U.S. job openings hit a three-month low in December, pointing to a slowing labor market. Available positions declined to 7.6 million from a revised 8.2 million in November, led by professional and business services, the Labor Department said Tuesday. While the hiring rate held at a historically low 3.4%, layoffs also remained muted. As well as a slowing jobs market, the figures suggest a lessening of upward pressure on prices — a good sign amid sticky inflation.
Cruise, the autonomous vehicle company owned by General Motors, will cut approximately 50% of its staff following GM's retreat from the robotaxi business. Cruise CEO Marc Whitten will be among the departures, which are expected to involve around 1,150 employees. GM announced it was discontinuing Cruise's robotaxi program in December, following a period of setbacks. Cruise will now become a GM subsidiary, with its staff transitioning to develop autonomous vehicle technologies.
Alphabet reported a 12% increase in quarterly revenue, but the result missed Wall Street analysts' estimates amid slowing growth in the company's cloud business. As a result, the stock slumped in after-hours trading. The Google parent also said it plans to spend $75 billion this year, more than expected, to boost its artificial intelligence initiatives. CEO Sundar Pichai has pledged to further infuse AI into Google search features amid intensifying competition from AI startups.
Waffle House has imposed a temporary surcharge of 50 cents per egg due to rising prices from a nationwide shortage caused by bird flu. The chain, which serves 272 million eggs annually, says the surcharge will remain until market conditions improve. Meanwhile, Biscuit Belly, with over a dozen locations in the South, has switched to cheaper eggs to manage costs. Prices have increased sevenfold in two years and are expected to jump another 20% in 2025, per the USDA.
Just shy of 40 million people quit their jobs last year — a decline of 11% from 2023 and a 22% plunge from two years earlier — marking the slowest rate of turnover since 2020, according to Labor Department data. Hiring has slowed, too, although The Wall Street Journal says economists still expect "decent job growth" in Friday's jobs report. It also notes that tech and legal roles are harder to come by, while healthcare and hospitality jobs are plentiful.
Snap shares rose in after-hours trading following the tech company's fourth-quarter revenue and profit results, which exceeded expectations. Revenue for the Snapchat parent totaled $1.56 billion for the quarter, up 14% year over year, with the company's revamp of its advertising business and a boost in subscription revenue driving much of the gains. Snapchat also reported strong user growth, with its 453 million daily active users in the quarter beating estimates.
Popular food delivery company Grubhub announced it suffered a security breach involving a “third-party actor,” which gave “unauthorized access to certain user contact information.” The company announced this issue in a press release after it partnered with leading forensic experts and believes the incident has been fully contained.
Grubhub explains that it detected “unusual activity within our environment traced to a third-party service provider for our Support Team. Upon discovery, we promptly launched an investigation, identifying unauthorized access to an account associated with this provider. We immediately terminated the account’s access and removed the service provider from our systems altogether.”
According to Grubhub, this security breach gave access to the following data:
- Names, email addresses, and phone numbers
- Partial payment card information for a subset of campus diners (card type and last four digits of the card number)
The hacker also accessed hashed passwords for certain legacy systems. While they haven’t accessed any codes associated with Grubhub Marketplace accounts, the company encourages users to use unique passwords to minimize risk. This means that if they use the same password for different accounts, they should definitely change their codes.
Still, Grubhub says that the majority of user’s data hasn’t been accessed, which includes:
- Grubhub Marketplace customer passwords
- Merchant login information
- Full payment card numbers
- Bank account details
- Social Security or driver’s license numbers
Finally, the company states to avoid further security breaches, it’s implementing new measures:
- Engaged Forensic Experts: Partnered with a third-party cybersecurity firm for a comprehensive investigation.
- Strengthened Credential Security: Rotated all relevant passwords to prevent potential unauthorized access.
- Enhanced Monitoring: Additional anomaly detection mechanisms across internal services were deployed.
Jobadvisor will let you know as we learn more about Grubhub’s security breach and whether it could have a broader impact on its users.
Over 1,000 people gathered in front of the Treasury Department in D.C. on Tuesday afternoon, protesting what they described as a breach of secure information and excessive access being offered to tech billionaire Elon Musk.
In between comments from House and Senate Democrats, the crowd chanted “Let us in!” to the building they were standing in front of and “Elon Musk has got to go!”
Some held signs that said things ranging from “Musk owns Trump” to “Muskrats are an invasive species.”
The gathering came after some members of Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) reportedly gained access to sensitive information, including bank accounts and Social Security payments.
“I’m worried about the sensitivity of our personal information being just put in the hands of teenagers, literally, and who have no knowledge of what government is really like,” Gabriela Kock said. “I’m afraid that this country is not going in the right direction with the decisions that are being made right now.”
Anita Martineau, meanwhile, said she and her friends make calls and send emails to members of Congress to “keep that pressure up.”
