Seasons greetings arent as cheery when its a season of layoffs.
November marked the eighth time this year that job cuts were up over the same period the year before, according to research from outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. To make matters worse, hiring in November was down 35% from 2024, marking the lowest year-to-date total since 2010.
News about the current labor market can be unnervingeven more so when layoffs are hitting your company. Being prepared can help make it less so. And one group of people knows more about that than most.
A page out of the prepper book
The word prepper may bring to mind images of shows like Doomsday Preppers, in which people stockpile food, water, weapons, and supplies in anticipation of apocalyptic events. However, most preppers are simply people who want to have some basic essentials or plan in place just in case.
In fact, the last Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) National Preparedness Report found that more than half of U.S. adults (55%) had taken 3 or more of the 12 preparedness steps, like making a plan, gathering supplies, and securing documents.
It’s not that different from preparing for a layoff, says organizational psychologist Melissa Doman.
Going through an unexpected layoff is a form of a temporary doomsday for some people. They didnt expect it, they cant control it, and they dont know how long its going to last, she says.
If youre worried about an impending layoff, try preparing like a prepper.
Know what you have
When layoff rumors start circulating, if you start making plans as soon as the whispers begin, or before if possible, youll be in a much better position, says Michael McAuliffe, president and CEO of Family Credit Management, a nonprofit credit counseling agency.Personal finance expert LaChelle Johnson agrees, advising, Figure out exactly what you have in terms of cash on hand, liquid assets, and even funds you may have access to in an emergency that you can withdraw from, like retirement accounts or investment accounts.
Maximize income and benefits
In 2018, Michelle Arellano Martin had what she thought was her dream job. Then, she got a surprise. I had just completed a huge projectgarnered some incredible awards for my workand then my position was eliminated, she says.
If she had it to do over again, she says she would have applied for unemployment benefits immediately, because the first payment took several weeks to arrive. She also advises negotiating for the best severance package you can. After her second layoff, she was able to negotiate an additional three months of severance pay. This, in part, helped her launch her business, sustainable travel site Travara.
Talent strategist Brittany Dolin, CEO of the Pocketbook Agency recruitment firm, advises reviewing an expected severance package and how benefits like health insurance last after a layoff. You may also look for benefits that can give you immediate value, such as flexible spending account balances available to you.Johnson also suggests looking for items that you might be able to sell if necessaryeverything from future concert tickets to that bread maker you always wanted to use but never opened. She also advises thinking about side hustles (but be sure you understand their impact on unemployment benefits).
Slash spending
When Johnson was laid off years ago, she and her husband had car loans, private school bills, credit card balances, and a big mortgage. The couple decided to make serious changes, like moving in with his parents for a year, to protect what they had and get out of debt. I just felt like we were maxed out from wall to wall, she recalls.
Johnson advises taking a close look at spending and eliminating what you dont need: Cut subscriptions. Pause gym memberships. Plan meals, and eat at home. Look for cheaper housing options. Follow frugal living communities on Reddit or other social media for more ideas on cutting expenses. You may pick up some good habits and find room in your budget to beef up your emergency fund over time, she says.
Get your support team lined up
Three of the 12 disaster preparation actions FEMA recommends involve identifying people you need for help and communication during emergencies. Similarly, Doman says you need to identify your support team if you suspect youre facing something as stressful as a layoff.
Dont just default to your best friend or a family member. Instead, she says, think about the people who are going to let you feel your emotions and, when youre ready, devise an action plan if the layoff comes to pass.You dont want someone whos just going to brush off your emotions or give you a lot of toxic positivity, she says. In fact, she adds, You may need more than one person.Reach out to these trusted individuals and let them know whats going on so they can support youand perhaps even help you network to find a new job.
Keep a schedule
If the layoff does come to pass, you may need to wallow a bit.
Doman says its okay to take a duvet day to lie in bed and watch television if you need it. But dont do that for too long, she adds. Keep structure in your dayget up at a set time, work on some tasks to find a new job, get some fresh air, talk to a friend, she says.
Dolin agrees. Fear can be paralyzing, and if a layoff is pending or just happened, its time to buckle down and do your best to stay employable in an unpredictable market, she says. Preparation does not equal panic.
Its rare that your esoteric, impossible-to-pronounce, decade-long research project becomes a technology so crucial to national security that the President of the United States calls it out from the White House.
But thats exactly what happened to Dr. Eric Wengrowski, the CEO of Steg AI.
Wengrowski spent nearly a decade of his life advancing steganography, a deeply-technical method for tracking images as they travel through the machinery of the modern Internet, as the focus of his PHD at Rutgers University.
After earning his degree, Wengrowki and a team of co-founders rolled his tech into a small startup. For several years, the company grew, but mostly toiled away in relative obscurity.
