Boeing will plead guilty to a criminal fraud charge tied to fatal 737 Max crashes, the Justice Department said Sunday, months after U.S. prosecutors said the aerospace giant violated a 2021 settlement that shielded it from prosecution.

Under the deal, Boeing agreed to pay a $243.6 million fine. An independent compliance monitor would also be installed to oversee compliance at Boeing for three years during a probationary period. Boeing would also have to invest at least $455 million in compliance and safety programs, according to a U.S. prosecutors’ court filing late Sunday. The plea deal requires the approval of a federal judge to take effect.

Boeing also agreed for the board of directors to meet with crash victims’ family members, under the agreement.

The plea deal offer forced Boeing to decide between a guilty plea and the attached terms, or going to trial, just as the company was seeking to turn a corner in its manufacturing and safety crises, pick a new CEO and acquire its fuselage maker, Spirit AeroSystems.

The guilty plea would brand Boeing a felon and could complicate its ability to sell products to the U.S. government. About 32% of Boeing’s nearly $78 billion in revenue last year came from its defense, space and security unit.

“We can confirm that we have reached an agreement in principle on terms of a resolution with the Justice Department, subject to the memorialization and approval of specific terms,” Boeing said in a statement.

In May, the Justice Department said Boeing had violated the 2021 agreement. Under that deferred prosecution agreement, Boeing agreed to pay $2.5 billion, including an original $243.6 million criminal fine, compensation to airlines and a $500 million fund for victims’ family members.

That 2021 settlement was set to expire two days after a door plug blew out of a nearly new 737 Max 9 operated by Alaska Airlines on Jan. 5. While there were no serious injuries, the accident created a fresh safety crisis for Boeing.

The U.S. accused Boeing of conspiracy to defraud the government by misleading regulators about its inclusion of a flight-control system on the Max that was later implicated in the two Max crashes — a Lion Air flight in October 2018 and an Ethiopian Airlines flight in March 2019. All 346 people on board the flights were killed.

U.S. prosecutors had told victims’ family members on June 30 that they planned to seek a guilty plea from Boeing, a plan family attorneys called “a sweetheart deal.”

Paul Cassell, a lawyer for victims’ family members, said he plans to ask the federal judge on the case to reject the deal and “simply set the matter for a public trial, so that all the facts surrounding the case will be aired in a fair and open forum before a jury.”

Cathy Balestriere was expecting “especially low” bookings last month at Crane’s Beach House, the boutique hotel she manages in Delray Beach, Florida. Instead, they jumped 12% from the year before.

“It feels like a miracle based on where we were sitting just a few weeks ago,” she said.

It’s not a miracle. It’s the weather.

The surge coincided with a sweltering mid-June heat wave across the Midwest and the Northeast, putting over 80 million people under heat alerts — the latest run of unseasonably extreme temperatures fueled by a global climate that is warming at a record pace.

Florida might not be the first destination that comes to mind for people looking to beat the heat, but it’s where some headed after their hometowns became just as sweltering.

This time of year, most guests at Crane’s are in-state or regional travelers, Balestriere said. But many of the surprise last-minute bookings came from New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Texas. Delray Beach has been hot, too, but visitors to the hotel “can at least enjoy the ocean breeze and access to the beach and refreshing pools,” she said.

It’s a similar story at the Lake Nona Wave Hotel in Orlando, where reservations soared 45% in the past three weeks compared with the year before, largely from the Northeast and Texas.

“We have had a couple of guests mention while they are checking in that the heat at home is unbearable,” sales and marketing director James Tattersall said.

“Snowbirds” typically head south to Florida and other balmier states in the winter and spring, creating a high season there when it’s frigid up north. But Crane’s Beach House now sees a growing opportunity in warmer months. It has already shifted its seasonal editorial calendar, Google ad strategy and newsletter messaging to capture more of the off-season demand, Balestriere said.

