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Graphic Truth: Federal employment already dropping
The US Supreme Court on Tuesday allowed President Donald Trump to proceed with widespread cuts to the federal workforce, pending a full trial, overruling a San Francisco judge’s order in May that temporarily blocked layoffs at 22 agencies. Prior to the Supreme Court’s ruling, thousands of government employees had been preparing for mass layoffs, with many notified of their pending terminations but awaiting official confirmation.
Here’s a look at the changing size of the federal workforce, which includes the US military, since Trump first took power in 2017.
Graphic Truth: The BRICS+ in a "G-Zero" world
The BRICS, a loose grouping of ten “emerging market” economies led by Brazil, Russia, India and China, held their 17th annual summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, this weekend. While the official readout from the summit emphasized their commitment to multilateralism, the guestlist begged to differ. Five of the 10 leaders were no-shows, including Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin.
While the group’s declaration took aim at tariffs increases and recent attacks against Iran, it stopped short of mentioning the US or naming President Donald Trump directly. For more, here’s GZERO writer Willis Sparks’ explainer on why the BRICS are a bad bet.Graphic Truth: Iran has a rial big problem
Iran’s Supreme Leader faces a number of challenges in the wake of the devastating 12-day war with Israel, and the perennial weakness of Iran’s economy is chief among them. Economic mismanagement, corruption, and strict Western sanctions have sapped output, weakened the currency and contributed to high inflation for years. But the recent spike in tensions with the US and Israel has accelerated the collapse of the Iranian rial, which has halved in value against the dollar since the end of last year. Here is a look at how the Iranian Rial has performed against the greenback since 2022.
Graphic Truth: Mexico and Brazil seek to boost trade ties
Mexico and Brazil are exploring ways to boost their trade ties, and there’s certainly room for improvement: bilateral commerce between Latin America’s two largest economies amounted to just $13.6 billion last year. That’s less than 10% of Brazil’s trade with China, and not even 2% of Mexico’s trade with the US. While the two countries have historically competed for dominance, the Trump administration’s latest tariffs and the election of left-wing leadership in both Brazil and Mexico have motivated closer cooperation.
Here’s a look at where trade between Brazil and Mexico currently stands.
The Graphic Truth: The majors least likely to get you a job out of college
A rising number of US college graduates are having trouble securing jobs. The Class of 2025 is up against the toughest labor market in four years, with the unemployment rate for recent graduates sitting nearly two percentage points above than the national average of 4%. Trade tensions are also raising fears of a global recession.
On top of these short-term economic factors is a major long-term one: experts say that many entry-level positions – particularly in the tech sector – are being displaced by artificial intelligence. Here’s a look at the majors least likely to lead to a job after college.
Maybe majoring in history was not such a bad idea after all.
Saudi Arabia's oil price problem
In the first quarter of 2025, Saudi Arabia reported a budget deficit of $15.7 billion—the highest figure since 2021. A big part of the reason is that Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman is investing substantial financial resources in Vision 2030, a sweeping, decade-old development initiative designed to diversify the nation’s economy away from hydrocarbons.
However, with slumping oil prices and even higher spending, Saudi Arabia may have to scale back some of its more ambitious investment plans. In April, reports surfaced that the kingdom was drastically cutting its plans for Neom—a $1.5 trillion infrastructure project aimed at constructing a utopian megacity in the desert.
Here’s a look at how global oil prices have stacked up against Saudi Arabia’s fiscal breakeven price—the level needed to balance the state budget—since 2008.
Elon Musk's political donations 2020-2024
The Graphic Truth: Elon Musk's political donations
During his public spat with Trump on social media, Tesla CEO Elon Musk claimed credit for the Republicans’ electoral victories last year, writing, “without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate.”
While Musk has indicated that he will pare down his political spending, he certainly possesses the financial power to tip the scales in campaign financing – he was the GOP’s largest donor last year. Here’s a look at where Musk, who publicly converted from Democrat to Republican ahead of the 2024 election, has put his money in the last two electoral cycles.
The Graphic Truth: The foreigners who hold US debt
The US is the world’s biggest debtor, with more than $35 trillion of securities outstanding.
About a quarter of that is held by foreign investors, a detail which has drawn considerable attention since Donald Trump began walloping the world with tariffs to rebalance US trade ties and military alliances. That’s because if countries upset – or merely uneasy – about Trump’s policies sell those securities in response, the debt servicing costs for the US rise. This is no small matter on $35 trillion worth of paper.
In fact, one widely held explanation for Trump’s abrupt suspension of the “Liberation Day” tariffs on April 9 was that wary bond investors had begun to sell US Treasuries: In the week of April 11, yields on 10-year US treasuries saw their biggest leap in a quarter of a century, a sign that creditors were dropping US sovereign debt fast.
Could countries weaponize US debt more directly? China, Trump’s biggest trade war target, is the second largest foreign US creditor, officially holding more than $750 billion.
A selloff could be devastating. But analysts say it would be hard to find enough buyers for a sale that is both swift and large enough to catch the US off guard.
And even if it were possible, a seller would risk their own financial security as well global economic health by kneecapping the US. In other words: It would be, in financial terms, the nuclear option.
The graphic above looks at which countries hold the most US sovereign debt. Note that the last official data precede “Liberation Day” and that they depend on official reporting. Some countries may hold more than what is listed here via third parties.