After a yearlong search, Rana Robillard was elated to learn she’d beaten three other bidders for a house in the leafy California suburb of Orinda, just outside of San Francisco.

So when Robillard, who works at a software startup, received an email in late January from her mortgage broker with directions to wire a $398,359.58 down payment to a JPMorgan Chase account, she wasted no time sending the money.

After all, the email appeared to be a response to one Robillard had sent her broker asking about final steps before the closing, which was rapidly approaching.

But on Jan. 30, the day after she’d sent the wire, Robillard got what looked like a duplicate request for the down payment, and it dawned on her that she had fallen for a scam — one that would throw her life into turmoil for the next six months. To her horror, instead of sending a down payment for her future home to the title company, as she believed she had done, Robillard had been tricked into sending her life savings to a criminal.

“That’s when I went into a full panic,” Robillard, 55, told CNBC, which verified the details of her story with the four banks involved.

What happened to Robillard, a 25-year veteran of tech companies including cybersecurity firm HackerOne, speaks to the increasingly sophisticated nature of cybercrime. Fraudsters are able to penetrate the email systems of mortgage brokers, real estate agents, lawyers or other advisors, waiting for the perfect moment to strike by sending emails or phone calls that appear to be from trusted parties.

Real estate, with its large transaction sizes and frequent use of wire transfers, has proven to be an especially lucrative target for criminals. Wires are faster than other forms of payment, typically closing within 24 hours, can handle far larger sums and are often irreversible, making them ideal for fraud.

Scams involving fake emails in real estate deals have exploded over the last decade, rising from less than $9 million in losses in 2015 to $446.1 million by 2022, according to FBI data.

Once criminals have a victim’s money, they quickly shuffle it to other bank accounts before withdrawing it as cash, converting it into crypto or exploiting mules to launder the funds, according to Naftali Harris, CEO of anti-fraud startup SentiLink. That’s why recovering funds in wire fraud can be so difficult, he added.

“The faster the fraudster moves it out of that first account and the more institutions they move it to, the better for them, because it just gets murkier and harder to track,” Harris said.

That’s what initially happened to Robillard’s funds, which went from a JPMorgan Chase account to ones at Citigroup and Ally Bank, according to people with knowledge of her case who weren’t authorized to speak publicly.

Robillard had alerted her bank, Charles Schwab, of the fraud on Jan. 30; within days, an official working in the cyber branch of the San Francisco division of the FBI had this message:

“Funds have been located and are frozen,” the official said, according to a Feb. 2 email reviewed by CNBC. “That’s all I’m allowed to tell you.”

After that promising start, Robillard’s frustrations have only mounted.

Robillard says she was initially told that her funds would likely be released after 90 days. But as the weeks and months stretched on, there were few updates from JPMorgan, which has taken the lead on the case, she said.

The FBI told her that once the banks involved had frozen the funds, its role was over, she said. So Robillard became obsessed with advocating for herself, reaching out to elected officials and government agencies including the Federal Trade Commission and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

“Nobody will give you any updates or information,” Robillard said. “I’ve been very assertive trying to get people to help; every week I’m following up with random people on LinkedIn from Chase, I’m filing to the California attorney general, the FTC, the CFPB, but it’s gotten me nowhere.”

In early July, Robillard told CNBC she had no idea whether she would ever see her money again.And while she’s been in financial limbo, the world has moved on. The home she had envisioned living in with her daughter — a newly renovated four bedroom on nearly half an acre of land — has been relisted by Opendoor for $1.63 million.

Robillard says she decided to publicize her story to boost awareness of real estate wire fraud, besides being a last-ditch attempt at getting her money back.

“This is not what I thought my public representation would look like, which is that I’ve lost all this money,” Robillard said. “If it helps other people, I’m happy to do it, even though it’s obviously not my proudest moment.”

