Staying put for better pay

America’s job market has historically rewarded the footloose. The surest route to a higher salary, the usual advice goes, is to string together a series of one- or two-year stints, each paying a bit better than the last. Career gurus on TikTok set videos of their own salary progression to jaunty pop beats, cloaking online bragging as guidance for the uninitiated. On Reddit, posters debate just how little time in a role a job-hopper can get away with before future employers might start to fret about disloyalty. Now things are changing. For the first time in 15 years, barring a couple of blips, wage growth for “job-stayers”, those who have stuck with their employer, is running faster than for “job-switchers”, those who jumped ship, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. Thus, for America’s office drones, hunkering down and impressing the boss may well be a better bet than polishing their CV or responding to those LinkedIn messages from head-hunters.

(Adapted from “Want higher pay? Stay in your job,” published on July 22, 2025, by The Economist)

Fighting Harvard

At Harvard, you can study negotiation. This being Harvard, there is in fact an entire academic programme dedicated to the craft. The principles are simple. Understand your alternatives — what happens if you fight rather than compromise — and your long-term interests. This being Donald Trump’s America, Harvard itself is now the case study. President Trump has turned full guns on Harvard. He has pressured it to hire fewer “Leftist dopes” and discipline pro-Palestine protesters. When the university refused, his administration froze federal research grants worth $3bn and tried to bar it from enrolling foreign students. Harvard has fought back and sued the government twice. Yet it seems increasingly likely that it will follow Columbia University and fold; reports suggest it will pay up to $500m. America’s oldest and richest university would be the president’s most satisfying trophy and its capitulation would become a template for coerced reforms across higher education in America.

(Adapted from “What Donald Trump Is Teaching Harvard,” published on July 30, 2025, by The Economist)

South-East Asia & AI

When Lawrence Wong visited China on his first trip as Singapore’s prime minister in June, he delivered a warning: economic restrictions are futile in an interconnected world. The more one country imposes restrictions on others, Mr Wong said in Beijing, “the more it incentivises others to find alternative solutions and sources”. Many of those alternative solutions are in South-East Asia, which is becoming a vital arena in the global tech competition between America and China — and its role in the global tech economy is growing. The region’s 700m people, as well as its proximity to several large economies, make it an ideal base for tech firms. Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia now host nearly 2GW in data-centre capacity, according to Jones Lang LaSalle, a property-services firm. These countries are well-suited to their roles as partners, geopolitical buffers and back doors for tech titans.

(Adapted from “South-East Asia Makes An AI Power Grab,” published on July 29, 2025, by The Economist)

BNPL’s risks

Banks don’t want you bingeing on “buy now, pay later” plans (BNPL), and they say it might actually hurt your chances of getting approved for a mortgage or credit card. Bankers and underwriting consultants say frequent use of BNPL — even with on-time payments — is often treated as risky because it is hard to tell whether a customer is using the loans responsibly. It factors into decisions about how big a credit line to extend, what interest rate to charge or whether to even approve the borrower. Traditional lenders also stand to lose revenue and market share for their own loan products as BNPL becomes more popular. BNPL providers pitch their services as a cheaper, more accessible alternative to credit cards. They say their instalment plans, which often don’t charge interest, help customers save money, take control of their cash flow and expand access to credit without annual fees. BNPL transaction volume is expected to reach $116.67bn in 2025 in the US, according to Emarketer, up from $13.88bn in 2020.

(Adapted from “Banks Hate ‘Buy Now, Pay Later’ — and May Penalise Its Users,” by Imani Moise, published on July 22, 2025 by the Wall Street Journal)

Published in Dawn, The Business and Finance Weekly, August 4th, 2025