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Todays labor market may be stagnating, but its also uncertain. Candidates arent behaving as many leaders would expect. The dynamic is trending towards an employers market. As a result, employers expect that candidates will increase their job searches, accept lower pay increases, and accept new roles more eagerly. But in reality, job searching has actually declined, pay expectations remain high, and candidates are reluctant to move. And this has resulted in a critical talent supply shortage. According to research from Gartner, 29% of candidates spent more than five hours per week on active job searches in the second quarter of 2025. Thats down from 49% in the first quarter of 2023. Additionally, in a 2025 Gartner survey of nearly 3,000 candidates, 53% identified higher compensation as their top reason for accepting a job offer. Acceptances are also significantly down with 51% of candidates reporting they accepted their most recent offer in the second quarter of 2025, down from 75% in the first quarter of 2025. Candidates might expect more from jobs today, or they might be responding more to uncertainty than market stagnation. Whatever the reason may be, theyre willing to wait for jobs that meet their higher expectations. As a result, recruiters are feeling greater pressure to understand candidates’ wants and how to deliver on them. To compete successfully for critical talent today, organizations need to adopt an approach thats more consistent with a fluid labor market. Below are the things that leaders need to focus on if they want to hire the best and brightest. Engaging talent selectively Many leaders expect candidates to put more effort into their job search today. The reality is that job searching has sharply declined. To bridge the job search expectation gap, organizations need to focus on building deeper relationships with the right talent, just like they would in a more fluid market. HR can guide business leaders to narrow their hiring focus to roles with the greatest business impact or complexity. This is especially important in todays cost-constrained environment. HR should prioritize deploying recruiters who excel at building long-term candidate relationships. Automating hiring processes for less critical roles can also help free up resources. This allows recruiters to concentrate on attracting talent for the capabilities that matter most. Managing attribute mix Labor market observers may expect candidates to settle for modest pay increases. But many are holding out for the full employment deal they want. To close this expectation gap, its up to the organization to amplify the right mix of attributes for the talent theyre targeting. HR can help business leaders pinpoint the critical skills and experience levels that they need, then identify current employees who match those profiles. Running focus groups with those employees can uncover the attributes that differentiate the organization from the perspective of those specific employees. Enlisting current employees from target talent segments can also help craft powerful messaging. They can help shape the tone, emphasis, and content that will resonate most with the candidates that the organization wants to attract Mitigating career risks Seasoned HR leaders might expect candidates to be eager to accept offers in todays climate. In reality, candidates are hesitant to accept. Gartner research finds that candidate willingness to accept job offers peaked in the last quarter of 2023, at 87%. This fell significantly by mid-2024. By the second quarter of 2025, only 51% of candidates reported they had accepted a new job offer. To resolve this offer-acceptance expectation gap, organizations need to focus less on convincing candidates to move jobs and more on the risk of not moving in the first place. HR needs to equip recruiters to help candidates think through their options, weigh risks, and make confident decisions. When candidates feel supported by the organization, theyre more likely to move forward. Thats why its important to train recruiters to be able to have these types of conversations, so that theyre in a better position to build relationships Following this path, HR is not simply reapplying the playbook from a fluid market. In todays climate, if the primary hesitation among talent is a fear of being Last In, First Out, then recruiters need to shift the conversation from the risk of making the move to not making it. HR leaders today cant rely on traditional assumptions about candidate behavior in a stagnating market. Todays market may be stagnant, but its also uncertain. Candidates are responding less to stagnation and more to that uncertainty. Until that changes, organizations should adopt a candidate playbook that reflects a more fluid market. And thats a market that demands tighter positioning and greater assertiveness.
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E-Commerce
Camping. Why anyone would put themselves through an odyssey of gross insects and pooping in holes is beyond me, but you do you, Steve. I’ll do me. However, if I were forced to go sleep in the woods, I would like to use this new camping mattress by Chinese sleep startup Mazzu created in collaboration with London-based design studio Layer. It looks like the closest thing to a Four Seasons bed this side of the Rio Grande. Or any río (just don’t get me close to a river). [Image: courtesy Layer] The Mazzu Camping Mattress isn’t your typical inflatable pad that promises comfort on-the-go but delivers back pain for a week. It’s built around 72 precision-engineered elastic spring unitspre-compressed coils encased in durable jackets that adapt independently to your body’s contours. Each unit flexes on its own, providing ergonomic support whether you’re lying flat or curled up on your side (you know, like in an actual bed). [Photo: courtesy Layer] Layer tells me via email that people want “the comfort of home when they’re outdoors, and traditional inflatable or foam mats just don’t deliver that.” Which, yes, that’s exactly my point. The company says conventional options are bulky, unreliable, or simply uncomfortable. And many are unsustainable. Layer and Mazzu saw a clear gap to create a sustainable, portable system that offers bed-like comfort without compromise, bringing “a real sense of restfulness to the camping experience.” [Photo: courtesy Layer] Come together, right now The collaboration between Layer and Mazzu wasn’t just about slapping springs into a camping format. Mazzus engineers have been developing elastic spring technology since they started their sleep company in Fujian, China, in 2024. Layer worked closely with Mazzu to translate that into a modular outdoor system. The design studio says there were many rounds of prototypingexploring different spring densities, connection systems, and layoutsuntil they arrived at something simple and robust that’s also intuitive to use. [Photo: courtesy Layer] The pieces click together like Lego bricks and are secured with a strong cord. When the mattress base is assembled, you add a thin, 100% cotton cushion on top to smooth everything out. Layer tells me it gets assembled “in just a matter of minutes,” and you can be set up and ready to rest almost as quickly as rolling out a standard mat, “but with a completely different sleep experience.” The other advantage of this design, the company points out, is that its not harmful to the planet. Layer says the portable coils structure is built without foam or glue (Mazzu, however, points out that the pad on top uses polyester fiber and high-resilience polyurethane). Layer says the mattress is built to last: “Every component can be replaced, repaired, or upgraded individually, which extends its lifespan and reduces wastesomething that’s very rare in camping gear.” [Photo: courtesy Layer] Packed in a cooler The complete mattressincluding foldable base, spring modules, and topperpacks into a wheeled case no larger than a cooler. Once emptied, Layer says, that case doubles as a nightstand or storage box at the campsite. So it’s not just about better sleep, the company says, it’s about circularity and smart use of space. The color palette takes cues from outdoor gear: foliage tones and bright accents for visibility. The open structure showcases the engineering inside, which I appreciate(if I’m paying for 72 independent spring units, I want to see them). The Mazzu Camping Mattress launches this month. Pricing in China is about 2,259 yuan (about $320), but no official price has been announced internationally. If it actually delivers on the promise of bringing regular mattress comfort into the wilderness, it might be worth whatever they’re charging. Maybe then I’ll consider camping. (LOL! No.)
