During the week of Christmas, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has announced food recalls for several holiday treats.
Before you begin enjoying your holiday snacks, its a good idea to check whether any of the goodies you have at home were recently recalled. Heres what you need to know.
The following food products are part of recent food recalls:
Atwaters cookie tins
Choceur cookie butter holiday bark
Choceur pecan, cranberry and cinnamon holiday park
Troemner Family Farm Pfeffernusse Cookies
You can find more details about each product recall below.
Atwaters cookie tins
On December 22, 2025, Baltimore-based Atwaters recalled 197 of its cookie tins because the cookies contain almond, pecan, and walnut allergens.
People with an allergy or severe sensitivity to tree nuts, almonds, pecans, or walnuts are at risk of serious or life-threatening allergic reactions if they consume the recalled product.
The recalled product is sold in a circular metal tin with a bow tied around it. The cookie tin has an Atwaters cookie tin label on the bottom of the package. However, the packaging failed to identify the nut allergen.
The cookie tins were distributed from December 13 through December 22, 2025, in Baltimore, Towson, and Catonsville, Maryland. They were sold at retail stores and “gifted” to three wholesalers, the notice says.
Consumers who have purchased the cookie tins are encouraged to return them to the place of purchase for a full refund.
More information, including product images, can be found in the recall announcement on the FDA’s website.
Choceur holiday barks
On December 22, 2025, Silvestri Sweets of Illinois expanded its voluntary recall of Choceur-branded holiday barks to include additional lot numbers and best-by dates. The company recalled the following products for the following reasons:
Choceur cookie butter holiday bark. This product may contain undeclared pecans, the notice states.
Choceur pecan, cranberry and cinnamon holiday park. This product may contain undeclared wheat.
The recalled items are sold in 5-ounce stand-up pouch bags. They were distributed nationwide at Aldi grocery stores.
Products with the following lot numbers and best buy dates are affected:
Cookie butter holiday bark:
Lot #: 28525 Best By May 2026
Lot #: 29925 Best By May 2026
Lot #: 30625 Best By May 2026
Pecan, cranberry and cinnamon holiday bark:
Lot #: 28525 Best By August 2026
Lot #: 29925 Best By August 2026
Lot #: 30625 Best By August 2026
To date, no illnesses have been reported.
Consumers who have purchased the recalled products should throw them away.
More information about these recalls, including images, can be found on the FDA’s website.
Troemner Family Farm Pfeffernusse Cookies
Troemner Farm of Atlantic Mine, Michigan, has recalled its Troemner Family Farm Pfeffernusse Cookies because they may contain undeclared milk, wheat, or soy.
People with allergies or severe sensitivity to milk, wheat, or soy are at risk of serious or life-threatening allergic reactions if they consume these recalled products.
The products were sold in 6-ounce and 12-ounce packages. They were distributed to retail locations in just two cities: Hancock and Calumet, Michigan
A missing labeling was revealed during a routine inspection, according to the FDA’s notice.
Consumers who have purchased Troemner Family Farm Pfeffernusse Cookies are encouraged to return them to Troemner Farm for a refund or replacement.
More information, including product images, can be found on the FDA’s website.