“I am definitely concerned about what’s happening here with Elon Musk in the Treasury, for sure, and I’m also concerned for civil servants who are being targeted,” Martineau said. “It is just wrong. It’s morally wrong. They are patriotic Americans who are doing their duty and doing their jobs to protect all of us.”
Addressing the crowd, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), “Elon Musk (is) coming into the Department of Treasury and stealing Social Security numbers, personal data. Are we going to let this stand?”
The protest shut down portions of 15th Street and surrounding streets near the White House for over an hour.
Describing Musk as “America’s Rasputin,” a protester named John said he’s “taking unauthorized power that is nowhere in the Constitution, no security clearance; he’s just bought whatever he has. He has no expertise, no authority, no moral legitimacy.”
Some demonstrators held signs expressing support for federal workers, though the Trump administration recently offered deferred resignations.
Jenifer, who said she’s worked for the federal government for 26 years, said there’s “a lot of chaos, and people don’t know what to do, and misinformation. We don’t think it’s right.”
Others held red signs that said “Stop Elon’s Takeover.”
“We have been compromised by a foreigner,” said Ron Ford, a Vietnam veteran. “The Trump administration is entirely corrupt, and there is no way that we can live in this kind of a society where we value no one.”
The Trump administration said Tuesday that it is pulling almost all U.S. Agency for International Development workers off the job and out of the field worldwide, moving to all but end the agency’s six-decade mission overseas that fought starvation, funded education, and worked to end epidemics.
The administration notified USAID workers in emails and a notice posted online, the latest in a steady dismantling of the aid agency by returning political appointees from President Donald Trump’s first term and billionaire Elon Musk’s government-efficiency teams who call much of the spending on programs overseas wasteful.
The order takes effect just before midnight Friday and gives direct hires of the agency overseas — many of whom have been frantically packing up households in expectation of layoffs — 30 days to return home unless they are deemed essential. Contractors not determined to be essential also would be fired, the notice said.
The move had been rumored for several days and was the most extreme of several proposals considered for consolidating the agency into the State Department. Other options included closures of smaller USAID missions and partial closures of larger ones.
Thousands of USAID employees already had been laid off and programs worldwide shut down after Trump imposed a sweeping freeze on foreign assistance. Despite outcry from Democratic lawmakers, the aid agency has been a special target as the new administration and Musk’s budget-slashing Department of Government Efficiency look to shrink the federal government.
They have ordered a spending stop that has paralyzed U.S.-funded aid and development work around the world, gutted the senior leadership and workforce with furloughs and firings, and closed Washington headquarters to staffers Monday. Lawmakers said the agency’s computer servers were carted away.
“Spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper,” Musk boasted on X.
The mass removal of thousands of staffers overseas and in Washington would doom billions of dollars in projects in some 120 countries, including security assistance to partners such as Ukraine as well as development work for clean water, job training, and education, including for schoolgirls under Taliban rule in Afghanistan.
The U.S. is the world’s largest humanitarian donor by far. It spends less than 1% of its budget on foreign assistance, a smaller share of its budget than some countries.
Health programs like those credited with helping end polio and smallpox epidemics and an acclaimed HIV/AIDS program that saved more than 20 million lives in Africa already have stopped. So have monitoring and deployments of rapid-response teams for contagious diseases such as an Ebola outbreak in Uganda.
Hundreds of millions of dollars of food and medication already delivered by U.S. companies are sitting in ports because of the administration’s sudden shutdown of the agency.
Democratic lawmakers and others say the USAID is enshrined in legislation as an independent agency, and cannot be shut down without congressional approval. Supporters of USAID from both political parties say its work overseas is essential to countering the influence of Russia, China, and other adversaries and rivals abroad, and to cementing alliances and partnerships.
The decision to withdraw direct-hire staff and their families earlier than their planned departures will likely cost the government tens of millions of dollars in travel and relocation costs.
Staff being placed on leave include both foreign and civil service officers who have legal protection against arbitrary dismissal and being placed on leave without reason.
The American Foreign Service Association, the union which represents U.S. diplomats, sent a notice to its members denouncing the decision and saying it was preparing legal action to counter or halt it.
Locally employed USAID staff, however, do not have much recourse and were excluded from the federal government’s voluntary buyout offer.
USAID staffers and families faced wrenching decisions as the rumors of layoffs loomed, including whether to pull children out of school midyear. Some gave away pet cats and dogs, fearing the Trump administration would not give them time to complete the paperwork to bring the animals with them.
Tuesday’s notice said it would consider case-by-case exceptions for those needing more time. But with most of the agency’s staff soon off the job, it was unclear who would process such claims or other paperwork needed for the mass removal of thousands of overseas staffers.
Musk’s teams had taken USAID’s website offline over the weekend and it came back online Tuesday night, with the notice of recall or termination for global staffers its sole post.