It’s part of a broader change that has been underway for years as tourist hot spots adapt to shifting demand tied to evolving seasonal weather.

While not every place is feeling an impact in the same way, or at all, “there is no question that we are seeing a growing preference for destinations with more comfortable summer temperatures alongside rising global temperatures,” said Jesse Neugarten, founder and CEO of Dollar Flight Club, a travel deal alert service.

From May to June, the platform had a 31% surge in flight bookings and interest from Northern cities like New York and Boston to destinations in Florida, he said, “where travelers are looking for relief from heat waves.”

Scorching weather at home is also pushing people toward cooler climes abroad. While hotel bookings in Italy — a longtime summer hot spot — are up a modest 3% since last year, “it’s Scandinavia that is having a moment,” researchers at the Virtuoso luxury travel network said in a recent report.

Bookings in the region have surged 25% since last year, with even steeper 49% and 47% increases in Iceland and Sweden, respectively. Even the Netherlands, where authorities have tried to reduce tourist volumes, is seeing 33% higher hotel demand this season, Virtuoso found. 

“I decided I had enough of Washington, D.C., summers,” said Andy Knestaut, 59, a retiree who was considering a trip with his wife somewhere in South America before they opted for northern Europe. “We chose Copenhagen and added two Baltic countries. We’ll go from late July to late August.”

Some parts of the continent are getting so hot during the summer that the typical high season is getting longer, said Rebecca Masri, founder and CEO of Little Emperors, a private members luxury hotel club.

“With the weather in southern Europe staying warm, booking trends are shifting to September, October and even November,” she said, as some hotels and resorts that usually close at the end of the summer extend their operations. “These months are becoming the new peak season.”

Consumers will increasingly see those shifts reflected in pricing, said Chris Lafakis, a director at Moody’s Analytics.

“You won’t have to be rich to vacation, but it’s going to be more expensive to travel to the more favorable destinations,” he said. “Those with the means to do so will be able to, and those that don’t will unfortunately not have as many options to fall back on.” 

As airlines have added capacity, domestic and international airfares have fallen by double-digit percentages this July Fourth holiday week compared with last year’s, according to booking platform Hopper, despite record expected travel volumes. But while average hotel room rates in some cooler northern European countries have stabilized since last year’s surge, they’re climbing in popular areas — up 18% in Iceland and 47% in Norway, Virtuoso said. 

Weather-driven shifts in travel patterns will create economic winners and losers, Lafakis said. “Probably 20% to 30% of the overall damage to the economy from the heat is because of less travel tourism,” he said. As seasonal temperatures soar, would-be visitors “may go somewhere else or choose not to go at all.”

Some industry experts aren’t so worried.

During hot weather, “travelers will usually change their behavior rather than cancel a trip,” said Tiffany Townsend, a spokesperson for New York City Tourism and Conventions. “They might visit more museums and indoor attractions or do more shopping” while it’s scorching outside and schedule outdoor activities early or late in the day.

Heather Dickie, 69, a Texas-based marketing consultant, said her travel itinerary is still in flux, but she said she needs a break from the heat. “If I can get out of Dallas,” where temperatures have already hit triple digits, “Alaska is sounding good,” she said.

But she’s more likely to head about 650 miles “up the road a bit” toward Taos, New Mexico, for the relative reprieve of highs in the mid-80s. “I have friends in that area,” she said, “and am looking at late July or August for a nice, cool getaway.”

Gasoline prices are still slightly cheaper than this time a year ago, but they’ve been inching up this week. At about $3.51 as of Friday, a gallon of regular costs just a penny less than it did at the same time in 2023, according to AAA.

There’s still some uncertainty ahead, given the record 60 million travelers who were expected to hit the road around the Independence Day holiday, driving up demand. And Hurricane Beryl is forecast to head toward South Texas, where major refiners are based.

Whatever direction gas prices may take after the holiday weekend, there’s no reason not to stretch your dollar as far as it will go at filling stations this summer. Here’s where to look for savings.

