Cam Newton, once one of the NFL’s most electrifying quarterbacks, is now tackling an off-field challenge: income loss.
At 37, Newton’s days as a professional athlete are behind him. He officially stepped away from the game in 2021, after his one-year, $6 million contract with the Carolina Panthers expired. These days, the football star is candid about the financial reality of life after fame.
“Being in the NFL, everyone knows there's a large sum of money that comes to you in a short span of time, and being away from the game for three years, those checks don't come in the same,” he said in an episode of the FOX reality TV show, Special Forces (1).
Newton admitted that the sudden drop in earnings made it difficult for him to feel like “Superman” to his eight children, referencing his iconic touch down celebration.
“It hurts me knowing that I can’t provide like I once did,” the former quarterback wrote on Instagram (2).
Aside from this income drop, Newton pointed to lifestyle creep as a major culprit for both his financial struggles and those of other pro athletes in a video posted to his 4th&1 with Cam Newton YouTube channel (3).
But in a dynamic, volatile economy, it’s certainly not just entrepreneurs and professional athletes facing sudden income fluctuations — ordinary workers are struggling too.
An unpredictable job market
The U.S. unemployment rate is stagnating at 4.3% of job seekers — or about 7.4 million Americans.
Job numbers also barely shifted in April, up just 115,000 (4).
While the Federal Reserve cut interest rates repeatedly in 2025 to try to support the market, these efforts weren’t quite enough to course-correct the American unemployment rate. Many factors are to blame here.
On the labor market side, the workforce is aging and shrinking due to low birth rates and reduced immigration (5). Population growth — immigration driven or otherwise — is a core component of increasing GDP.
Meanwhile, employers face ongoing economic uncertainty due to shifts in global politics — making it more challenging to hire more workers. Tariffs also caused a significant employment shake-up last year. Approximately one-fifth of companies said they were reducing hiring because of tariffs, according to a survey by the Federal Reserve Banks of Atlanta and Richmond, alongside Duke University (6).
There were also widespread layoffs of civil servants, as the U.S. federal workforce dropped to its lowest levels in at least a decade (7). And that’s before 2026 began with round upon round of AI-influenced layoffs.
According to the Wall Street Journal, “job hunts [are] more desperate, as workers cobble together part-time gigs, raid 401(k)s and get waitlisted by DoorDash (8).”
Like Newton, many now face hard choices and uncomfortable lifestyle adjustments, but on a different scale.