One map shows where Americans are paying the highest electricity bills

Americans in some states are facing much higher electricity bills than the rest of the country.

PAUL FAITH / AFP

• High energy costs burden much of the US, with Hawaii and Connecticut having the highest average bills.
• Extreme weather, volatile gas markets, and infrastructure investments are driving up utility costs.
• Renewable energy expansion in states like Colorado helped moderate cost increases.

Where you live can impact how much you pay for utilities.

That's because the price of electricity depends on more than just the price of oil and gas. It is also affected by local utilities' investment in infrastructure, whether the state is vulnerable to extreme weather, and the amount of renewable energy that powers the grid.

The most recent data published by the Energy Information Administration, a US government agency, showed that residents of Hawaii, Connecticut, and Alabama had the highest average monthly electricity bills in 2024. Utah, New Mexico, and Colorado had the lowest average bills.

As energy bills have risen even faster than overall inflation in recent years, the greatest burden falls on the lowest earners, who tend to spend a larger share of their budgets on utilities. While President Donald Trump has promised to slash energy prices in half by pursuing a "drill, baby, drill" agenda on oil and gas, energy analysts and economists told Business Insider it's not that simple.

Extreme weather combined with exploding costs to upgrade the infrastructure that delivers electricity across the country are fueling higher prices. Renewable energy has helped moderate prices in some states, but looming tariffs on Canada and Mexico combined with skyrocketing energy demand from data centers may only increase costs.

Energy experts shared some of the biggest factors driving energy costs and explained why there are disparities among states.

The cost of extreme weather and volatile gas markets hit low earners the hardest

Since January 2020, consumer energy services costs have risen about 34%, compared to a 23% increase in overall prices, Bureau of Labor Statistics data showed. Additionally, the Bank of America Institute found that the median utility bill payment for electricity, gas, and water rose 6% in January compared to a year earlier, double the 3% rise in overall inflation during this period.

These cost increases have hit people with the lowest incomes the hardest. A Bank of America Institute note said that in 2023, US households with annual incomes below $50,000 spent 6.8% of their earnings on natural gas and electricity costs, compared to 1.2% for households with annual incomes more than $150,000.

While it's no surprise that using more fuel or electricity can spike customers' energy bills, analysts told Business Insider that extreme weather, volatile oil and gas prices, and utilities' growing investments in the poles, wires, and big transmission lines that deliver power to homes are all contributing to increased costs.

Freezing winters — like the subzero temperatures that blanketed the US this year — and scorching summers can spike the demand for heat and air conditioning and hike costs. Utilities are investing in aging infrastructure that carries electricity from power plants to communities and can recover those costs from their customers. Oil and gas, which still supplies the majority of US electricity, is a volatile market vulnerable to global shocks like Russia's war in Ukraine.

Those shocks hit New England hard. The region, which includes Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont, gets more than 50% of its power from natural gas. And unlike states such as Pennsylvania or Texas — where natural gas is underground in the region — a lot of the fuel for New England states is imported. This partly explains why energy costs are higher compared to the rest of the country, said Dan Dolan, president of the New England Power Generators Association, a trade group.

Dolan said wholesale electricity prices have fallen over the last two decades, but that's been offset by transmission costs soaring 800% between 2004 and 2023, data from New England's regional transmission organization showed.

"We've also seen a dramatic increase in the spending at the distribution level as we build out more substations, poles, and wires to highly electrified homes and businesses," Dolan said. "Those combined elements — transmission and distribution — now make up the largest single segment of the vast majority of electricity rates across New England."

Dolan added that New England states have more aggressive climate policies, including participation in a regional cooperative that caps carbon emissions from power plants and requires them to pay for every ton they emit — another cost that's passed on to customers.

On the opposite coast in California, extreme weather is driving higher utility bills, which averaged $159 a month in 2024. Utilities have spent billions of dollars on wildfire-related costs that are partially being passed on to consumers, said Brendan Pierpont, director of electricity modeling at Energy Innovation, a non-partisan energy and climate policy think tank.

Those costs include investments in preventing wildfires, like managing vegetation that can catch fire and burying power lines underground, as well as legal liabilities for blazes caused by their infrastructure.

Renewables can slow rising costs

Pierpont added that some states, including Colorado and New Mexico, have been able to moderate rising electricity costs in part by expanding solar and wind power.

"Many of the states with the cheapest power and lowest rate of increases have easy access to high-quality wind and solar resources," he said, citing a paper he authored last year.

Johanna Neumann, senior director of Environment America's Campaign for 100% Renewable Energy, said states that generate the highest percentage of their electricity from renewable energy sources have electricity rates that are below the national average, pointing to Iowa, South Dakota, and Oklahoma as examples.

"Renewables actually reduce wholesale electricity costs and reduce our dependence on notoriously volatile natural gas," she said.

However, not all states that have heavily invested in renewables have electricity rates lower than the national average. Neumann pointed to Hawaii as one example, where she said benefits from renewables investments are being offset by continued reliance on imported oil.

"These fuels have to be shipped to the island across long distances, leading to higher electricity costs," she said.

Texas is in a category of its own because the state's power grid is isolated from other regional ones. A deadly winter storm in 2021 that knocked out power and sent electricity prices soaring prompted state regulators to direct power plants to better prepare for extreme weather.

While Texas has abundant natural gas resources and is a leader in solar and wind development, the state aims to build more fossil fuel and small nuclear power plants to meet growing demand, said Michele Richmond, executive director of the Texas Competitive Power Advocates, which represents companies that produce power, including natural gas, wind, and nuclear.

Richmond added that Texas has a competitive, deregulated energy market that dispatches the cheapest power first to help offset some of the cost pressures. But it isn't immune from rising prices.

"We believe that having a diversified fuel mix is good for reliability because the wind doesn't blow all the time, and the sun doesn't shine all the time," Richmond said.

Do you have a story to share about your utility bills? Contact these reporters at cboudreau@businessinsider.com and jzinkula@businessinsider.com.

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The ranks of Gen Z realtors are growing. Here's what 3 young brokers said about getting into the business.

Courtesy of Joseph Khateri, Chloe De Verrier, and Marios Milonas

• Real estate is attracting more young people to the profession.
• The share of realtors under the age of 30 quadrupled in 2024, NAR data shows.
• The trend has been helped by record-high home prices and the allure of being one's own boss.

Young, fresh-faced 20-somethings are taking the housing market by storm — not by buying homes, but by selling them.

After dipping in 2023, the share of realtors under the age of 30 quadrupled in 2024, rising from 1% to 4% last year, according to registration data from the National Association of Realtors.

Meanwhile, the median age of the average real estate agent dropped from 60 to 55 last year, the lowest since 2021.

It's a lucrative time to get into the business. While new rules have affected how realtors' commissions work, real estate agents and brokers still made a collective $48 billion in revenue in the third quarter of last year, about double what they made 10 years ago.

Paydays are being boosted by soaring home prices. The median sale price of a home was about $419,000 in the fourth quarter of 2024 — up 27% since the start of 2020.

Business Insider spoke to three realtors who dove into the property business early, with some obtaining their license as soon as they turned 18, or pausing college studies to do so.

Many described themselves as especially entrepreneurial and seeking an alternative to a typical desk job — and said they found the work rewarding, both on a financial and a personal level.

Marios Milonas, a real-estate agent based in New York, started in the business when he was 19 and looking for direction in his career. He wanted nothing to do with a regular 9-to-5, and, in an effort to steer clear of student loans, was taking classes at his local community college.

"I just felt like I wanted to be able to experience financial freedom," he said, adding that he shied away from the idea of being forced into a job just to pay of student debt.

