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McDonald’s is raising pay at 650 company-owned stores in the U.S. as part of its push to hire thousands of new workers in a tight labor market.

The fast-food giant is also encouraging its franchisees — which make up 95% of its restaurant base — to boost pay.

McDonald’s follows other chains including Chipotle, which said Monday that it will raise workers’ pay to an average of $15 per hour by the end of June. Darden Restaurants, the owner of Olive Garden and other chains, said it March that it will guarantee workers $12 per hour including tips by 2023.

Amazon, Costco and other big companies have all announced pay raises in recent weeks.

Wages and benefits for U.S. workers have been rising quickly as vaccinations increase and employers try to meet growing demand at restaurants and other businesses. U.S. workers’ total compensation rose 0.9% in the first three months of this year, the largest gain in more than 13 years, according to the Labor Department.

McDonald’s, based in Chicago, said Thursday that its hourly wages will increase an average of 10% over the next few months to $13 per hour, rising to $15 per hour by 2024. Entry-level workers will make at least $11 per hour; shift managers will make at least $15 per hour.

Fight for $15 and a Union, a labor group which is trying to unionize fast food workers, said the increases aren’t enough and it will continue to demand a starting wage of $15 per hour for all McDonald’s workers.

“Clearly, McDonald’s understands that in order to hire and retain talented workers, something needs to change,” union organizer and McDonald’s employee and union organizer Doneshia Babbitt said in a statement. “Now, they’re raising pay for some of us and using fancy math tricks to gloss over the fact that they’re selling most of us short.”

Fight for $15 is planning strikes in 15 cities next Wednesday ahead of McDonald’s annual shareholders meeting.

However, the vast majority of McDonald’s nearly 14,000 U.S. stores are owned by franchisees who set pay in their own restaurants.

McDonald’s said it didn’t have data on wages at franchised restaurants but said that it’s asking them to follow suit.

“We encourage all our owner/operators to make this same commitment to their restaurant teams in ways that make the most sense for their community, their people and their long-term growth,” McDonald’s U.S. President Joe Erlinger wrote in a letter to employees.

In a prepared statement, the U.S. National Franchisee Leadership Alliance which negotiates with the company on behalf of franchisees expressed support for the wage hikes and encouraged restaurants to stay competitive in their local markets.

Suppose you were Mark Zuckerberg, recently ordered by an advisory board to decide how long former President Donald Trump should stay banned from Facebook. How do you make that decision without alienating key constituencies — advertisers, shareholders, users, lawmakers and others — while staying true to your own sense of what Facebook should be?

It’s a hypothetical exercise, but one that illustrates the high-wire act Facebook’s leadership now has to pull off.

Facebook’s quasi-independent oversight board last week said the company was justified in suspending Trump because of his role in inciting deadly violence at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. But it told Facebook to specify how long the suspension would last, saying that its “indefinite” ban on the former president was unreasonable.

The ruling, which gives Facebook six months to comply, effectively postpones any possible Trump reinstatement and puts the onus for that decision squarely back on the company — the exact scenario Zuckerberg was likely trying to avoid in the first place.

For years, he and other Facebook executives have insisted that Facebook should not be the “arbiter of truth” and that as a tech company it shouldn’t be making decisions on thorny societal matters such as free speech. Zuckerberg has stated publicly numerous times that he supports government regulation, although the rules Facebook wants aren’t always the same as those regulators might seek.

The company said this week it has no updates on its plans for Trump’s accounts beyond what it said last week, when it said it will review the board’s decision and “determine an action that is clear and proportionate.” It plans to respond to the board’s recommendations within 30 days of the decision.

Here are some of the constituents that could have strong and wildly different reactions to Facebook’s ultimate decision.

USERS

Facebook has more than 2.7 billion users worldwide — most of them outside of the U.S. For most, Trump’s presence or absence on the platform is unlikely to greatly influence whether they should stay or they should go. Most people remain on Facebook even if they’re not entirely happy with it, studies show.

While some users are leaving Facebook — often citing the toxicity of political conversations and the platform’s broader actions against hate speech and misinformation — enough are staying (and joining) for the company to report rising user numbers quarter after quarter. For those who’ve left, even a decision to keep Trump off the platform forever is unlikely to make a difference.

Younger social media users are more likely to be liberal and, based on Pew Research studies, are more likely to use newer social media platforms that are still growing in the U.S. such as TikTok or Snapchat. In other words, if Facebook wants to keep expanding Instagram, its platform most popular with that demographic, banning Trump permanently is unlikely to hurt.