Many drivers can find fuel deals where they buy their groceries, said Joe Brusuelas, chief economist at the accounting and consultancy firm RSM. Retailers such as Target and Walmart announced a wave of discounting last month, and “gasoline is part of that” at many of those stores, said Brusuelas — who expects gas prices to trend broadly lower the rest of this year.

Walmart has been heavily promoting its Walmart Plus annual membership, which includes fuel savings of up to 10 cents per gallon at more than 13,000 stations at Walmart, Sam’s Club, Murphy Express and other retail sites. Last month it wrapped a weeklong promotion that doubled that discount for members filling up at Exxon or Mobil stations. And from July 5 to 18, new members can pay only $49 for their first year — half the usual price.

Kroger, which has been quietly expanding its loyalty program, also launched a special through Tuesday in which customers get four times the “fuel points” when they use most third-party gift cards. Some have saved as much as 14% on gas.

Savvy consumers might find ways to multiply those savings. For example, if a store or a gas station is running a promotion, said Ted Rossman, senior industry analyst at Bankrate, you can pay for that purchase with a credit card that offers rewards, taking advantage of two perks at once.

Just be sure to check your cards’ rotating cash-back categories, he said: Starting this month, for example, Chase Freedom Flex customers get 5% off gas purchases through September.

“Make sure that you are aware of when these categories fall, because then you can use the optimal card,” he said.

Rossman acknowledged that “not everyone is an optimizer” when it comes to coupons and discounts. If looking up gas promotions online or keeping track of numerous cash-back categories feels overwhelming, he advises defaulting to a 2% cash back card for savings “across the board.”

“You do need to know yourself and how much complexity you’re willing to take on,” Rossman said. “Consider it relative to cash or debit, where you’re probably not getting any rewards at all. These things can add up over the long haul.”

Mobile apps can also help you save gas money, he said: Many stores offer their own to help streamline special offers, and other standalone apps, such as Upside — which can net users up to $20 per month from gas purchases alone — aggregate deals and reward customers accordingly.

The days of printing out step-by-step driving route instructions from MapQuest are long over, but consider TripTik, AAA’s travel-planning app: After you plug in your start and stop coordinates, it will display stations along the way, as well as their pump rates for the day.

In many cases, “there’s a huge difference in gas prices between stations” that are very close to each other, said Andy Gross, a AAA spokesperson. “It’s really quite something.”

Google Maps users can also switch on the app’s eco-friendly route feature, which recommends more fuel-efficient paths that minimize hills and stop-and-go traffic patterns, which can gobble up gas. Most vehicles also come with an “eco mode” that limits how readily your car accelerates when you hit the gas and shuts off energy-consuming features.

“That’s one thing that they’re always tuning,” Ivan Drury, director of insights at the auto research firm Edmunds, said of carmakers. “Eco mode actually smooths out your driving for you,” helping stretch out gas mileage, he said. Cruise control — increasingly bolstered by autonomous technology — can have a similar effect.

“The car will always do a better job at maintaining speeds consistently than your right foot, guaranteed,” Drury said, “and it always has better fuel economy than if you were trying to do it yourself.”

Much of the fuel economy wisdom that was yelled at you as a teenager still holds true, with some important caveats.

In addition to driving smoothly and not speeding, it helps to keep your vehicle in good repair, Drury said. The cost of vehicle maintenance remains high — it’s still up more than 10% from a year ago, despite having ticked down slightly in May for the first time all year — but even minor issues like weak tire pressure, dirty air filters or low oil levels can drag down your fuel economy or devour any savings you might be finding at the pump.

“It is a lot more costly to have to replace or repair major systems with your vehicle,” Drury said. “A little more pain now is going to save you a lot of pain in the future.”