Marios Milonas said he began working on his real estate license when he was 19. It took him more than a year to sell his first home, he told BI.

Courtesy of Marios Milonas

His girlfriend's father, who had worked in real estate for more than 20 years, recommended he try it out. After a few weeks of coursework, he got his license and soon after dropped out of community college.

The market was tough, at first. Milanos didn't sell a single home for his first year in the business, he said, pointing to the pandemic.

His "baby face" also held him back, he said, recalling offhand comments from other professionals in the business.

"One person came in and said, 'Oh, I thought you were 13 years old," Milanos said.

The comments began to subside as he began to grow more confident and worked on appearing more knowledgeable in front of his clients. Once the housing market began to heat back up, he felt things finally coming together.

"When that housing market opened up, it was crazy," he said, adding that he began making a six-figure salary when he was 21 years old. Milonas made over $300,000 in commission in 2024, according to financial statements viewed by BI.

Chloe De Verrier, a 26-year-old realtor based in Los Angeles, also began working on getting her real estate license when she was 19. At the time, she was attending UCLA and felt unsure about her career path. She did, though, know that she wanted to run her own business, and have full control over her schedule. Real estate seemed like the right fit.

"I was kind of having that, I guess, quarter-life crisis of, 'I don't know what I want to do,'" she said. "I kind of just decided to take a leap of faith."

She decided to temporarily drop out of college and pursue real estate full-time. Her first official day in business was her 21st birthday.

De Verrier said she worked as a restaurant hostess on the side while she was first trying her hand at being a real estate agent.

Courtesy of Chloe De Verrier

It also took De Verrier eight months to sell her first home, which she attributes to the pandemic and the fact that she was just starting out in the industry. In the meantime, she lived off her savings and moonlighted as a restaurant hostess for extra cash.

"It was just a complete shit show," she said. "I would do real estate all day during the day, go to my night shift. And it would be funny because clients would call me when I was on shift, and so I would make some excuse to go to the bathroom or step into the alleyway to negotiate deals."

At times, she also doubted herself because of her age.

"Who's going to trust a 20-something-year-old to buy or sell their biggest asset?" De Verrier said.

But for the most part, people don't seem to care about how young she was. De Verrier says clients typically trust her because she's knowledgeable and does her best to come across as professional.

"To this day, people are like, you look 23, but you act [older]," she said. "Looking back, I don't think it was as big of a deal as I made it out to be in my head."

De Verrier made over $100,000 last year, according to documents viewed by BI.

Joseph Khateri, a 21-year-old real-estate agent in Virginia, said he got his real estate license when he was 18, but he was dabbling in real estate long before that. Khateri helped his immigrant parents read documents and sell their home twice when he was younger.

Khateri, who also works full-time as a software engineer, said he expected to make around $200,000 in combined income in 2025.

Courtesy of Joseph Khateri

The last time Khateri helped his parents move, the realtor who sold them their house in Virginia told him to think about getting into the real estate business. Afer obtaining his license, he plunged into the real estate business full-time, working as many as 80 hours a week his first few years.

Khateri described his approach to real-estate as a kind of game, adding that he worked doggedly to bring up his hourly rate, or what his salary would be if he were paid by the hour.

It was tough going, though. It took Khateri around six months to sell his first home. His commission, when subtracting fees from his brokerage and other work-related expenses, came out to a rate of around $2 an hour.

"I was just losing money every month," he said. "My parents were like, 'Joseph, what are you doing?'"

He, too, said he had trouble doing deals because of his age. "Ageism is a very big thing with real estate," he said.

Since then, things have picked up. Last year, Khateri made around $70,000 from his real estate business alone, which includes his income from commission, referrals to clients, and consulting, statements viewed by BI show.

The Gen Z realtors who spoke to BI said they all want to stick with real estate, even if its just as a side hustle.

Milonas, who grew up in a working-class family in Queens, said he planned on scaling his business and building generational wealth through his real estate ventures.

Khateri picked up a full-time job as a software engineer last year and said he would continue to work in real estate on the side. Money is part of the reason why, he admits, as he's a close follower of the Financial Independence, Retire Early movement. He said expects to make $200,000 in income this year. But for the most part, he just finds real estate fun.

"I'm a huge money guy, numbers guy, heavily into finance. I simply just like helping people with their investments. It's honestly fun for me," he said.

De Verrier said she would also stay in the industry, with plans to potentially build her own team of agents one day.

"I don't know what else I would do, honestly," she said.

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'Marital conflicts, financial losses, and lawsuits': Crypto-addiction therapists dish on the havoc it creates

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• Demand for crypto-trading addiction therapy is rising, experts in the space say.
• Crypto addiction mirrors gambling addiction, driven by excitement and potential financial gain.
• Therapists note clients often face legal issues, financial losses, and personal life disruptions.

Navigating the notoriously volatile crypto market is an exceedingly difficult thing to do.

But with bitcoin coming off a 124% rally in 2024 and as meme coins surge in popularity, some can't see the excessive risk that lies beyond what they deem a bevy of opportunities to strike it rich.

And eventually, it gets them into trouble — so much so that some conclude that they need to seek professional help.

Many therapy and counseling firms now offer crypto-related services, which have become more popular in recent years, according to professionals in the space.

Business Insider asked two therapists about their experiences with clients — below are some of their top observations.

Crypto addiction often resembles gambling addiction

While cryptocurrencies are relatively new, experts say the characteristics exemplified by traders who have gotten to the point of addiction often resemble those of an older condition: gambling addiction.

But the odds of winning aren't always even. Nor are they as transparent as they are in, say, casino games or sports gambling.

"It is seen as a quick way to make money, but the reality is it's a skill-based form of gambling, and there are certainly more losers than winners," said Craig Bilton, clinical director at The Diamond Rehab Thailand, a rehab center with a one-month minimum stay.

Similar to gambling addictions, the dopamine from the first win keeps people coming back. But oftentimes, like with gambling, it's not even about making money itself — it's about the excitement of taking on the risk.

"They work on the same circuit of the brain," Bilton said. "There is an initial win that creates the hook. And then after that, it's the anticipation of the win."

Clients sometimes miss their sessions out of fear of repercussions for crimes

Bobbe McGinley, clinical director of Birches Health, said that some clients are likely involved in illegal activity, resulting in their absence from therapy sessions.

"Cryptocurrency frauds and scams, ranging from phishing, Ponzi schemes and pyramid schemes, to market manipulation, have been growing in frequency and magnitude over the past years, inflicting considerable financial losses on victims, and becoming an issue of significant concern," McGinley said in an email.

"Individuals involved often do not report for therapy, support, and assistance due to the complexity of their shame, and stress and anxiety about potential consequences," she added.

Clients have usually suffered big financial losses

"I've recently had a client that lost half a million dollars," Bilton said.

The sums of money aren't always that big — but the amounts are usually significant relative to each trader, according to Bilton.

"If you take a cocaine addict, the cocaine addict will stop using when they run out of cocaine," he said. "A gambling addict or a cryptocurrency or day-trading addict, they stop using when they've run out of money."

The addiction is the symptom of another underlying issue

"We want to always be able to go deeper. We always want to be able to figure out: why the behavior, why the pain," Bilton said. "The reality is the addiction meets legitimate needs, but in an illegitimate way."

Crypto-trading addictions often harm many parts of clients' lives — not just financial

"These individuals often spend considerable amounts of time daily on trading activities (neglecting other areas of their lives) and highly value social status and success, being highly competitive," McGinley said. "Reported negative consequences are not rare and can be varied: from marital conflicts, financial losses and lawsuits to adverse psychological outcomes."

Bilton said he's seen similar issues with clients.