California officials and weather forecasters urged holiday travelers to avoid the roads and reconsider Christmas travel as a series of powerful winter storms brought relentless rains, heavy winds and mountain snow.Storms began to move in late Tuesday evening and were expected to intensify into Christmas Eve. Authorities said the millions of people expected to travel across the state will likely meet hazardous, if not impossible, conditions as several atmospheric rivers were forecast to make their way through the state, the National Weather Service warned.“If you’re planning to be on the roads for the Christmas holidays, please reconsider your plans,” said Ariel Cohen, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Los Angeles, during a Tuesday news conference.Forecasters said Southern California could see its wettest Christmas in years and warned about flash flooding, mudslides and debris flows in areas scorched by last January’s wildfires. Los Angeles County officials said they were knocking on the doors of some 380 particularly vulnerable households to order them to leave.Much of the Sacramento Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area were under a flood watch and a high wind warning through Friday. Forecasters warned heavy snow and gusts were expected to create “near white-out conditions” Wednesday in parts of the Sierra Nevada and make it “nearly impossible” to travel through the mountain passes.There’s also a risk of severe thunderstorms and a small chance of tornadoes along the northern coast.Heavy rain and flash flooding already led to water rescues and at least one death in Northern California, local officials said. Shasta County Sheriff Michael L. Johnson on Monday declared a state of emergency to prepare for more rain and allow the state to help with hazard mitigation and search and rescue operations.Southern California typically gets half an inch to 1 inch (1.3 to 2.5 centimeters) of rain this time of year, but this week many areas could see between 4 and 8 inches (10 to 20 centimeters), National Weather Service meteorologist Mike Wofford said. It could be even more in the mountains. Gusts could reach 60 to 80 mph (96.5 to 127.8 kph) in parts of the central coast.Officials expect multiple road closures and airport delays during the storms. Downed trees and power lines are also possible. Parts of Los Angeles are under evacuation warnings this week.The county put up K-rails, a type of barrier, around the burn scar to help catch sliding debris during rainstorms. Residents could also pick up free sandbags to protect their homes, said Kathryn Barger, a Los Angeles County supervisor representing Altadena.Many people in burn scar areas decided not to leave after receiving the evacuation notification, Los Angeles Police Department Chief Jim McDonnell said. He urged them to reconsider.“The threat posed by this storm is real and imminent,” he said.Local and state officials are gearing up to respond to emergencies through the week. The state has deployed resources and first responders to a number of counties along the coast and in Southern California. The California National Guard is also on standby to assist.An atmospheric river is a long, narrow band of water vapor that forms over an ocean and flows through the sky, transporting moisture from the tropics to northern latitudes.
Associated Press writers Sophie Austin in Sacramento, California, and Jessica Hill in Las Vegas contributed to this report.
Trân Nguyn, Associated Press
The great power competition in the AI Age will probably be between OpenAI and Google, and one of the main battles may be over advertising dollars. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman seemed to describe the world in those terms during an appearance on the Big Technology podcast Monday.
OpenAI, which is not yet profitable, is reportedly getting set to sell ads within ChatGPT in an effort to monetize the many free users on its platform. ChatGPT now has an impressive 800 million weekly active users, but only 35 million of them buy subscriptions. The ads, which could help pay for OpenAIs plan to spend $115 billion on infrastructure by 2029, could show up as soon as early 2026.
As Altman pointed out on the podcast, Google was slow to put generative AI at the center of its products, especially search, its cash cow. Google has probably the greatest business model in the whole industry, and I think they will be slow to give that up, Altman said. Google became a two trillion-dollar company selling ads around its traditional ten blue links search results; answering search queries with AI-generated results would have meant lost revenueespecially for product searches. (Google has since developed its own AI search experiences and is experimenting with ads to match.)
Altman believes Googles hesitation to go hard on infusing its products with generative AI has bought his company time and staying power. If Google had really decided to take us seriously in 2023, lets say, we wouldve been in a really bad place, the CEO said. I think they wouldve just been able to smash us.
OpenAI believes (as Perplexity does) that Google will struggle to monetize AI search ads after spending decades perfecting a massive apparatus for selling ads around traditional search results. [B]olting AI into web searchI may be wrong, I may be drinking the Kool-Aid hereI dont think thatll work as well as reimagining the whole [business]. Altman said. He seems to suggest that his company is better positioned to reinvent web search and advertising because its a pure AI play.
Its true Google was slow to evolve search (and search ads) toward AI, but the company still has some massive advantages when competing for brand advertiser dollars. It has amassed databases full of custom information that it can serve for certain searcheslike local business searches, weather, or mapping. And it has more ad targeting data than anyone else.
There are very legitimate reasons to be concerned that OpenAI is going to eventually succumb to the Google behemoth, just as Yahoo, Microsoft, Blackberry, and countless others have, writes Stratechery analyst Ben Thompson in a recent newsletter. I still want to believe that OpenAI can be an aggregator, but they dont have the business model to match, and that may be fatal.
Altman has said he has reservations about putting ads within ChatGPT, worrying that it might erode trust in the chatbots outputs. But it may be that advertising will be the way consumer AI is paid for, just like its the reason that much of the web has been free for decades.