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E-Commerce
The Trump administration is spending more than half a billion dollars to help prop up the dying coal industry. Its also weakening pollution regulations and opening up more federal land to coal mining. All of this isnt likely to save the industryand also isnt likely to do much to meet the surging demand for power from data centers for AI. Coal power is expensive, and that isnt going to change Aging coal power plants are now so expensive to run that hundreds have retired over the last decade, including around 100 that retired or made plans to retire during Trumps first term. Offering relatively small subsidies isnt likely to change the long-term trend. I dont think its going to change the underlying economics, says Michelle Solomon, a manager in the electricity program at the think tank Energy Innovation. The reasons why coal has increased in cost will continue to be fundamentally true. The cost of coal power grew 28% between 2021 and 2024, or more than double the rate of inflation. One reason is age: the average coal power plant in the U.S. is around 50 years old, and they arent designed to last much longer. Because renewable energy is cheaper, and regulation is likely to ramp up in the future, investors dont see building new coal power plants as viable. But trying to keep outdated plants running also doesnt make economic sense. The new funding cant go very far. The Department of Energy plans to spend $625 million on coal projects, including $350 million to recommission and retrofit old plants. Another $25 million is set aside for retrofitting coal plants with natural gas co-firing systems. But that type of project can cost hundreds of millions or even a billion dollars for a single plant. (The $25 million, presumably, might only cover planning or a small pilot.) Other retrofits might only extend the life of a power plant by a few years. Because the plants will continue to be expensive to run, some power plant owners may not think the subsidies are worth it. Utilities want to move on If coal power plants keep running past their retirement age, even with some retrofits, costs keep going up for consumers. Thats something that you really see in states that continue to rely on coal for a big part of their electricity mix, says Solomon. Like Kentucky and West Virginia, who have had their cost for power increase at some of the fastest rates in the country. In Michigan, earlier this year, the DOE forced a coal power plant to stay open after it was scheduled to retire. The DOE cited an emergency, though neither the grid operator nor the utility said that there were power supply issues; the planned retirement of the plant included building new sources of energy to replace it. The utility reported to the SEC that within the first 38 days, alone, it spent $29 million to keep the plant running. (The emergency order is still in place, and being challenged by multiple lawsuits.) The extra expense shows up on consumers bills. One report estimates that by 2028, efforts to keep large power plants from retiring could cost consumers more than $3 billion a year. Utilities have long acknowledged the reality that there are less expensive energy sources. In the first Trump administration, in 2018, utilities resisted Trump’s attempts to use emergency powers to keep uneconomic coal plants open. When utilities plan to retire a power plant, there’s a long planning process. Plants begin making decision to defer maintenance that would otherwise be necessary. And many won’t want to reverse their decisions. It’s true that demand for power from data centers has led some utilities to keep coal plants online longerand electric bills are already soaring in areas near large data centers. But Trump’s incentives may not make much difference for others. The last coal plant in New England just shut down years early, despite the current outlook for data centers. “Utilities do have to take a long-term view,” says Lori Bird, director of the U.S. energy program at the nonprofit World Resources Institute. “They’re doing multi-year planning. So they consider the durability and economic viability of these assets over the longer term. They have not been economic, and they’re also the highest-emitting greenhouse gas facilities.” Even if the Trump administration has rolled back environmental regulations, she says, future administrations could reverse that; continuing to use coal is a risky proposition. In most states, utilities also have to comply with renewable power goals. There are better solutions It’s true that the U.S. needs more power generation, quickly. It’s not clear exactly how much new electricity will be neededsome of that will depend on how much AI is a bubble and how much tech companies can shrink their power usage at data centers. But the nonprofit Rewiring America calculated that data centers that are under construction or in planning could add 93 gigawatts of electricity demand to the U.S. grid by the end of the decade. The nonprofit argues that some or even all of that new capacity could be covered by rooftop solar and batteries at homes. Cheap utility-scale renewable power plants could obviously also help, though the Trump administration is actively fighting them. Battery storage can help provide 24/7 energy. One analysis of a retiring coal plant in Maryland found that it would be less expensive to replace it with batteries and transmission upgrades than to keep it running. Temporarily saving a handful of coal power plants won’t cover the new power needs. It would add to air pollution, water pollution, and climate pollution. And it would significantly push up power bills when consumers are already strugglin. Real support for an “energy emergency” would include faster permitting and other work to accelerate building affordable renewable energy, experts say. “Making sure that resources can compete openly is really important,” says Solomon. “It’s important to not only meet the demand from AI, but make sure that it doesn’t raise costs for electricity consumers.”
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E-Commerce
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