"There's often a lot of damage control that needs to be done, whether it's relational therapy because the husband spent all the savings," he said.

"People don't phone me because I'm a nice guy," Bilton continued. "I'm a nice guy, but people phone me because a lot has happened."

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4 tips for job searching after being told you're an underperformer

If you were fired for performance-related issues, talk to a mentor and do some self-evaluation.

Adie Bush/Getty Images

• If you've been fired for performance, you can do a few things before applying to new work.
• You can talk to someone you trust about what your performance is really like.
• Be ready to talk about your skills and why you're looking for work during an interview.

One of the toughest things you can hear at work is your boss saying you suck at your job.

Being told you're a low-performer, as thousands of former workers from Meta, Microsoft, and the federal government know firsthand, is rarely easy. That's especially the case if you believe the poor job assessment is unfounded.

In the vernacular of Elon Musk, it can mean workers find themselves at a fork in the road — and often jobless.

Being out of work after suffering a rhetorical body blow calls for self-evaluation, getting feedback from a mentor, and being careful about how you talk about your former job and employer, career experts told Business Insider.

Workers pushed out in a high-profile culling of ostensibly poor performers could struggle even more to find work, Dan Schawbel, managing partner at Workplace Intelligence, told BI.

"Employers know that that's the reason why they got laid off," he said.

That might necessitate that job seekers take special care. Here are four things to keep in mind.

Reflect on what happened and then take steps to improve

Before applying to jobs again, workplace observers suggested taking a step back and reflecting on what your former employer said.

Amanda Augustine, the career expert at TopResume, said it's important to think, "Was I really bad at this, or was I not doing a great job of communicating my work and my performance?" Whatever you learn, work on that in your next role.

If you were told you were underperforming in a particular skill, you could get a certification or complete some training to improve, Harshal Varpe, a career expert at Indeed, said.

Job seekers should also consider who can vouch for them.

"Your references are almost your living testimonial of what your performance has been," Varpe said.

Augustine suggested two potential job references: someone in human resources from your previous company or a former colleague who can attest to your skills. If you put down a former boss, a prospective employer "might get some insight" into your performance, she said.

Get an honest assessment from someone who knows you

Getting canned for falling short of an employer's expectations hurts. And, of course, there can be numerous reasons you drew the underperformer tag. Perhaps your skills weren't well suited for the role, or maybe your employer didn't give you what you needed to succeed, Vicki Salemi, a career expert with Monster, told BI. In some cases, that might be training or a set of clear expectations.

Finding a mentor or someone else you trust who knows your work can be a big help, she said, because you can ask the person for an honest assessment of your strengths and weaknesses.

"You might actually truly be a poor performer," Salemi said. If you get a sense that's the case, it's reasonable to ask how you might improve, she said.

If you believe your poor performance rating isn't justified or that you faced other obstacles, like an unreasonable workload, Salemi suggests gathering qualitative measures of your success and clearly defined accomplishments.

She said having specific examples in your back pocket will help "demonstrate that you are a strong performer."

Be careful with your digital footprint

Some workers Meta terminated after labeling them as low performers pushed back with LinkedIn posts asserting that they'd earned solid reviews.

That's a departure from a more discreet approach some fired workers might have taken in the past.

If you're planning to post about your termination, Augustine said to consider what you include because it reflects your professional — and personal — brand to prospective employers and others, such as people you're hoping to set up informational interviews with.

Instead of talking about your performance or calling out your past employer, Augustine said to talk about the kind of areas where you're seeking opportunities, what skills you are hoping to use, and, of course, that you are hoping for job leads.

"You want to be cognizant of what reputation you're promoting for yourself, how you're positioning yourself, and your experience to the world," she said.

Focus on your skills

Augustine said prospective employers usually ask candidates why they left a job or are seeking a new one. She advised answering with, "I'm now targeting roles that really leverage my X, Y, and Z skills, which are really strong," rather than discussing performance or badmouthing a former employer.

Salemi said that job seekers should have ready a simple statement that explains why they left their last role. It's similar, she said, to how you might be prepared to talk about employment gaps on your résumé. Salemi said that after briefly explaining why you left, it's time to shift toward the role you're seeking.

"You want to pivot to your top skills and strengths," she said.

Before landing a role, you can get insight into performance expectations during the job interview. Augustine said you can ask, "If I were to take on this job, what would you expect me to accomplish in the first three months or the first six months?"

She said this can help inform your relationship with your potential manager. Once you get the job, she said to align with your boss about your goals and how you should be communicating progress toward them.

Do you have a story to share about your job search? Contact these reporters at mhoff@businessinsider.com or tparadis@businessinsider.com.

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So close, yet so far from retirement: These older Americans need a few more years of work, but can't find a new job

 Older Americans often debate whether they should retire in their 60s or keep working.

shapecharge/Getty, Westend61/Getty, aquaArts studio/Getty, Anna Kim/Getty, Tyler Le/BI

• It's a tough job market out there, and experienced workers are not exempt.
• Some older Americans just want a few more years of work to boost retirement savings or stay busy.
• The jobs that are available don't pay enough to make them worthwhile, job seekers said.

Gino Marconi is struggling to secure full-time work, and it's messing with his retirement plans.

Marconi, who's 64 and lives in Plantation, Florida, earned $60,000 annually as a sales representative for an outdoor supply company until two years ago, when he resigned due to the stress of working long days on the road. Marconi previously held engineering jobs that paid more.

Since then, he said he's applied to over 600 remote and in-person roles across various industries and skill levels. He suspects many positions have rejected him because he's overqualified, and he's removed the years he's completed some degrees and certifications from some applications.

Marconi said he hopes to retire in a few years and rely on Social Security income, but his plans could change if he's unable to find higher-paying work.

"My home is paid off, my cars are paid off," Marconi said. "But I need to keep going until I get back to work."

Are you an older American who is still working or looking for work? Please fill out this quick Google Form.

As many Americans reach retirement age, they don't find themselves coasting into their golden years as easily as they may have hoped. Instead, as hundreds of older Americans told Business Insider in responses to reader surveys about work and retirement, they find themselves once again on the job market. Maybe they got laid off or quit a career due to health issues. Either way, they need just a few more years to reach a comfortable financial position — and it's tough out there for job seekers.

To be sure, the unemployment rate for Americans age 55 and older was just 3% as of January, compared to 4% for all workers. But for people of all ages who don't have jobs, the hiring landscape has become more challenging in recent years. Excluding a two-month pandemic-related dip in 2020, US businesses are hiring at nearly the lowest rate since 2013, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

In response to his job search struggles, Marconi is working part-time with a transportation company for a hotel chain and said he's taken steps to become a full-time insurance agent. He said he's grown frustrated with the application process — he recalled getting stood up at an interview — but is remaining optimistic while cutting back on unnecessary spending.

"I don't know when I'll retire because Social Security is not going to be enough," Marconi said, adding he's pickier about the roles he applies for. "My wife used to say I should do whatever increases my income, but I'm not going to work as an engineer making no money."

Working later in life for extra security

Some older Americans told BI that even though they could technically retire, they're holding out because they fear their savings and retirement income won't be sufficient if unexpected costs arise.

David F., 67, has been looking for work since last October — when he anticipated he would soon be laid off from his aerospace industry job. The layoff ultimately came in January.

Of the nearly 1,700 submitted applications he's tracked since beginning his job search, only 4% have yielded interviews, and none have amounted to a job offer yet. He said he's frequently encountered ghost jobs or positions with similar job descriptions to previous roles but significantly less pay.

"They're either looking for a unicorn and never finding it, or there's not really a position there, but they want to look like they're hiring," said David, who lives in Washington and asked to withhold his last name due to ongoing late-stage job interviews.