Ad dollars may let OpenAI maintain its pace in pursuing human-level AI models, its major goal. But going head-to-head with Google in web ads is a daunting task, and it may be one of OpenAIs biggest tests yet.
A news segment about the Trump administration’s immigration policy that was abruptly pulled from “60 Minutes” was mistakenly aired on a TV app after the last minute decision not to air it touched off a public debate about journalistic independence.The segment featured interviews with migrants who were sent to a notorious El Salvador prison called the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, under President Donald Trump’s aggressive crackdown on immigration.The story was pulled from Global Television Network, one of Canada’s largest networks, but still ran on the network’s app. Global Television Network swiftly corrected the error, but copies of it continued to float around the internet and pop up before being taken down.“Paramount’s content protection team is in the process of routine take down orders for the unaired and unauthorized segment,” a CBS spokesperson said Tuesday via email.A representative of Global Television Network did not immediately respond to a request for comment.In the story, two men who were deported reported torture, beatings and abuse. One Venezuelan said he was punished with sexual abuse and solitary confinement.Another was a college student who said guards beat him and knocked out his tooth upon arrival.“When you get there, you already know you’re in hell. You don’t need anyone to tell you,” he said.The segment featured numerous experts who called into question the legal basis for deporting migrants so hastily amid pending judicial decisions. Reporters for the show also corroborated findings by Human Rights Watch suggesting that only eight of the deported men had been sentenced for violent or potentially violent crimes, using available ICE data.The decision to pull a story critical of the Trump administration was met with widespread accusations that CBS leadership was shielding the president from unfavorable coverage.The journalist who reported the story, Sharyn Alfonsi, said in an email sent to fellow “60 Minutes” correspondents that the story was factually correct and had been cleared by CBS lawyers and its standards division.CBS News chief Bari Weiss said Monday that the story did not “advance the ball” and pointed out that the Trump administration had refused to comment for the story. Weiss said she wanted a greater effort made to get its point of view and said she looked forward to airing Alfonsi’s piece “when it’s ready.”The dispute put one of journalism’s most respected brands and a frequent target of Trump back in the spotlight and amplified questions about whether Weiss’ appointment is a signal that CBS News is headed in a more Trump-friendly direction.
Safiyah Riddle, Associated Press
Michael Graves once said regarding a mens suit, You can buy a lot of cheap ones, or you can buy one great Armani suit.
He was not just talking about tailoring. He was talking about time, and about the value of design that endures functionally, emotionally, and aesthetically long after the first moment of use. At Michael Graves Design, we have always believed that the best designs are not those that just capture attention for a moment, but those that quietly support you over years, as your life evolves.
As we look toward the future of accessibility, this idea becomes more urgent. The truth is simple: Every body is either disabled, or not currently disabled.
DESIGN THAT LASTS MUST ALSO ADAPT
Accessible design is not a niche strategy. It is a philosophy of foresight. Just as quality design anticipates wear and tear, accessible design anticipates change. Our abilities shift over time: a disease diagnosis, a broken wrist, aging eyesight, a dimly lit room, or the fatigue that comes from multitasking. These are permanent, temporary, and situational disabilities that remind us that accessibility is not for some people, it is for every body, all the time.
When you buy something thoughtfully designed, you are not only purchasing an object for today. You are investing in your future self. A well-placed grab bar or an ergonomically-contoured handle may seem unnecessary now, but design that is inclusive from the start ensures your environment keeps working for you as life evolves. That is not a limitation; that is liberation.
THE BLUE SKY FALLACY
Every designer learns that constraints fuel creativity. The most overlooked constraint is time itself. Great design considers not only how an object is today, but how it ages, how it feels after a decade, and how it fits into new phases of life.
The products that endurethe teakettle you reach for every morning, the cane that becomes an extension of confidence, the accessible bed that becomes invaluable when you are pregnant, recovering from a sports injury or dealing with arthritisearn their place through empathy and endurance. Like copper developing a natural patina, they do not lose their shine with age; they gain depth, character, and meaning. Time reveals what is truly human in design: the capacity to keep serving, delighting, and belonging.
When we prioritize quality over quantity, we move from consumption to connection. The inexpensive object may fill a need, but the well-designed one creates a relationship. It gathers meaning through use, through memory, and through time.