The announcement came as Secretary of State Marco Rubio was on a five-nation tour of Central America and met with embassy and USAID staff at two of the region’s largest USAID missions: El Salvador and Guatemala on Monday and Tuesday.
Journalists accompanying Rubio were not allowed to witness the so-called “meet and greet” sessions in those two countries but had been allowed in for a similar event in Panama on Sunday in which Rubio praised employees, particularly locals, for their dedication and service.
At a news conference earlier Tuesday, Rubio said he has “long supported foreign aid. I continue to support foreign aid. But foreign aid is not charity.” He noted that every dollar the U.S. spends must advance its national interests.
The online notice says those who will be exempted from leave include staffers responsible for “mission-critical functions, core leadership, and specially designated programs” and would be informed by Thursday afternoon.
“Thank you for your service,” the notice concluded.
A sweeping new U.S. tariff on products made in China is expected to increase the prices American consumers pay for a wide array of products, from the ultra-cheap apparel sold on online shopping platforms to toys and electronic devices such as computers and cellphones.
An additional 10% tariff on all Chinese goods took effect Tuesday, while the U.S. Postal Service announced it will stop accepting parcels inbound from China and Hong Kong until further notice.
The previous day, President Donald Trump agreed to pause his threatened tariffs against Mexico and Canada for 30 days following negotiations on Trump’s demands for the North American nations to take steps to reduce illegal immigration and the flow of drugs such as fentanyl into the U.S.
After failing to get a similar White House reprieve, China struck back with retaliatory tariffs on some U.S. goods that are set to begin next week.
The sheer volume and variety of the China-made merchandise sold in the U.S. mean residents would probably see the prices of many typically inexpensive items tick higher if the tit-for-tat tariffs persist.
These are some of the products most likely to be impacted:
Electronics, home supplies, and car parts
The U.S. imported about $427 billion worth of goods from China in 2023, the most recent year with complete data, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Consumer electronics, including cell phones, computers,s and other tech accessories, make up the biggest import categories.
China is a dominant production engine for tech gear, including for American companies like Apple that have their products assembled in the country. In 2023, China accounted for 78% of U.S. smartphone imports and 79% of laptop and tablet imports, the Consumer Technology Association trade group reported.
The tariffs also may affect how much consumers pay for typically inexpensive clothing, shoes, and kitchen items like pots and pans, as well as the big-ticket items, such as appliances, furniture, and auto parts.
Jay Salaytah, 43, who runs his own auto repair shop in Detroit, said he bought some pieces of equipment sooner than he might have, anticipating they would cost more if Trump implemented his campaign promise to use import tariffs as a tool to promote U.S. manufacturing.
“I knew the costs were going to go up, and these are manufactured in China,” Salaytah said of a probe test light he purchased before Tuesday’s tariff went into effect.
Low-cost apparel and accessories
In addition to imposing a new tariff on Chinese imports, Trump’s executive order also suspended a little-known trade exemption that allowed goods worth less than $800 to come into the U.S. duty-free. The order left open the possibility for the loophole to still be used with shipments from other countries.
The trade rule, known as “de minimis,” has existed for nearly a century. It came under greater scrutiny in recent years due to the rapidly growing number of low-cost items coming into the U.S. from China, mainly from prominent China-founded online retailers such as Shein, Temu and Alibaba’s AliExpress.
Former President Joe Biden’s administration proposed a crackdown on the loophole in September, but the rules did not take effect before Biden left office.
Shein and Temu have gained global popularity by offering a quickly updated assortment of ultra-inexpensive clothes, accessories, gifts, and gadgets shipped mostly from China, allowing the two e-commerce companies to compete on the home turf of American companies.
Seattle-based Amazon is trying to compete with them through an online storefront that mimics their business model by offering cheap products shipped directly from China.
Chinese exports of low-value packages soared to $66 billion in 2023, up from $5.3 billion in 2018, according to a report released last week by the Congressional Research Service. In the U.S., Temu and Shein comprise about 17% of the discount market for fast fashion, toys, and other consumer goods, the report said.
How much will prices go up?
It’s unclear. Under de minimis, Shein, Temu and AliExpress could bypass taxes collected by customs authorities. But under the changes effective Tuesday, company shipments from China will now be subject to existing duties plus the new 10% tariff imposed by Trump, analysts said.
“The vast majority of these orders are valued less than $800, which means all or virtually all of them are going to get caught in that,” Youssef Squali, an analyst at Truist Financial, said.
Juozas Kaziukenas, founder of e-commerce intelligence firm Marketplace Pulse, said he thinks the price increases on platforms like Shein and Temu will be “pretty small” and the products they sell will remain cheap. However, the rule change is likely to result in delivery delays since the packages now have to go through customs, Kaziukenas said.