Also consider what your car is carrying — especially things that interfere too much with its weight or wind shear. Lots of drivers might have cashed in recently on dealer specials, like pulling the trigger on customized SUVs with features like extra roof railings or crossbars. If you aren’t using it, take it off, Drury said: “Anything added to your vehicle that has wind resistance, those sap up fuel.”

As it turns out, however, there is some parental guidance we can chuck. Driving with the windows up and the AC blasting? Not necessarily bad for fuel economy anymore. Not only have federal regulations created more efficient cooling systems, but driving faster than around 50 mph with the windows down can create more drag, Drury said.

And unless you drive a performance luxury vehicle or an actual race car, paying for premium gas probably isn’t worth it. “If it doesn’t say ‘required’ or ‘recommended,’ don’t do it. You’re wasting money,” Drury said.

For consumers who want the best fuel economy without going full EV, there are few better options than a hybrid vehicle. Sales of hybrids, once seen as a stop on the road to a fully electric future, surged 53% from 2022 to last year.

“We have seen a massive uptick in this humble hybrid,” Drury said. “[It has] all the conveniences of high fuel-economy ease, no change of lifestyle and none of the downsides that come along with EV ownership.”

A number of automakers are discounting models through the Fourth of July weekend, including Kia, with a lease rebate of around $3,000 for the 2023 Sorento Hybrid, and Ford, which is offering a cash rebate of up to $2,000 if you buy its hybrid 2024 F-150 truck. Terms and amounts vary regionally, so be sure to check the details with your dealership.

Those driving long distances in hybrids can face similar headaches as EV owners, like surge pricing at charging stations, Drury warned. Still, he said, “if you plan out your trip accordingly, you can definitely save more money and frustration.”

This is part of NBC News’ Checkbook Chronicles, a series of profiles highlighting the financial realities of everyday Americans.

Unlike most people who switched jobs during the Great Resignation, Shannon Penney is working twice as much for roughly the same pay she made years ago. She wouldn’t change it.

Penney, 37, became disenchanted nearly a decade ago with her work as a freelancer in the advertising industry, but it took the pandemic for her to make a change. The decision dawned on her in the ER, sick with Covid-19 in the early days of a pandemic that would hammer her soon-to-be profession in ways it’s still recovering from.

“It put a bookmark in my head of like: This is really important,” said Penney, who recently completed her first full year as a registered nurse at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center in Manhattan.

Primary source of income: Working full-time as a registered nurse at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital making $120,000 annually. That works out to roughly as much as she netted as a producer earning $1,200 per day but rarely notching consistent workweeks. She now has an employer-sponsored retirement account for the first time, but her hours are much longer.

“I knew it was going to be much more sacrificial,” she said. “But at the same time, I really felt like I owed something back to a society that had given me all of these privileges that I didn’t ask for or necessarily deserve.”

Living situation: A 550-square-foot Manhattan apartment that she bought in 2016 and shares with her dachshund, Baguda. The co-op building charges a $1,400 maintenance fee.

Economic outlook: Penney has never had to worry much about money. Her parents — a retired nurse and an investment banker — built and eventually sold their family’s “McMansion” in Westchester, New York, and later footed the bill for her nursing degree. She is also debt-free after her father paid off her $10,000 credit card balance in May.

Penney is quick to note that she’s “a very privileged white person” with minimal debt. “Sometimes it’s embarrassing to say it out loud, but that’s all I know how to do with it — just acknowledge it,” she said. “Do what you can with it to help other people. Pay it forward.”

After 12 years of producing commercials for big brands — dealing with budget cuts that forced her to lowball contractors and witnessing uncomfortable dynamics on shoots — Penney decided in March 2020 that she’d had enough. She enrolled in her nursing program soon afterward.

She’s sitting on more than $65,000 in retirement savings, much of it split nearly equally between a brokerage account and a Roth IRA, with the rest in her still-budding 403(b) account. With stock indexes smashing records, many savers with investments tied to the market have seen their nest eggs swell this year.

