Please ensure Javascript is enabled for purposes of website accessibility

General Dynamics’ Deep promoted to president

Danny Deep, ‘ executive vice of global operations, has been promoted to president of the -based Fortune 100 government contractor, the company announced Friday.

Deep previously served as executive vice president of its combat systems division, vice president of the company and president of General Dynamics Land Systems.

The company also announced Friday that William A. Moss, vice president and controller, intends to retire March 31, 2026, and that Dana O. Maisano, staff vice president and controller for the General Dynamics Information Technology subsidiary, will succeed Moss. She’s been with General Dynamics for more than 20 years, serving in various finance roles.

Deep was promoted to lead global operations in June, following his April 2024 promotion to executive vice president of combat systems. He has been with the company for 24 years.

In June, General Dynamics Chairman and  Phebe Novakovic said in a statement, “Danny will focus on improving operating performance across each of the company’s business units during this period of growth and change. Danny is a proven leader and has spent the last 24 years with the company in various operating roles and has deep experience and demonstrated results.”

Novakovic, who became chairman and CEO in 2013, was the last person to serve as president of General Dynamics, a role she was promoted to in 2012, along with chief operating officer. Six months later, she was tapped as the next CEO.

General Dynamics has more than 110,000 employees worldwide and reported $47.7 billion in 2024 revenue. It ranked No. 96 on the 2025 Fortune 1000.

Frank Gehry, the most celebrated architect of his time, dies at 96

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Frank Gehry, who designed some of the most imaginative buildings ever constructed and achieved a level of worldwide acclaim seldom afforded any architect, has died. He was 96.

Gehry died Friday in his home in Santa Monica after a brief respiratory illness, said Meaghan Lloyd, chief of staff at Gehry Partners LLP.

Gehry’s fascination with modern pop art led to the creation of distinctive, striking buildings. Among his many masterpieces are the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain; The Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles and Berlin’s DZ Bank Building.

He also designed an of Facebook’s Northern California headquarters at the insistence of the company’s , Mark Zuckerberg.

Gehry was awarded every major prize architecture has to offer, including the field’s top honor, the Pritzker Prize, for what has been described as “refreshingly original and totally American” work.

Other honors include the Royal Institute of British Architects gold medal, the Americans for the Arts lifetime achievement award, and his native country’s highest honor, the Companion of the Order of Canada.

The start of his career in architecture

After earning a degree in architecture from the University of Southern California in 1954 and serving in the Army, Gehry studied urban planning at Harvard University.

But his career got off to a slow start. He struggled for years to make ends meet, designing public housing projects, shopping centers and even driving a delivery truck for a time.

Eventually, he got the chance to design a modern shopping mall overlooking the Santa Monica Pier. He was determined to play it safe and came up with drawings for an enclosed shopping mall that looked similar to others in the United States in the 1980s.

To celebrate its completion, the mall’s developer dropped by Gehry’s house and was stunned by what he saw: The architect had transformed a modest 1920s-era bungalow into an inventive abode by remodeling it with chain-link fencing, exposed wood and corrugated metal.

Asked why he hadn’t proposed something similar for the mall, Gehry replied, “Because I have to make a living.”

If he really wanted to make a statement as an architect, he was told, he should drop that attitude and follow his creative vision.

Gehry would do just that for the rest of his life, working into his 90s to create buildings that doubled as stunning works of art.

As his acclaim grew, Gehry Partners LLP, the architectural firm he founded in 1962, grew with it, expanding to include more than 130 employees at one point. But as big as it got, Gehry insisted on personally overseeing every project it took on.

The headquarters of the InterActiveCorp, known as the IAC Building, took the shape of a shimmering beehive when it was completed in New York City’s Chelsea district in 2007. The 76-story New York By Gehry building, once one of the world’s tallest residential structures, was a stunning addition to the lower Manhattan skyline when it opened in 2011.

That same year, Gehry joined the faculty of his alma mater, the University of Southern California, as a professor of architecture. He also taught at Yale and Columbia University.

Imaginative designs drew criticism along with praise

Not everyone was a fan of Gehry’s work. Some naysayers dismissed it as not much more than gigantic, lopsided reincarnations of the little scrap-wood cities he said he spent hours building when he was growing up in the mining town of Timmins, Ontario.

Princeton art critic Hal Foster dismissed many of his later efforts as “oppressive,” arguing they were designed primarily to be tourist attractions. Some denounced the Disney Hall as looking like a collection of cardboard boxes that had been left out in the rain.

