End-of-Week Wrap-Up

Price growth is cooling across the economy. While that is good news for consumers, the timing of this progress on inflation could end up short-changing seniors and other Social Security recipients when they learn their annual cost-of-living increase later this year.

According to the latest estimate from The Senior Citizens League, which regularly forecasts Social Security’s cost-of-living adjustment, or COLA, Social Security recipients can expect their monthly checks to increase by 2.63% — essentially unchanged from the 2.57% it forecast last month.

The Social Security Administration calculates the annual COLA change by taking the average measure of the Consumer Price Index for urban wage earners and clerical workers, or CPI-W — a slightly different version of the regular CPI — for July, August and September of the given year. It typically announces the official COLA change in October.

But using that methodology means Social Security recipients’ checks can start falling behind the overall pace of inflation, according to The Senior Citizens League: Price surges can occur — and abate — at any time of the year, and the COLA may not account for those changes, said the organization’s Social Security and Medicare statistician, Alex Moore, managing partner at Blacksmith Professional Services.

That is what has been happening in the pandemic and post-pandemic economy: From January 2020 to December 2023, the CPI-W increased exactly 20% — while the COLA increases have totaled only 19%.

A matching increase over that period would have netted Social Security recipients an extra $10 in their monthly payments by 2024, according to NBC News calculations.

For fixed-income recipients, every bit counts: In the league’s most recent membership survey, 34% of retirees said they had visited a food pantry or applied for food stamps over the last 12 months.

“About 50% of senior households depend on Social Security as the difference between [staying out of] poverty,” Moore said.

Editor’s note: This is part of NBC News’ Checkbook Chronicles, a series of profiles highlighting the financial realities of everyday Americans.

Doug Sharp isn’t a rich man — but he has played one in Hollywood.

Sharp, 59, lives in Los Angeles and until recently got the bulk of his income by driving for Uber and Lyft while moonlighting as a paid extra.

It’s the chance to earn the spotlight and work with others who share his passion for acting that keeps him going after years of having failed to find any other kind of full-time work.

Primary source of income: Sharp says he struggles to make ends meet, having survived the past few years on a generous pandemic unemployment reimbursement.

He has begun taking delivery orders on UberEats, but he said the pay barely makes it worth it.

What keeps Sharp going is acting — a notoriously fickle endeavor but one he says has upside potential. He recently got a small speaking part in a coming production featuring at least two Hollywood A-listers — and saw his daily pay rate go from about $200 to nearly $1,200.

‘The money for background is good, and there’s always the possibility of being upgraded to principal,’ he said. ‘That has happened to me — I have not found a replacement for it.’

Still, it’s not consistent enough for him to obtain full Screen Actors Guild benefits, so his health insurance is through Medicaid.

Living situation: Sharp lives alone and said his housing situation is unstable. It includes periodically renting from a friend, as well as an unauthorized arrangement he wasn’t comfortable discussing on the record.

Economic outlook: After nearly a decade of making steady pay driving for Uber and Lyft, Sharp has effectively quit both platforms for now, in part, he said, because their base pay and regular rates are no longer enough make it worth it to use them, especially for what’s needed to live in Los Angeles.

Acting remains enjoyable — Sharp said he isn’t a celebrity hound and simply enjoys being around other people.

‘The older you get, the less parts there are,’ he said. ‘However, the pool of older guys is smaller — and shockingly I always play the rich white guy, because that’s what I look like. But I didn’t I know look like a rich white guy until I started playing one.’

Yet the gigs have hardly been steady enough to make a career out of.

‘What I can tell you is I barely work,’ Sharp said. ‘In May I worked two days, in April I worked four days, in March I worked two days, in February I worked two days, in January I worked one day.’

Budget pain points: Sharp struggles buying basic necessities, to the point that he found himself recently trying to return goods around his residence to Home Depot and Walmart for cash or credit.

He owns a car, a Fiat 500, but is trying to obtain a new one through a rental company so he can get back to driving for Uber and Lyft — even at the reduced rates. However, he’s not sure his credit score will be good enough for him to obtain the new vehicle.

Outlook: Sharp said he basically started his life over in his 40s, when he got a business degree from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. But he graduated in 2013, when the economy was still emerging from the global financial crisis, and he couldn’t land a job.

Uber, and later Lyft, provided a lifeline, and he enjoyed the work. But over the years, their rates got lower and lower.

Still, returning to those platforms remains his key financial objective.

In the meantime, Sharp struggles with depression and anxiety.

‘The one thing people hate are educated white men who look rich but who are poor,’ Sharp said. ‘They think, ‘Oh, he must be lazy or on drugs. What is his problem?’ I get this — I’ve watched my friend group move away.’

‘I am ashamed about where I am in my life as it relates to my finances and not knowing how to fix it,” he continued.

Finding a full-time job — even at a fast-food restaurant, and even in a labor market that the Federal Reserve says remains relatively healthy — has been a lot more difficult than one might imagine.