THE 10-3-1 RULE: DESIGN FOR DISCOVERY
From 10 feet away, a product should make a striking visual impression that draws you in. From three feet away, you begin to notice the finer details that make it beautiful and unique. From one foot away, you experience the tactile qualitiesthe feel in your hand, the sound of a lid closing, the subtle comfort of balancethat turn interaction into attachment.
This layering of experience also connects design across time. The first impression creates desire. The first touch confirms trust. Over years of use, the subtle discoveries and enhancements continue to reveal themselves, deepening the relationship between product and user.
When we design with this rule, we are not creating for novelty. We are designing for longevity, ensuring that the product continues to surprise and delight in small ways long after it is first used. The more you live with it, the more reasons you find to keep it. That is how great design resists obsolescence and becomes part of your life story.
DESIGN WITH: CREATING FOR THE LONG JOURNEY
Product designers often start with ethnographic research. It means we observe, listen, and collaborate with users to uncover product opportunity gaps that real life exposes. During this process, we create journey maps for all stages of use to ensure that, over time, the product continues to delight and exceed expectations.
This approach turns empathy into strategy. When we design with people, rather than for them, we learn what they reach for first, what they avoid, and what frustrates them as time goes on. Designing with time in mind ensures that function and emotion evolve together. Products should not simply age well; they should grow more meaningful as users do.
FROM TIMELESS STYLE TO SUSTAINABLE EMPATHY
Design that lasts is also sustainable. Durability is the quiet partner of accessibility. When an object is built to last, both physically and emotionally, it reduces waste in materials and in meaning. A timeless product avoids obsolescence not because it resists change, but because it anticipates it.
Michael Graves understood that beauty and practicality are not opposites. They are collaborators. His philosophy, that good design belongs to every body, was not just about cost or availability. It was about longevity. The most democratic design is the one that remains useful and dignified across the entire arc of a persons life. When we think beyond immediate needs to what those needs might become, we create environments that nurture resilience rather than replacement.
DESIGN AS AN INVESTMENT IN YOUR FUTURE SELF
When you buy an accessibly-designed product, whether a piece of furniture, a bathroom fixture, or a cooking tool, you are not only investing in quality. You are investing in your future independence, comfort, and dignity.
As Michael reminded us, you can buy a lot of cheap ones, or one great Armani suit. The suit, like great accessible design, carries you forward. It becomes part of your story. It fits you today, and it will still fit, both metaphorically and emotionally, when your needs evolve.
The fifth dimension of design is not about style that never changes. It is about care that never expires.
Ben Wintner is CEO of Michael Graves Design.
You came, you ate, you sat through Uncle Bob’s crass jokes. Youve earned yourself some alone time.
If the holidays prompt you to research “solitary retreats near me,” or if you find yourself utterly bored with dinner table conversationhow are we still talking about Wicked?!here are four games you can play on your phone or computer.
Heads-up: The last one requires a minimum of two people, so save it for when you’ve recharged your social batteries.
[Image: The New York Times]
1. For those who are sick of Wordle
Domino fan? Sudoku fan? If you like either or both of those games, youll love Pips, a new logic puzzle game from The New York Times. The rules are simple: Place your domino tiles on a game board to meet a set number of conditions. Some regions must have the same number of pipsthose dots that make up the face of your domino tile; others must add up to a certain number.
You have to satisfy all requirements in order to win. If one puzzle doesn’t scratch the itch, you can play two more on the same day, though you have to pick a different level of difficulty.
If you’re looking for a Wordle alternative, or want something more numerical that’s not good old Sudoku, this one’s for you.
[Screenshots: Neal Agarwal]
2. For those who want to fight a machine
You know that really annoying CAPTCHA puzzle you have to sometimes complete to prove you’re not a robot? Well, game designer Neal Agarwal has turned it into a mischievously addictive computer game.
I’m Not a Robot features 48 puzzles that become increasingly difficult as the game progresses. One minute, you’re checking boxes with stop signs on them; another, you’re trying to park a Waymo with your keyboard’s arrow keys.
The action culminates in a frantic Dance Dance Revolution game, but its so difficult that only 1% of people had reached that level within a month of the game launching. If you find yourself sucked in, and your family keeps growling at you for being antisocial, just tell them youre on a noble mission to prove your humanity to a machine.