Then, AI image generators exploded into the publics consciousness. And for Wengrowki and Stegs team, everything blew up.
Durable Marks
I met Wengrowski during the pandemic, when we both volunteered to help a media industry trade group rapidly pivot its yearly in-person conference to a Zoom format.
For years, I only knew Wengrowski as a cheerful, highly-intelligent floating head in my video chat window. I even interviewed him for my YouTube channel from the COVID-safe confines of our respective home offices.
When I finally met him in person in San Francisco in 2023, I discovered that hes actually a towering 6 feet 3 inches tall.
It was one of those iconic pandemic professional meet-cute moments people joke about, where you find that someone youve virtually known for years looks totally different in person.
What wasnt different about Wengrowski in real life was his intense interest and passion for his chosen field. Steganography (pronounced STEG-an-ography, like the Steg in stegasaurus) is a technique for embedding an invisible code into the pixels of an image.
Basically, a complex algorithm subtly changes selected pixels in a way thats invisible to human perception. Images look no different after being marked with a steganographic watermark than they did before.
Yet, when special software looks at the marked image, the unique code embedded in its pixels comes through clearly to the softwares computerized eyes.
The presence of that code lets companies like Steg track a marked image back to its source with extremely high accuracy.
Crucially, because the code is embedded directly into the images pixels, its also nearly impossible to remove.
Bad actors can easily crop out a physical watermark from an images pixels, or use a tool like Photoshop to scrub data from the images IPTC or EXIF metadata fields.
In contrast, because steganographic watermarks live directly in the visual part of the image itself, they travel with the image no matter where it goes. And they survive the most common image-related funny business that nefarious people might try to use to remove them.
All steganographic watermarks can survive things that amateur image thieves might try, like aggressive cropping, or even the common practice of taking a screenshot of an image in order to stealthily steal it.
But Stegs tech goes even further, Wengrowski told me in an interview. If for example you load an image watermarked by the companys tech on your computer screen, take out your phone, and photograph the physical screen, the companys watermarks will survive in the new image on your phone.
Your nefarious copy will remain traceable to the original with Stegs tech.
AI Explodes Everything
When Wengrowski originally developed Stegs technology, he knew it was cool. And he had a hunch that it was useful for something. But exactly what that something might involve wasnt originally clear.
In the early days, Steg slowly grew by helping companies with legal compliance and image protection. Steg would embed its watermarks in copyrighted images, for example, and then trace where those images ended up.
If someone stole and used a copyrighted image without permission, Stegs embedded watermarks could be used to prove the theft and could help lead to a legal settlement.
The company also worked to safeguard things like pre-release images of a new product. If a company sent top-secret images of a new phone (marked with Stegs tech) to a supplier, for example, and those photos suddenly ended up as a leak in TechCrunch, the company could trace the embedded watermark and know who to blame.
That was enough for Steg to grow slowly and steadily improve its tech. Then, in 2022, everything changed.
All at once, OpenAI released its Davinci image generation model (remember the avocado chairs?), Midjourney rolled out its then world-beating image generation tech, and Google leaned into image generation within its Bard and later Gemini AI models.
Almost overnight, the world was awash in AI images. And very quickly, they became so realistic that everyday people had trouble knowing what was real and what was AI generated.
This presented a huge problem for AI companies. They wanted to release their tech far and wide. But they fretted about the potential societal (and legal) consequences if their images were used for deepfakes to deceive people, or even to sway elections.
And more broadly, anyone with an interest in the veracity of images suddenly had a huge problem knowing what was real and what was AI-generated.
Everything from news reporting to war crimes tribunals rely on imagery as evidence. What happens when that imagery can be quickly and cheaply spun up by an AI algorithm?
Yes, AI companies can physically watermark their images (such as by adding a little Gemini star in the lower right), or embed Generated by AI markers in their images metadata. But again, removing those markers is childs play for even the least sophisticated scammers.
With AI image generators storming the world, the origins and veracity of every image online was suddenly called into question.
Thank You, Mr. President
That led to a bizarre situation for any deeply technical person pursuing their random, highly-specific passion in relative obscurity.
On October 30, 2023, Wengrowki woke to find that then-president Joe Biden had issued an executive order specifically calling out AI watermarking tech, highlighting it as a crucial factor in national security, and ordering all Federal agencies to use it.
Specifically, Bidens order mandated embedding information that is dificult to remove, into outputs created by AI including into outputs such as photos, videos, audio clips, or text for the purposes of verifying the authenticity of the output or the identity or characteristics of its provenance, modifications, or conveyance.
The order also specifically called for the rapid development of science-back standards and techniques forlabeling synthetic content, such as using watermarking.
Biden framed this as mission criticalthe term national security appears 36 times in his executive order.
Basically, Biden was mandating the use of tech like steganography, and specifically calling it out from the White House.
