U.S. trade deficit widened 14% in August from the prior month to a seasonally adjusted roughly $106 billion
The Texas-versus-New York comparison comes from a WSJ CFO Journal morning briefing written by bureau chief Walden Siew. From 2019 to 2025, Texas grew its finance workforce nearly 26%, compared with New York’s 12% growth. Texas is the third-ranked state for finance employment, but it is expanding faster than New York on a percentage basis — a result the briefing attributes to efforts to attract new stock listings and offices from major financial institutions. In absolute terms, New York still leads the securities industry by a sizable margin, and in the first quarter of 2026 the state added nearly double the finance jobs that Texas did.
The briefing, which draws on reporting by Siew’s colleague Ben Glickman, noted that the nation’s biggest banks have been reporting gangbuster profits so far; third-quarter results are due next week, when investors and finance professionals will get the latest clues on the health of financial services firms.
The securities industry overall is on pace for more than $90 billion in profits, according to fresh data from New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli. Bonuses track with Wall Street’s results, more or less, and times are very, very good in finance. The state now expects the bonus pool to grow year-over-year after previously projecting a decline. Securities industry taxes last year were about one-fifth of all state tax collections — a heavier reliance than the city’s because the state does not have the benefit of local property tax revenue.
The briefing cites market volatility, which is good for banks’ businesses facilitating trades on behalf of clients, and the AI boom’s demand for seemingly endless new financing as drivers. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon last quarter literally said, “It’s getting close to as good as it gets.”
The briefing also reported that the U.S. trade deficit widened in August to its biggest level in more than a year. The trade gap in goods and services grew 14% from the prior month to a seasonally adjusted number of roughly $106 billion, the Commerce Department said Tuesday, driven by increased U.S. purchases of crude oil, gold, and semiconductors. That marked the highest level since March 2025, when companies raced to import goods early in President Trump’s second term to get ahead of tariffs.
Separately, Volvo Chief Executive Håkan Samuelsson said the “consumer willingness to buy is very low,” telling The Wall Street Journal in an interview: “If you are not confident, the car is probably one of the things you say: Let’s keep this car another year.”
The Federal Open Market Committee releases the minutes from its mid-September monetary policy meeting.