[Images: courtesy Colin Miller]
3. For transit nerds (or those who loved The Sims)
Are you old enough to remember SimCity, or progressive enough to find public transit cool? Then youll love Subway Builder, a new simulation game that lets you design, build, and operate subway systems in more than 20 cities across the United States. But here’s the best part: Unlike other transit games, this one uses real-life data to map where residents and workers live, as well as building foundations, road layouts, and existing tunnels that may impede construction.
The game gets so realistic you have to contend with signal failures, broken down trains, and operational costs in a way that might just help you gain an ounce of sympathy for the folks who run the actual subway in your city.
Transit experts believe the game could start a transit revolutionso hop on quick.
[Photo: Hasbro]
4. For those who hate being the Banker
Do you still carry cash? Hasbro, the maker of Monopoly, figured you’ve upgraded to mobile banking, and decided to make a version of Monopoly that meets you where you are.
Meet: Monopoly App Banking, a version of the classic board game that eliminates both paper money and the dreaded role of the banker, instead delegating transactions to a free mobile app. In this case, the app is both the bank and the banker!
The app-assisted game promises faster, fairer playno more power grabsand augmented-reality enhanced mini games you unlock every time you land on Free Parking, Jail, or Railroad spaces. Don’t worry, though: The board itself remains.
The holiday season is merry, bright, and hectic. Its hard to cram every moment of cheer into just four weeks and keep your sanity.
If you find yourself behind and needing to grab last-minute presents, run errands, or pick up a stick of butter on Christmas Eve, know that you are only human.
After taking a couple of deep breaths, read on to see which stores are open and closed on the night before the big night.
Are banks open on Christmas Eve?
Christmas Eve is not a federal holiday, so most banks are open. Some may choose to have reduced hours, so it is a good practice to check with your local branch ahead of time to save you the potential headache.
If you missed your window, dont forget that online banking and ATMs can come to the rescue.
Is mail delivered on Christmas Eve?
Yes, mail is delivered on Christmas Eve. The U.S. Postal Service is operating, although some branches may close early.
Is the stock market open?
Yes, you can buy and sell on Christmas Eve. (Perhaps to stuff the stockings with stock?) Both the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq are open for business, but only until 1 p.m. ET.
Which stores are open?
Here’s a cheat sheet for grocery store hours this year:
Trader Joes: Reduced hours; open until 5 p.m.
Aldi: Reduced hours; check your local store for details.
Whole Foods: 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Publix: 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
Kroger: Store closes at 8 p.m.; pharmacy closes at 5 p.m.
Safeway: 6 a.m. to 8 p.m.
And here’s one for popular retailers:
Walmart: 6 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Target: 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Costco: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Kohls: 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.
TJ Maxx: 7 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Macys: Closing at 7 p.m.
Starbucks is open but with reduced hours. Check your local store for details.
Are pharmacies open on Christmas Eve?
If you’re feeling under the weather on Christmas Eve, you can turn to CVS or Walgreens. Both major pharmacy chains are open, though they are expected to close early. Check in with your local store before heading on a run for cough syrup.
The bottom line
Never fear. Most stores are open on Christmas Eve with reduced hours. Double-check the hours at your local shop so you dont waste a trip. And try not to worry. Everything will get done and be holly jolly.
The best-selling video game console this Black Friday was the PlayStation 5. That surprised no one. The number-two spot went to the Nintendo Switch 2. Again, that was expected.
But the bronze position wasn’t held by Microsoft’s Xbox, as you might suppose. Instead, it was claimed by the Nex Playground, a small gaming system that almost no one had heard of two years ago.
The Playground has since grown into one of 2025’s hottest gifts. In 2023, just 5,000 units of the controller-free small cube were sold. In 2024, that number spiked to 150,000. This year, the company is on track to sell 600,000 units.
While it has a loyal (and growing) fan base, there are still a number of people scratching their heads at the Playground’s sales surge. If you’re one of them, we’ve got answers to all of your questions about this little gaming device that’s managing to carve out a new market in the video game world.
What is the Nex Playground?