When that happened, Wengrowski told me, everything went crazy. Since the orderand the corresponding growth of AI imagery more broadlyStegs revenue has increased 500%.
Moreover, protecting the integrity of images appears bipartisanWengrowski told me that AI watermarking has been embraced by both the Biden and Trump administrations.
In an extremely tight AI job market where top researchers can command eight-figure salaries, Steg now employs five machine learning PHDs devoted to improving its technologies.
Although Wengrowski couldnt share his customer list on the record, I can vouch for the fact that its wildly impressive.
While keeping its legal compliance and image tracing side alive, Steg has expanded aggressively into the world of cybersecurity and AI image watermarking.
For AI companies that want to ply their trade without ruining humanitys trust in visual media, Stegs tech is a lifeline.
Companies can embed a steganographic watermark directly into AI images the moment theyre generated. For the life of an image, the code travels with it, even if its reposted, edited or altered.
If that image is used as a deepfake or used to manipulate or harass people, the company that created it can quickly read the embedded steganographic watermark in its pixels, definitively label it as a fake, and quickly dispel any damage the image might cause.
If youve created an AI image in the last year, youve almost certainly used steganography without even knowing it. Most major AI image generation companies now use the tech. Many use Stegs.
And in a world where AI images are so good that they easily fool most detectors (and even trained forensic image analysts), many companies see steganography as the only bulwark against AIs total destruction of any truth still left in the visual world.
A Wild Ride
For Steg and for Wengrowski personally, its been a wild ride. Right as Biden issued his order, Wengrowski became a father, and now juggles the everyday struggles and joys of a young parent with the rigors of such things as constant travel and testifying in state legislatures.
The rise of AI imagery has also revealed some counterintuitive challenges. When Steg first launched, Wengrowski told me, he expected that people would yearn for a technology that could prove whether an image was real or fake.
In reality, he was surprised by how little people care. Many people are fine with seeing AI generated content, as long as its funny, informative or otherwise engaging. Whether or not its properly labeled as AI matters very little to them.
More pointedly, it matters very little to the social media platforms that disseminate the content, too.
Again, though, for the companies who create that contentand who face legal and reputational risk if their tech runs awryit matters an awful lot. Wengrowski tells me that Steg is continuing to improve its tech, making its watermarks even harder to beat.
The company is also entering the emerging field of poisoning. New software that Wengrowki showed me invisibly alters images in ways that trip up common deepfake algorithms.
If someone tries to turn the poisoned image into a deepfake, it comes out garbled and illegible. The tech works both when images are used for training deepfake models, and when a bad actor tries to create a deepfake of a specific person.
The idea is that an influencer, for example, could upload poisoned images of themselves to their social media. The images would look normal to human users. But if someone tried to deepfake the influencer, the poisoned images would thwart them.
Wengrowki told me hes especially excited to use the tech to help protect young influencers and teens in general, who are often targeted in abhorrent cyberbullying attacks involving explicit deepfakes.
More broadly, though, Wengrowskis story is an inspiring one for anyone grinding away on an as-yet unproven technology, convinced of its value but unsure whether the world will ever see their work.
Reflecting on Stegs success, Wengrowski acknowledged that Its probably best to start a business with a clear plan and an understanding of product/market fit.
But in his words, Theres also something to be said for knowing a technology is cool, continually improving it even if you have no idea where that will lead, and just trusting that eventually it will have some value for the world.
In Stegs case, thats indeed been a winning formula.
Many Americans are likely to see massive changes to their taxes in 2026, especially seniors.
That’s largely due to President Donald Trumps so-called big, beautiful bill, a massive 940-page bill signed into law over the summer that includes an array of new tax write-offs but also fails to renew some previous deductions from the Biden administration.
One change is a $6,000 deduction for seniors. Here’s what to know.
Who qualifies for the new senior tax deduction?
Trumps tax and spending law introduced a $6,000 deduction for qualifying seniors ages 65 and older, on top of the current additional standard deduction for seniors under existing law. Taxpayers must attain age 65 on or before the last day of the taxable year to be eligible.
The $6,000 senior deduction (or $12,000 for a married couple where both spouses qualify) applies to an eligible individual earning up to $75,000 in modified adjusted gross income, or up to $150,000 for joint filers. It is available for both itemizing and non-itemizing taxpayers.
Taxpayers must include the Social Security number of the qualifying individual(s) on the return, and file jointly if married, to claim the deduction.
How does the deduction impact Social Security?
The deduction is meant to offset upcoming federal taxes on Social Security payments.
Older taxpayers could be taxed up to 85% based on their combined income, which is calculated based on a taxpayer’s adjusted gross income plus half of their Social Security benefits, according to CNBC.
Anything else to know?