Still other critics included Dwight D. Eisenhower’s family, who objected to Gehry’s bold proposal for a memorial to honor the nation’s 34th . Although the family said it wanted a simple memorial and not the one Gehry had proposed, with its multiple statues and billowing metal tapestries depicting Eisenhower’s life, the architect declined to change his design significantly.

If the words of his critics annoyed Gehry, he rarely let on. Indeed, he even sometimes played along. He appeared as himself in a 2005 episode of “The Simpsons” cartoon show, in which he agreed to design a concert hall that was later converted into a prison.

He came up with the idea for the design, which looked a lot like the Disney Hall, after crumpling Marge Simpson’s letter to him and throwing it on the ground. After taking a look at it, he declared, “Frank Gehry, you’ve done it again!”

“Some people think I actually do that,” he would later tell the AP.

Gehry’s lasting legacy around the world

Ephraim Owen Goldberg was born in Toronto on Feb. 28, 1929, and moved to Los Angeles with his family in 1947, eventually becoming a U.S. citizen. As an adult, he changed his name at the suggestion of his first wife, who told him antisemitism might be holding back his career.

Although he had enjoyed drawing and building model cities as a child, Gehry said it wasn’t until he was 20 that he pondered the possibility of pursuing a career in architecture, after a college ceramics teacher recognized his talent.

“It was like the first thing in my life that I’d done well in,” he said.

Gehry steadfastly denied being an artist though.

“Yes, architects in the past have been both sculptors and architects,” he declared in a 2006 interview with The Associated Press. “But I still think I’m doing buildings, and it’s different from what they do.”

His words reflected both a lifelong shyness and an insecurity that stayed with Gehry long after he’d been declared the greatest architect of his time.

“I’m totally flabbergasted that I got to where I’ve gotten,” he told the AP in 2001. “Now it seems inevitable, but at the time it seemed very problematic.”

The Gehry-designed Guggenheim Museum in Abu Dhabi, first proposed in 2006, is expected to finally be completed in 2026 after a series of delays and sporadic work. The 30,000-square-foot (2,787-square-meter) structure will be the world’s largest Guggenheim, leaving a lasting legacy in the capital city of the United Arab Emirates.

His survivors include his wife, Berta; daughter, Brina; sons Alejandro and Samuel; and the buildings he created.

Another daughter, Leslie Gehry Brenner, died of cancer in 2008.

HII wins up to $471.97M Navy contract

Newport News-based contractor has won a contract worth up to $471.97 million to provide engineering support for Nimitz-class and Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carriers.

The Department of (also known as the ) said on Monday that the award tasks with engineering, technical work, design, integrated logistics support, configuration management, database management and modernization and ship change document development.

While the initial cost-plus-fixed-fee contract award is $91.89 million, it includes options that, if exercised, would bring its cumulative value to $471.97 million.

HII will perform about 96% of the work in . The rest will take place in Portsmouth and Bremerton, Washington.

The said the contract was not competitively procured, as HII is the nation’s sole designer and builder of the Gerald R. Ford-class.

The contract work is expected to be completed by November 2030.

Last year, , a division of HII, announced it would, for the first time, build two Gerald R. Ford-class carriers simultaneously in the same dry dock.

NNS delivered the first-in-class USS Gerald R. Ford to the Navy in May 2017. The second-in-class, John F. Kennedy, is scheduled to be delivered to the Navy in March 2027, after missing both a June 2024 and 2025 deadline. The is expected to be delivered to the Navy in 2029, while USS Doris Miller is expected to be delivered in 2032.

Wall Street rises to the edge of its all-time high

Summary

NEW YORK (AP) — The U.S. rose to the edge of its all-time high on Friday.

The S&P 500 added 0.2% and finished just 0.3% shy of its record closing level, which was set in October. It had briefly topped the mark during the day, before paring its gain.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 104 points, or 0.2%, and the Nasdaq composite gained 0.3%.

The modest moves capped a quiet week for , offering a respite following weeks of sharp and scary swings.

Ulta Beauty helped lead the market and jumped 12.7% after the retailer reported stronger profit and revenue for the latest quarter than expected. Kecia Steelman said its customers are broadly feeling pressure, but Ulta saw growth across its categories, particularly in e-commerce. It raised its forecast for revenue over the full year.

Another encouraging signal for the holiday shopping season came from Victoria’s Secret & Co. It delivered a milder loss for the latest quarter than analysts expected, and it likewise raised its forecast for sales over the full year. Its stock rallied 18%.