While many Americans might look to Facebook’s final decision as a “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” on Trump, the approach the company takes could also affect its relationship with users around the world and their local and national political leaders, said David Kaye, a former United Nations special rapporteur on free speech.

“What kind of platform does Facebook want to present to the world?” asked Kaye, now a law professor at the University of California at Irvine. “A platform that cares about its users, cares about offline harm, and devotes resources to solving problems about offline harm? Or do they want to be known as the place that facilitates ethnic cleansing?”

U.S. POLITICIANS AND REGULATORS

Whatever Facebook decides will probably enrage one side of the political aisle.

That could be even messier if Trump decides to run for president again in 2024, since he’d once again be a major political figure. Facebook isn’t bound by the U.S. First Amendment, which prevents the government from muzzling free speech, so it can technically do whatever it wants under its rules. But a private company banning a major party candidate from its service could be complicated and might invite further scrutiny from antitrust enforcers over its power.

Of course, Twitter banned Trump permanently without a backward glance, and it’s still standing. Its shares, which briefly dipped after it announced the Trump ban in January, have since recovered. But a permanent silencing of the former president on Facebook would still anger Trump and his supporters.

Since before Trump was even elected, a vocal and growing set of conservative politicians have pushed the narrative, with no proof, that Facebook and other tech companies are biased against conservatives. A permanent ban would further cement this belief, possibly pushing sympathetic users to other, smaller platforms.

On the other hand, allowing Trump on Facebook again could fuel the push by some civil rights advocates to seek stricter rules against harmful misinformation — perhaps in ways that could hurt Facebook’s business model, which thrives on any kind of engagement.

SHAREHOLDERS AND ADVERTISERS

Facebook holds so much sway over how online advertisers reach consumers that whether Trump is on or off the platform is unlikely to matter much to them, said Cathy Taylor, of the London-based World Advertising Research Center.

“There’s not many places for them to go to spend their ad dollars,” she said. “They kind of are backed into being on Facebook whether they like it or not.”

Taylor said major marketers did get the company’s attention last summer when they launched a boycott pushing Facebook to take a stronger stand against hate speech, but those big brands — from Starbucks to Unilever — still accounted for less than 1% of Facebook’s revenue in the U.S.

The company’s stock is trading close to last week’s record high, despite some skittishness due to regulatory pressure on Facebook’s plans for an Instagram aimed at children. Its advertising revenue is soaring, thanks in large part to a boost in online ads during the pandemic. Revenue grew 48% to $26.17 billion in the first three months of this year — a pace more typical for startups than for massive global corporations.

And as long as Facebook profits from advertising spending, the company’s shareholders will stay happy, too.

“Facebook in particular has tons of small and mid-sized businesses that don’t even enter into these big political conversations,” Taylor said. “There’s no sign that anything is changing with these social media sites based on whether or not Donald Trump is on the platform.”

Stocks were posting strong gains in midday trading Thursday, following three days of losses and the biggest one-day drop in the S&P 500 since February.

Technology stocks, which were hurt hard earlier in the week, were among the bigger gainers. Apple, Microsoft, and Facebook were all up 1% or more.

The S&P 500 was up 1% as of 11:47 a.m. Eastern. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 367 points, or 1.1%, to 33,955 and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite was up 0.5%. It’s not uncommon for markets to reverse direction after sharp gains or losses over a period of days as investors reassess markets and pause during period of volatility.

Investors have had things to be concerned about. Last week’s jobs report was showed fewer employers hiring than had been expected, and on Thursday the government reported that wholesale prices jumped 0.6% last month, driven by higher costs for services and food. That was more than expected and the latest indication that inflation pressures are mounting.

Rising prices reflect growing economic activity after last year’s global shutdown to fight the coronavirus pandemic. However investors worry inflation might disrupt the recovery or prompt central banks to withdraw stimulus and near-zero interest rates.

“The capital markets are clearly grappling in a tug of war,” said Bill Northey, senior investment director at U.S. Bank Wealth Management.

Investors have been questioning whether rising inflation will be something transitory, as the Federal Reserve has said, or something more durable that the Fed will have to address. Currently, the central bank has maintained low interest rates in order to help the economic recovery, but concerns are growing that it will have to shift its position if inflation starts running too hot.

“Is there something more durable being embedded within rising prices? The next several months will not likely resolve this debate,” Northey said.