David doesn't have a firm retirement goal, but he hopes to retire within the next 5 to 10 years, assuming he finds a suitable position. After working in project management for nearly three decades, David briefly retired but returned to work to bolster his finances when the pandemic caused economic uncertainty. He said he's looking for work now because earning additional income would help him live more comfortably and stress less about retirement savings.

"My situation is not desperate, and although I've made mistakes in my retirement savings in the past, I'm not making those mistakes," David said.

David said he also wants to keep working to stay busy. He's among the older Americans who desire to keep working for reasons other than finances.

"There are the people that love their job, working or even volunteering," said Deb Whitman, AARP's chief public policy officer, adding, "There's sort of a social connection, a sense of purpose and meaning that people get."

David Schanen has been looking for work since being laid off in 2022.

David Schanen

Some older Americans' jobs are more crucial. While they hope to retire in the next few years, it's far from guaranteed.

In December 2022, David Schanen was laid off from his network engineer job. Over the last three years, he's struggled to find high-paying work in his industry.

"There's a lot of work for things that I'm qualified for, but people are paying like $25 an hour," said Schanen, who's 64 and based in Seattle. He said his network engineer job paid about $200,000 annually.

Schanen said he hopes to sell the two side businesses he started over the past decade and retire sometime in the next couple of years. However, he said his real estate photography and virtual concert businesses have only generated roughly $100,000 in combined revenues to date — not nearly enough to make his significant financial investments in them feel worthwhile.

Schanen's uncertain retirement outlook is why he's continued exploring other job opportunities. About six months ago, he began driving for Uber about 40 hours a week. He said he's frustrated with the gig's pay, but that it's given him the flexibility to control his own working hours and dedicate time to his businesses.

"Right now what I'm doing is just kind of keep helping me stay afloat," he said.

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The AI coding apocalypse

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In 2023, not long after ChatGPT made generative AI mainstream, a poll on the anonymous workplace forum Blind asked, bluntly, whether young software engineers were "fucked." Some 42% of the more than 13,000 respondents picked the response "Yes? U guys are pretty much fucked."

This past October, Sundar Pichai proudly announced on an earnings call that AI was writing more than 25% of new code at Google. Mark Zuckerberg has said that Meta will build an AI engineer to write code. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff announced a hiring freeze for engineers in 2025, saying AI had increased productivity by 30% — and then news broke that Salesforce planned to lay off 1,000 workers. (It's still hiring salespeople for AI-powered products.) Stripe intends to cut some engineers while also growing its overall head count this year.

All of this raises the question of what junior engineers will take on if some basic tasks become automated. Some product managers have speculated that AI will increasingly take on some technical coding tasks and circumvent their need for engineers. Overall, job postings for software engineers on Indeed are at a five-year low.

Are engineers really coding themselves into obsolescence?

AI is knocking down the career ladder by doing more of the coding work of entry-level engineers, but, at least for now, the increased coding output from AI is also increasing the demand for and value of experienced, creative developers to interpret and put the AI's work to good use.

While many obituaries have been written to mourn the death of coding, engineering is more than writing code: It requires creative thinking to solve problems and expertise to read code. As it is now, AI isn't an original thinker.

"AI can't support what it doesn't know," says James Stanger, the chief technology evangelist at CompTIA, a nonprofit trade association for the US IT industry. "I still don't think that it is something that can fully replace a good developer." He adds, though, that "if a developer is not creative, then you can replace them very easily."

---

oftware engineering has been around since the 1960s, but hiring boomed in the '90s with the dot-com era. Coding boot camps became common in the 2010s as the demand for engineers outpaced the supply. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 1.9 million people worked as software developers, quality-assurance analysts, and testers in 2023. The bureau projected that the industry would grow by 17% from 2023 to 2033, outpacing the national average of 4% for all jobs.

An analysis from CompTIA found that the rate of job postings for software engineers fell by 50% from January to December 2023, recovering slightly by the end of 2024. While posts for jobs across tech, finance and accounting, and marketing, communications, and creative roles all fell as well, the dip for software engineers was the sharpest. But CompTIA says the reason for the fall wasn't clear. Tech companies — including some that acknowledged overhiring during the pandemic — laid off thousands of workers in 2022 and 2023, with many citing economic uncertainty.

But there's a widening divide within software engineering regarding experience level. CompTIA found that the proportion of open software engineering roles seeking entry-level workers had dropped since January 2023, to just over 20% from nearly 30%, while job postings for those with seven years of experience or more increased to make up nearly 40% of the open roles, up from just over 30%.

The experienced engineers I talked to seemed confident that AI wouldn't come for the jobs anytime soon.

Jeremy Chua, a software engineer for the AI Lab at the venture firm Georgian, turns to chatbots when he hits issues with coding. He may prompt ChatGPT or Claude to cull answers from the depths of Google and Stack Overflow, a Q&A site for programmers, or to help him write in coding languages he's less fluent in. Chua, who has more than a decade of experience, says he was skeptical about whether gen AI could help him at work. He says that now he can sometimes complete projects that would have taken a week in a day or two, and he thinks of the chatbots he uses as coding partners. "It's not like it will replace me — it augments the way that I work," Chua tells me.

Caleb Tonkinson, an engineer at a clinical AI company called SmarterDx, tells me that AI is changing programming through two paths: "I can deliver the same thing faster, or I can deliver something better in the same period of time." He views AI as similar to other tech tools that became available to engineers — except more exciting as it advances rapidly. "There have been tons of tools for 20 years now" to debug software, generate code, or evaluate code, he says. "Your best companies and best software engineers are almost always leveraging those tools."

Cody Stewart, a principal software engineer at the software company CallRail, says he doesn't use gen AI for everything at work but might use it to get answers to "stupid questions" that he could spend a long time looking for on Google or Stack Overflow. He began using chatbots at work in 2022. "I read something that was like, you either learn to adopt new tools and figure out how they can enhance your day-to-day life and you stay with the times, or people are going to outlevel you," he said. "I saw that and thought I should probably give this a shot."

While more-experienced engineers are optimistic about AI, young engineers have more reason to worry.

The startup Cognition AI last year widely released an AI-powered software engineer called Devin, designed to work on bugs and small feature requests. In a December video, it described it as "a junior engineer" who "works best with a great manager." Cognition AI and its CEO, Scott Wu, did not respond to questions about whether it's meant to replace engineers or reduce the number the companies need.

Jayesh Govindarajan, a Salesforce executive vice president focused on AI, told my colleague Ana Altchek that the company was building "a system that can pretty much solve anything for you" but "just doesn't know what to solve," making knowing how to code less important. "I may be in the minority here," Govindarajan said, "but I think something that's far more essential than learning how to code is having agency."

Alexander Petros, a freelance open-source software engineer, is an AI holdout; he tells me he doesn't use generative AI to code. "I do worry that because AI is in many ways doing things that you used to hire junior developers to do, it does remove the ladder upon which junior developers would try to do those things, make those mistakes, and then learn," he says. Petros says he tried ChatGPT but found that the code could be clunky. If something in that code breaks, humans may not know how to fix it. "The process of producing code with LLMs, for the foreseeable future, is almost entirely distinct from the process of producing good software systems that last for a very long time," he says. Plus, using AI to solve problems means he may not learn how to get through those roadblocks on his own.

Chatbots lack creativity — that's where engineers, especially those who have been doing the job for a while, have an in-demand advantage. Stanger says he hopes companies use AI not as justification for cutting back on engineers but as a way to help them "get deeper into this code and get more creative."

