Workers are barely getting ahead in this economy
Marketplace All-in-One
Marketplace
4.5 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 16 July 2026
⏱️ 8 minutes
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Summary
Annual inflation is clocking in at 3.5%, which is still high by recent standards. That's also the same rate at which average hourly earnings grew in June. While workers barely broke even in June, they actually lost purchasing power to inflation in April and May. With real earnings stagnating, we'll examine some of the causes. But first, we'll check in on how the latest developments in the war with Iran are showing up in oil prices and the rest of the global economy.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | For decades, companies built their procurement and supply chains around cost and efficiency. |
| 0:05.7 | Today, that's no longer enough. |
| 0:08.1 | Wars, trade conflicts, and the regionalization of trade have changed the rules. |
| 0:13.2 | Companies still need to control costs, but they also need to reduce risk and respond faster to disruptions and shocks. |
| 0:20.6 | GEP helps the world's leading enterprises do exactly that. |
| 0:24.8 | Through its AI-native quantum intelligence platform and services, |
| 0:28.8 | GEP helps companies gain visibility, predict and manage risk, |
| 0:32.9 | and make smarter capital investments across their global value chain. |
| 0:36.6 | More than 7,000 employees across |
| 0:39.1 | 30 offices support over 1,000 organizations worldwide. GEP combines agentic AI with three decades |
| 0:47.1 | of procurement and supply chain data and expertise. Learn more at gep.com. |
| 1:02.4 | A check-in on how the latest developments in the war with Iran are showing up in oil prices and the rest of the global economy. |
| 1:06.6 | From Marketplace in New York, I'm Kimberly Adams. |
| 1:13.3 | With the war in Iran resumed and a U.S. naval blockade back in place, oil prices continue to rise. |
| 1:18.2 | This morning, Brent Crude oil is at $85 and $44 a barrel. |
| 1:22.4 | Prior to the strikes resuming, Brent Crude was pricing in the low 70s, |
| 1:26.9 | and before the ceasefire, oil prices rose above $100 a barrel. |
| 1:29.2 | For more on this, I'm joined by Diane Swank, Chief Economist at the Audit Tax and Advisory firm, KPMG. Diane, good morning. |
| 1:34.9 | Good morning. How much of what we're seeing with oil prices right now is driven by actual |
| 1:40.5 | supply disruption versus just people's fears? A lot of what we've seen has been fear-related, |
| 1:47.6 | although we have also seen disruptions in supply. What mitigated it was that we had extraordinary |
| 1:54.5 | inventories that were used as a buffer to drain a lot of those inventories so that we wouldn't |
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