Robillard acknowledges that she could’ve been more cautious before initiating the wire transfer. For one, she says she should’ve confirmed with OS National, the title company owned by Opendoor, that the wire request sent to her in January was an authentic one.

But Robillard also sees ample room for improvement in all the parties involved: Her real estate agent should’ve explained that wire directions would be coming directly from the title company; the banks should’ve verified that the receiving account was that of a genuine title company and not a fraudster; and her mortgage broker should’ve used a secure portal for document sharing.

In a chain of more than 20 emails seen by CNBC between Robillard and her mortgage processor, Kristy Aichinger of Compass Mortgage Advisors, just one was sent by the cybercriminal. It was indistinguishable from the rest.

While Martinez, California-based Compass Mortgage denies being hacked, it acknowledged that the email with wire directions wasn’t from them, according to Robillard.

When reached by phone last week, Aichinger declined to comment and referred a reporter to the company’s founder and president, Kent Donahue.

Donahue didn’t respond to several detailed messages about this story.

After more than five months in limbo, Robillard finally caught a break.

A few days after CNBC contacted the banks in early July about the Robillard case, she received a $150,000 wire from Chase, funds that had been bounced back from Ally. Then, on Thursday, Robillard got the balance of her down payment that had been at Citi, nearly $250,000.

A JPMorgan spokesman had the following comment:

“We are sorry to hear that Ms. Robillard was tricked into sending funds from her real estate transaction to an imposter,” the spokesman said. “Although she’s not our customer, we were able to recover all of her funds.”

Further, JPMorgan said that consumers should be wary of last-minute changes to payment instructions and to always verify wire recipients before sending money.

Robillard’s bank, Schwab, told CNBC that it urged customers to “remain vigilant in protecting their personal information, and stay skeptical when it comes to financial transactions.”

Robillard still doesn’t know who was behind the scam.

While overjoyed that she can finally begin a new home search, the tech executive struck a pessimistic note.

The real estate industry has gotten used to closing transactions electronically, which is efficient, but leaves buyers open to fraud, she said. Advances in artificial intelligence will give criminals more tools to impersonate those they trust to steal Americans’ money, she warned.

“The banks and real estate companies weren’t even prepared for the old world, how are they going to handle the new one?” Robillard said. “Nobody’s ready for what’s coming.”

They say everything’s bigger in Texas.

And between 2020 and 2023, that seems to have been true of population growth.

Nine of the 10 U.S. cities and towns where populations grew at the fastest clip during that period are found in the Lone Star State, according to the latest U.S. Census Bureau data on places with populations of 20,000 or more at any point between April 2020 and July 2023.

Celina, Texas, a city about 40 miles north of Dallas, earned the top spot as its population grew by more than 143% between 2020 and 2023. As of July 2020, the city had a humble population of just over 17,800. By July 2023, that number had swelled to more than 43,300, according to Census Bureau estimates.

Residents say Celina is incredibly safe, has excellent economic health and offers an overall great quality of life, according to a 2022 community engagement survey the city sponsored.

Fulshear, Texas, which lies about 30 miles west of Houston, experienced similar growth. Its population more than doubled, from 17,558 in 2020 to 42,616 in 2023.

On the flip side, Big Spring, Texas, had the fastest population decline of -14.8% over the three-year period. But it’s the only Texas city among the 10 U.S. cities and towns that saw the biggest population drops between 2020 and 2023.

While the cities that grew the fastest are fairly concentrated in Texas, places where populations shrank by the largest percentages are spread across eight states, primarily in the South and Western regions. California has three entries, including notoriously expensive San Francisco.

The population growth in many Texas towns may be attributed, at least in part, to the state’s relatively lower cost of living compared with many other states, plus its lack of personal income tax. Texas also ranked No. 3 in the nation in CNBC’s 2024 top states for business rankings.

The state’s population has been growing steadily and faster than nearly any other state since 2000, the Census Bureau reports. Despite its position along the Southern border, domestic migration has played a slightly larger role than international migration in Texas’ population growth, the agency finds.