Penney has also stashed more than $36,000 in her personal savings. By contrast, the median bank account balance for adults ages 35-44 was $7,500 in 2022, according to the Federal Reserve. Only 43% of millennials say they could cover a $1,000 emergency expense, Bankrate has found.

But while Penney’s economic status differs from most of her peers’ and largely enabled her career move, that decision isn’t so unique. More than 1 in 5 young professionals say their work lacks purpose or meaning, Deloitte research has found, and many have taken advantage of a tight labor market to change that recently.

Budget pain points: Penney said her mental health care costs have gone up since she switched to nursing. While her psychiatrist is in-network with her insurance, her therapist of several years isn’t, resulting in a monthly bill of up to $1,000.

Ironically, “it took me [becoming] a nurse to not get that covered,” she said.

Despite her sturdy finances, Penney said, she finds herself watching her spending more lately.

“I still live very much within my means,” she said, adding that she sticks to a monthly budget and doesn’t splurge on luxuries like expensive clothes. “Some of the most privileged people in this country are not in a comfortable place.”

Working life: “I’m a shift worker, meaning I leave my house at 6:30 a.m. and I don’t get home until 8:30 p.m.,” Penney said. After having spent at least $2,000 a month on dog day care, she recently hired a walker, more than halving the expense.

The nursing field is regaining its footing after years of pandemic-induced turmoil. Burned-out nurses cycled out of the profession in recent years, but wages and staffing levels are improving, and labor groups continue to push to shore up workers’ livelihoods.

There were 6% more full-time registered nurses in the workforce last year than in 2019, a JAMA Health study found, and 1.2 million are expected to join by 2035, returning to pre-pandemic projections. The average U.S. nurse made around $94,500 annually last year, federal data shows, up from about $80,000 four years ago — barely outrunning inflation since then.

Hospitals have ramped up their retention efforts — from offering referral bonuses to streamlining intensive care training — as thousands of nurses have picketed for better pay and staffing ratios. NewYork-Presbyterian faced its own revolt last year, just before Penney joined, and it ultimately boosted wages and staffing commitments.

A closer view of a lopsided economy: Penney works on a hospital floor where wealthier patients can pay $1,500 a night for private rooms with concierge-like features such as a dedicated chef, round-the-clock attention and unlimited family visits.

In some ways, aspects of the economy that bothered Penney in her former career have proved inescapable — a realization she described as “absolute whiplash.”

“Going from the dazzle of production with celebrities, now you’re on this floor where there’s very high-profile people,” she said, “and you just instantly see how inequitable health care is.”

The economy added 206,000 jobs last month, according to fresh government data, but unemployment inched above 4% for the first time in over two years.

The June jobs report, released Friday morning by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, showed somewhat hotter hiring than the 200,000 nonfarm job gains economists had expected. That marked a slowdown since May, whose level was revised down to 218,000 from 272,000. April’s job gains were also revised sharply lower, showing 111,000 fewer roles added during those prior two months than earlier thought.

‘The June rise in nonfarm payroll was slightly higher than expectations, but the big downward revisions to April and May are the story,’ Kathy Jones, chief fixed income strategist at Charles Schwab, posted on X Friday. ‘Job market is slowing down.’

The U.S. labor market has for months defied long-running forecasts of a sharper pullback. Instead, prospects for workers have generally remained robust even as employers ease up on hiring. The latest report shows conditions are gradually tightening.

Workers’ pay continues to rise, with average hourly earnings up 3.9% in June from the year before. That’s still higher than pre-pandemic — and still outpacing inflation, at 3.3% as of May — but marks the smallest annual increase since May 2021.

And for the first time since November 2021, the unemployment rate ticked above 4%, hitting 4.1% in June. That remains a historically low level, and the uptick coincides with a slight rise in the labor force participation rate. That measure of working-age people who are employed or actively job-hunting hit 62.6% in June, up from 62.5% in May.