Bond yields rose sharply this week in response to the data but pulled back slightly on Thursday. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note was 1.67% compared to 1.70% the day before.

In other markets, the price for Bitcoin plunged 11% after billionaire Elon Musk changed his position on the digital currency, citing the environmental impact. He said Tesla Motors would no longer accept Bitcoin as payment for its cars.

Crude oil prices fell 3% after a key gasoline pipeline on the East Coast was reopened late Wednesday. The price of crude oil is now down slightly for the week. Energy companies lagged the market as prices fell. Occidental Petroleum slipped 4.1%.

The Biden administration swung aggressively into action after a primary gasoline pipeline fell prey to a cyberattack — understanding that the situation posed a possible series of political and economic risks.

The pipeline shutdown was an all-hands-on-deck situation for a young presidency that has also had to deal with a pandemic, a recession, an influx of unaccompanied children at the U.S.-Mexico border, a troop withdrawal from Afghanistan and high-stakes showdowns globally that carry the specter of war.

The administration devoted the first half of the week to showcasing all the steps it was taking to get gas back to service stations in affected areas. It scrambled into action after ransom-seeking hackers on Friday shut down the pipeline, which delivers about 45% of the East Coast’s gas. The shutdown caused a supply crunch and spiking prices — all of which the administration was preparing to address.

President Joe Biden was scheduled to deliver remarks on the pipeline incident Thursday morning, more evidence of his administration’s awareness of the political perils associated with the shutdown and of White House efforts to turn the situation into a new reason to argue for his infrastructure package.

Hours before the Colonial Pipeline was restarted on Wednesday, Biden had signaled that there were reasons for optimism.

The president followed with an executive order to improve cybersecurity. Biden’s team seized on the shutdown as an argument for approving the president’s $2.3 trillion infrastructure package.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said the cyberattack was a reminder that infrastructure is a national security issue and investments for greater resilience are needed.

“This is not an extra, this is not a luxury, this is not an option,” Buttigieg said. “This has to be core to how we secure critical infrastructure.”

The Department of Homeland Security issued a temporary waiver of a federal law overseeing maritime commerce to an individual company, not identified by the government, to allow the transportation of additional gas and jet fuel between Gulf Coast and East Coast ports.

The Transportation Department was surveying how many vessels could carry fossil fuels to the Gulf of Mexico and Eastern Seaboard to provide gasoline. Waivers were issued to expand the hours that fuel can be transported by roadways. The Environmental Protection Agency issued waivers on gas blends and other regulations to ease any supply challenges.

The technology firm Gasbuddy.com found that 28% of stations were out of fuel in North Carolina. In Georgia, South Carolina and Virginia, more than 16% of stations were without gas.

The sudden supply crunch after last week’s hack showed the challenges that can pop up for a White House that must constantly respond to world events.

Republican lawmakers were quick to criticize the administration for previously canceling plans to construct the Keystone XL oil pipeline from Canada. Biden had canceled its permit over risks of spills and worries that climate change would worsen by burning the oil sands crude that would have flowed through the pipeline.

“The Colonial Pipeline crisis shows that we need more American energy to fuel our economy, not less,” House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy of California said on Twitter. He said Biden had “left our energy supply more vulnerable to attacks” by blocking the Keystone XL pipeline.

The cyberattack was but one of many challenges confronting the president.

Within just a few days, the Biden administration has also been dealt a disappointing monthly jobs report, a potentially worrisome increase in inflation and lethal violence in Israel. It is still trying to vaccinate the country against the coronavirus, send out hundreds of billions of dollars in economic aid and pass its own sweeping jobs and education agenda.

“You have to be prepared to juggle multiple challenges, multiple crises at one time, and that’s exactly what we’re doing at this moment,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Wednesday.

Higher energy prices often have political fallout, complicating reelection campaigns for incumbents outside oil-producing regions. The 1979 fuel shortage crushed Jimmy Carter’s presidential reelection efforts and helped usher in the Reagan era.

Research published last year by the World Bank looked at 207 elections across 50 democracies and found an oil price spike a year before the election “systematically lower the odds of incumbents being reelected.” The findings applied to both conservatives and liberals, showing a degree of pragmatism by voters.

The best way for Biden to respond was probably to show that he understands how rising gas prices can hurt family budgets and to move quickly to help fix the pipeline problem.

“It’s important for the president to show empathy and recognize the position that the average American is in vis-à-vis gas prices,” said Mark Jones, a political science professor at Rice University in Houston. “Gas prices are something that don’t affect the elite — and our politicians are all among the elite.”

