Global manufacturing contracted in September for the first time in more than two years as orders and production continued to weaken, underscoring growing risks of a worldwide recession.
First they came for factory jobs. Then they showed up in service industries. Now, machines are making inroads into the kind of white-collar office work once thought to be the exclusive preserve of humans.
The pandemic pushed millions of older Americans out of the labor force. It should have spawned a surge in Social Security benefits applications — but it hasn’t. Perhaps because they aren’t retired.