Slowing job growth combined with slowing inflation reinforces widespread hopes that the Federal Reserve could begin cutting interest rates in September, which would bring some relief to credit card users and people with loans and mortgages.

‘If the job market continues to cool and inflation allows, the central bank will shift some of its attention away from the stable prices part of its mandate to increasingly focus on the other issue which is maximum employment,’ Bankrate Senior Economic Analyst Mark Hamrick said in a statement Friday.

Last week, the Fed’s preferred gauge of price growth, the Personal Consumption Expenditures price index, climbed 2.6% from a year ago in May. That was the lowest annual rate since March 2021.

In remarks this week, Fed Chair Jerome Powell said risks to its inflation and employment goals ‘have come back much closer to balance.’ In other words, the odds the Fed won’t act aggressively enough to wrestle inflation back down to its 2% target are now closer to even with the odds that unemployment will increase as a result.

‘The longer the Fed maintains its high interest rate strategy, the greater the risk that it throttles the economy back too far,’ Moody’s Chief Economist Mark Zandi told NBC News ahead of Friday’s jobs report. ‘We’re starting to see higher claims and layoffs and job market pullbacks. That’s an increasing concern.’

On Wednesday, the Labor Department reported initial claims for unemployment benefits continued to rise, while ongoing unemployment claims hit their highest level since November 2021.

Firing rates remain low, ING global financial group Chief Economist James Knightley pointed out in a note to clients this week, but ‘if you do unfortunately lose your job it is becoming much harder to find a new position,’ he said.

Still, many analysts have been encouraged by the pace and direction of recent labor market trends.

‘That 206K is what full employment looks like in an economy that is cooling back towards trend,’ RSM Chief Economist Joe Brusuelas wrote on X following the June report, adding that a potential September rate cut remains in focus.

‘Right now we’re seeing a job market that is experiencing what I like to call a modulated cooldown,’ Nela Richardson, chief economist of payroll processor ADP, told reporters earlier this week. ‘It’s striking the right note at the right time.’

ADP’s own data on private-sector hiring showed Wednesday that just 150,000 roles were added in June, fewer than expected, driven largely by leisure and hospitality.

‘This is a gradual cooldown that we all expected,’ Richardson reiterated on CNBC Friday after the report, but added, ‘I’d like to see the hiring be more broad-based than it is now.’

This is part of NBC News’ Checkbook Chronicles, a series of profiles highlighting the financial realities of everyday Americans.

Becky Melvin can usually be found on her phone — but not for the reasons many other Americans are.

Melvin, 61, of the Jacksonville, Florida, area, was laid off from a nearly six-figure public relations job in Nashville, Tennessee, in 2019. Since the start of the pandemic, she has worked seven days a week picking up and dropping off orders on delivery apps — typically for 12-hour stretches.

“If I don’t carry my phone with me to the bathroom, I might miss an order,” she said. “Or while I’m doing laundry.”

Primary source of income: Shuttling orders on Shipt and Instacart, earning about $50,000 before taxes last year. She expects that to rise to about $75,000 annually if she makes it through the hiring process for a 911 dispatcher role she’s pursuing. Before she lost her PR job, Melvin said, she made close to $100,000 annually.

Living situation: A three-bedroom, two-bathroom home, which she owns, with monthly homeownership costs totaling about $2,900.

Economic outlook: Melvin said her life could be worse but isn’t great right now.

“I sound like I’m doing OK, but I have all these things hanging over me. If any of them go at one time, it’s like a domino effect,” she said. “Don’t think I have it easy because I’m not on food stamps.”

This is part of NBC News’ Checkbook Chronicles, a series of profiles highlighting the financial realities of everyday Americans.

Stefanie Longenecker would love to take advantage of rising wages, a strong job market and the master’s degree she’s still paying off. But she has been sidelined from the workforce by a child care system that has grown inaccessible for many families.

