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U.S. employers posted far fewer jobs in November than the previous month, a sign that employers arent yet ramping up hiring even as growth has picked up. Businesses and government agencies posted 7.1 million open jobs at the end of November, the Labor Department said Wednesday, down from 7.4 million in October. Layoffs also dropped, however, as companies appear to be holding onto workers even as they are reluctant to add staff. The report suggests that the low-hire, low-fire job market remains in effect, with workers enjoying some job security but those out of work struggling to find new jobs. The moribund labor market stands in contrast with data showing solid economic growth, which topped 4% at an annual rate in last year’s July-September quarter, the latest data available. Economists forecast growth slowed but remained solid in the final three months of 2025. A key question for this year is whether hiring will pickup to match healthy growth, or whether sluggish job gains will eventually drag down the economy. There is a third possibility: Automation and artificial intelligence could enable steady economic growth without creating many jobs. Further insights into that question will emerge Friday when the monthly jobs report for December will be released. The number of postings in November was the fewest since September 2024. But outside that month, it was the lowest in nearly five years. Open jobs in November fell sharply in shipping and warehousing, restaurants and hotels, and in state and local government. They rose in retail and construction. The number of Americans who quit their jobs ticked higher in November, which is seen as a good sign, because workers typically quit when they are more confident they can find a better job, or already have one. Yet quits remained historically low, at 3.16 million, up from just under 3 million in October. The figures provide some critical measures of the job market after last falls government shutdown delayed the release of data on hiring and inflation. Wednesdays report is known as the job openings and labor turnover survey, or JOLTS, and provides key insights into the state of hiring and firing. Separately, payroll provider ADP said Wednesday that businesses added 41,000 jobs in December, an improvement after they shed 29,000 positions in November. ADP’s report is based on anonymous payroll records the company maintains for 26 million employees. Small firms with fewer than 50 workers added 9,000 jobs, an encouraging reversal after they shed jobs in previous months. Smaller firms have been hard-hit by President Donald Trump’s tariffs, with less ability to absorb or pass on the costs compared with larger companies, economists say. It is a slower labor market, said Nela Richardson, chief economist at ADP. “The labor market isnt falling off a cliff. We still see some job growth, and we dont see an uptick in layoffs. The Bank of America Institute, which tracks changes in the number of paychecks landing in its customers’ accounts, said it saw signs that hiring picked up in December. Job gains rose to 0.6% in December, compared with a year earlier, up from just 0.2% in November. It does look like, in our data, that the worst of the slowdown could be behind us, David Tinsley, senior economist at Bank of America Institute, said in a call with reporters. Christopher Rugaber, AP economics writer
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On the first anniversary of the most destructive wildfires in the L.A. area, the scant home construction projects stand out among the still mostly flattened landscapes.Fewer than a dozen homes have been rebuilt in Los Angeles County since Jan. 7, 2025, when the Palisades and Eaton fires erupted, killing 31 people and destroying about 13,000 homes and other residential properties.For those who had insurance, it’s often not enough to cover the costs of construction. Relief organizations are stepping in to help, but progress is slow.Among the exceptions is Ted Koerner, whose Altadena home was reduced to ash and two chimneys. With his insurance payout tied up, the 67-year-old liquidated about 80% of his retirement holdings, secured contractors quickly, and moved decisively through the rebuilding process.Shortly before Thanksgiving, Koerner was among the first to finish a rebuild in the aftermath of the fires, which were fueled by drought and hurricane-force winds.But most do not have options like Koerner.The streets of the coastal community of Pacific Palisades and Altadena, a community in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, remain lined with dirt lots. In the seaside city of Malibu, foundations and concrete piles rising out of the sand are all that’s left of beachfront homes that once butted against crashing ocean waves.Neighborhoods are pitch black at night, with few streetlamps replaced. Even many homes that survived are not inhabited as families struggle to clear them of the fire’s toxic contaminants.Koerner was driven in part by fear that his beloved golden retriever, Daisy Mae, now 13 years old, might not live long enough to move into a new home, given the many months it can take to build even under the best circumstances.He also did not have to wait for his insurance payout to start construction.“That’s the only way we were going to get it done before all of a sudden my dog starts having labored breathing or something else happens,” Koerner said.Once construction began, his home was completed in just over four months.Daisy Mae is back lying in her favorite spot in the yard under a 175-year-old Heritage Oak. Koerner said he enjoys his morning coffee while watching her and it brings tears to his eyes.“We made it,” he said. Many fear they can’t afford to rebuild About 900 homes are under construction, potentially on pace to be completed later this year.Still, many homeowners are stuck as they figure out whether they can pay for the rebuilding process.Scores of residents have left their communities for good. More than 600 properties where a single-family home was destroyed in the wildfires have been sold, according to real estate data tracker Cotality.“We’re seeing huge gaps between the money insurance is paying out, to the extent we have insurance, and what it will actually cost to rebuild and/or remediate our homes,” said Joy Chen, executive director of the Eaton Fire Survivors Network, a group of 10,000 fire survivors mostly from Altadena.By December, less than 20% of people who experienced total home loss had closed out their insurance claims, according to a survey by the nonprofit Department of Angels.About one-third of insured respondents had policies with State Farm, the state’s largest private insurer, or the California FAIR plan, the insurer of last resort. They reported high rates of dissatisfaction with both, citing burdensome requirements, lowball estimates, and dealing with multiple adjusters.In November, Los Angeles County opened a civil investigation into State Farm’s practices and potential violations of the state’s Unfair Competition law. Chen said the group has seen a flurry of substantial payouts since then.Without answers from insurance, households can’t commit to rebuilding projects that can easily exceed $1 million.