Seattle firm NetMotion Software agreed to be purchased by a technology company based in Vancouver, B.C., for $340 million in cash.

Absolute Software said its deal for privately held NetMotion, announced Tuesday, is expected to close in late June. Both companies focus on providing security solutions for their customers.

NetMotion has at least 3,200 customers worldwide and employs about 180 people, about half of which are in Seattle, and there are no plans to change that after the acquisition, said Joel Windels, NetMotion’s chief marketing officer. Absolute has more than 530 employees, Windels said.

NetMotion had about $60 million in revenue in the 12 months ending March 31, up 18% from a year earlier; it posted adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization of $18 million, according to an Absolute news release.

WASHINGTON — The number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits fell last week to 473,000, a new pandemic low and the latest evidence that fewer employers are cutting jobs as consumers ramp up spending and more businesses reopen.

The decline — the fourth in the past five weeks — coincides with a rash of states led by Republican governors that have blamed expanded jobless benefits for a slowdown in hiring and are acting to cut off the additional aid.

Thursday’s report from the Labor Department showed that applications declined 34,000 from a revised 507,000 a week earlier. The number of weekly jobless claims — a rough measure of the pace of layoffs — has fallen significantly from a peak of 900,000 in January.

Last week’s unemployment claims marked the lowest level since March of last year, when the viral pandemic erupted across the economy. The decline in applications is coinciding with a steadily improving economy. More Americans are venturing out to shop, travel, dine out and congregate at entertainment venues. The reopening has proceeded so fast that many businesses aren’t yet able to staff up as quickly as they would like.

In April, employers added 266,000 jobs, far fewer than expected. The surprisingly tepid gain raised concerns that businesses may find it hard to quickly add jobs as the economy keeps improving and that regaining pre-pandemic employment levels could take longer than hoped.

In Thursday’s report on jobless claims, the government said nearly 16.9 million people were receiving unemployment aid during the week of April 24, the latest period for which data is available. That is up from 16.2 million in the previous week and suggests that hiring wasn’t strong enough last month to pull people off unemployment.

The rise in unemployment recipients occurred mostly in California and Michigan, where more than 600,000 people were added to the federal jobless benefit program that was set up for gig workers and contractors.

The hiring slowdown has led to a political backlash against several federal expansions to unemployment benefits, including an extra $300 in weekly benefits paid for by the federal government, on top of state payments that average about $320. The supplement was included in President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus measure, approved in March, and is set to expire the week of Sept. 6.

But so far, 12 states — all with GOP governors — have announced that they will stop paying the extra benefit as soon as June or July. In Tennessee, for example, Gov. Bill Lee said the state will stop issuing the payment July 3. In Missouri, Gov. Mike Parson said on Twitter that it will end June 12.

The 12 states will also end their participation in two federal benefit programs: One that has made gig workers and the self-employed eligible for assistance for the first time, and a second that provides extra weeks of aid. Together, those programs cover 12.5 million people nationwide.

Businesses have cited the extra $300 as a reason they are struggling to hire. An analysis by Bank of America economists found that people who had earned up to $32,000 in their previous jobs can receive as much or more income from jobless aid. Some unemployed people say the extra benefit allows them to take more time to look for work, which can make hiring harder.

There are other factors that help explain why many people who are out of work might be reluctant to take jobs. Some worry that working in restaurants, hotels or other services industries will expose them to the virus, according to government surveys. In addition, many women, especially working mothers, have had to leave the workforce to care for children who are still in online school for at least part of the week.

The Century Foundation, a think thank, estimates that the move by the 12 states will cut off benefits for 895,000 people. In addition to Tennessee and Missouri, the other states are: Alabama, Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, South Carolina, Utah and Wyoming.

In some states, the impact will fall the hardest on African-Americans, the Century Foundation calculates. Half the unemployment benefit recipients in Alabama and South Carolina are Black; in Mississippi, two-thirds are.

Biden earlier this week disputed the notion that the $300 payment is to blame for the drop-off in hiring last month. But he also urged the Labor Department to work with states on renewing requirements that recipients of unemployment aid must search for jobs and take a position if offered.

The job search rule was suspended during the pandemic, when many businesses were closed and employment opportunities were few. A majority of states have now reinstated it.

“Anyone collecting unemployment, who is offered a suitable job must take the job or lose their unemployment benefits,” Biden said.