DETROIT — General Motors said Tuesday it is again slowing its plans for all-electric vehicles by further delaying a second U.S. electric truck plant and the Buick brand’s first EV.

The six-month delay in retooling the electric truck plant in Michigan, until mid-2026, also means GM will not achieve a prior target of having North American production capacity of 1 million EVs by 2025.

‘We are committed to growing responsibly and profitably,” GM CEO Mary Barra told investors Tuesday during the company’s second-quarter earnings call.

Barra’s comments come a week after she raised concerns about GM hitting its North American EV production capacity target.

Barra did not provide updated timing on Buick’s first EV, which was expected in 2024. The entire Buick brand has targeted being fully electric by 2030, as part of GM’s plans to exclusively offer consumer EVs by 2035.

The changes add new questions about the Detroit automaker’s plans for future battery cell plants other than two current joint venture facilities with LG Energy Solution in North America. GM previously announced plans for four of the multibillion-dollar plants in the U.S. by 2026.

Barra on Tuesday said the company would grow cell production in a “meaningful cadence.”

GM CFO Paul Jacobson declined to discuss potential plans to delay or cancel the automaker’s future EV battery cell plants, aside from the two facilities making cells in Ohio and Tennessee.

“We’re going to continue to be guided by the customer. We’re rapidly scaling in cell plants one and two,” Jacobson said during a media briefing. “We have nothing to comment on right now.”

GM’s U.S. EV deliveries increased 40% during the second quarter compared with a year earlier to 21,930 units. Still, EVs made up only 3.2% of its total second-quarter U.S. sales.

Jacobson said the company is set to ramp up assembly to achieve production and vehicle wholesales of between 200,000 and 250,000 all-electric vehicles in North America this year. He said the company wholesaled about 75,000 of its new EVs during the first half of the year.

Jacobson reiterated GM expects its EVs to be profitable on a production, or contribution-margin basis, once it reaches output of 200,000 units by the fourth quarter.

“We’re still holding to that,” Jacobson said, adding additional EV sales are expected to lower the company’s earnings, as they will be less than variable profits of GM’s traditional gas models.

Many of America’s largest labor unions have now announced their endorsements of Kamala Harris’ presidential bid, as the vice president intensifies her campaign for the Democratic nomination.

Yet some notable union holdouts remain, suggesting Harris will still have some work to do to win over other working-class voters.

On Monday, the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), the biggest federation of unions in the U.S. and a longtime supporter of President Joe Biden, announced its endorsement of Harris.

“From day one, Vice President Kamala Harris has been a true partner in leading the most pro-labor administration in history,” said AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler. “At every step in her distinguished career in public office, she’s proven herself a principled and tenacious fighter for working people and a visionary leader we can count on. From taking on Wall Street and corporate greed to leading efforts to expand affordable child care and support vulnerable workers, she’s shown time and again that she’s on our side.”

Shuler added: “With Kamala Harris in the White House, together we’ll continue to build on the powerful legacy of the Biden-Harris administration to create good union jobs, grow the labor movement and make our economy work for all of us.’

Several other unions also have announced their support, including the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), the United Food & Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW), the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) in addition to the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and the United Steelworkers (USW).

The Biden-Harris administration has enjoyed the steady backing of union and labor groups over the past few years and it has sought to reciprocate. In his most high-profile show of support, Biden became the first sitting president to walk a picket line during the United Auto Workers’ strike against the Big Three automakers last fall.

But the UAW is one of the groups that has yet to announce its formal support for Harris’ White House bid. On Sunday, it issued a statement praising Biden’s leadership during his administration but stopped short of endorsing Harris.

‘The path forward is clear: we will defeat Donald Trump and his billionaire agenda and elect a champion for the working class to the highest office in this country,’ the statement read.

A UAW representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday morning.

