Submitted by Charles Kennedy of OilPrice.com
Russia's authorities and regional governors are racing to assure residents there are no fuel shortages amid an intensified Ukrainian drone campaign at Russian refineries and fuel supply roads.
Ukraine has stepped up attacks this month on key fuel supply routes in its territories occupied by Russia, including Crimea and Mariupol. Several Russian regions have been experiencing fuel shortages as Ukraine hits Russian oil refineries.
Last week, the Moscow Times reported that some gasoline stations in Moscow and regions in northern Russia have started to cap fuel purchases per driver, in a move to prevent panic buying.
Officials are playing down the fuel crisis.
Alexander Drozdenko, governor of the northwestern Leningrad region, said this week that "Supplies are being delivered according to plan, there are no shortages," as carried by Bloomberg.
Some isolated complaints about fuel shortages "do not reflect the overall situation," the regional official said.
Governors all across Russia are looking to play down the extent of the crisis.
Meanwhile, earlier this month Russia admitted for the first time that its crude oil production is falling.
Russia's crude oil production has declined since the beginning of the year as a number of local refineries are under unscheduled repairs and maintenance, Russia's Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said, in the first public acknowledgement from Moscow that its output is flailing.
"We have a number of refineries under unscheduled repairs. However, we are maximizing the use of the export infrastructure," said Novak, who represents Russia at the OPEC+ meetings and at discussions about the alliance's output.
Russia is preparing to sharply reduce crude oil exports this month as mounting refinery disruptions, fuel shortages, and Ukraine's bombing campaign force Moscow to divert more barrels into the domestic market.
Exports from Russia's western ports of Primorsk, Ust-Luga and Novorossiysk are expected to fall to roughly 1.7 million barrels per day in June from 2.5 million bpd in May, according to Reuters calculations based on preliminary industry and trading data.
Tyler Durden Fri, 06/12/2026 - 21:45America’s hiring recovery has split into sharply different regional stories since 2020.
Some states, including Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Texas, continue seeing elevated hiring demand years after the pandemic. Others, particularly across parts of the West Coast and Mountain West, have experienced steep declines in job openings.
The map below, via Visual Capitalist's Dorothy Neufeld, shows how job openings changed in every state between February 2020 and January 2026, based on data from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
The contrast is especially striking in the Mountain West. Idaho leads the nation with hiring demand up over 20%, while neighboring Wyoming ranks last at -39%.
Where Job Openings Have Increased the MostThe rankings below show the change in job openings since 2020 by state.
Rank State Change in Job OpeningsIdaho leads the nation with job openings up 20.5% since 2020, followed by Mississippi and Oklahoma. Georgia (16.0%) and Texas (14.2%) have also posted strong gains, reflecting continued migration toward lower-cost states and expanding regional economies.
Manufacturing investment is helping drive demand. Billions of dollars tied to semiconductors, EVs, and industrial reshoring have fueled hiring across parts of the South and Midwest. Significant population growth has added another tailwind, boosting both labor supply and consumer demand.
The map highlights how America’s labor market is increasingly diverging at the state level, with neighboring states often moving in very different directions.
Why Many Western States Saw Hiring Cool OffSeveral Western states have seen some of America’s steepest declines in job openings since 2020.
Wyoming ranks last nationally, with hiring demand down 38.9%, while Washington is close behind at -36.3%. California, Oregon, and Nevada have also posted sizable declines after the rapid hiring surge seen earlier in the decade.
Much of the slowdown reflects a reversal of pandemic-era expansion, especially across technology and white-collar industries. During 2021 and 2022, many companies aggressively expanded payrolls amid booming demand and cheap capital. Since then, layoffs, higher interest rates, and efficiency-focused cost-cutting have pushed many firms into retrenchment mode.
California alone has announced more layoffs than any other state since 2022. The result is a labor market that looks very different from the hiring frenzy that defined the post-pandemic recovery.
What It Means for Workers and the EconomyHiring demand affects more than just how easy it is to find a job. It can influence migration patterns, wage growth, housing demand, and local economic confidence.
States with stronger hiring markets often attract more workers, investment, and new business formation, reinforcing long-term economic growth. Weaker hiring markets, meanwhile, may experience softer consumer spending and slower labor demand.
The map increasingly reflects broader economic shifts unfolding across America. Lower-cost states continue attracting people, capital, and industrial investment, while many high-cost markets are adjusting to slower growth after the pandemic-era boom.
The result is a labor market that is becoming more fragmented geographically, with economic momentum increasingly concentrated in a smaller group of states.
To learn more about this topic, check out this graphic showing where wealth is moving across America.