‘I do qualify for food stamps; I do qualify for [Medicaid],’ he said. ‘I’m not embarrassed about that, but when I’m willing to work — and bust my ass — why is it that I can’t get a living wage?’

Ironically, fast-food jobs are now quite difficult to obtain, Sharp said, not least because their hourly wages are higher than in many other industries thanks to California’s new $20 minimum wage for workers in the sector.

‘It’s embarrassing, because it seems like there’s a piece of the puzzle that I’m not telling,’ Sharp said. ‘I’m doing everything I can.’

Post-pandemic consumer splurging is rapidly coming to a halt, according to two widely followed U.S. companies — more evidence that the U.S. economy is likely in for a period of slower economic growth.

Pepsi and Delta Air Lines both offered subdued financial outlooks as they reported quarterly earnings Thursday, and both cited the same reason: Customers are now becoming more value conscious, after years of struggling with elevated costs.

‘The impacts of persistent inflationary pressures and higher borrowing costs over the last few years have resulted in tighter household financial conditions,’ Pepsi said Thursday in a statement.

As a result, the company said, consumers have become more price sensitive across its entire range of products.

Delta CEO Ed Bastian echoed the sentiment in explaining his company’s lower outlook for the rest of the year.

“What you see happening is the impact in the domestic marketplace to the lower fare discounting that’s been going on this quarter,” he told CNBC airline reporter Leslie Josephs.

In other words, Delta customers have started to push back on paying top-dollar to travel in the skies.

The stock price of both companies fell in early Thursday trading. A third consumer-focused company, Slim Jim-parent Conagra Brands, also reported lower earnings Thursday, and CEO Sean Connolly likewise said customers are becoming more cost conscious as they ‘adapt and establish new reference prices.”

The seemingly economy-wide bargain-hunting was further reflected Thursday in the latest official inflation data, which showed the monthly Consumer Price Index had meaningfully declined for the first time since the pandemic.

While the change in the 12-month index remained above the Federal Reserve’s 2% goal, at 3%, it cooled more than analysts’ expectations.

Thursday’s company announcements kick off several weeks of other big consumer companies giving business updates.

Even as consumers start budgeting more, economic forecasters say there is still no sign of a recession. While the labor market has begun to weaken, wage growth remains healthy — even surpassing the rate of inflation, but the pay increases are not excessive.

‘The labor market is normalizing, it isn’t seeing the type of weakness that could spark recessionary worries,’ Josh Jamner, Investment Strategy Analyst at ClearBridge Investments financial group, wrote in a note to clients. He added that unemployment claims data show that ‘a layoff cycle that could lead to a recession is not currently building.”

Economists say the goal is ‘disinflation,’ a situation where the economy downshifts without slipping into recession. It would mean slower price growth without a full-blown recession.

Gregory Daco, chief economist at EY (formerly Ernst & Young), sees that scenario currently playing out.

‘Softer consumer spending growth due to increased pricing sensitivity, reduced markups, moderating wage growth, and declining rent inflation will continue to provide a healthy disinflationary impulse,” Daco wrote in a note to clients Thursday.

The National Football League is considering allowing minority private equity ownership for its 32 teams of up to 10%, Commissioner Roger Goodell said in an exclusive CNBC interview Thursday.

“As sports evolve, we want to make sure our policies reflect that,” Goodell said in an interview with CNBC’s Julia Boorstin at Allen & Co.’s annual Sun Valley Conference. “We’ve had a tremendous amount of interest [from private equity firms], and we believe this could make sense for us in a limited fashion, probably no more than 10% of a team. That would be something we think could complement our ownership and support our ownership policies.”

The NFL hopes to set its new ownership policies by the end of the year, Goodell said. The 10% cap would be a starting point, and the league is open to raising it in time, he said.

While other major U.S. sports leagues, including the National Basketball Association, Major League Baseball, the National Hockey League and Major League Soccer all allow private equity ownership of up to 30%, the NFL has resisted taking money from institutional funds, such as private equity, preferring limited partners to be individuals or families.

But franchise valuations have steadily risen as the NFL has signed lucrative media deals, meaning fewer people can afford team ownership. In 2023, Josh Harris, co-founder of private equity firm Apollo Global Management, headed a group that paid $6.05 billion for the Washington Commanders — the most money ever spent on a U.S. professional sports franchise.

“Unless you’re one of the wealthiest 50 people [in the world], writing a $5 billion equity check is pretty hard for anyone,” Harris told CNBC “Squawk Box” co-anchor Andrew Ross Sorkin at the CNBC CEO Council Summit in Washington, D.C., last month.

Harris tapped 20 people to help raise money for his bid, including former NBA superstar Magic Johnson; former Google CEO Eric Schmidt; and David Blitzer, the Blackstone Group senior executive who previously partnered with Harris to buy the NBA’s Philadelphia 76ers and the NHL’s New Jersey Devils.

“Raising that amount of capital was unique; it had never been done before,” Harris said. “I think it may be leading to some rethink into the consideration of letting private equity, as an example, or institutional investors into the NFL.”

