For a while now, weve been hearing warnings about AI eliminating jobs. First, it was only at the fringes. But now its starting to bite into roles once thought untouchable. It isnt just administrative work, copywriting, or design anymore; even advisory roles, data analytics, and coding are being reshaped by automation.
But history teaches us that technological disruption doesnt eliminate work, it reshapes it. The industrial revolution, for example, didnt end human contribution, it simply redefined the places where humans bring the most value.
AI is doing the same thing today. While it does, in fact, take (or reduce the need for) some jobs, it can, and will, pave new paths in the form of entrepreneurial opportunities. The rise of no-code tools, automated workflows, and AI-powered tools to support business creation means people can turn ideas into companies faster than ever before. The real challenge now lies in ensuring that the accessibility and utilization of these resources match the level of AI-induced displacement.
While employment rates remain relatively stable, the numbers mask deeper shifts in how work gets done. Automation has been advancing for yearsaccelerated by AIwith many firms quietly cutting labor not through layoffs but by trimming hours, automating tasks, or relying on smaller teams to sustain productivity. This obscured drop in main hours, dubbed shadow layoffs, paints a far more complex picture of employment health than the headlines and numbers suggest.
AI makes independence not just possible, but practical
With roughly 80% of U.S. businesses already operating as nonemployer firms (meaning the owner is the only employee), self-driven enterprises have gained popularity since the 1990s. This massive trend is undervalued, and AIs unique ability to fuel entrepreneurial endeavors will signal a cultural and economic shift toward independence, flexibility, and self-determination. These characteristics are uniquely American, one of the reasons the country has long been the poster child for rags-to-riches capitalism.
AI makes the traditional employment model even less reliable and familiar roles less secure, but the benefits of AI-driven entrepreneurship could reshape the workforce in the near future. For individuals, AI removes many of the barriers that once made the process of building a business challenging. AIs assistance negates, for example, costly and time-consuming marketing campaigns and the difficulties of providing customer support and training materials that drain budgets and slow down the path to business ownership.
Launching a brand, opening an online clothing store, or offering a niche service can now happen in days, not months, with tools that streamline product development, go-to-market, and scaling from day one.
For example, a laid-off marketing manager can launch a single-person consultancy powered by AI tools and handle everything from accounting and content creation to client management as a one-person show. This is something that in the past would have demanded at least three additional employees.
While the technology is proven, individual grit alone isnt enough. Without proper support systems to close the gap between displaced workers and AI-enabled bootstrapping, an accessible path to entrepreneurship will remain out of reach for most. For future classes of AI entrepreneurs to thrive, theyll need an ecosystem designed to absorb and launch them forward.
Turning disruption into design: Why public-private collaboration matters
The ultimate goal for turning AI displacement into entrepreneurial opportunities should be a healthy society and a resilient economy. The key to maximizing these circumstances lies in empowering those who combine a unique vision with AI fluency. Investing in regional AI boot camps, small-business accelerators, or micro-grant programs for displaced workers will provide resources to help them reinvent themselves.
Timely support is key: Upskilling workshops, business literacy, and AI fluency need to be accessible before layoffs happen, not after. If laid-off workers can pivot faster, the economic and social repercussions will be minimal.
The most effective recipe for success in this regard is when the private and public sectors work in a complementary manner. Public-private entrepreneurial hubs could close this gap. Governments can ensure equitable access, while private companies focus on relevance and innovation. Through upskilling and educational initiatives and incentivized collaborations, the two can turn layoffs into small-business launchpads.
In New York, the Department of Labor enacted an initiative to provide free access to Coursera and professional certifications from leading tech companies, including Google. While primarily for reskilling, these certifications and courses specifically support self-employment in the digital economy. If replicated nationwide, this could actually start moving the needle on digital self-employment.
The key to kick-starting like-minded programs is through building awareness. They should focus on steering economic and social stability by providing laid-off workers with the necessary tools. If key private-sector leaders and government officials can align around shared goals, AI could redefine the American dream instead of disrupting it.
While AI destabilized the traditional employer-employee model, it also opened new doors for the next wave of entrepreneurs. These entrepreneurs wont necessarily have an Ivy League degree or access to VCs, but they will be those who embrace AIs powerful capabilities and monetize those skills in original ways.
AI will continue to change the paradigm on how and where people earn a living, but the outcome depends on how society responds. With the right infrastructure in place, this wave of automation could become one of the largest drivers of entrepreneurship since the internets onset. Without it, expect to see deeper inequality and economic stagnation.