Tyler Durden Fri, 06/12/2026 - 21:20Authored by Larry Sand via Heartland.org,
After decades of steady growth, attendance in U.S. K-12 public schools has shifted drastically. Over the past five years, registration has fallen by 2.3 percent, or 1.18 million students, and schools show no signs of rebounding. Lower birth rates are the primary driver of the downturn. The number of births has decreased steadily in recent years, with 690,000 fewer children born in 2024 than in 2007.
California lost nearly 75,000 K-12 students as of the 2025-26 school year, a slide more than twice as steep as the previous year.
Since 2017-2018, the Golden State has seen a 10 percent decline.
New York City has also been hard hit.
As of the 2025–26 school year, 793,300 students are enrolled in K-12 schools, down nearly 10 percent from 2020.
The loss of enrolled students has prompted some desperate measures. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is offering “free” childcare for 2-year-olds regardless of their parents’ income. In 2024, parents of toddlers spent an average of more than $23,000 on center-based childcare, according to the NYC Comptroller.
For those still attending public schools, chronic absence—the percentage of students missing 10 percent or more of a school year—is a growing problem. As of January 20, the latest data show that chronic absenteeism, which surged from 15 percent pre-COVID to 28 percent in 2022, remains elevated at 24 percent.
Nat Malkus, American Enterprise Institute’s director of education policy, notes that the surge in absenteeism affects districts of all sizes, racial backgrounds, and income levels. However, the data reveal significant racial and ethnic disparities, with 39 percent of black students, 36 percent of Hispanic students, 24 percent of white students, and 15 percent of Asian students chronically absent.
A major factor behind rising absenteeism is that many students lack motivation to attend school. In 2024, Gallup and the Walton Family Foundation surveyed more than 1,000 Gen Z students ages 12 to 18 and found that only 48 percent of those enrolled in middle or high school feel motivated to attend. Only half said they do something interesting in school every day. Similarly, a 2024 EdChoice poll found that 64 percent of teens said school is boring, and 30 percent view it as a waste of time.
Additionally, a 2024 survey revealed that nearly 64 percent of school parents say K-12 education is headed in the wrong direction, up 8 points from 2023.
Marc Oestreich, an education policy consultant and strategist, writes that in many cases, students are responding to schools that fail to teach them to read, fail to adapt to their needs, and fail to demonstrate that another day in the building is worth their time.
Oestreich asserts, “The honest version of the absenteeism story is not that American parents have suddenly become uniquely irresponsible, or that students have collectively misplaced their work ethic somewhere between TikTok and the bus stop. The honest story is that a substantial number of families, concentrated among the poor, the male, and the badly served, have concluded from direct experience that what their local public school offers is not worth the time.”
While public schools are struggling, private school attendance has remained steady. However, as more parental choice bills advance, the number of children attending private schools will very likely increase. There are currently 75 private school choice programs in 34 states, serving more than 1.5 million students.
Also, the Federal Tax Credit Scholarship Program, which takes effect on January 1, 2027, is likely to substantially increase the number of students leaving public schools for private schools.
Through the program, individual taxpayers will be eligible for a dollar-for-dollar tax credit of up to $1,700 for contributions to approved scholarship-granting organizations (SGOs). In turn, the SGOs will be required to use these contributions to grant scholarships to students at private and public elementary and secondary schools within their states. Students who are eligible to attend public school and whose family income is below 300 percent of the gross area median income will be eligible for the scholarships. The scholarships can be used for qualified expenses such as tuition, fees, books, supplies, room and board, uniforms, transportation, computer technology, equipment, and internet access.
The program is especially popular among black and Hispanic communities, groups most likely to experience chronic absenteeism. A recent poll found that 63 percent of Hispanics and 68 percent of blacks—groups most in need of choice—support a private option.
Thus far, 31 states have opted into the federal scholarship program, and two governors (in Minnesota and Wisconsin) have said their states won’t participate. The remaining states and the District of Columbia have not yet formally decided or announced their decisions.
In states without a private choice program, the best option for parents is to educate their children at home. In fact, homeschooling continued to grow across the United States during the 2024-2025 school year, with an average increase of 5.4 percent, nearly three times the pre-pandemic growth rate of about 2 percent.
Micro-schools, where classes typically have fewer than 15 students of varying ages and schedules, and curricula are tailored to each class’s needs, are growing in popularity and currently educate about 2 percent of the U.S. student population—roughly 750,000 students. Most micro-schools are independently run by parents, though some are part of a formal network that provides paid, in-person teachers. Lessons take place in various settings, including homes, libraries, community centers, etc.
Micro-schools today are less “micro” than they were, according to the latest analysis of the sector from the National Microschooling Center. In 2024, the median number of students in a typical micro-school was 16. That figure has since risen to 22, reflecting the increased experience of school operators, reports Don Soifer, the center’s CEO. However, some now serve as many as 100 students.
In sum, except in the case of declining birth rates, government-run schools are shedding students because many are not offering a worthy product.
Tyler Durden Fri, 06/12/2026 - 20:55