Longenecker, 43, left her job as a hospital pathologist during the pandemic to care for her young children amid repeated day care and school closings. Last fall, while she was shopping around for child care for three of her four children in hope of returning to work, one provider quoted her $4,300 a month and couldn’t say when a spot would open up. Another center that would have cost $3,500 a month already had 70 infants on its waitlist.

“It would be great for my family if I could go back to work,” Longenecker said, but so far, “that’s just not in the cards.”

Primary source of income: $80,000 to $90,000 a year from her husband’s work as a mechanic, depending on overtime. The couple’s income has been more than halved since 2020, when Longenecker left her job, where she made more than $110,000 annually working with surgical specimens in a hospital lab.

Living situation: Longenecker and her husband own a home that they’re still paying the mortgage on in Palmyra, Pennsylvania, a small community outside Harrisburg, which they share with their children, ages 11 months, 2 years, 4 years and 10 years.

The couple would like to move into a bigger house. The value of their current one has swelled since the start of the pandemic, but that’s also true of those they’d consider moving into.

As with many households, the combination of high home prices and interest rates has left the family feeling locked in place. Meanwhile, upgrading their current home feels out of reach. Longenecker wants to install air conditioning and replace the windows but doesn’t expect to be able to afford that any time soon.

Economic outlook: “I definitely feel like the economy as a whole is for the better,” Longenecker said, adding that she’s hopeful even though her family’s finances remain tight. “It does seem like things are improving.”

If she could just secure affordable child care, she said, she’s confident she would find a job “in a heartbeat” given the strong labor market, adding that demand for her husband’s skills is strong. Pennsylvania’s unemployment rate has held steady at 3.4% all year, lower than the current national 4% level.

Budget pain points: While Longenecker’s husband’s pay has increased over the past few years, so have the family’s health care and other costs.

“In our experience, when he makes more money, things cost more. Gas is more expensive; groceries are so much more expensive,” she said. “It seems like on paper we’re going to get ahead, and then the car doesn’t pass inspection or gas goes up again.” (Prices at the pump in Longenecker’s Lebanon County are just a few cents lower than the statewide average a year ago; nationwide, groceries were more than 2% higher in May than the year before.)

The family has pulled back on short- and long-term spending alike. Vacations are on hold for now. Her husband traded in his vehicle for a heavily used truck costing just $1,000, and he sold a cherished Harley-Davidson motorcycle that had belonged to his father.

In the short term, Longenecker said, her biggest financial worry is what would happen if her husband were to lose his job. They have only a small emergency fund and would most likely need help from relatives to pay their bills if that happened. Longer-term, she worries about the implications of not being able to contribute to her retirement savings.

Life as a full-time caregiver: Longenecker hadn’t planned to leave her job, but running out of paid time off to navigate Covid-related day care closures helped force her hand. “It was a huge decision,” she said. “We had to revamp our whole financial picture for right now and for the future to make that happen,” she said.

Despite the financial and professional sacrifices, she’s grateful for the time she gets to spend with her children. “We haven’t lost our house. We’re not in debt,” she said. “I’m incredibly lucky to be able to spend this time with my kids, even recognizing the shortcomings.”

The child care crunch has put a growing squeeze on families since the pandemic, when more than 100,000 workers left the industry and more than 16,000 child care centers permanently closed.

Since then, child care costs have risen more than 30%, and households with child care expenses have been spending at a slower pace and dipping into savings at a faster rate than the general population, according to a Bank of America analysis of its customers’ spending.

The strain has disproportionately affected women, with a Stanford University survey finding in 2022 that 39% of women caregivers had left the workforce or reduced their work hours since the pandemic began.

Looking ahead to returning to work: While Longenecker remains eager to pick back up with her professional career, she wonders whether it will be harder the longer she has to wait.

“It’s a hugely hands-on job,” she said of her pathology work. “I can read all the research and understand the technical things, but not having my hands in it, doing it every day, it is definitely a concern that I have.

“It is a ‘use it or lose it’ skill, and every day I’m losing.”