“They’re worried about getting started and running out of money,” Chen said. An uncertain future Jessica Rogers discovered only after the Palisades fire destroyed her home that her coverage had been canceled.The mother of two’s fallback was a low-interest loan from the Small Business Administration, but the application process was grueling. After losing her job because of the fire and then having her identity stolen, her approval for $550,000 came through last month.She is still weighing how she’ll cover the remaining costs and says she wonders: “Do I empty out my 401(k) and start counting every penny in a penny jar around the apartment?”Rogers now executive director of the Pacific Palisades Long Term Recovery Group estimates there are hundreds like her in Pacific Palisades who are “stuck dealing with FEMA and SBA and figuring out if we could piecemeal something together to build our homes.”Also struggling to return home are the community’s renters, condo owners, and mobile homeowners. Meanwhile, many are also dealing with their trauma.“It’s not what people talk about, but it is incredibly apparent and very real,” said Rogers, who still finds herself crying at unexpected moments. A slow start That so few homes have been rebuilt a year after the wildfires echoes the recovery pattern of a December 2021 blaze that erupted south of Boulder, Colorado, destroying more than 1,000 homes.“At the one-year mark, many lots had been cleared of debris and many residents had applied for building permits, said Andrew Rumbach, co-lead of the Climate and Communities Program at Urban Institute. “Around the 18-month mark is when you start to see really significant progress in terms of going from handfuls to hundreds” of homes rebuilt.Time will bring the scope of problems into focus.“You’re going to start to see some real inequality start to emerge where certain neighborhoods, certain types of people, certain types of properties are just lagging way far behind, and that becomes the really important question in the second year of a recovery: Who’s doing well and who is really struggling and why?” Rumbach said.That’s a key concern in Altadena, which for decades drew aspiring Black homeowners who otherwise faced redlining and other forms of racial discrimination when they sought to buy a home in other L.A.-area communities. In 2024, 81% of Black households in Altadena owned their homes, nearly twice the national Black homeownership rate.But recent research by UCLA’s Latino Policy & Politics Institute found that, as of August, 7 in 10 Altadena homeowners whose property was severely damaged in last year’s wildfire had not begun taking steps to rebuild or sell their home. Among these, Black homeowners were 73% more likely than others to have taken no action. Determined to rebuild Al and Charlotte Bailey have been living in an RV parked on the empty lot where their home once stood.The Baileys are paying for their rebuild with funds from heir insurance payout and a loan. They’re also hoping to receive money from Southern California Edison. Several lawsuits claim its equipmentsparked the wildfire in Altadena.“We had been here for 41 years and raised our family here, and in one night it was all gone,” said Al Bailey, 77. “We decided that, whatever it’s going to cost, this is our community.” Alex Veiga and Gabriela Aoun Angueira, Associated Press
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The Tin Can phone is designed to be a simple and screen-free way for children to connect with friends and family. But since Christmas morning, when many families unwrapped and installed the retro, landline-style phones, network issues have left many users unable to make or receive calls. Ultimately, Christmas Day overwhelmed us, says Tin Can cofounder and CEO Chet Kittleson. We spent months preparing for it, and we just didnt get it all right. Tin Can customers on social media including Reddit and Instagram have reported a variety of issues both making and receiving calls with the devices. Some new users also experienced trouble setting up their accounts and activating their phones, which is normally done using a parents smartphone. The setup issues have now been resolved, Kittleson says, but he confirms network instability following an unprecedented influx of new customers continues to make the phone service itself unreliable for many. No matter how much you stress test and load test and all the rest, you just don’t know exactly how a service is going to perform under a new amount of pressure, Kittleson says. The growth we experienced literally within an hour was like nothing Ive been through before. Tin Can offers a free plan that enables calls to other Tin Can devices, as well as a paid party line plan that allows calls to and from ordinary phone numbers preapproved by a parent. All types of incoming and outgoing calls, including emergency calls to 911, are potentially affected by the network issues, Kittleson says. And while he declined to provide Fast Company with an estimate of when service will be fully restoredI dont want to overpromise and underdeliverthe company has pledged not to charge paying customers until the network is reliable once more. Kittleson says his team is working around the clock to fix the issue, well-aware that the outage means children being unable to connect with friends and loved ones. Even his own family has had trouble with a Tin Can phone. The Tin Can devices, which connect via the internet rather than the traditional phone network, have been promoted as a way for children to be able to connect with friends and family as they did in the landline era. Kids can use the devices to stay connected without having to be equipped with their own smartphones or risk exposure to the spam and scam calls ubiquitous on other phones today. (Tin Can may soon face competition, with kids device maker Pinwheel on January 5 announcing plans to launch a similar device in April). The company has been updating customers on the issues via Instagram, email, and a status page, and social media feedback so far appears to be a mix of frustration and patient acceptance from fans of the deviceor at least the concept. Many new customers who received Tin Can phones for the holidays likely have yet to build routines around the devices due to the outage, and the company has postponed shipping a next batch of phones until April, Kittleson says. He declined to specify how many new customers activated the devices over the holidays, though he says there were a lot. Tens of thousands of Tin Can devices used the network without a problem for 14 months prior to Christmas, according to the company. And while some customers are evidently frustrated, Kittleson is optimistic that fans will stick with the Tin Can product and service once the outage is resolved. I think we have an audience that generally believes in the mission, believes in what we’re doing, and understands we just went through a pretty massive shift, Kittleson says. And they know that we’re working really, really hard to both let them know what’s going on and to resolve the issues.
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