According to the IRS, the deduction expires at the end of 2028, right before Trump leaves office, making this a temporary deduction effective for tax years 2025 through 2028.
Robinhood is betting that its customers want to trade on absolutely everything.
On Tuesday, the popular stock-trading app unveiled a slate of updates to its prediction markets business, aggressively expanding into sports. Now, Robinhood users can trade contracts tied to specific professional football players’ performances, as well as prepackaged combos for individual games.
Early next year, customers will be able to combine up to 10 outcomessuch as winners, spreads, and totalsinto a single, custom-built contract. Robinhood’s news site, Sherwood, is also launching a new sports newsletter, Scoreboard. Eventually, Robinhood plans to launch contracts that span not just multiple games, but multiple categoriesfrom sports to climate to politics.
“If customers say they’re looking to trade a specific category or specific event, we’re all ears,” Adam Hickerson, Robinhood’s senior director of futures and prediction markets, tells Fast Company.
Robinhood’s entrance into prediction markets can be seen as a natural culmination of the trajectory it set into motion years ago. For the uninitiated, prediction markets allow people to trade on real-world events by buying and selling contracts. These events can range from sports matches to political elections to who Time magazine will name as its Person of the Year.
Since Robinhood launched prediction markets in late 2024, they’ve become the companys fastest-growing line of business. In the third quarter this year, it reported that users traded 2.3 billion prediction-markets contracts. Then, in October alone, that figure reached 2.5 billion.
The most popular contracts have been in sports. Robinhood maintains that users are not gambling, as trading on the market sets the odds, not the platform itself. Still, the sports contracts tap into an enthusiasm for sports speculation. According to the Pew Research Center, 22% of adults in the U.S. have bet money on sports in the past year. Among men younger than 30, that figure rises to 36%. Robinhood isn’t the only app getting in the game: Fanatics, a global sports platform, just launched a prediction-market app, becoming the first sportsbook to do so.Some regulators believe decision markets cross the line into gambling. Numerous states have sent Robinhood cease-and-desist letters, demanding prediction markets stop offering sports contracts. In response, Robinhood sued New Jersey and Nevada earlier this year, maintaining that its markets are completely legal.
There is no sign of regulatory turmoil dampening Robinhood’s ambition. In November, the company announced plans to start its own prediction market, launching an exchange with Susquehanna International Group. “This is just the tip of the iceberg,” Hickerson says.
From meme stocks to prediction markets
In 2013, Vlad Tenev and Baiju Bhatt founded Robinhood as an easy, commission-free way for users to trade on their phones. Business boomed during the COVID-19 pandemic as bored Americans, flush with stimulus checks, flocked to the app. The online brokerage became known for its popularity among young adrenaline junkies who treated investing less like retirement planning and more like a mobile game.
Robinhood’s supporters applauded the company for democratizing finance. Critics, meanwhile, slammed it for encouraging users to trade stocks like gamblers betting on sports. In 2021, legendary investor Charlie Munger told CNBC that Robinhood was “a gambling parlor masquerading as a respectable business,” calling it a “sleazy, disreputable operation.”
The anti-Robinhood backlash boiled over during the GameStop saga, when users fueled a trading frenzy that drove meme stocks to absurd highs. In the aftermath, Robinhood dialed back on its so-called gamified elements, removing a confetti animation that accompanied certain achievements. In a February 2021 hearing before Congress, Tenev testified that the “vast majority” of Robinhood’s customers were long-term investors, not day traders buying meme stocks.
Eventually, however, Robinhood acknowledged the importance of its active day tradersusers less interested in traditional stocks and far more interested in riskier products like cryptocurrencies. These are our most engaged customers that generate the lions share of our revenue, Tenev told The Wall Street Journal in November. We put our best people on active traders.
Robinhood keeps these valuable customers happy by letting them invest in whatever their hearts desire. Increasingly, that means prediction markets.
Betting on predictions
Prediction markets have been around for more than a century. They have primarily existed as a niche curiosity, not a major focus for investors, amateur or professional. Then came last years election.
More than $3.3 billion was traded in 2024 presidential election contracts, mostly on prediction market Polymarket. Robinhood launched its own contracts a month before the election, its first foray into the prediction markets. By the time Trump wonas forecast by the marketsthe concept of prediction markets had cemented itself in the American mainstream. At the time, it was not legal for Americans to use Polymarket. As a result, it operated offshore, although Americans likely still used it via VPNs and thanks to Polymarket’s reliance on cryptocurrency. Reports alleged that much of the election-trading volume came from “wash trading,” which inflates market activity and is a form of market manipulation. In January, Kalshi launched “100% legal” sports trading in all 50 states, regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. The next month, Robinhood announced a partnership with Kalshi for Super Bowl contracts. But mere hours after the announcement, Robinhood canceled the contracts at the request of the CFTC. The agency had serious concerns that the contracts may not be permissible under the law, a CFTC representative said at the time.