Americans will be splashing around this summer in the backyard pools they’ve already got, but not splashing out as much on new ones. 

Swimming pool installations were part of the home improvement frenzy that swept the country during the pandemic as Americans were stuck at home. But recent signs show demand is slowing as households with spending money shift it more toward vacations than renovations.

Pool Corp., a national pool equipment distributor with a roughly $11 billion market valuation, said last week it expects new pool construction to fall by 15% to 20% this year. Some local contractors across the country are seeing a pullback, too.

Skip Ast III, sales director at Shasta Pools in the Phoenix metropolitan area, said the local industry has been having a harder time since roughly 2022.

“If 2023 wasn’t already considered — by pool volume — kind of disastrous, this year’s been worse,” he said, but added that the company has managed to adapt.

While consumers aren’t cutting back on overall record spending, those with extra money in their budgets are increasingly burning it on experiences like travel, dining out and other service-sector purchases.

Airlines and hotels are expecting a strong travel season, cruise lines are seeing record bookings, and tickets for concerts and sporting events are still hot at sky-high prices. By contrast, nonessential household purchases are cooling off amid higher food costs and the Federal Reserve’s push to tame inflation by keeping interest rates elevated — triggering a long stretch of steep mortgage and credit card rates.

The falloff in big-ticket home purchases has been many months in the making, and pools aren’t the only backyard feature facing slower demand; Traeger Grills reported declining revenues in the first quarter, part of a trend that began early in the post-pandemic recovery. But businesses that rely on Americans’ appetite for home upgrades are still adjusting to leaner times — including pool builders.

In 2020, installations of all kinds of pools, from in-ground and hot tub pools to typically cheaper inflatable and above-ground models, rose by 20%, according to property analytics firm Cape Analytics.

At the time, “people started settling in for, ‘OK, we’re going to be at home for a while, we need to bring the vacations into our backyards,’” said Ast, whose family has been in the pool construction business for nearly 60 years. He recalled suppliers struggling to keep up with a crush of orders and contractors facing monthslong backlogs.

Scott Payne, a pool installer in Hatfield, Pennsylvania, also saw business explode during the pandemic: “As a company, we doubled revenue five of the first seven years. Two of those years were during Covid.” He described taking eight to 10 calls a day at the peak of demand.

But despite the more recent declines nationwide, Payne and Ast said their businesses are doing well, even as both have raised prices due to rising materials costs. Both said their work during the pandemic helped lay a foundation to weather this slowdown.

Responding to surging demand in an affluent area several years ago allowed Payne’s company to develop an “omnipresence” there that it’s still cashing in on, he said. While he has fewer projects in the works today, he’s doing more expensive ones, allowing his business to maintain its higher revenues.

“A lot of companies have maybe pulled back a little,” he said. “I can’t say we’re not seeing it, but we’re maybe a little isolated from it. We’re very, very busy still.”

Ast said Shasta’s own moves during the pandemic are also paying off as demand cools. It rolled out an online calculator to help potential clients estimate the costs of their projects, and it launched a new pool care division that offers maintenance services after installation. All these factors combined have allowed the company to take in a greater share of revenue from fewer consumers in the overall market, Ast said.

Even Pool Corp. pointed to a silver lining in the slowdown: After so many households recently built new pools or upgraded existing ones, there’s higher demand for upkeep services like the kind Shasta now offers.

“We are encouraged as maintenance-related product sales have remained stable, evidenced by volume growth in chemicals, and equipment sales (excluding cleaners) being down only 2% for the year, an improvement from the 3% decline realized in the first quarter of 2024,” the company said in its earnings release.

And with climate change contributing to earlier, hotter, more frequent heat waves — like those that scorched much of the country in mid-June — some consumers may be starting to see swimming pools as more of a must-have.

In Arizona, Ast said, “the lines get blurred a little bit between luxury and need in the middle of the desert.”