The new tariffs will also hit third-party sellers on Amazon that import products from China, according to Squali. He expects sellers to eat some of the costs and pass the rest onto customers, which he thinks could result in percentage price increases in the mid-single digits. Other e-commerce sites that host businesses, such as Etsy, are also going to be impacted, Squali said.
Temu, which is owned by China’s PDD Holdings, has previously said its growth did not depend on the de minimis policy. Though most of its products are shipped from China, Temu has been recruiting Chinese merchants to store inventory in the U.S., a move that experts said would allow it to not be as exposed to changes around the trade rule.
In January, China also introduced measures to help cross-border e-commerce build overseas warehousing by offering them tax rebates or tax exemptions
What are US retailers saying?
The day after November’s U.S. presidential election, Brieane Olson, CEO of teen clothing chain PacSun, went to Hong Kong to meet with factory executives to figure out ways to prepare for Trump’s tariff plan.
Roughly 35% to 40% of PacSun’s garments are made in China, even as the chain has accelerated moves to diversify with suppliers in countries like Cambodia and Vietnam.
But Olson said Trump’s 10% tariff on Chinese goods was less extreme than the company anticipated. For now, PacSun doesn’t plan to increase prices on its products or move its manufacturing of knitwear and denim out of China.
Toys are another category of consumer products that relies heavily on imports from China. Greg Ahearn, the president and CEO of The Toy Association trade group, said he thinks toy companies that source in China are going to absorb the cost of the new tariff in the short term.
Eventually, those price hikes will be moved onto the consumer, Ahearn said.
Cosmetics giant Estée Lauder, which owns brands such as Clinique, MAC, and La Mer, is cutting as many as 7,000 jobs and restructuring in efforts to stem a sales slowdown, particularly in Asia. The move comes after the company said it expects net sales to tumble 10% to 12% through the first three months of the year, steeper than the 6.8% analysts were expecting, per Bloomberg. The company also advised that geopolitical instability, including potential tariffs, would drag on business.
Even AI companies are getting fed up with AI-generated content. In what Gizmodo calls “a comical case of irony,” Anthropic — the startup behind AI chatbot Claude — is asking job seekers not to use AI writing assistants when applying for positions at the company. Applicants for roles including software engineering, sales and communications are required to agree to the no-AI policy as Anthropic wants to “evaluate your non-AI-assisted communication skills.”
Chipotle’s (CMG+1.11%) fourth-quarter earnings beat expectations, showing that more customers are still flocking to its restaurants despite it hiking prices by 2% last year.
Strong traffic didn’t keep the burrito maker’s stock from taking a hit after it said it expects weak same-store sales growth for 2025, prompting shares to drop by more than 4% in after-hours trading.
“I want to make sure that as we continue to scale Chipotle, everything we do is in service of our guests or those who serve our guests,” said Scott Boatwright, Chipotle’s CEO, in a statement.
The California-based Chipotle reported revenue for the quarter of $2.85 billion, meeting Wall Street’s revenue expectations. Total revenue for the quarter jumped by 13.1%, according to the company’s earnings release.
Chipotle’s same-store sales rose 5.4%, but were still slightly below analysts expectations of 5.7%. Still, transactions climbed 4%, continuing the chain’s streak of higher foot traffic.
This is no small feat, especially as the broader restaurant industry continues to grapple with sluggish customer traffic, as many consumers cut back on dining out to save money. In Dec. 2024, Chipotle said it would raise prices by 2%, further building on its price hikes, which have increased four times over the last two years. The month prior, it named Scott Boatwright as CEO after Brian Niccol stepped down to take over Starbucks (SBUX+2.31%).
In 2025, the chain is projecting sales growth to be between the low to mid-single-digit range. It also plans to open 315 to 345 new locations, many of which will feature “Chipotlanes” – the drive-thru for digital orders that’s become a key part of the brand’s strategy.
In Sept. 2024, Chipotle introduced two robots to help streamline operations and meet rising demand. The first, called “Autocado,” automates the process of cutting, coring, and peeling avocados. Currently in use at a Huntington Beach, California location, Autocado can process an avocado in just 26 seconds.
The second robot, “Augmented Makeline,” assists with assembling bowls and salads at a location in Corona del Mar, California. With about 65% of digital orders being bowls or salads, the robot helps manage high-volume orders. While these robots show potential, Chipotle’s previous attempt at automation, a robot called “Chippy” for cutting chips, was discontinued due to cleaning challenges.
Walmart (WMT+1.18%) is betting on a mall comeback — at least in Pennsylvania.
The retail giant has purchased Monroeville Mall, located just outside of Pittsburgh, for a reported $34 million in cash.
Amazon may be facing challenges with its physical stores, but its delivery is stronger than ever. The e-commerce giant has made significant strides in logistics, offering faster and more efficient delivery than rivals like Walmart and Target.