Robinhood was undeterred. In March, just ahead of the NCAA basketball tournament, the company launched its prediction markets hub, still in partnership with Kalshi. A CFTC official told Sportico that the agency had no legal justification to prevent Robinhood from offering access to these contracts.”Robinhood is competing not only with Polymarket and Kalshi but also with Coinbase, which is reportedly planning to introduce prediction markets, thanks to its own partnership with Kalshi.
Defining “gambling”
Laws on gamblingand how regulators interpret those lawsare set to be one of Robinhood’s biggest obstacles when it comes to decision markets.
Kalshi and Robinhood maintain that their users are trading, not gambling. Kalshi and Robinhood do not make money based on outcomes, but instead earn revenue via transaction fees. They emphasize that, unlike sportsbooks, prediction markets do not take bets or set odds.
For example, if the New England Patriots are playing the Tennessee Titans, a user who thinks the Titans will win could buy shares on the “yes” position. Shares will be less expensive if Tennessee is the underdog, but the price is set by the markets’ perceived probability. If the Titans win, each winning share pays out $1, while those who picked the Patriots are left empty-handed.
If regulators agree with decision markets’ line of reasoning, companies like Robinhood and Kalshi should be able to offer sports contracts online in all 50 states, including states where sports betting is illegal or restricted. Gambling is banned for people under 21, but 18-year-olds are typically allowed to trade event contracts. Many sports-betting regulationssuch as safeguards to prevent game fixingdo not currently apply to prediction markets.
Not every regulator is convinced by decision markets’ arguments. In addition to New Jersey and Nevada, Connecticut, Ohio, Maryland, Illinois, and Arizona have sent Robinhood and other decision markets cease-and-desist letters.
Nonetheless, the decision markets have amassed some powerful allies.
In January, Donald Trump Jr. joined Kalshi as a strategic adviser. Polymarket’s return to the U.S. and its legalization came, in part, thanks to the president’s son becoming an investor and adviser. In September, President Trump nominated Kalshi board member Brian Quintenz to chair the CFTC. A month later, Trump Media announced a prediction market partnership involving Crypto.com and Truth Social.
Everything, everywhere, all at once
Folding sports contracts, stock trades, online banking, and crypto into a single app will inevitably upset traditionalists. Old-school investors might also be skeptical of Robinhoods other announcements on Tuesday, focused on artificial intelligence: upgrades to its AI-powered investing assistant and the launch of personalized daily Digests that analyze users’ portfolios.
For Robinhood, the grab bag of choices is the point. “Everything comes down to: What does the customer want?” Hickerson says. Robinhood takes feedback seriously, he said, and executives have heard “loud and clear that these are some features that they really want to trade on.”
Scrolling through the contracts on any prediction market reveals just how many topics inspire speculation. As of Monday, more than $17,000 in contracts had been traded on Kalshi related to the topic: “What will Vlad Tenev say during the Robinhood keynote?” (Trading activity indicates a 72% chance that Tenev says “sport.”)
“Ultimately,” says Oren Naim, Robinhood’s vice president of platforms, “our long-term vision for the company is to become your one-stop shop for anythingany financial needacross the board.”
Suzanna’s Kitchen, a Georgia-based food production company, has issued a recall of 62,550 pounds of fully cooked, bone-in breaded chicken products.
The chicken, which was distributed nationwide, was recalled over mislabeling. While the product was labeled with a product code that classifies it as non-allergen-containing, the product contains soy.
According to the recall notice, which was issued on December 12, the affected product is the eight-piece cut, bone-in breaded chicken portions that were produced on October 16, 2025. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) mark of inspection and establishment number printed on the side of the package is P-1380.
According to the USDA, soy is one of the “big nine” allergens and could result in serious allergic reactions. “Symptoms of food allergies typically appear within minutes or up to two hours after a person has eaten or has come into contact with the food to which they are allergic,” the department’s website explains. It also notes that common signs of an allergic reaction include hives; difficulty breathing; swelling of the tongue, lips, face, throat, and vocal chords; a drop in blood pressure, and more.
It’s unlikely that the products will be found in home refrigerators, as it was distributed to restaurants across the country. However, restaurant-goers with soy allergies should be aware of the heightened concern. The USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) says restaurants should carefully check their stock. FSIS is concerned that some products may be in restaurant refrigerators or freezers. Restaurants are urged not to serve this product; these items should be thrown away, the recall notice states.
The notice also said there have been no confirmed illnesses due to the affected products, but that consumers concerned about a potential illness should contact their healthcare provider immediately.
Otherwise, questions about the recall can be directed to Dawn Duncan, Customer Service Director, Suzannas Kitchen, at dduncan@suzannaskitchen.com, the notice states. The USDA’s Meat and Poultry Hotline is also available for questions at 888-674-6854.