Warner Bros. Discovery rose 6.3% after Netflix said it would buy Warner Bros. for $72 billion in cash and stock following its pending split from Discovery Global.

The deal for the company behind HBO Max, “Casablanca” and “Harry Potter” is not a sure thing, though. It could raise fears at the U.S. government about too much industry power residing at Netflix.

Shares of Netflix fell 2.9%. Paramount Skydance, which earlier had been seen as a front-runner to buy Warner Bros., sank 9.8%.

Also on the losing end of Wall Street was SoFi Technologies. The financial technology company fell 6.1% to $27.78 after saying it would add $1.5 billion worth of its stock into the market in order to raise cash. It’s selling the stock at a price of $27.50 per share.

All told, the S&P 500 rose 13.28 points to 6,870.40. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 104.05 to 47,954.99, and the Nasdaq composite gained 72.99 to 23,578.13.

If the S&P 500 does return to a record, it would mark the latest time the U.S. stock market has powered past what seemed to be a debilitating set of worries. Most recently, those concerns centered on what the will do with , whether too many dollars are flowing into artificial-intelligence technology and if sharp drops for cryptocurrencies would bleed over into other markets.

After some back and forth, the widespread expectation among traders is now that the Fed will cut its main interest rate next week in hopes of shoring up the slowing U.S. job market. If it does, that would be the third cut of the year.

Investors love lower interest rates because they boost prices for investments and can juice the economy. The downside is that they can worsen inflation, which is stubbornly remaining above the Fed’s 2% target.

Economic reports released on Friday did little to change expectations for a coming cut. One said that an underlying measure of inflation that the Fed prefers to use was at 2.8% in September, exactly as economists expected.

A separate report said U.S. consumers appear to be downgrading their expectations for inflation coming in the near future. They’re now forecasting 4.1% inflation for the year ahead, down from their forecast of 4.5% last month, according to the University of Michigan.

That’s the lowest such forecast since January, which is important because heightened expectations for inflation can create a vicious cycle that only worsens inflation.

In the bond market, Treasury yields climbed. The yield on the 10-year Treasury rose to 4.13% from 4.11% late Thursday.

In stock markets abroad, indexes were mixed in Europe and Asia.

Germany’s DAX returned 0.6%, and South Korea’s Kospi jumped 1.8% for two of the world’s bigger gains.

Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 fell 1.1% after data showed household spending in Japan fell 3.0% in October from a year earlier. It was the sharpest drop since January 2024. Japanese markets have been shaky recently after the Bank of Japan hinted that hikes to interest rates may be coming.

Manufacturer to invest $4.9M in Franklin County expansion

Cornerstone Building Brands, a North Carolina-headquartered manufacturer of exterior building products, plans to invest $4.9 million to expand capacity at its campus, Gov. Glenn Youngkin announced Thursday.

The is expected to create 50 .

“ is proud to continue advancing American by expanding our operations in where we have a terrific team,” Gunner Smith, of Cornerstone Building Brands, said in a news release. “This investment increases our capacity and strengthens our ability to meet future demand for our Ply Gem windows and doors while creating new career opportunities for skilled manufacturing workers in Franklin County.”

In 2018, NCI Building Systems, a Texas-based manufacturer of exterior building products for commercial , and Ply Gem Building Products, a North Carolina-based manufacturer of exterior building products for residential construction, merged and began selling their exterior building materials under the Cornerstone Building Brands name.

The company sells vinyl windows and doors, vinyl siding, stone veneer, metal roofing, metal wall systems and metal accessories. Cornerstone Building Brands’ portfolio includes the brands Ply Gem, Simonton Windows and Doors, Mastic by Ply Gem and Mueller.

Cornerstone Building Brands did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“Cornerstone Building Brands’ expansion builds on the proud manufacturing legacy of its Rocky Mount facility, which has been a cornerstone of Franklin County’s economy since 1939,” Regional Partnership CEO John Hull said in a news release. “The Roanoke region is home to a strong cluster of building products companies — from windows and glass to cement and materials — that continue to innovate, invest and create opportunity for our community.”

With 18,800 employees, Cornerstone Building Brands has close to 100 manufacturing facilities and more than 100 warehouses.

GMU law school dean leaving at end of academic year

SUMMARY: 

  • Scalia School Dean will step down at end of academic year
  • Randall testified to that George Mason’s retaliated against law school and sabotaged it in ABA audit
  • Law school associate dean says resignation not related to testimony

Two months after making accusations against ‘s president in congressional testimony, the dean of Mason’s Scalia Law School is leaving at the end of the academic year.