The Nex Playground is an Android-powered console that utilizes a motion camera, meaning you control the onscreen action with movements, rather than a controller. The system uses AI to detect player movements, with a focus on keeping things simple. That’s a strategy Nintendo embraced several years ago with the Wii, offering a gaming console for the masses rather than one that was focused on the core gaming customer (though one that didn’t eschew those financial whales either).
[Photo: Nex Playground]
The Playground doesn’t look like any gaming system you’ve seen before. It’s a three-inch multicolor cube with a camera lens staring at you. Instead of sitting on the couch, slumped back and passively enjoying a game, Playground players jump around and burn calories as they play their favorite titles. And they can play communally, rather than being isolated or playing with strangers online.
[Photo: Nex Playground]
It’s a system designed for people aged five and upbut the younger focus doesn’t mean the games aren’t fun for adults. (You won’t, however, find shooters or mature titles.)
How much does a Nex Playground cost?
The Playground carries a suggested retail price of $249, though it has sold for less than that during some periods this holiday season. That’s roughly half the price of a PS5 or Switch 2. That affordability has made it a popular choice for families, especially those with young children this year. The trick, these days, is finding one in stock and available before the holiday.
Who created the Nex Playground?
David Lee is cofounder and CEO of Bay Area-based Nex. A father of two daughters, he initially wanted to create a company that would use games to strengthen bonding time between family members, rather than turning kids into screen zombies. As he worked on the Playground, he used his daughters and his mother for feedback, looking for ways to make it accessible to a wide range of players.
What games are available on the Nex Playground?
The Playground’s catalog leans more toward family-friendly titles, bypassing action games like you’d find on traditional consoles. The system comes with five titles installed: Fruit Ninja, Party Fowl, Whack A-Mole Deluxe, Goal Keeper, and Starri. The full catalog has more than 30 options, with new releases coming every month.
How did the Nex Playground become so popular?
Two things contributed substantially to Nex’s success: TikTok and the pandemic. The company initially made a basketball shot-tracking app, but when families were stuck at home in 2020, the team began offering more gamified activity, which brought a surge of new downloads. That led the company to begin work on what would become the Playground.
Once it launched, word of mouth began to slowly spread, then TikTok cast its eye upon the Playground and things changed fast. The TikTok Shop couldn’t keep it in stock. Retailers began having trouble doing so as well. The harder it became to find, the more people talked about it. And by Black Friday, it had reached a tipping point.
Is the Nex Playground sold globally?
Not yet. The Playground is not sold on sites like Amazon UK. Given its domestic success, though, an international expansion in the months or years to come seems a logical assumption.
Does the Nex Playground have a monthly subscription fee?
Yes and no. You don’t have to sign up for any of the company’s PlayPass program, but that’s the only way to get new games added to your Playground. Once you tire of the core five titles, you can get a 12-month subscription to PlayPass for $89. That will get you a new catalog of game titles ever month, along with things like workouts for adults.
Its been a rough year for American workers. Unfortunately, 2026 isnt looking all that much better.
The year began with tariffsjust as inflation was finally starting to coolfollowed by AI anxiety and headline-grabbing layoffs, before ending with Americas longest ever government shutdown.
Surveys suggest many American workers didnt get a raise in 2025, and most are unsatisfied with their current compensation. They feel, however, as though they cant leave their jobs or ask for more moneydespite an increasing cost of livingfor fear of making themselves vulnerable to future layoffs.
Instead, most relied on secondary sources of income to make ends meet, further fueling disengagement and burnout at their day jobs.
The story of the U.S. job market this year is definitely one of struggle and strife, says Jasmine Escalera, a career expert with the résumé-building platform Zety.
That sense of desperation is largely the result of a tough job market, where layoffs are on the rise, job openings are declining, and more Americans are falling into long-term unemployment.
We have employees that are in survival mode, feeling as though they can’t make any requests because they don’t want to rock the boat, Escalera says, adding that there could be negative repercussions for employers as well. When you are in survival mode, you cannot also be in creativity and innovation mode. Youre just thinking about how to keep this job.
Americans are feeling underpaid, but afraid to ask for a raise
According to a recent survey of 1,000 American workers by Zety, 41% of American workers havent had a meaningful raise in more than two years.