Stanger says that treating engineers as a faucet that can be turned on and off as a business needs, or even replaced with AI, is likely to backfire in the long term. "If you've got toxic companies that are interested in that binge-and-purge, on-and-off hiring of developers, I'm not sure they're going to create very good products," he says.

People have long panicked that technology will take their livelihood. But even as automation eliminates some jobs, tech often creates a demand for new roles; most people today are working jobs that didn't exist before 1940.

The wholesale elimination of software engineers likely won't come to fruition in the near future, but the picture for more-experienced engineers is brighter. In the best-case scenario, AI will mean they get more time to flex their muscles and solve deep problems.

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Amanda Hoover is a senior correspondent at Business Insider covering the tech industry. She writes about the biggest tech companies and trends.

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Few prisoners claiming abuses have access to a jury trial. The Supreme Court could soon change that.

The US Supreme Court is slated to hear a case Tuesday that could expand prisoners' access to jury trials.

Alyssa Schukar/for Business Insider

• The Supreme Court is set to hear a case Tuesday that could expand prisoner access to jury trials.
• The case relates to the PLRA, a 1996 law requiring prisoners to pursue a prison grievance before filing suit.
• The petitioner says expanding access to juries would leave courts "inundated" with meritless suits.

When US lawmakers introduced legislation nearly 30 years ago to curb the "frivolous" prisoner lawsuits they said were inundating the courts, they insisted it wouldn't affect prisoners with legitimate claims.

That law, the 1996 Prison Litigation Reform Act, created something of a catch-22. Under the PLRA, any lawsuit, however serious the claim, can be dismissed if the prisoner didn't first exhaust their prison's internal grievance process. Yet prisoners say grievances can be stymied by the very guards they've accused of wrongdoing.

In these cases, a prisoner's claim of abuse or retaliation can be intertwined with their failure to properly file grievances.

The Supreme Court is expected to hear arguments Tuesday about whether prisoners have a right to argue these complex cases before a jury.

The case the justices will hear centers on a Michigan prisoner named Kyle Brandon Richards, who said in a legal complaint he filed in April 2020 that Thomas Perttu, a resident unit manager at the Baraga Correctional Facility, had "engaged in a pattern of prolific and repetitive sexual abuse." Richards said that when he tried to file written grievances reporting the abuse, Perttu retaliated against him by destroying them and threatening to kill him.

The Michigan Department of Corrections declined to comment on the claims against Perttu and did not confirm whether he still worked at the prison, citing the pending litigation. Michigan's attorney general's office, which represents Perttu, did not respond to queries.

A judge dismissed Richards' lawsuit over his failure to exhaust Baraga's grievance process under the PLRA. An appeals court reversed course. A panel of 6th Circuit judges found that because Richards' First Amendment retaliation claims against Perttu were intertwined with a factual dispute over whether he'd properly exhausted the grievance process, those contested facts should be decided by a jury, not a judge, under the Seventh Amendment right to a jury trial.

Perttu appealed, and the question of whether prisoners in these situations have a right to a jury trial will now be heard by the Supreme Court.

"Holding that the Seventh Amendment requires a jury decision on this question would be significant," said Michael Mushlin, an emeritus professor at Pace University's law school, who wrote an amicus brief with law professors in support of Richards' claims. "It's not earth-shattering, but it's significant in trying to soften the horrible blow of the PLRA."

A contested law

Though the PLRA was pitched as a common-sense reform to curb trivial lawsuits, Business Insider found, in a six-part series published in December, that the law has largely stymied prisoner lawsuits claiming serious harm — including retaliatory beatings, stabbings, sexual assaults, and egregious forms of medical neglect.

Exhausting an internal grievance system before filing suit, as the PLRA requires, is often a convoluted ordeal.

In one case BI uncovered that was dismissed by a judge over the failure to exhaust, a New Jersey prisoner said he'd been beaten by prison guards while he was in restraints and then missed a grievance deadline while in solitary confinement. In another, a Virginia prisoner who said he was sexually abused by a prison psychologist filed a grievance that was not considered specific enough. In Indiana, a prisoner who said he attempted suicide after a guard told him to "go for it" lost in court because his grievance didn't contain the guard's full name.

In Richards' case, he argued that he was unable to meet the PLRA's exhaustion requirement because Perttu had destroyed his grievance forms — the same set of circumstances at the heart of his retaliation claim.

"The disputed facts," said Lori Alvino McGill, a lecturer at the University of Virginia's law school who is representing Richards before the Supreme Court, "will be critical to both the retaliation claim and to whether administrative remedies were available."

The PLRA has faced intense criticism since it was first enacted. Members of Congress have tried to reform the law and failed. And the Richards case is not the first time the Supreme Court has been asked to review aspects of the law.

Margo Schlanger, a law professor at the University of Michigan who is a leading researcher on the PLRA's effects and who helped guide BI on its research methodology, said that if the justices decide in favor of Richards, it would mean, at the very least, "a few more cases" filed by prisoners would make it before juries.

BI found that such outcomes are unusual. Of nearly 1,500 Eighth Amendment prisoner cases BI analyzed for its series — including every appeals court case that reached a decision over a five-year period — only 2% were decided by a jury.

Plaintiffs who got a jury trial fared far better than those who did not: Less than 1% won their cases before a judge, while 18% of plaintiffs whose cases reached a jury prevailed.

ACLU, Cato, counties weigh in

Richards' case has attracted support from the ACLU and the Cato Institute, the libertarian think tank, which both filed amicus briefs on Richards' behalf. Groups including the National Sheriffs' Association and the International Municipal Lawyers Association filed briefs supporting Perttu.

The Cato Institute argued in its brief that the constitutional right to a civil jury trial is "fundamental to American liberty."

"For Richards, and those similarly situated to him," Cato's Clark Neily III wrote, "a jury trial at the exhaustion stage is essential to ensure that their claims are fairly heard."

According to Jennifer Wedekind, a senior staff attorney at the ACLU's National Prison Project who was an author of the ACLU's brief, credibility determinations often come down to an officer's word against a prisoner's. "Those are precisely the type of determinations that juries are supposed to be making," she told BI.

The Supreme Court could decide broadly that every incarcerated plaintiff is entitled to a jury trial when there are disputes over exhaustion. Or the justices could rule more narrowly, as Mushlin expects — granting access to a jury trial only to plaintiffs in cases in which the factual discrepancies over exhaustion are inseparable from the substantive issues of the case.

Perttu's lawyers argued that if the justices uphold the circuit court's decision, federal courts will be "inundated" with "meritless lawsuits that they must allow to go to a jury" and effectively "erase nearly 30 years of progress in reducing frivolous lawsuits."

A brief filed by the International Municipal Lawyers Association and the National Association of Counties echoed those points, arguing that the 6th Circuit ruling "undermines the PLRA's goal of saving costs by reducing the volume of frivolous inmate suits."

BI found that claims of a tide of frivolous lawsuits were largely a myth. While a few dozen of the claims in BI's sample appeared to center on minor matters, the vast majority clearly involved claims of substantive harm. The effects of the law have been dramatic: Of the roughly 1,400 federal prisoner cases that BI examined filed by people who were imprisoned — rather than by former prisoners or their families — 27% failed because of the PLRA's requirements. Among cases decided in district courts, 35% failed because of the law.

Research by Schlanger found that within five years of the PLRA's passage prisoner suits dropped by 43% even as the prison population grew. The filing rate, she later found, never rebounded.

In BI's sample of prisoner suits, plaintiffs prevailed less than 1% of the time — indicating a near evisceration of protections for this country's 1.2 million prisoners, thanks to the combined impact of the PLRA and a set of legal standards established by the Supreme Court at the height of the war on drugs.