The latest employment numbers have droppedand the job market still looks tough for workers.
Todays jobs report shares data from November, which was delayed due to the government shutdown that lifted last month. As jobs growth has slowed in recent months, the unemployment rate has climbed to 4.6%, up from 4.4% in September and the highest it has been in four years. Employers added only 64,000 jobs in November, and the market also shed 105,000 jobs the month prior. Wage growth has stagnated to a degree that hasnt been seen since 2021.
The jobs report seems to confirm what many workers are likely encountering as they try to navigate the current job market: Employers are simply not hiring at the same rate, due to economic uncertainty and the Trump administrations crackdown on immigration. The current climate has been described by experts as low hire, low fire, which means the workers who do lose their jobs are struggling to find new employment. The share of Americans who have been out of work for over six months has jumped to 1.9 million, when it was 1.7 million a year ago. Thats not great news for people affected by the layoffs sweeping through companies like UPS and Amazon, which had raised alarm bells about the broader labor market.
On the whole, however, the jobs report indicates employers are not cutting jobs at a concerning rate: Initial claims for unemployment insurance are still relatively low, which is usually a measure of whether layoffs are roiling the economy; (The job losses from October also reflect the exit of over 150,000 federal workers who had accepted deferred resignation offers and are no longer on the payroll.) The rising unemployment rate seems to be fueled by the hiring slowdownwhich has left workers who are laid off with fewer job opportunities.
At the same time, however, economists say that a decline in immigration has kept the unemployment rate lower than it should be, since there are fewer people entering the labor force. That might explain why the unemployment rate isnt even higher, given the hiring outlook, though Black workers are also seeing a significant spike in unemploymenta sign that the labor market might be weakening.
Its a confusing picture for people who are seeking new jobs or entering the workforce. The jobs report tells us that the labor market has, in fact, cooled, but perhaps not to the extent that you might expect amid recurring reports of layoffs. There are a number of other factors that workers are up against: Artificial intelligence is fueling fluctuations in the workforce, with some employers citing the technology as they issue layoffs, though that might not be the true reason for shedding workers.
Still, there dont seem to be clear recession indicatorsat least for now. There might even be a glimmer of hope for workers in the job growth figures from November: While the gains were modest, it looks like private employers may be slowly starting to hire more, particularly in the healthcare sector.
FIFA slashed the price of some World Cup tickets for teams’ most loyal fans following a global backlash and some will get $60 seats for the final instead of being asked to pay $4,185.
FIFA said Tuesday that $60 tickets will be made available for every game at the tournament in North America, going to the national federations whose teams are playing. Those federations decide how to distribute them to loyal fans who have attended previous games at home and on the road.
The number of $60 tickets for each game is likely to be in the hundreds, rather than thousands, in what FIFA is now calling a Supporter Entry Tier price category.
FIFA did not specify exactly why it so dramatically changed strategy, but said the lower prices are designed to further support travelling fans following their national teams across the tournament.
The World Cup in North America will be the first edition that features 48 teamsup from 32and is expected to earn FIFA at least $10 billion in revenue. But fans worldwide reacted with shock and anger last week on seeing FIFAs ticketing plans that gave participating teams no tickets in the lowest-priced category.
The cheapest prices ranged from $120 to $265 for group-stage games that did not involve co-hosts the United States, Canada, and Mexico.
FIFA had set those prices despite the co-hosts having pledged eight years agowhen they were bidding for the tournamentthat hundreds of thousands of $21 tickets would be made available.
Criticism from fans, especially in Europe, had been increasing for several months over plans for dynamic pricing plus extra fees on a FIFA-run resale platformboth features which are common in the U.S. entertainment industry but not to soccer fans worldwide.
Fan anger intensified last week when it became clear loyal supporters would have no access to the cheapest category tickets and that fans who wanted to reserve a ticket for all of their team’s potential gamesthrough the finalwould not get refunded until after the tournament.
In another climbdown Tuesday, FIFA said it would waive its administrative fees when refunds are made after the July 19 final.
Kraft Heinz announced on Tuesday that new CEO Steve Cahillane will join the food giant to help steer its split into two companies. The former head of Kellanova joins the ailing food giant after years of declining sales and slow growth, and as shares are down 75% since 2017.
In 2026, the company will split into two independent, publicly traded companies, Global Taste Elevation Co. and North American Grocery Co., with the first focused on condiments and the Heinz ketchup brand, and the second on Oscar Mayer, Kraft Singles, and Lunchables brands.
Cahillane comes on board January 1, 2026 and will serve as chief executive officer of the first of those companies, which will rebrand as Global Taste Elevation Co. and continue to house the Philadelphia and Kraft Mac & Cheese brands, along with Heinz.