Overall, 36% feel underpaid, but 66% have avoided asking for more money. And half say theyre grateful just to have a job in this economy, in a trend known as job hugging.
The cost of living is still increasing, and we have employees that are unfortunately not feeling as though they can ask for a pay raise, Escalera says. Theyre incredibly concerned about job security and will do whatever it takes to stay in the role they have.
The Zety study is consistent with a global survey conducted by online résumé and cover letter builder Kickresume, which found that only 28% of workers are satisfied with their current compensation. Among those who feel underpaid, over a third believe they should be earning 30% or more than their current salary.
Only about half of Americans who took part in our survey have had a raise in the past year, and more than 25% havent had a raise in more than two years, says Martin Podu¹ka, editor-in-chief at Kickresume, who co-authored the study.
Further adding to workers frustration is the feeling that employers don’t sympathize with their financial struggles, with 80% saying theyre skeptical that their boss comprehends the cost-of-living strain theyre under.
People who have a job should probably hang on to it and wait it out if they can, Podu¹ka advises. There will be a day where we will be able to complain again, but this is probably not the year.
Instead, theyre turning to side gigs to make ends meet
Unable to find a new full-time gig that offers a higher salary, and unable or unwilling to ask for a raise in a difficult economy, many are instead turning to gig work and side hustles to make ends meet.
According to a recent survey conducted by MyPerfectResume, 71% of workers relied on secondary income to stay afloat. Among them, 42% say they use the extra earnings to pay off debts, and more than a third relied on it for essentials like housing and groceries.
When you feel like you dont have control over whether or not youre going to get laid off, you can take control or just soften the blow by figuring out a way to make more money with a side hustle, explains MyPerfectResume career expert Toni Frana. That was a big deal for people in 2025, and it allowed them to be more resilient.
How to prepare for the worst (while hoping for the best)
The challenges workers faced in 2025 had many causesranging from tariffs and AI anxiety to inflation and recession fearsand unfortunately, few of those underlying causes appear poised for a resolution in the new year.
“Struggle and strife may be the new normal for many American workers, but that doesnt mean theyre helpless to improve their situation.
Some, for example, will continue to turn to those side hustles to up their earnings in lieu of a raise or a higher paying job in a difficult economy. Others may want to advance their skills or add new capabilities that can help them stand out in a tight job market.
If youre worried, make sure youre taking care of yourself and your career, Frana advises. Are you tracking your career accomplishments and wins? Do you know where you bring value to your organization and what that value proposition could be for your next role? Do you have a good handle on your career story?
Those can make for a softer landing if you suddenly lose your job, she says.
As AI data centers spring up across the country, their energy demand and resulting greenhouse gas emissions are raising concerns. With servers and energy-intensive cooling systems constantly running, these buildings can use anywhere from a few megawatts of power for a small data center to more than 100 megawatts for a hyperscale data center. To put that in perspective, the average large natural gas power plant built in the U.S. generates less than 1,000 megawatts.
When the power for these data centers comes from fossil fuels, they can become major sources of climate-warming emissions in the atmosphereunless the power plants capture their greenhouse gases first and then lock them away.
Google recently entered into a unique corporate power purchase agreement to support the construction of a natural gas power plant in Illinois designed to do exactly that through carbon capture and storage.
So how does carbon capture and storage, or CCS, work for a project like this?
I am an engineer who wrote a 2024 book about various types of carbon storage. Heres the short version of what you need to know.
How CCS works
When fossil fuels are burned to generate electricity, they release carbon dioxide, a powerful greenhouse gas that remains in the atmosphere for centuries. As these gases accumulate in the atmosphere, they act like a blanket, holding heat close to the Earths surface. Too high of a concentration heats up the Earth too much, setting off climate changes, including worsening heat waves, rising sea levels, and intensifying storms.
Carbon capture and storage involves capturing carbon dioxide from power plants, industrial processes, or even directly from the air and then transporting it, often through pipelines, to sites where it can be safely injected underground for permanent storage.
The carbon dioxide might be transported as a supercritical gaswhich is right at the phase change from liquid to gas and has the properties of bothor dissolved in a liquid. Once injected deep underground, the carbon dioxide can become permanently trapped in the geologic structure, dissolve in brine, or become mineralized, turning it to rock.