The university’s provost, James Antony, said this week at a meeting of George Mason’s academic affairs committee that Dean Ken Randall has tendered his resignation, and a search for his successor is underway. Randall, who was previously dean of University of Alabama’s law school, joined Scalia Law School in December 2020.

Ken Turchi, the law school’s associate dean for external affairs, said Randall was not available to comment Friday, and that he hasn’t commented much about the reasons for his decision to step down. However, the dean’s five-year contract is set to end this month, and he offered to extend it to the end of the 2025-26 academic year to give the university an opportunity to search for his successor, Turchi added.

Randall’s departure is not related to his testimony to the , Turchi said, and he will stay on as a tenured law school faculty member following a sabbatical.

The Republican-controlled congressional committee released a staff report last month finding that George Mason President lied to Congress in his testimony about alleged racial discrimination against white and Asian candidates in the university’s hiring practices. The report relied heavily on Randall’s Oct. 1 testimony to the committee, which provided transcripts of his and Washington’s testimony, as well as that of Naoru Koizumi, associate dean of research at Mason’s Schar School of Policy and Government, who was subpoenaed to testify.

“This is hearsay. I did not hear President Washington say this,” Randall testified about a Black job candidate hired for a university administrative position. “But … [Washington] wanted a candidate [for vice president for research] who did not make it to the short list, and … the comment that gets attributed to the president is he said … ‘Oh, come on. Just give the brother a chance.’ And then, ultimately this person was hired as the VP.”

According to the transcript, Randall also said that Washington retaliated against the law school for the dean’s decision not to appoint an equity adviser for hiring decisions, and Randall also accused Washington of apparently sabotaging an American Bar Association accreditation audit of Scalia Law School.

In 2022, Washington “appeared to sabotage a regular American Bar Association accreditation ‘inspection’ of Scalia Law School, telling ABA inspectors that George Mason may be unable to continue to financially support the law school,” Randall testified. “This jeopardized the law school’s accreditation and resulted in the ABA putting Scalia Law School on probation.”

According to the transcript, Randall said Washington, when speaking with ABA examiners, “volunteered that he didn’t know whether the university was going to be able to support the law school [financially] in the same manner it had previously supported the law school.”

Douglas Gansler, Washington’s attorney and a former Maryland attorney general, called the committee report following its Nov. 6 release “a political lynching,” adding that Washington “never discriminated against one human being over his five years at George Mason” and “did not utter one syllable that was not true to Congress.”

Antony, who credited Randall with boosting the law school’s reputation and national standing, said at Thursday’s meeting that the university expects to name a new dean by late spring 2026. Antony, too, will be leaving in March 2026 to become provost at the University of San Diego, he said.

This story has been updated since publication.

New York company buys Chesapeake apartments for $34.8M

New York-based company is investing $34.8 million to acquire and renovate Landmark , a 120-unit complex in .

The purchase marks Fairstead’s third Chesapeake acquisition this year, further expanding its presence in . Although the company did not name the seller, online Chesapeake records show the previous owner was Landmark Two Limited Partnership.

Located at 2900 Fireside Road, Landmark Apartments is a garden-style community with 15 two-floor buildings comprising 72 two-bedroom units and 48 three-bedroom units. All apartments are currently reserved for families earning 60% or less of the area median income, roughly $63,900 for a household of four.

Fairstead plans a comprehensive overhaul, investing over $100,000 per unit in interior and exterior upgrades. Renovations will include aesthetic and functional enhancements, including new kitchens and bathrooms, modern appliances and new flooring and lighting.

The community building, leasing office, laundry room and mailroom will also be improved. Harkins Builders is the project’s general contractor while Moseley Architects will lead the property’s design.

“This latest acquisition reflects the strong need for affordable housing across the region as well as statewide and serves as an example of how public-private partnerships can create long-term impact within the industry,” said Fairstead Jeffrey Goldberg in a statement.

According to Fairstead, renovation will be financed through a mix of Low Income Housing Tax Credit and Project-Based Voucher programs, supported by partners including U.S. Bank, Berkadia, Freddie Mac, Virginia Housing and the Chesapeake Redevelopment and Housing Authority.

is expected to begin in January 2026 and wrap up by mid-2027.

Residents will be temporarily relocated during the renovation process. A spokesperson said Fairstead will be providing relocation assistance and support for all residents, and will be cover the cost of relocation assistance.