“Im confident the planned separation will accelerate the Companys ability to compete and win in todays environment,” Cahillane said in a statement.
Cahillane brings a wealth of industry experience to Kraft Heinz, having most recently served as chief executive of Kellanova, where he oversaw the recent acquisition by Mars and the expansion of household brands including Pringles, Cheez-It, Pop-Tarts, and Kelloggs.
More notably, he led Kellogg Company through the successful separation of its North American cereal business and the launch of Kellanova, a global snacking powerhouse. That experience that should come in handy in the coming months.
Steve is uniquely qualified to lead this organization into the future, and we are delighted he will be taking on the role of CEO,” Kraft Heinz’s chair Miguel Patricio said in a statement.
Kraft Heinz financials
In its third quarter earnings, the food giant reported adjusted earnings per share (EPS) of $0.61, beating analyst estimates. However, revenue fell short of expectations, with the company reporting a year-over-year net sales decline of 2.3%.
The countrys automotive future doesnt look as electric as carmakers had once hoped. But it doesnt mean the EV industry is entirely dead.
On Monday, Ford Motor Co. announced that its taking major steps to pull back on its EV-focused business road map. The automaker is scrapping plans to produce a new electric truck, repurposing an EV battery plant to produce storage for the grid, and converting its fully electric F-150 Lightning into a hybrid.
Its also planning to expand its gas and hybrid options. The strategy shift away from fully electric vehicles will cost the automaker $19.5 billion.
Ford’s stock has been mostly flat since the news was announced, with shares trading down roughly 0.11% as of late Tuesday afternoon.
The move may seem like an indictment against electric vehicles at large. It may also seem counterintuitive given that EV sales in the U.S. hit record highs this year.
But experts say it illustrates the specific headwinds that EV makers have faced in the U.S. this year, and the challenges of scaling an emerging technology.
Tax credits and tariffs
Manufacturing vehicles in the U.S. has become increasingly expensive, due in part to higher labor costs, stricter environmental regulations, and supply-chain issues. And a more expensive manufacturing environment means more investment risk.
In 2025, it became even more challenging. “A lot of things designed to mitigate that risk have been unwound, says Albert Gore, executive director of the Zero Emissions Transportation Association (ZETA), a coalition advocating for EV advancement.
President Trump scrapped federal tax credits for EVs and enacted sweeping (and at times unpredictable) tariffs. He also rolled back fuel economy standards and generally added immense uncertainty to every investment decision in U.S. manufacturing.
The cost of doing business in the U.S. has gone up significantly, Gore says.
Ford’s announcement even speaks to this, noting that “regulatory changes” have affected its EV plans.
Profitability concerns
Ford’s situation in this landscape is unique in part because of the specific type of EV it offers. Fords flagship EV was its F-150 Lightning, a full-size pickup that came with a steep price.
Though the F-150 Lightning was announced in 2021 with a price of $40,000, once production began, that cost increased. The 2025 F-150 started at around $55,000, though other versions came in even higher; the F-150 Lightning Platinum, for example, starts at around $85,000.
Ford had been struggling with its EV profitability for a while; it was losing money on every EV it sold, even at the start of 2024.
And though EV demand has been strongGore says that for the past 15 years, EV demand has far exceeded industry estimatesprice is an important component of that demand.
In general, the U.S. auto market focuses on SUVs and trucks, which have higher average transaction prices than sedans. That impacts U.S. consumers, who have been facing increasing costs in multiple sectors, including groceries and electricity.
It also makes it more challenging for U.S. companies to compete internationally. In 1960, about 52% of global automotive sales were U.S.-made vehicles. Today, its around 11%, and falling.
Some of that is just because the rest of the world is growing its manufacturing, Gore notes. But some of it is the way that cars made here for this market have changed in a way that places them somewhat out of step with the rest of the world.
Ford isnt totally giving up on EVs, though. The automakers changing strategy is specifically about no longer producing select larger electric vehicles where the business case has eroded due to lower-than-expected demand, high costs, and regulatory changes, the company has said.
So while it has scrapped the F-150 Lightning, it still has plans to make smaller, affordable models, as well as expand its hybrid and extended-range EVs.
EVs need scaleand China is dominating
In order for EVs to be profitable, production needs to reach a certain scale. But these factorsvehicle type, as well as shifting trade and tax policieshinder automakers abilities to do so.
And EVs are still somewhat nascent, at least compared to internal combustion vehicles.
Manufacturing new power train vehicles is hard, Gore says, and particularly takes economies of scale that have been achieved over a century with internal combustion vehicles, but are just now starting to be achieved in the U.S. with electric vehicles, within the last seven years or so.
About 1 out of every 4 vehicles sold around the world in 2025 will be an EV. But right now the market is dominated by China, which accounts for about 70% of global EV production.