Republican nominee Donald Trump has sought to undermine UAW leadership, explicitly calling for the ouster of its head, Shawn Fain.

During his nomination acceptance speech in Milwaukee last week, Trump claimed, without evidence, that China was planning to build auto manufacturing sites in Mexico at the expense of assembly lines in the U.S.

“The United Auto Workers ought to be ashamed for allowing this to happen and the leader of the United Auto Workers should be fired immediately,’ Trump said, adding: ‘Every single autoworker, union and nonunion, should be voting for Donald Trump because we’re going to bring back car manufacturing and we’re going to bring it back fast.’

There remain dozens of automotive manufacturing plants in the U.S., many of which are in Southern states and the Midwest.

Trump has also sought to exploit the UAW’s concerns about the national transition to electric vehicles — something that caused the union to decline to explicitly support Biden’s 2024 candidacy.

“The federal government is pouring billions into the electric vehicle transition, with no strings attached and no commitment to workers,” Fain said last spring, according to CNBC. “The EV transition is at serious risk of becoming a race to the bottom. We want to see national leadership have our back on this before we make any commitments.”

The UAW has historically seen a steady 60-40 split between Democrat- and Republican-supporting members, according to Brian Rothenberg, a former UAW communications director and now a partner at Triumph Communications firm.

He said that while UAW members remain uneasy about the EV transition, there are other concerns about workplace safety, and especially the impact of Project 2025, a conservative blueprint that lays out actions to weaken public-sector unions.

‘That’s a much more robust issue for them than perhaps for the rest of the country,’ Rothenberg said.

UAW members have attended and participated in Trump events in Michigan, CNBC reported last year.

This past weekend, Trump and running mate JD Vance appeared at a rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, to bolster support in the crucial swing state.

While UAW leadership has at least formally rejected Trump, another major union player has explicitly signaled its presidential endorsement is up for grabs.

Sean O’Brien, the head of the Teamsters Union, gave an impassioned speech against corporate interests at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee last week that caused some commentators to question whether labor is now as fully united behind Democrats as they have traditionally been. 

‘I refuse to keep doing the same things my predecessors did,’ O’Brien said. ‘Today, the Teamsters are here to say we aren’t beholden to anyone or any party. We will create an agenda and work with a bipartisan coalition ready to accomplish something real for the American worker. I don’t care about getting criticized. It’s an honor to be the first Teamster in our 121-year history to address the Republican National Convention.’

A since-deleted post on X from the official Teamsters account in the wake of the speech appeared to signal internal rancor about O’Brien’s appearance.

“Unions gain nothing from endorsing the racist, misogynistic, and anti-trans politics of the far right, no matter how much people like Sen. Hawley attempt to tether such bigotry to a cynical pro-labor message,” the Teamsters account wrote on X, referring to the Republican senator from Missouri, Josh Hawley, then adding: “You don’t unite a diverse working class by scoffing at its diversity.”

In a statement, a Teamsters representative said the group has invited Harris to a roundtable discussion, and noted that its presidential endorsement are traditionally announced after the political parties’ conventions.

‘We are on our timeline and continuing to engage our members in this process,’ the spokesperson said.

The Democrats will host their convention in Chicago next month.

While Biden has been generally pro-labor, seeking to increase manufacturing jobs and improve workers’ bargaining power by banning noncompete agreements, active union membership has stayed on its historical downtrend during his term.

Yet even as Republicans have begun to pursue working-class and factory workers more aggressively, there is currently an effort underway to dismantle the National Labor Relations Board, the government body in charge of settling labor disputes.

The biggest backer of that initiative is Elon Musk, the head of Tesla, who has pledged his full support to Trump.

Musk, who earned praise from Trump at the Michigan rally, was sanctioned by the NLRB for tweeting in 2018: “Nothing stopping Tesla team at our car plant from voting union … But why pay union dues & give up stock options for nothing?”