"Recent reports from Business Insider show that many prisoners have been denied their basic legal rights," Rep. Jan Schakowsky of Illinois said in response to BI's series. "Any abuse that happens inside our prisons must be allowed to reach the light of day."

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Russia's real strongman: Meet the oligarch who's pushing Putin to destroy Ukraine

A Gen Xer made $280k secretly working 2 remote jobs in the medical field. He said he gave up on 'climbing the corporate ladder.'

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• A Gen Xer made $280,000 last year secretly working two full-time remote jobs in the medical field.
• He said "overemployment" helped him boost his income after he failed to land promotions.
• Juggling two jobs can be stressful, but he's learned how to manage his workload.

After spending years struggling to rise in the ranks at work, Daniel found another way to boost his earnings: secretly working a second full-time job.

In 2020, Daniel worked remotely as a training and customer support specialist in the radiation oncology field, a medical specialty involved in cancer treatments. When his company offered employees a three-month sabbatical with reduced pay, Daniel seized the opportunity. He spent those three months working in a part-time, remote role for another employer in the industry.

Daniel said this experience made him realize he might be able to juggle a remote side gig in addition to his full-time role after his sabbatical. When his part-time gig came to an end, he found another. By 2021, this part-time gig had converted to a full-time role, and for the first time, Daniel was working two remote full-time jobs simultaneously.

Last year, Daniel earned more than $280,000 across his two jobs, each of which paid more than $125,000 annually. He said the additional income has helped him grow his retirement savings, complete home renovations, and, in the coming months, will go toward buying a second investment property.

"I feel like I'm expediting my years of income-earning potential," said Daniel, whose identity was verified by Business Insider but asked to use a pseudonym due to fear of professional repercussions. "I'm doubling up, so I don't have to wait a couple of years to save up for something."

Daniel, who's in his late 40s and based in Texas, is among the Americans who have secretly worked multiple remote jobs recently to increase their incomes. Over the past two years, BI has interviewed more than two dozen "overemployed" workers who've used their earnings to pay off debt and travel the world. To be sure, having multiple jobs without the approval of one's employer could have professional repercussions and lead to burnout. But many job jugglers have told BI that the financial perks generally outweigh the downsides and risks.

Struggling to climb the "corporate ladder" led to overemployment

In the early 2000s, Daniel was working as a research technician for a biotech company. He believes he hit a pay ceiling at that employer and that he would have needed additional education to advance his career. After exploring his options, he decided to enroll in a one-year program focused on radiation oncology, which he said opened doors for higher-paying opportunities.

After graduating in 2005, Daniel worked at a new employer for about a year until he landed his landed his current remote role, which involves training hospital staff on using certain medical products and providing customer support over the phone. The job came with a lot of downtime, but it presented a familiar hurdle: He said he struggled to land promotions and increase his pay during the next 14 years. Then, he started his sabbatical.

Daniel feels frustrated that he spent so many years trying to get recognition from his employers. However, he said the demands of job juggling have forced him to accept that he can't be a "star employee" at either of his jobs. In recent years, he's shifted his focus to maximizing his earnings instead of climbing the corporate ladder.

"This is something I know how to do and I'm pretty good at it," he said of overemployment. "But climbing the corporate ladder, I don't think I was very good at it. I wanted to be much better than I really was."

Daniel said he typically works 40 to 50 hours a week across the two jobs. Even though there's the occasional 60-hour week, having no commute saves him a lot of time. He added that spreading out his work over the week has helped juggling two jobs feel more manageable. For example, he might work a few hours on the weekends or in the evenings and spend some time during the day running errands.

"I can set my own schedule, so it doesn't feel so overbearing," he said.

Daniel said each of his bosses knows he has a "side gig" but doesn't know it's full-time. While some bosses think that secretly juggling multiple jobs is unethical, James said he feels no guilt.

"The companies I work for can lay me off for no reason at any time, so there's no sort of sense of loyalty," he said.

Going forward, Daniel said he hopes to generate rental income from the second investment property he's close to purchasing. If things go well, he said he plans to eventually give up one of his jobs and rely on this passive income stream to supplement his earnings.

Juggling multiple jobs can be exhausting at times. Daniel said his wife is concerned that his work arrangement is too stressful, but she trusts him to decide whether it's feasible. In recent years, Daniel said he's learned new skills to manage this stress. For example, he said reminding himself that he can "only do one thing at a time" helps him when his workload piles up.

"I've gone through several waves where the workload is either too much, or it's impossible, or there doesn't seem like there's enough time, but it always works out as long as I don't lose it," he said.

Have you worked multiple remote jobs at the same time or discovered an employee/coworker was doing so? Reach out to this reporter at jzinkula@businessinsider.com.

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He was once Elon Musk's biggest believer. Now he's doubling down on why Tesla stock will feel serious pain in 2025.

Emma McIntyre / Staff/Getty Images

• Ross Gerber was an early investor in Tesla, buying in before the stock boomed.
• But he's gotten increasingly outspoken about issues he sees with Elon Musk and Tesla, and has sold shares.
• Gerber outlined for BI four reasons why he expects Tesla shares to fall as much as 50% in 2025.

Tesla shareholder Ross Gerber is no stranger to bearish takes on the company, at least lately.

In the middle of last year he revealed that he'd sold about $60 million of Tesla shares on concerns its vehicles were fading in popularity. Then, after Donald Trump's election victory, Gerber said in early December that Tesla would see minimal positive impact, if any, from Elon Musk's association with the president.

The warnings now seem prescient. After an initial post-election surge, Tesla shares are down 16% so far in 2025, and sit roughly 4% lower since Gerber's December comments.

It's a trend Gerber sees continuing amid a collection of familiar issues, including a lofty valuation, worries about the company's Full Self-Driving capabilities, and the knock-on effects of Musk's unpredictable behavior.

In new interview with Business Insider, Gerber took his bearishness even further, outlining why he sees Tesla vulnerable to a drawdown of as much as 50%.

To his credit, Gerber — who is the president and CEO of Gerber Kawasaki Wealth & Investment Management — has had no issue putting his money where his mouth is. He reduced his firm's Tesla stake by 31% in 2024, regulatory filings show, leaving him with 262,000 Tesla shares worth $106 million at the end of last year.

Detailed below are four reasons informing Gerber's expectation for a rough year for Tesla:

1. Full Self-Driving 'doesn't work'

Gerber sees a disaster for Tesla stock this year because Musk's June target of launching an autonomous taxi network in Austin, Texas is too ambitious.

"All of this stuff is going to come to roost this year because he put this deadline on full self driving working in a couple months. It almost seems impossible for that to happen," Gerber told BI.

According to Gerber, the core issue is that Tesla's autonomous driving platform doesn't use the LIDAR sensors that other driverless systems, like Alphabet's Waymo, rely on. Instead, it uses cameras.

"We're well behind in robotaxi and autonomy, there's no question now," Gerber said, adding that he thinks Waymo's approach is "a safer system."

"I'm in the camp now that you need LIDAR to have a safe enough system for Full Self-Driving," he said. "They're going to run into a wall, where they can't get better unless they change the hardware."

2. Elon Musk is distracted

From running several companies, including Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI, to posting prolifically on X, to spearheading government efficiency efforts at DOGE, to being the father to 11 kids, it's safe to say there might not be enough time in the day for Musk.

Gerber thinks that's a problem for Tesla shareholders, especially considering Musk's sole focus in recent months appears to have been AI.

"His 100% focus is on AI, and that's really a detriment to Tesla more than it's a plus for xAI and all the other businesses because he doesn't work at Tesla anymore," Gerber said.

