State lawmakers are moving to cut the time Arizonans can collect jobless benefits -- even when unemployment hits double digits.

After a year in which the Valley saw the nation’s highest inflation rate for metro areas, experts say consumers can expect inflation to ease in 2023 – but warn that it’s not going away entirely.

The only thing scarier than ghosts, ghouls and goblins this Halloween may be the rising prices for candy, costumes and pumpkins. Candy is up 13% over last year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and pumpkins were also about 13% costlier in the Southwest by mid-October of this year compared to last, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data.

Arizona’s 43,000 minimum wage workers are not going to get a government-mandated pay boost in January. And you can blame low oil prices for that.

For about three years, Katherine Castillo has worked as a hotel housekeeper earning Arizona’s minimum wage of $7.80 an hour.

There's another casualty of the federal government partial shutdown: Arizona's unemployment numbers.

As a former room service worker at a Phoenix hotel, Daria Ovide said she saw housekeepers harm their backs, knees and wrists lifting dozens of heavy mattresses each day.

One in three Arizona teachers was absent for more than 10 days in the 2009-2010 school year, slightly better than the national rate of 36 percent, according to a recent report.

When unemployment in Yuma ballooned to 22.9 percent in 2009, people were streaming in the other direction. From 2000 to 2010, Yuma’s population surged more than 20 percent, even as the jobless rate continued to climb.

A few months ago, the city of Phoenix rolled out a $450,000 taxpayer-funded report showing that local governmental workers were paid 6 percent more in aggregate wages and benefits than private sector workers on average.