More recently, Tesla became the subject of an NLRB complaint in May that accused the company of discouraging its employees ‘from forming, joining, or assisting the Union or engaging in other concerted activities.’ An initial hearing in that dispute is scheduled for this month.

A Tesla representative could not be reached for comment.

People are struggling to pay off their credit card debt even as many trim their spending.

The share of credit card balances that are past due reached the highest level ever in the first quarter, according to data the Philadelphia Federal Reserve has tracked since 2012.

The delinquencies come as consumers have leaned heavily on borrowing to pay for everything from groceries to vacations — expenses that have risen sharply during the pandemic recovery — and as higher interest rates to curb inflation have pushed card rates to record highs.

The Philadelphia Fed report, released Wednesday, found the number of accounts with balances at least 30 days past due fell in the first quarter, and total card balances dipped somewhat as well. Both are seasonal trends that typically occur at the start of the year after the holiday spending season, the report noted.

Even so, “account holders who are behind have larger balances left unpaid,” the researchers wrote.

The figures add to a worrying portrait of U.S. consumer credit, with first-quarter data released in May by the New York Federal Reserve showing household debt swelling and credit card and auto loan delinquency rates rising across age groups. Consumer spending has largely held up this year even as the economy cools and many tighten their belts. Wealthier households are still splurging on experiences like travel, while big brands dangle promotions to keep tighter-budget customers coming back.

“The fact that we see more people carrying balances for a longer period of time, and now more people falling behind, is evidence of the struggle that millions of households are engaged in just trying to make ends meet,” said Greg McBride, chief financial analyst at the personal finance company Bankrate.

Faced with steep rates and rising debt burdens, some consumers are thinking twice about extending themselves further.

The Philadelphia Fed also found declines in the number of new credit card accounts in the first quarter. While that’s also typical in the months after the holidays, the total is down from the same period last year, and major Wall Street firms have flagged recently that cardholders are tapping the brakes on spending.

A similar caution is showing up in the housing market, where mortgage initiations reached a record low in the Philadelphia Fed’s data. Mortgage demand has been on the downtrend even as rates ease, as some prospective homebuyers sit tight in hopes that the Federal Reserve will finally start lowering interest rates in the months ahead.

Cassandra Happe, an analyst at the personal finance website WalletHub, said the Philadelphia Fed’s mortgage data highlights “deepening affordability issues, with high housing costs and mortgage rates discouraging new home purchases.”

“The rising average loan size points to a market increasingly dominated by higher-income buyers, exacerbating housing inequality,” she said in an email.

As inflation has cooled, the Federal Reserve is widely expected to cut interest rates by September. But Bankrate’s McBride warned that it will take awhile for consumers to feel relief.

“Interest rates took the elevator going up, but they’re going to take the stairs going down,” he said. “Interest rates are not going to fall fast enough to bail you out of a bad situation.”

The math seemed impossible, but numbers don’t lie — it was less expensive for Julie Kelley to send her 9-year-old son to seven different summer camps in three states than to enroll him in one full-time program in Vermont, where they live.

Summer vacation lasts 10 weeks for the Kelleys. And it will cost Kelley and her husband Richard about $2,000 for their only child.

When Kelley searched for full-time, five-day summer camps near Saint Johnsbury, Vermont, where her family lives, she says she couldn’t find any options. Other full-time camps in Burlington, Vermont, about a two-hour drive from their house, cost $400 per week.

By the time school starts in August, Kelley’s son will have attended day camps in Vermont, New Hampshire and Minnesota, where they’ll stay with relatives. All the camps cost between $150 and $400 per week.

“It sounds insane, but those were the best options within our budget, even planning months in advance,” the 50-year-old mom tells CNBC Make It. The local day camp they used last summer closed because of staffing shortages.

Kelley, a communications consultant who works from home full time, says she and her husband are spending “more than double” what they did last year on other child-care arrangements.