The acquisition follows Fairstead’s purchases of the 65-unit Peaceful Village Apartments and the 152-unit MacDonald Manor, both also located in Chesapeake, earlier this year. The company, which focuses on sustainable development and affordable housing, owns more than 26,000 apartments across 28 states and now has 1,300 residences across Virginia.

EU fines X €120M for breaking digital transparency rules

Summary

  • EU issues first non-compliance ruling under the .
  • fined €120M for deceptive blue checkmarks, weak ad transparency and data access barriers.
  • U.S. officials, including Rubio and Vance, criticize the decision as anti–free speech.
  • Regulators say the violations undermine user protection and platform accountability.

LONDON (AP) — regulators on Friday fined X, ‘s social media platform, 120 million euros ($140 million) for breaches of the bloc’s digital regulations, in a move that risks rekindling tensions with Washington over free speech.

The European Commission issued its decision following an investigation it opened two years ago into X under the 27-nation bloc’s Digital Services Act, also known as the DSA.

It’s the first time that the EU has issued a so-called non-compliance decision since rolling out the DSA. The sweeping rulebook requires platforms to take more responsibility for protecting European users and cleaning up harmful or illegal content and products on their sites, under threat of hefty fines.

The Commission, the bloc’s executive arm, said it was punishing X because of three different breaches of the DSA’s transparency requirements. The decision could rile Donald Trump, whose administration has lashed out at digital regulations, complained that Brussels was targeting U.S. tech companies and vowed to retaliate.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio posted on his X account that the Commission’s fine was akin to an attack on the American people. Musk later agreed with Rubio’s sentiment.

“The European Commission’s $140 million fine isn’t just an attack on @X, it’s an attack on all American tech platforms and the American people by foreign governments,” Rubio wrote. “The days of censoring Americans online are over.”

Vice President JD Vance, posting on X ahead of the decision, accused the Commission of seeking to fine X “for not engaging in censorship.”

“The EU should be supporting free speech not attacking American companies over garbage,” he wrote.

Officials denied the rules were intended to muzzle Big Tech companies. The Commission is “not targeting anyone, not targeting any company, not targeting any jurisdictions based on their color or their country of origin,” spokesman Thomas Regnier told a regular briefing in Brussels. “Absolutely not. This is based on a process, democratic process.”

X did not respond immediately to an email request for comment.

EU regulators had already outlined their accusations in mid-2024 when they released preliminary findings of their investigation into X.

Regulators said X’s blue checkmarks broke the rules because on “deceptive design practices” and could expose users to scams and manipulation.

Before Musk acquired X, when it was previously known as Twitter, the checkmarks mirrored verification badges common on social media and were largely reserved for celebrities, politicians and other influential accounts, such as Beyonce, Pope Francis, writer Neil Gaiman and rapper Lil Nas X.

After he bought it in 2022, the site started issuing the badges to anyone who wanted to pay $8 per month.

That means X does not meaningfully verify who’s behind the account, “making it difficult for users to judge the authenticity of accounts and content they engage with,” the Commission said in its announcement.

X also fell short of the transparency requirements for its ad database, regulators said.

Platforms in the EU are required to provide a database of all the digital advertisements they have carried, with details such as who paid for them and the intended audience, to help researches detect scams, fake ads and coordinated influence campaigns. But X’s database, the Commission said, is undermined by design features and access barriers such as “excessive delays in processing.”

Regulators also said X also puts up “unnecessary barriers” for researchers trying to access public data, which stymies research into systemic risks that European users face.

“Deceiving users with blue checkmarks, obscuring information on ads and shutting out researchers have no place online in the EU. The DSA protects users,” Henna Virkkunen, the EU’s executive vice-president for tech sovereignty, security and democracy, said in a prepared statement.

The Commission also wrapped up a separate DSA case Friday involving TikTok’s ad database after the video-sharing platform promised to make changes to ensure full transparency.

Appalachian Community Capital announces new CEO

Appalachian Community Capital, a Christiansburg-based financial institution that supports small-business and across the Appalachian region, has named Daniel Wallace its next and .

He will take over on Jan. 2, 2026, succeeding Donna Gambrell, who is retiring at the end of the year after nearly a decade of leading the organization’s growth.

“I’m honored to step into this role at such a pivotal moment for ,” said Daniel Wallace in a statement. “Across the region, there is a powerful opportunity to strengthen the economic backbone of our communities, expand flexible capital for underserved entrepreneurs and build the long-term capacity that makes resilience possible.”