"If he were putting all of his time into full self-driving, I'd feel a lot more confident about Tesla."

3. Vehicle sales are slowing

While investor hype around Tesla focuses on its autonomous and robotic ambitions, selling cars remains its core business, and that's starting to slow.

Last year marked Tesla's first annual decline in EV sales. After forecasting 20%-30% growth in 2025, management has since said on its latest earnings call that it expects a "return to growth."

For Gerber, increasing competition from BYD, the largest EV maker in the world based out of China, is a real threat to Tesla's EV business outside the US.

"Xi has made it very clear that he wants Chinese tech and EV companies to succeed, not Tesla," Gerber said. "BYD is such a good company, everybody in the emerging markets are buying BYDs."

Tesla sold almost 1 million vehicles in China last year.

The other threat to Tesla is Musk's close association with President Donald Trump.

"What this does is it creates this anger. I've never seen this anger towards Tesla, but it's not toward Tesla as the company, it's because of Elon, this is the only way people can take it out," Gerber explained.

Singer Sheryl Crow posted a video to Instagram this week waving goodbye to her Tesla, which she sold in protest.

"There comes a time when you have to decide who you are willing to align with. So long Tesla," Crow wrote on Instagram.

The trend could be picking up steam outside the US, with the Financial Times reporting that Tesla's January vehicle sales plunged 63% in France, 60% in Germany, and 38% in Norway.

"We've got to sell cars, and people just don't want them anymore," Gerber said.

4. Tesla trades at a premium valuation

Tesla has always traded at a premium valuation relative to other automakers and its mega-cap tech peers, but if Tesla's slowdown in vehicle sales continues, that premium could diminish considerably.

At a $1.1 trillion market capitalization, Tesla is nearly 5x larger than Toyota despite delivering just 20% of Toyota's profits last year, according to data from YCharts.

Its forward price-to-earnings ratio of 118x is more than triple that of the next most expensive "Magnificent 7" stock, Nvidia, and is above its five-year average of 84x.

"The issue to me is, I've got $100 million in Tesla stock at 125x earnings and it's not even close to any PE, to any normal Mag 7 stock," Gerber said. "So Tesla's vulnerability is it could drop by 50% if things don't work out for it this year. So we sell Tesla stock. We still have tons of it and we sell it because we think it's pretty overvalued."

Some major Wall Street firms may agree with Gerber. JPMorgan was bearish on Tesla's latest earnings release. Despite an initial burst of enthusiasm from investors, the bank said it is sticking with a $135 price target for Tesla stock, representing potential downside of 60% from current levels.

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Moscow says there will be a 'price to pay' for the Western companies that left Russia after it invaded Ukraine

Three years into the war in Ukraine, nearly 475 foreign companies have left the Russian market completely.

Alexander Sayganov/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images

• Western companies may be considering a return to Russia post-war, but Moscow doesn't appear too keen.
• Foreign firms left Russia due to sanctions over its Ukraine invasion, impacting the economy.
• Russian officials say the country is prioritizing domestic companies over returning Western firms.

Some of the Western companies that left Russia over its war in Ukraine may be tempted to head back when the war ends — but Moscow wants them to know it's is not in a rush to receive them.

"We are not waiting for anyone with open arms. There will be a price to pay for past decisions," Anton Alikhanov, the Russian industry and trade minister, told reporters on Thursday, according to TASS state news agency.

Three years into the war in Ukraine, nearly 475 foreign companies have left the Russian market completely, according to the Leave Russia database from the Kyiv School of Economics. Those that have made a complete exit include McDonald's, Starbucks, Ikea, British energy giant Shell, and Japanese tire maker Bridgestone.

Alikhanov said Russia is prioritizing domestic brands instead of waiting for foreign brands to return.

His comments come as US President Donald Trump has signaled a willingness for the US to reconcile with Moscow, igniting discussions about the return of some departed companies.

"It is a reasonable assumption that some companies will seek to return to Russia following a comprehensive settlement to end the war," Andrew Staples, the principal of GeoPol Asia, a business strategy and geopolitical risk consultancy, told Business Insider.

Denis Manturov, the first deputy prime minister of Russia, echoed the country's emphasis on domestic companies and those from the Eurasian Economic Union — a group of five post-Soviet states— per TASS.

"We will clear for our market the ones of interest for ourselves," Manturov said on Thursday.

Foreign firms are probably not rushing back to Russia either

International companies may not race back, wrote Edward Verona, a former business executive who was based in Moscow in the 1990s and 2000s.

"Taking another chance on Russia might seem appealing to some. After all, memories can be short in the business world," Verona, who is now a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council's Eurasia Center, wrote on Thursday.

Good deals may not be enough to lure back Western companies still concerned about the safety of non-Russian staff and the rule of law, he said.

"US firms may feel less restrained to return than European firms given the geographical and political distance involved," Staples said.

Even if sanctions were to be lifted, he said it's hard to imagine countries closer to the conflict — such as Poland, the Baltic states, Scandinavia, Germany, France, and the UK — get involved again.

Staples said consumer goods companies and firms operating in less sensitive sectors are more likely to return to the market than those in strategic sectors like energy, tech, banking, finance, aerospace, and defense.

Companies seeking to safeguard their reputations and who left Russia for moral reasons are also unlikely to return in the foreseeable future, wrote Verona, who is a former head of the US-Russia Business Council.

Russia's wartime economy

Even if companies are enticed by the prospect of a return to the Russian market, the fundamental question is whether it's worth the effort.

"Perhaps most importantly, from a business perspective, the outlook for the economy is not great," Staples said, citing challenges including high inflation and a tight monetary policy.

The Russian economy has largely held out from three years of Western sanctions — at least on paper — as its leaders focused on defense manufacturing, ramping up military spending to account for 8% of its GDP in 2025.

The ruble slumped to a two-year low of 113.72 against the dollar in early January as Europe's progressive decoupling with Russian energy opened the way for another tranche of US sanctions. That latest measure, one of the Biden administration's final moves, blocks Russia's third-largest bank from handling many energy-related payments.

Still, a new wave of optimism has since buoyed the ruble to a six-month high, at 88.67 against the dollar on Thursday.

The ruble has strengthened about 14% since Trump took office on January 20.

Meanwhile, some of Russia's firms — even those outside the military — are doing well. Yandex, an internet company that operates one of Russia's largest search engines, posted record annual revenues of $11.22 billion on Thursday, surging 37% year-on-year.

Yandex's net income slumped 78% from 2023, to $129 million, as interest and operating expenses increased. Russia hiked interest rates to 21% last year to try to cool surging inflation.

Yandex split from its Dutch-domiciled ownership in July after a two-year negotiation that ended with local buyers acquiring its Russia-based assets.

But other sectors, such as its agriculture, automotive, and commodity industries, have showed signs of struggle.

In particular, Europe has found new sources of energy to supplant Russia, once its largest energy provider. Energy accounts for about one-fifth of Russia's GDP.

Meanwhile, demand from China is sluggish amid its economic downturn, and Trump is pressing other countries to buy more US energy — more competition for Russia's exports.

"Given this economic assessment and continued political and reputational risk of being in Russia, is it an attractive place for foreign firms? I wouldn't anticipate a 'rush to get back to Russia,'" said Staples.

Business risks in Putin's Russia

Even if the numbers work out, there are political risks associated with operating in Russia where President Vladimir Putin — who is in office for a fifth term — has an ironclad rule.

Eurasia Center's Verona wrote that Russia is far from the same Western-partnered country it was under Boris Yeltsin's 1991 to 1999 leadership.