“Any time I run into other parents in line for coffee or at the park and ask how they’re doing, I see the same sleep-deprived expression reflecting back to me,” she says. “Summer shouldn’t feel this hard.” 

American families now spend nearly one-fifth of their income, an average of $800 per month, on child care, the Federal Reserve reports.

The rising cost of child care is not a seasonal issue, but the summer months can be especially challenging for families as schools close and parents are on the hook for day care, sleepaway camps and other expenses. 

The average cost of summer camp in the U.S. is about $87 a day, with sleepaway camp tuition at about $173 a day, according to the American Camp Association.

Years marked by inflation and a nationwide child-care crisis mean that families are more cash-strapped than usual. 

Summer camp isn’t an option for many households across the U.S. as 40% of parents say that they can’t afford such programs due to a higher cost of living, according to a recent Credit Karma survey of more than 2,000 U.S. adults. 

Of those who are sending their children to camp, nearly 30% are going into debt or resorting to buy-now, pay-later options to cover the cost. 

A separate report on summer parenting, released in June by the non-profit organization ParentsTogetherAction, found that 59% of parents have someone in their household who had to cut back on hours or leave a job because they can’t afford reliable seasonal child care.

In summers past, both of Margaret McGriff’s daughters, ages 7 and 12, would attend a day camp near their home in Lake Worth, Florida, Mondays through Fridays while she was at work. 

“It was the perfect setup,” McGriff, who is a single parent, says. “I’d drop them before driving to the office and pick them up on my way home around 5 p.m.”

This summer looks a lot different. After months of struggling with higher tax, grocery and gas bills, among other necessities, McGriff says she could only afford to send her younger daughter back to camp. 

The program costs about $2,000 per child, which means she’ll save $2,000 by keeping her 12-year-old daughter home for the summer. 

Margaret McGriff has been bringing her oldest daughter to work with her on Wednesdays in the summer to save on child care. She says having a flexible employer has been a “godsend.”Photo: Margaret McGriff

McGriff, who is a senior content strategist at Labor Finders, a staffing and recruitment firm in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, had to ask her boss if she could work mostly from home until August, as she couldn’t find a nanny or part-time camp for her eldest daughter within her budget. 

Instead of spending three days in-office each week as she normally would, McGriff is commuting once a week between June and August. On Wednesdays, her daughter comes with her to the office.

“I’m super fortunate to have that job flexibility, but it’s still been incredibly challenging to balance parenting and working full time,” McGriff, 42, says. “This is the first summer I haven’t had access to affordable child care. It’s just mentally exhausting.” 

McGriff says that, despite the unexpected challenges this summer brought, she and her daughter have grown “even closer” and are finding silver linings in being home together. 

Her older daughter has been reading, baking and completing workbooks to kill time while McGriff is at her job. In the evenings and on weekends, McGriff takes her children to museums, parks, the movie theater and other outings to make up for the field trips her oldest daughter is missing from not going to camp. 

Natasha Brown works from home as a data annotator from midnight until 8 a.m. five days a week, then clocks into her “second shift” as a working mother to six kids, all off from school and home for the summer. 

“It is complete chaos,” Brown, 40, says. “This has been the most stressful summer ever.” 

Brown and her husband, Christopher, live in Cumming, Georgia with their children — their youngest child just turned 1, and their oldest is 20 — and two dogs. Christopher also works from home full time as a data manager for a health tech company. 

Natasha Brown and her husband, Christopher, opted to keep their six children home (pictured here with five of their children) for the summer and save the money they would have spent on camps for a family vacation in the fall.Photo: Natasha Brown

Last summer, the parents hired a full-time nanny for about $800 per week to watch their four youngest children while they worked. The Browns would also send their children to part-time day camps and one-off activities like cello and singing lessons. 

This summer, however, Brown says they’ve been “crushed” by higher child-care costs and had no choice but to keep their children at home. Hiring another full-time nanny would’ve cost the family about $1,800 per week, more than double the amount it cost last year.

