Skimming through all of the corporate earnings reports that have been coming out this week, we were struck by how many times we saw a word that we use a lot ourselves on “Marketplace”: headwinds.

The word is corporate speak for “challenges.”

Today alone, it showed up in the quarterly reports of 18 companies. By contrast, the word “tailwinds” only shows up in three reports.

The prevalence of headwinds isn’t a coincidence. It reflects ongoing challenges in the United States and global economies.

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