The goal of carbon storage is to ensure that carbon dioxide can be kept out of the atmosphere for a long time.
Types of underground carbon storage
There are several options for storing carbon dioxide underground.
Depleted oil and natural gas reservoirs have plentiful storage space and the added benefit that most are already mapped and their limits understood. They already held hydrocarbons in place for millions of years.
Carbon dioxide can also be injected into working oil or gas reservoirs to push out more of those fossil fuels while leaving most of the carbon dioxide behind. This method, known as enhanced oil and gas recovery, is the most common one used by carbon capture and storage projects in the U.S. today, and one reason CCS draws complaints from environmental groups.
Volcanic basalt rock and carbonate formations are considered good candidates for safe and long-term geological storage because they contain calcium and magnesium ions that interact with carbon dioxide, turning it into minerals. Iceland pioneered this method using its bedrock of volcanic basalt for carbon storage. Basalt also covers most of the oceanic crust, and scientists have been exploring the potential for sub-seafloor storage reservoirs.
How Iceland uses basalt to turn captured carbon dioxide into solid minerals.
In the U.S., a fourth option likely has the most potential for industrial carbon dioxide storagedeep saline aquifers, which is what Google plans to use. These widely distributed aquifers are porous and permeable sediment formations consisting of sandstone, limestone, or dolostone. Theyre filled with highly mineralized groundwater that cannot be used directly for drinking water but is very suitable for storing CO2.
Deep saline aquifers also have large storage capacities, ranging from about 1,000 to 20,000 gigatons. In comparison, the nations total carbon emissions from fossil fuels in 2024 were about 4.9 gigatons.
As of fall 2025, 21 industrial facilities across the U.S. used carbon capture and storage, including industries producing natural gas, fertilizer, and biofuels, according to the Global CCS Institutes 2025 report. Five of those use deep saline aquifers, and the rest involve enhanced oil or gas recovery. Eight more industrial carbon capture facilities were under construction.
Googles plan is unique because it involves a power purchase agreement that makes building the power plant with carbon capture and storage possible.
Googles deep saline aquifer storage plan
Googles 400-megawatt natural gas power plant, to be built with Broadwing Energy, is designed to capture about 90% of the plants carbon dioxide emissions and pipe them underground for permanent storage in a deep saline aquifer in the nearby Mount Simon sandstone formation.
The Mount Simon sandstone formation is a huge saline aquifer that lies underneath most of Illinois, southwestern Indiana, southern Ohio, and western Kentucky. It has a layer of highly porous and permeable sandstone that makes it an ideal candidate for carbon dioxide injection. To keep the carbon dioxide in a supercritical state, that layer needs to be at least half a mile (800 meters) deep.
A thick layer of Eau Claire shale sits above the Mount Simon formation, serving as the caprock that helps prevent stored carbon dioxide from escaping. Except for some small regions near the Mississippi River, Eau Claire shale is considerably thickmore than 300 feet (90 meters)throughout most of the Illinois basin.
The estimated storage capacity of the Mount Simon formation ranges from 27 gigatons to 109 gigatons of carbon dioxide.
The Google project plans to use an existing injection well site that was part of the first large-scale carbon storage demonstration in the Mount Simon formation. Food producer Archer Daniels Midland began injecting carbon dioxide there from nearby corn processing plants in 2012.
Carbon capture and storage has had challenges as the technology developed over the years, including a pipeline rupture in 2020 that forced evacuations in Satartia, Mississippi, and caused several people to lose consciousness. After a recent leak deep underground at the Archer Daniels Midland site in Illinois, the Environmental Protection Agency in 2025 required the company to improve its monitoring. Stored carbon dioxide had migrated into an unapproved area, but no threat to water supplies was reported.
Why does CCS matter?
Data centers are expanding quickly, and utilities will have to build more power capacity to keep up. The artificial intelligence company OpenAI is urging the U.S. to build 100 gigawatts of new capacity every yeardoubling its current rate.
Many energy experts, including the International Energy Agency, believe carbon capture and storage will be necessary to slow climate change and keep global temperatures from reaching dangerous levels as energy demand rises.
Ramesh Agarwal is a professor of engineering at Washington University in St. Louis.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
