🐔 It’s poultry in motion

As this email hits your inbox, McDonald’s will be reporting its quarterly earnings (the call is scheduled for 8:30 a.m. Wednesday) and investors will be hoping it doesn’t suffer the fate of competitor Yum! Brands, the parent company of KFC, Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell. The conglomerate missed expectations yesterday amid a slowdown in consumer spending, especially at KFC, as competition in the chicken arena heats up, with chains like Chick-fil-A and newcomers like Raising Cane’s, Dave’s Hot Chicken, and Church’s Chicken clucking at its heels.

Well, McDonald’s isn’t sitting out the chicken fight, and has brought back the “most requested” discontinued item of all time: the Snack Wrap. While we haven’t yet listened to the call to see if the move was a success, days after the item re-hit menus, the wraps were selling so well that McDonald’s stores were reportedly running out of lettuce.

But the Snack Wrap isn’t just about appeasing a rabid fan base; it’s a weapon in one battle of the Fast-Food Chicken Wars, the winner of which will feed Americans’ insatiable appetite for the bird and make money doing so.

• After decades of steady growth, chicken finally out-pecked beef in 2010 as the most consumed animal protein in the United States, and it’s been poultry in motion ever since, as multiple charts make clear.

• For restaurants and grocers, which live and die on thin margins, the price of beef has soundly outpaced the price of chicken in the US for over a decade.

• As fast-food restaurants take an absolute beating over their menu prices, the revival of the Snack Wrap in all its efficiency, austerity, and portable glory has offered an opportunity for McDonald’s to change the conversation.

People clamored for the wraps, and we’ll be keen to see if internet buzz helped bring consumers back to the Golden Arches after last quarter’s disappointing same-store sales data.

The Takeaway

In 2025, chicken still rules the roost, but its fixture in the humble wrap and its sheen of somehow being a healthier fast-food option speaks to a consumer culture that’s currently obsessed with protein, wary of carbs, and constantly snacking instead of relying on full meals. And with a seemingly unshakable sense of financial anxiety swirling, the allure of a well-priced wrap reflects a consumer base that is nervous, nostalgic, and hungry for a tasty value.

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After months of strong showings, July’s job numbers came in weak, with the US adding just 73,000 jobs last month, far below the 104,000 forecast. But the bigger surprise came after the print, as President Trump fired BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer (who was confirmed last year by a bipartisan Senate vote of 86 to 8), asserting that the job data was “rigged” to discredit his administration.

It wasn’t just the July data that led to this declaration, but also the sharp downward revisions BLS released for May and June, which slashed a combined 258,000 jobs from earlier estimates. That dragged the average job gain over the past three months to just 35,000 — the weakest since the early days of the pandemic and a stark reversal from the solid labor market momentum seen last month. 

That does seem like a wild drop! But revisions are a routine part of the BLS releases, as the agency updates its numbers as more employer data rolls in and other adjustments are made. Just how unusual are major revisions like the one we just saw? This chart has the answer.

While the numbers far exceed the typical monthly average revision, they’re not without precedent. And to further assure that the underlying data is good, Ernie Tedeschi, former chief economist at the Council of Economic Advisers, noted that “BLS’s first-release estimates of nonfarm payroll employment have gotten more, not less, accurate over time.”

The Takeaway

The revisions were undoubtedly larger than usual, but there is no evidence of any foul play. A Trump-appointed former BLS commissioner, William Beach, told ABC News that it’s “impossible” for a BLS commissioner to manipulate the data and that it’s more likely it signals a turning point in the economy. The bigger worry for economists is that the firing could erode trust, with JPMorgan’s chief economist issuing a stark warning on “the risk of politicizing the data.”

Read more.

OpenAI releases open-weight “gpt-oss” models to compete with DeepSeek and Meta

The models are open-source, which means they’re free for anyone to use — but importantly, they’re also “open-weight,” which means developers can customize the models further or run them on personal infrastructure without having to pay OpenAI a license or subscription.

Why CEO Sam Altman is calling these new models a “big deal” 

• Pfizer rose after reporting earnings results that beat Wall Street’s estimates and raising its full-year outlook

• Navitas Semiconductor, a tiny semiconductor company that went parabolic in late May, tumbled after reporting second-quarter results

• Galaxy Digital Holdings slumped following misses on both Q2 revenue and earnings per share

• Strong earnings from Palantir drove the stock to its best day since Trump’s first turn away from massive tariffs on April 9

• CRISPR shares fell 7% after the gene-editing company’s Q2 results didn’t meet expectations

• More than 5.8 million Switch 2 consoles have sold from April to June — more than twice the pace of the original Switch

• Some of the top shareholders of Core Scientific are crying foul over the terms of its all-stock takeover by CoreWeave and are planning on voting against the deal

• Tesla sales more than halved in Europe’s two biggest EV markets. Meanwhile, sales of vehicles from Chinese EV maker BYD more than quadrupled in those countries