The National Women’s Soccer League allows private equity firms to take majority control of franchise teams, unlike the other U.S. professional sports leagues. Private equity incentives around reaching investment targets and exit thresholds could alter the motivations for ownership in ways that make the bigger sports leagues uncomfortable.

Minority stakes typically come with little or no decision-making power on the team. That is likely comforting to the NFL if it allows private equity investors, but it has also limited the number of individuals interested in taking smaller stakes in teams.

“These people are really rich and successful. They’re used to being the center of the universe. And now you go, I need a quarter of a billion dollars. Fantastic, what do I get? Nothing,” Ted Leonsis, the owner of the Washington Capitals, Wizards and Mystics, told ESPN in May. “Do you have any control? Any role? No, you’re passive investors. You’ll get your name on a website somewhere or something and you get to tell people I own a piece of an NFL team.”

Private equity firms, tasked with finding investment vehicles to make returns on their assets under management, may be better suited to minority ownership.

Editor’s note: This is part of NBC News’ Checkbook Chronicles, a series of profiles highlighting the financial realities of everyday Americans.

Doug Sharp isn’t a rich man — but he has played one in Hollywood.

Sharp, 59, lives in L.A. and until recently got the bulk of his income by driving for Uber and Lyft, while moonlighting as a paid extra.

It’s the chance to earn the spotlight and others who share his passion for acting that keeps him going after years of failing to find any other kind of full-time work.

Primary source of income: Sharp says he struggles to make ends meet, having survived the past few years off a generous pandemic unemployment reimbursement.

He has begun taking delivery orders on UberEats, but said the pay on that platform barely makes it worth it.

What keeps Sharp going is acting — a notoriously fickle endeavor but one he says has upside potential. He recently obtained a small speaking part in an upcoming production featuring at least two Hollywood A-listers — and saw his daily pay rate go from about $200 to nearly $1,200.

‘The money for background is good, and there’s always the possibility of being upgraded to principal,’ he said. ‘That has happened to me — I have not found a replacement for it.’

Still, it’s not consistent enough for him to obtain full Screen Actors Guild benefits, so his health insurance is through Medicaid.

Living situation: Sharp lives alone, and said his housing situation is unstable. It includes periodically renting from a friend as well as an unauthorized arrangement he wasn’t comfortable discussing on the record.

Economic outlook: After nearly a decade of making steady pay driving for Uber and Lyft, Sharp has effectively quit both platforms for now, in part because, he said, their base pay and regular rates are no longer enough make it worth it to utilize the platforms, especially for what’s needed to live in Los Angeles.

Acting remains enjoyable — Sharp said he is not a celebrity hound and simply enjoys being around other people.

‘The older you get, the less parts there are,’ he said. ‘However the pool of older guys is smaller — and shockingly I always play the rich white guy, because that’s what I look like. But I didn’t I know look like rich white guy until started playing one.’

Yet the gigs have been hardly steady enough to make a career out of.

‘What I can tell you is I barely work,’ Sharp said. ‘In May I worked two days, in April I worked four days, in March I worked two days, in February, I worked two days, in January, I worked one day.’

Budget pain points: Sharp struggles with buying basic necessities, to the point that he found himself recently trying to return goods around his residence back to Home Depot and Walmart for cash or credit.

He owns a car, a Fiat 500, but is trying to obtain a new one through a rental company so that he can get back to driving for Uber and Lyft — even at the reduced rates. However, he’s not sure his credit score will be good enough for him to obtain the new vehicle.

Outlook: Sharp said he basically started his life over in his 40s, when he obtained a business degree from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. But he graduated in 2013, when the economy was still emerging from the global financial crisis, and couldn’t land a job.

Uber, and later Lyft, provided a lifeline, and he enjoyed the work. But over the years, their rates got lower and lower.

Still, returning to those platforms remains his key financial objective.

In the meantime, Sharp struggles with depression and anxiety.

‘The one thing people hate are educated white men, who look rich but who are poor,’ Sharp said. ‘They think ‘Oh, he must be lazy, or on drugs what is his problem? I get this — I’ve watched my friend group move away.’

‘I am ashamed about where I am in my life as it relates to my finances and not knowing how to fix it,” he continued.

Finding a full-time job — even at a fast-food restaurant, and even in a labor market that the Federal Reserve says remains relatively healthy — has been a lot more difficult than one might imagine.

‘I do qualify for food stamps, I do qualify for [Medicaid],’ he said. ‘I’m not embarrassed about that, but when I’m willing to work — and bust my ass, why is it that I can’t get a living wage?’

Ironically, fast-food jobs are now quite difficult to obtain, Sharp said, not least because their hourly wages are now higher than in many other industries thanks to California’s new $20 minimum wage for workers in the sector.

‘It’s embarrassing because it seems like there’s a piece of the puzzle that I’m not telling,’ Sharp said. ‘I’m doing everything I can.’