China has come to own the global EV industry in part because of its technological advancements, specifically around battery innovationand its ability to make ultra-affordable EVs.
Some Chinese EVs start as low as $10,000; Ford CEO Jim Farley himself test-drove (and loved) a Xiaomi SU7, which retails for around $30,000.
Chinas EV success reveals just how far behind the U.S. is when it comes to EV advancements. And though Chinas dominance isnt quite affecting the U.S. car marketformer President Biden imposed 100% tariffs on Chinese EVs as a way to protect American auto manufacturingit is having global impacts.
The European Union is abandoning a ban on combustion vehicles after automaker pressure, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday, giving more time for automakers to go electric. The move comes as European carmakers face increased competition from China, as well as steep tariffs from the U.S.
EV consumer sentiment is hitbut theres hope
Another factor playing into the complicated EV landscape, particularly in the U.S., is the changing consumer sentiment around the technology. EV sales did hit a record high in the U.S. this year, but that was likely influenced by consumers racing to qualify for th federal tax credits before they expired at the end of September.
A recent study by CDK Global found that EV interest among gas car drivers dropped 20%. When asked if they will buy an EV in the future, 31% of gas drivers said yes in 2024, compared with 11% in 2025.
Interest even dropped among hybrid drivers, 54% of whom said in 2024 they would switch to an EV in the future, compared with 35% in 2025.
Gore wasnt involved in that survey, but he points out that the conversation around EVs has become increasingly politicized. The rhetoric is, by its nature, extremely negative, and it’s loud, he says.
That can affect EV adoption, particularly for a technology that needs to vie for mainstream appeal. Early adopters drove EVs initial surging growth, but then the industry has had to figure out how to attract everyone else who isnt as invested in being a front-runner.
But Gore isnt concerned about the long-term appeal of EVs. “That’s something that has been absolutely consistent, that regardless of what anyones heard, the experience of driving an EV is overwhelmingly positive, and the same with owning one, he says.
Though EV sales dipped 1% in North America this year compared with 2024, theyre still up 24% globally.
Despite the challenges the EV industry faces in the U.S. and abroad, experts like Gore are positive that theres still plenty of market to reachand that continued advancement, particularly in battery technology, means electric vehicles make sense for the future.
The U.S. EV industry has seen ups and downs before. And though it might be the right current move, economically, for automakers to pull back on EV plans, they risk falling behind if and when the market swings back.
“For people who don’t [scratch their EV plans], I think the reward will be a much bigger market than a lot of companies,” Gore says.
Automakers Hyundai and Kia must offer free repairs to millions of models under a settlement announced Tuesday by Minnesota’s attorney general, who led an effort by dozens of states that argued the vehicles weren’t equipped with proper anti-theft technology, leaving them vulnerable to theft.
Under the nationwide settlement, the companies will offer a free repair to all eligible vehicles at a cost that could top $500 million, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said. Hyundai and Kia must also outfit all future vehicles sold in the U.S. with a key piece of technology called an engine immobilizer and pay up to $4.5 million of restitution to people whose vehicles were damaged by thieves.
The settlement was reached by 35 states, including California, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania. The vehicles eligible for fixes date as far back as 2011 and as recently as 2022. About 9 million eligible vehicles were sold nationwide.
Thefts of Hyundai and Kia vehicles soared in part because beginning in 2021, videos posted to TikTok and other social media demonstrated how someone could steal a car with just a screwdriver and a USB cable. Minneapolis reported an 836% increase in Hyundai and Kia thefts from 2021 to 2022. Ellison announced an investigation into the automakers in early 2023.
Ellison said the two companies installed engine immobilizers on cars sold in Mexico and Canada, but not widely in the U.S., leading to car thefts, crimes and crashes that injured and even killed people, including teenagers.
This crisis that we’re talking about today started in a boardroom, traveled through the Internet and ended up in tragic results when somebody stole those cars, Ellison said at a news conference.
He was joined by Twin Cities officials, a woman whose mother was killed when a stolen Kia crashed into her parents vehicle and a man whose car was stolen nine times as recently as Monday night, and including seven times after a previous software fix.
Under the settlement, Hyundai and Kia will install a zinc sleeve to stop would-be thieves from cracking open a vehicle’s ignition cylinder and starting the car.
Eligible customers will have one year from the date of the companies’ notice to get the repair at an authorized dealership. The repairs are expected to be available from early 2026 through early 2027.
In a statement, Kia said the agreement is the latest step it has taken to help its customers and prevent thefts.
Kia is eager to continue working with law enforcement officers and officials at federal, state, and local levels to combat criminal car theft, and the role social media has played in encouraging it, and we remain fully committed to upholding vehicle security, the company said.
The Associated Press emailed Hyundai for comment.
Jack Dura, Associated Press
