Friday’s business headlines

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — Here’s a look at Friday’s business headlines with Jane King.

U.S. employers expect 4% average raises next year

American employers say they expect the average raise to be 4% in 2023, which would be the largest hike in 15 years.

But advisory firm Willis Towers Watson says that extra money may not go far. That is less than half the rate of inflation.

Consumers spend 40% of food budget at restaurants

A survey from Atlanta-based platform Popmenu finds consumers are spending 40% of their food budget at restaurants.

Researchers learned that 29% of consumers believe it is cheaper to order from restaurants than buy the ingredients needed to cook a meal.

Amazon sold 300 million items on Prime Days

Shoppers didn’t hold back for Amazon Prime Days earlier this week.

Amazon says 300 million items were sold over the two days.

Insider intelligence estimates Amazon Prime Day this year saw global sales grow 17% from last year to $12.5 billion this year.

Adobe Analytics says total U.S. sales hit nearly $12 billion this year.

Twitter hit by major outage

Twitter was hit by a major outage Thursday, according to several thousand reports of problems on the website Downdetector.

The Verge reports users were receiving “over capacity” error messages, as well also errors saying, “This page is down.”

It was twitter’s first major outage since it was down twice in a week in February.

Hasbro, New York Times creating Wordle board game

Hasbro is partnering with “The New York Times,” which owns the popular online word puzzle Wordle, to create “Wordle: The Party Game.”

The board game gives players six chances to guess a five-letter word with the assist of some color-coded clues.

Pre-orders begin Thursday ahead of the game’s October 1 release. It will be sold on Hasbro’s website, Target, Amazon, and Walmart at a suggested price of $19.99.