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Rising rents are one of the main drivers in the recent bout of inflation. They are also spurring many renters to try to buy a home as quickly as possible, the Wall Street Journal reported. Average monthly rents listed in the U.S. jumped more than 14% year over year in December, climbing to $1,877, according to data from Redfin. In many major cities, including Austin, Texas, and Miami, rents increased by more than 30%. Economists still recommend buying a home as a way to stave off inflation and build wealth, though it is hardly easy. Buyers are already contending with rising home prices, decreased inventory, bidding wars and the prospect of higher mortgage rates. Many renters are staying on the hunt nevertheless. They are redoing the math on renting after seeing their monthly payments go up and rushing to get a home — any home — to outrun coming rises in mortgage rates and future rent increases. The pressure on renters is coming from many directions. Higher rents are eating into buyers’ down-payment savings, while rising home prices mean they need to come up with a bigger down payment to compete with other buyers. As of January 2022, the median home price increased to $357,300, up 14% year over year, according to Redfin.

Washington state Insurance Commissioner Mike Kreidler’s adoption this week of a rule prohibiting insurers from using credit scoring to set rates for auto, homeowner and renter insurance has already drawn a legal challenge from insurer groups, the Associated Press reported. The American Property Casualty Insurance Association, the Professional Insurance Agents of Washington, and the Independent Insurance Agents and Brokers of Washington on Wednesday jointly filed two legal actions — an administrative challenge and a superior court lawsuit — seeking to stop the rule, which is set to take effect March 4 and last for three years after the end of pandemic-related federal and state emergency financial protections, whichever is longer. Kreidler’s office started the process of implementing the permanent rule — announced Tuesday — after an emergency rule the commissioner issued last year was struck down by a court, which found there was no justification to bypass normal rulemaking procedures. Kreidler said he’s also proposing a new rule that would require insurers to provide policyholders with a written explanation for any premium change. He said that once federal pandemic protections end, people who have struggled financially over the past two years are at risk of have delinquencies show up on their credit reports, and noted that insurers charge good drivers with low credit scores nearly 80% more for mandatory auto insurance.

AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. struck a deal to refinance expensive debt it took on in the early days of the pandemic, as it vies to revive the investor enthusiasm that made the company a centerpiece of the meme-stock phenomenon, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. AMC yesterday received investor commitments for a new $950 million bond deal and will use the proceeds to pay off higher-interest debt borrowed in April 2020 as an emergency measure after closing the company’s nearly 1,000 theaters world-wide. The new bond will carry an interest rate in the range of 7.5%, compared with the 10.5% AMC has been paying, and extends the maturity by four years, to 2029, they said. Yesterday’s deal is expected to be the first in a series of refinancing transactions designed to reduce AMC’s interest burden. The company’s debt load stands at roughly $5.5 billion, and includes a number of other expensive loans and bonds taken on during the pandemic.

Private payrolls tumbled by 301,000 in January, posting their biggest drop-off since the onset of the pandemic, as the omicron variant set off a spike in coronavirus cases, according to data released yesterday, the Washington Post reported. The unexpected findings by ADP — which had forecast a gain of 200,000 jobs for the month — represent the first time the payrolls processing firm has reported negative employment growth since December 2020 and the biggest decline in employment since spring 2020. They also cut against federal data showing more moderate losses. The wide variance suggests the labor market was more chaotic last month than previously thought. The federal government will offer its own snapshot of the labor market on Friday, when it releases January jobs data. Though ADP’s estimates often differ, the shift it documented yesterday — from a gain of 807,000 jobs one month, to a loss of 301,000 the next ― could reset expectations for the Labor Department’s report.

Latam Airlines Group SA can send its $5.4 billion bankruptcy-exit plan to creditors for a vote, a judge said Tuesday, handing the airline a partial victory over debtholders who want to pursue alternatives, including a takeover by rival Azul SA, Bloomberg News reported. The decision means the company can seek final court approval for its reorganization plan in April and possibly exit bankruptcy several months after that, should it get support from securities regulators in Chile, where Latam is based. Bankruptcy Judge James Garrity rejected arguments that Latam’s proposal is so obviously flawed that it could never win final court approval. Judge Garrity’s decision still allows holdout creditors, including Avenue Capital Management and Pentwater Capital Management, to bring up their objections again when the reorganization comes back to the judge for a final decision. Several obstacles remain before Latam can ask Judge Garrity to bless the reorganization. Later this month, the judge has scheduled a hearing on whether to approve a restructuring support agreement. That deal would help Latam gets its plan approved by guaranteeing support from key creditors, but has drawn scrutiny because it calls for paying those creditors hefty fees. The company must also either refinance, or get an extension of a loan that it took out to help pay for its reorganization. That so-called debtor in possession loan matures in April, company attorney Lisa M. Schweitzer said during a virtual court hearing.

Some 4.3 million people quit or changed jobs in December — down from last month’s all-time high but still near record levels, as the labor market remained unsettled and the omicron variant swept through the U.S., the Washington Post reported. Employers reported some 10.9 million job openings in a survey from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, well above pre-pandemic averages. December proved to be an incredibly disruptive month for the labor market. Parents scrambled to navigate their work lives as schools and day cares closed due to growing virus cases. Employees grappled with sudden outbreaks at work, with little of the social safety net protections or pandemic-controlling measures that helped cushion the blow from earlier waves. At least 4 million workers resigned each month during the second half of 2021, with many of them departing to find work that had better pay, better benefits or more flexible schedules.

Hanging over the $800 billion Paycheck Protection Program, one of the government’s most expensive pandemic relief efforts, is a simple question: whether or not it worked. New research, drawing on millions of wage and payroll records, suggests a complicated answer: Yes, but at an extraordinarily high cost, according to the New York Times reported. One new analysis found that only about a quarter of the money spent by the program paid wages that would have otherwise been lost, partly because the government steadily loosened the rules for how businesses could use the money as the pandemic dragged on. And because many businesses remained healthy enough to survive without the program, another analysis found, the looser rules meant the Paycheck Protection Program ended up subsidizing business owners more than their workers. “Jobs and businesses are two separate things,” said David Autor, an economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who led a 10-member team that studied the program. “We tried to figure out, ‘Where did the money go?’ — and it turns out it didn’t primarily go to workers who would have lost jobs. It went to business owners and their shareholders and their creditors.” Questions about the success of the program have gained urgency as the Omicron variant of the coronavirus disrupts the country’s economic upswing, intensifying calls from hard-hit industries like restaurants for a new round of federal aid. Congress rushed to create the Paycheck Protection Program in the pandemic’s early days, trying to prevent struggling small companies from gutting their work forces and adding to the staggering unemployment rate. The program offered business owners low-interest loans of up to $10 million to cover roughly two months of payroll and a few additional expenses. The loans would be forgiven as long as the money went to permitted costs. Nearly every company in America with 500 or fewer workers (and some larger ones) qualified: law firms, construction companies and restaurant chains as well as Uber drivers, freelancers and the bars, boutiques, grocery stores and hair salons that are the backbone of many Main Streets. Early studies of the program — which generally focused on the largest small companies — were not flattering, finding it had little effect on preserving jobs. But Michael Dalton, a research economist for the Bureau of Labor Statistics who drew on extensive wage records collected by the government that other researchers did not have access to, said it had performed better than he expected. Within one month of being approved, companies that got loans had an average head count 8 percent higher than comparable businesses that didn’t. After seven months, their work forces were still 4 percent larger, maintaining a lead even as hiring nationwide began to bounce back.