“At that rate, almost my entire paycheck, or my husband’s, would be spent on summer child care,” she says. “We want our son and daughters to have a fun summer but we don’t want to blow our savings to make that happen.”

Her two oldest children, who are 16 and 20, have summer jobs, and the younger three — ages 11, 9 and 5 — are taking online classes in French, Spanish, math, ballet and other subjects on the platform Outschool. Classes can cost as little as $10 or upwards of $100 depending on the subject.

Other than that, Brown says she’s tried to keep her children occupied with summer movie marathons and encouraging them to play outside with other children on their street and have sleepovers with their friends. 

She and her husband take turns watching their 1-year-old daughter when they’re not working. 

Brown estimates that she’s saving at least $3,000 by keeping her children home this summer — money that she’s planning to use toward a family trip to Martha’s Vineyard in September. 

“Even if we didn’t get the relaxing summer we hoped for, it’s a short-term sacrifice to ensure that our bills are paid, our children are comfortable and we don’t slip into debt,” she adds. “I still feel blessed to have that option.” 

Consumer need for speed in package delivery, which has reached its apex with same-day shipping, has placed retailers in a tough spot when it comes to managing transportation costs. The result is increased competition among shippers for retail volume in a market dominated by FedEx and UPS, according to a new survey from global consulting firm AlixPartners.

Retail executives surveyed say as more — especially younger — consumers demand same-day delivery, the financial payoff isn’t there.

Roughly three-quarters (76%) of retail executives surveyed by AlixPartners said delivery cost on a per-package basis has increased since last year, and three out of four said home delivery does not add to profitability. An overwhelming majority (85%) said reducing their total cost per order is the No. 1 priority for last-mile delivery.

Shippers are facing their own cost pressures. “Carriers have experienced meaningful inflation in wages, equipment, repair and maintenance, insurance, fuel, tires, real estate, health-care costs, and more,” said Marc Iampieri, global co-leader of logistics & transportation, and partner & managing director of AlixPartners. “Those costs are offset by future rate increases. There is also a macro supply-and-demand equation to consider as e-commerce growth outstrips retail growth.”

Iampieri said the recent UPS-Teamsters contract renewal is a good example of wage inflation. 

To save on delivery costs, retailers are moving away from reliance on single carriers in last-mile delivery. Three out of four executives reported they are using a mix of last-mile options. To date, the shift in shipping strategy has helped FedEx, but hurt UPS. FedEx was the primary last-mile carrier cited by 42% of executives, an increase of 15% year over year. But UPS saw a decrease in retailers using it as a sole last-mile carrier, dropping from 35% in 2023 to 25% in 2024.

UPS reported weaker-than-expected profits for Q2 this week and suffered its worst single-day stock loss on record.

UPS did not respond to a request for comment by press time.

In its earnings commentary on Tuesday, it cited customers “trading down,” moving to more economic options in the most recent quarter, but also indicated this was linked to the “acceleration of new entrants, new e-commerce customers” that were coming into the market, assumed to be a reference to Asian low-cost retailers and Amazon rivals Shein and Temu. UPS also noted that it lost customers year over year due to the Teamsters contract negotiations in 2023 and customers signing long-term contracts elsewhere. 

Some alternative parcel delivery companies identified as benefitting from the move to diversify last-mile delivery include OnTrac, Pandion, and LSO/Lone Star Overnight. Additional delivery companies include Uber Eats and Uber Connect, Postmates, DoorDash, Instacart, and Shipt. 

Free delivery is still the big draw for consumers, with 92% saying that factors into their buying decisions, but the consumer threshold of waiting for product delivery is 3.5 days maximum, or else they say they will shop elsewhere.

“They are addressing this by shifting customer policies with half increasing minimum order spend in the past year,” said Chris Considine, a partner at AlixPartners. “When minimum delivery expectations aren’t met, 25% of shoppers will spend elsewhere.”