"It is not even the Russia of the early 2000s, before Vladimir Putin had fully consolidated his grip on power and completed the transition from fledgling democracy to authoritarian regime," Verona added. "After twenty-five years of Putin's rule, the Kremlin now dominates all aspects of Russian life, including the country's business climate."

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The stock market's overconfidence is setting it up for a dangerous fall

Getty Images; Alyssa Powell/BI

The stock market has been able to shake off quite a lot of worrying news lately.

The first two months of 2025 have been solid for investors. Major market indexes have recently hit or approached all-time highs: The S&P 500 hit a record on January 23, while the Nasdaq and Dow Jones averages have been hovering around their peaks. The market's resilience comes at a time when there is growing uncertainty about the future of the economy. Your daily coffee is still expensive, the housing market is frozen over, political tensions are boiling over, and AI dystopia seems to be all market experts are talking about.

There's a pretty big reason stocks have held up despite these worrying headlines: Companies, big-time investors, and average Americans are enthusiastic about the future.

For the past few years the US was stuck in a vibecession, as my friend Kyla Scanlon calls it, in which people worry about the economy despite evidence that it's in great shape. That's all flipped. As warning signs for stocks and the economy piled up, consumer confidence rose to a three-year high at the end of 2024, driven by optimism about the future. And if that's not stunning enough, check this chart out.

In July 2022, three months before the S&P 500 kicked off its ongoing rally, stock market pessimism hit a 10-year low. This past November, a record number of respondents in the Conference Board's survey said they thought the stock market would move higher over the next year. America clearly just went through a collective mood swing, especially when it comes to their investment portfolios. But is this happiness, a genuine mood shift that could sustain the stock rally well into the future? Or mania, a final act of hubris before the market gets its comeuppance?

The answer depends on the mechanics of Wall Street, where market moves depend more on expectations than reality. Measured optimism can be a powerful catalyst for stock prices, but even the best intentions can spiral into overconfidence — and pride often comes before a fall.

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The biggest market sell-offs in history were precipitated by economic crises. A catastrophe causes consumers to pull back on spending, company profits drop, executives cull hiring, and stock prices fall. What digs us out of these crises is confidence. Markets wallow in negative headlines until conditions change enough to sow optimism about the future — no matter how slim the hope may be. That's why over the past five decades we've seen the stock market turn higher an average of three months before recessions ended.

Even in less dire times, when it comes to your portfolio, expectations matter as much as — and maybe more than — the news itself. Think of it this way: What would you do if you knew you were about to get punched in the stomach? You'd tense and brace for impact, even if it doesn't end up hurting as much as you think. Markets work in a similar way. When lots of investors brace for a punch, they tend to discover that the actual punch doesn't hurt as bad. The opposite is true, too. If you get unexpectedly slugged out of nowhere, you have no time to prepare, and that punch is going to hurt. Generally, the sweet spot for markets is somewhere in the middle: excitement with a healthy dose of skepticism.

There are, thankfully, a slew of confidence and sentiment gauges that can help us determine whether investors are properly calibrated for the risks on the horizon or perhaps getting a little too comfortable. They also serve as a litmus test for what consumers and businesses expect for the future and, ultimately, what they may do with their money.

On the surface, we seem to be in a great spot. The Conference Board's gauges point to a cheerful American public, which historically is a good sign. Since 1970, when economic confidence has increased over a three-month span, the S&P 500 has climbed by an average of 10% over the following year. Usually, when people feel more confident, the economy — and the stock market — follow suit.

What reversed the vibecession? Well, it's complicated. Obviously we had a contentious election in November, and you could argue that confidence gauges have been skewed by the anticipation of a pro-growth, America-first administration. Politics are definitely a contributing factor, as they seem to be tinting everybody's glasses these days, but chalking it up to who's in the White House doesn't do the story justice.

First of all, confidence indicators started improving before Donald Trump won the election. The Conference Board economist Stephanie Guichard told me that fewer survey respondents than in 2020 were writing in to say that politics were the reason for their cheeriness.

The survey also suggests that hopes for the future have improved. Guichard told me there'd been a noticeable number of open-ended comments arguing that life feels more affordable. Maybe because, for some, it is. Wages have broadly outpaced inflation for the past 21 months, and more Americans are starting to adjust to what things cost these days.

Another interesting theory is that people are simply becoming more aware of the world around them. It's never been easier to keep up with the ups and downs of the stock market, and if we see a line move up and to the right, we often believe it can keep going. Data backs this up — over the past two years, 79% of the monthly changes in the Conference Board's stock market gauge have moved in the same direction as the S&P 500 (versus an average of 55% since 1987). No matter the cause, it's fair to say that Americans feel increasingly good about the future for legitimate reasons.

The problem, though, could lie in how confident we are.

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There is a fine line between confidence and arrogance.

Confidence is a constructive state of trust and certainty. It helps you own the room and control the narrative. Arrogance, on the other hand, is a destructive air of superiority. It sets you up for embarrassment, whispers, and abject failure. It's the difference between crushing your work presentation and being the butt of office jokes. Given the slim margin between merriness and mania, Wall Street may be dangerously close to tipping over to the wrong side of that line.

In November and December, the stock market seemed to defy gravity. Tech stocks were untouchable. Crypto bros started bragging about their bags. Fartcoin became a thing. The pot has been boiling over for a while now. Take the one-two punch of the Trump meme coin and DeepSeek. On January 17, Trump released $Trump, which jumped to $15 billion in market value in less than 48 hours. Days later, shares of Nvidia — the darling of the AI trade — tanked by an eye-catching 17% after the Chinese AI startup DeepSeek released a model promising function comparable to competitors for a fraction of the cost and energy use.

I can't help but look at both of these headlines and wonder if they're part of the same phenomenon. Did we become so confident in the market's prospects that we lost sight of the hefty risks coming down the pike? You can't judge a market solely on vibes. But if you don't think things have been getting a little overheated, you're not paying attention.

High expectations are where your portfolio can run into trouble. Rising optimism can be constructive until the investing population acts untouchable. Expectations become too lofty as cracks start to form. People look around nervously because they can feel the ground shifting. Then one blow knocks the market off its axis. This pattern has been evident throughout history. Before 2024, the Conference Board's gauge of stock market confidence reached its highest point in January 2018. That month, the S&P 500 slid by 10% during a violent two-week sell-off.

Its second-highest point was in January 2000, two months before the peak of Wall Street's most notorious mania — the tech bubble — and a 49% drop in the S&P 500.

Not every surge in optimism has such a dramatic ending, and what doomed the stock market back then isn't necessarily dooming it now. But there's one parallel I can't ignore.

Main Street and Wall Street aren't just confident; they're throwing caution to the wind in their portfolios. That makes me doubt the durability of the market if things turn south. Data from the American Association of Individual Investors indicates investors are keeping about 69% of their portfolio in single stocks or stock funds, near the highest level since 2021. And based on Bank of America's monthly allocation survey, professional money managers are holding their smallest percentage of cash in two decades.

We have plenty of reasons to feel upbeat about the months ahead. Companies are hiring, profits are growing, and people are spending money. The economy's foundation looks fine, if not slightly cracked from higher unemployment and job market friction. We're coming off back-to-back 20% years in the S&P 500 after a loud chorus of recession calls. C'mon, we deserve a little fun!

But let's face it: We've been spoiled as investors. And while it's tough to see a disastrous market crash while the economy is growing, we've lost the undercurrent of healthy skepticism that has guided prices higher these past few years.

Be confident, but be intentional about balance in an environment like this.

The punch may be just around the corner.

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Callie Cox is the chief market strategist at Ritholtz Wealth Management and the author of OptimistiCallie, a newsletter of Wall Street-quality research for everyday investors. You can view Ritholtz's disclosures here.

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