be among the year’s biggest.
It comes as the market for tech-focused offerings has been roaring back to life. Circle Internet Group, Chime Financial, and Hinge Health are among the buzzy tech startups that have gone public this year. In addition to Figma, space tech company Firefly Aerospace is also expected to IPO soon.
In September 2022, Adobe (NYSE: ADBE) had announced plans to buy Figma for $20 billion in cash and stock. But the merger was scrapped due to antitrust concerns raised by European and U.K. regulators.
In December 2023, both companies announced that they had mutually agreed to terminate their merger agreement. Adobe paid Figma a $1 billion termination fee.
In its SEC paperwork, Figma reported $228.2 million in revenue for the first three months of 2025. The company reported $749 million in revenue in 2024, an increase of 48% year-over-year. The design software maker has 13 million monthly active users.
Boeing’s second-quarter loss narrowed and revenue improved as the aircraft manufacturer delivered more commercial planes in the period.Boeing Co. lost $611 million, or 92 cents per share, for the three months ended June 30. A year earlier it lost $1.44 billion, or $2.33 per share.Adjusting for one-time gains, Boeing lost $1.24 per share. This was better than the loss of $1.54 per share that analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research expected.Shares rose slightly before the market open on Tuesday.Revenue climbed to $22.75 billion from $16.87 billion, mostly due to 150 commercial deliveries compared with 92 deliveries in the prior-year period.The performance topped Wall Street’s estimate of $21.86 billion.“Our fundamental changes to strengthen safety and quality are producing improved results as we stabilize our operations and deliver higher quality airplanes, products and services to our customers,” CEO Kelly Ortberg said in a statement. “As we look to the second half of the year, we remain focused on restoring trust and making continued progress in our recovery while operating in a dynamic global environment.”Boeing has been dealing with a variety of issues over the past few years.On Sunday Boeing said that it expects more than 3,200 union workers at three St. Louis-area plants that produce U.S. fighter jets to strike after they rejected a proposed contract that included a 20% wage increase over four years.The International Machinists and Aerospace Workers union said the vote by District 837 members was overwhelmingly against the proposed contract. The existing contract was to expire at 11:59 p.m. Central time Sunday, but the union said that a “cooling off” period would keep a strike from beginning for another week, until Aug. 4.Last fall, Boeing offered a general wage increase of 38% over four years to end a 53-day strike by 33,000 aircraft workers producing passenger aircraft.In June the National Transportation Safety Board said that its 17-month long investigation found that lapses in Boeing’s manufacturing and safety oversight, combined with ineffective inspections and audits by the Federal Aviation Administration, led to a door plug panel flying off Alaska Airlines flight 1282, which was a Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft, last year.Boeing said in a statement at the time that it will review the NTSB report and will continue working on strengthening safety and quality across its operations.The Max version of Boeing’s bestselling 737 airplane has been the source of persistent troubles for the company since two of the jets crashed, one in Indonesia in 2018 and another in Ethiopia in 2019, killing a combined 346 people.In May the Justice Department reached a deal allowing Boeing to avoid criminal prosecution for allegedly misleading U.S. regulators about the Max before the two crashes.Boeing was also in the news last month when a 787 flown by Air India crashed shortly after takeoff and killed at least 270 people. Investigators have not determined what caused that crash, but so far they have not found any flaws with the model, which has a strong safety record.
Michelle Chapman, AP Business Writer
Stellantis has forecast that U.S. tariffs would cost it 1.5 billion euros ($1.7 billion) this year, five times the hit taken in the first six months of the year when the carmaker tallied losses of 2.3 billion euros ($2.65 billion).The maker of Jeep, Chrysler, Fiat, and Peugeot cars said Tuesday that net profits plummeted from 5.6 billion euros ($6.5 billion) in the same period last year as it burned 3.3 billion euros ($3.8 billion) in cash for the cancellation of a hydrogen fuel cell project, changes in the fine regime for U.S. carbon emission regulations, and write-downs on platform investments.U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs cost the company 300 million euros ($346 million) in the first six months of the year, Stellantis said. During the period, U.S. shipments were down by nearly a quarter as the carmaker reduced the importation vehicles produced abroad.Stellantis said it expected net revenues to increase over the next six months compared with the first half of the year, when they dropped 13% to 74.3 billion euros ($85.7 billion). The carmaker also said cash flow would improve.Incoming CEO Antonio Filosa, who was confirmed in the role last month, said the new executive team “will continue to make the tough decisions needed to re-establish profitable growth and significantly improve results.”“My first weeks as CEO have reconfirmed my strong conviction that we will fix what’s wrong with Stellantis,” Filosa said in a statement.
Associated Press