Almost two-thirds (64%) of retail executives surveyed said they increased the minimum order value for free shipping; 15% said they are requiring a minimum order value and membership for free shipping. Among consumers, 25% surveyed said they preferred to Buy Online, Pick Up in Store (BOPIS) versus delivery to avoid any shipping costs and to receive the product faster.

“While this trend has traditionally been driven by convenience, continuing shifts in service level improvements, expanding options, assortment, and return to in-person working environments are also playing a role,” Considine said.

Most consumers surveyed (92%) said a delayed order would impact their future purchase decisions and 82% expected compensation, but only 4% of companies surveyed said they would offer a discount on the next purchase for a late delivery.

Considine characterized online buying fundamentals as strong, with e-commerce sales of cleaning products up the most year over year, at 11%, followed by grocery and health/medical supply, both up 10%. Footwear and apparel purchases increased to a lesser extent.

Recent data from Motive, which tracks trucking visits to North American distribution facilities for the top five retailers, shows freight volume was up 30% year-over-year in June.

To cut costs on returns, retailers have also changed free shipping qualifications.

“Retailers are tightening the return policies such as shortening or enforcing the return window of time and eliminating free returns just for convenience and requiring a stated defect or issue with the good/product,” Iampieri said.

When given the option of shipping the return or an in-store return, over 80% of consumers reported they were willing to travel between 15-30 minutes for free in-store returns versus paying a shipping fee.

Disneyland employees have reached a tentative deal on a new contract with the company, according to a coalition of unions, averting what would have been the first strike to hit the Southern California theme park in 40 years.

‘We have shown Disney that we are the true magic makers of the park and today proves that when workers stand together for what they deserve, we win,’ the Disney Workers Rising Bargaining Committee said in a statement. ‘We look forward to making our voices heard during the voting process to ratify this contract.’

The bargaining committee said details of the tentative agreement would be shared with union members before a formal vote on Monday. The results of that vote will then be shared with the public.

The announcement of a tentative deal comes five days after union members voted to authorize a strike by an overwhelming majority, citing alleged unfair labor practices during contract negotiations.

The number of employees who voted was not released. The unions said that, of the members who participated, 99% voted to approve a walkout.

In a statement, Disneyland Resort spokesperson Jessica Good said: ‘We care deeply about the wellbeing of our cast members and are pleased to have reached a tentative agreement with [the unions] that addresses what matters most to our cast while positioning Disneyland Resort for future growth and job creation.’

The employees covered by the contract include custodians, ride operators, candymakers and merchandise clerks at the popular theme park, a pillar of the tourism economy in Southern California. In company parlance, theme park workers are known as ‘cast members.’

The bargaining committee previously accused Disney of having ‘engaged in multiple instances of conduct we allege are unfair labor practices, including unlawful discipline and intimidation and surveillance of union members exercising their right to wear union buttons at work.’

The union buttons in question depict a Mickey Mouse-style white glove raised in a fist. (The company has insisted that costumes worn by cast members are ‘a critical part of enhancing the experience of our Disney show.’)

In recent years, labor leaders and scholars have drawn public attention to the economic struggles of employees at Disneyland and other major theme parks across the country.

In an internal survey of union members conducted earlier this year, 28% of Disneyland cast members reported experiencing food insecurity, 33% reported experiencing housing insecurity in the last year, and 42% reported needing to miss work for medical treatment because they did not have enough sick leave.

The four unions that represent the workers are the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers (BCTGM) Local 83; the Service Employees International Union-United Service Workers West (SEIU-USWW); the Teamsters Local 495; and the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 324.

The last time Disneyland was hit with a strike was September 1984, when nearly 2,000 cast members walked off the job for 22 days.

The pre-existing contract for cast members at Disneyland expired June 16. The contract for cast members at Disney California Adventure and Downtown Disney expires Sept. 30.