Wallace, who has almost 30 years of experience in rural business development and nonprofit leadership, joins from the Green Bank for Rural America, an ACC subsidiary he has led since its launch last year.

The Green Bank was established to accelerate investment in rural enterprises, community projects and energy-resilient infrastructure. It was launched with a $500 million award from the Environmental Protection Agency. Under Wallace’s leadership, the subsidiary identified more than $328 million in energy-related businesses and projects.

Before joining Green Bank, Wallace was chief investment officer at Coastal Enterprises, Inc. (CEI), where he led efforts to develop new financing tools to expand access to capital for low-income communities and entrepreneurs often overlooked by traditional financial markets. CEI’s loan and investment portfolio grew to a record $78 million during that period.

In a statement, Interim ACC Board Chair Marten Jenkins said the institution was “thrilled” to welcome Wallace as its president and CEO.

“His catalytic leadership in development finance — and his deep commitment to building pathways to durable prosperity — align perfectly with ACC’s vision and the momentum we are building for the future,” Jenkins said.

Wallace said he’s excited to work alongside the organization’s community development financial institution members and partners “to advance a more prosperous future for Appalachia and rural America.”

Based in Christiansburg, ACC is a lending intermediary created to raise capital for its 43 members. The members then use ACC’s capital to fund small businesses in underserved areas in Appalachia. The members and their affiliates manage $4.5 billion in assets.

Fed’s preferred inflation gauge stayed elevated in September as spending weakened

Summary

  • Fed’s preferred gauge rose 0.3% in September, unchanged from August.
  • up 0.2%, keeping pressure toward the 2% target.
  • Steady inflation strengthens expectations for a rate cut on Dec. 9–10.
  • Mixed economic signals: slower spending, higher unemployment, rising AI investment, and emerging job cuts.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The ‘s preferred measure of inflation changed little in September, likely easing the way to a widely expected interest rate cut by the central bank next week.

Prices rose 0.3% in September from August, the Commerce Department said Friday, in a report that was delayed five weeks by the government shutdown. It matched the increase recorded during the previous month. Excluding the volatile food and energy categories, core prices rose 0.2% in September from August, the same as August, and a pace that if it continued for a year would bring inflation closer to the Fed’s 2% target.

Compared with a year ago, overall prices rose 2.8%, up slightly from 2.7% in August. Core prices also rose 2.8% from a year earlier, a small decline from the previous month’s figure of 2.9%.

The data indicate that core inflation was muted in September and will bolster the case for a cut to the Fed’s key interest rate at its next meeting Dec. 9-10. Inflation remains above the central bank’s 2% target, partly because of Donald Trump’s tariffs, but many Fed officials argue that weak hiring, modest economic growth, and slowing wage gains will steadily reduce price gains in the coming months.

At the same time, there were some warning signs in the figures. Omair Sharif, chief economist at Inflation Insights, said that Friday’s report overall will likely reassure the Fed that core inflation is mostly cool. But he noted that a measure of services inflation in the report remains elevated and could raise concerns among some Fed policymakers, since the higher figure doesn’t stem from tariffs, but instead broader inflationary pressures.

“It hasn’t really shown any sign of slowing down,” Sharif said. “That has to be concerning for them.”

The Fed is facing a tricky decision next week: It would typically keep rates high to fight inflation. At the same time, it is worried about weak hiring and a slowly rising unemployment rate. It hopes that reducing rates will spur more borrowing and boost the economy.

Friday’s report also showed that grew, though at a slower monthly pace in September than the previous month, suggesting Americans were willing to spend despite high prices and stagnant hiring. Spending rose 0.3% in September, down from 0.5% in August.

More recently, Americans appeared to step up their spending on Black Friday and the weekend after Thanksgiving, which could boost growth in this year’s fourth quarter. Online spending jumped 7.7% during the five days after Thanksgiving, compared to the same period last year, according to Adobe Analytics.

Incomes, meanwhile, rose at a solid 0.4% in September for the second straight month.

The economy is sending unusually mixed signals, as growth appears solid even as the unemployment rate has ticked up to a four-year high of 4.4%. Home sales are moribund and factories have been cutting , yet a boom in investment in artificial intelligence data centers has boosted the broader economy.

But on Wednesday, payroll processor ADP said that businesses shed 32,000 jobs in November, a sign that companies are starting to lay off workers. Should job cuts continue, consumers would likely rapidly dial back their shopping, weakening the economy.

The government will issue its own for November on December 16, which for now is forecast to show a small gain, according to data provider FactSet.