Disruption is unavoidable, but reinvention is a workers choice. Those who pair their expertise with AIs capabilities wont just survive this transition; theyll be the ones who embrace entrepreneurship, turning passion projects into real businesses faster than ever. The barrier to entry is no longer a team or a budget. Its a mindset and a small monthly subscription. In this shift, the winners wont be the ones who fear AI; theyll be the ones who take one good idea and build.
Its the end of the year and the pressure is on, demands are high, and youre probably close to the end of your rope as you try to wrap up your remaining projects before the holidays start. If thats you, youre not alone. Holiday stress is very common: In a survey by LifeStance Health, 57% of respondents said they experience stress over the season.
But its possible to maintain your energy and momentum and not only get things done but stay engaged and finish strong. Fortunately, there are a few pragmatic strategies to maintain your energy and momentum through the end of the year.
1. Maintain control
Youre likely to start feeling out of control. This is because of all the work you must accomplish before the end of the year, all the events you must attend, and all the responsibilities to families and friends for the holidays.
Feeling like your work-life balance is out of control can sap your energy and create a barrier to getting things done. This can turn into a vicious circle. Youre out of control, cant get things done, and then feel even more out of control, and the cycle continues. On the other hand, when you feel greater levels of choice and control, youre better able to stay clearheaded, get more accomplished, and feel more satisfied as a result.
So how can you feel more in control? First, decide what you must do this year and put off the things that dont need your attention until after the holidays. Be intentional to get things done that will relieve your mind and keep responsibilities from hanging over your head. At the same time, plan for what can be done later on.
Additional tactics to take control are deceptively simple. Make lists of what you need to accomplish. Keep a calendar handy so you know whats coming up. When you accomplish things, check them off your list so you feel a sense of completion and progress, or mark the calendar counting the days youve tackled.
With all of these, take the approach that works best for you. For some people, its an analog and always-visible to-do list. For others its an app or the use of your systems calendar or planning software. Dont spend a lot of time deciding which to use, just leverage what youre accustomed to and dig in to take control and maintain your momentum for the year.
2. Prioritize
With so much coming at you, it can be tough to find the time and energy for everything. The project is due at work, you have to buy a secret Santa gift, and you must figure out what to give your childs teacher for the holidays.
Surprisingly, when you remind yourself that you cant do it all, youll actually enhance your well-being. Its a mindset that we can do it all that often leads to burnout and emotional upheaval. By giving yourself permission to choose, rather than having to do everything, you liberate yourself to focus on whats most important.
In order to choose well, clarify your values and focus on whats most important to you. For example, completing the project at work is aligned with your value of excellence or standout performance. Contributing to your childs party at school is important to your role as an involved and committed parent.
But you might choose to forgo the committee meeting this month or miss the neighborhood cookie exchange because these arent as important to your identity or your priorities. In fact, the LifeStance Health data found that 64% of people would like to skip at least a few of their holiday gatherings. So while many of the meetings or events still matter, some may not rank as highly when you consider that you cant do it all.
Do what you can and preserve your energy for the activities that are most important to you.
3. Spend meaningful time with others
When things get busy, you may feel like everyone is pulling you in different directions, but our community and relationships are among the most important drivers of well-being.
Youll want to maintain connections to maintain your energy. Research shows that strong community and relationships have significant impact on mental, physical, and cognitive well-being. And yet the holidays can be a lonely time. According to LifeStance Health, 51% of people surveyed said they experience loneliness during the holiday season.
Reframe the demands you face as opportunities to share meaningful time with others. If youre under pressure to finish the project before the holiday break, appreciate the bonding opportunity with colleagues as you push forward together. If youre holiday shopping with your sister-in-law, appreciate the moments to deepen your relationship. Strive to be fully present with others, no matter what youre doing together.
You can also reduce the responsibilities that come with getting together with others. Instead of reading your usual book with your book group this month, get together for conversation without actually reading a book. Or if your singles group normally meets at someones house, get together at a restaurant this month so no one has to host. The bottom line: Adjust your patterns during this time so its less about the demands and more about the connections.
4. Manage your habits
Another way to maintain your energy is to manage the small habits that make a big difference in your physical and emotional energy. Get enough sleep. Stay hydrated. Eat healthfully. Move as much as you can. All of these are proven ways to ensure youll be at your best.
Also spend as much time as possible in nature, even if the weather is colder. Significant research demonstrates that by spending more time outside, youre able to maintain perspective and rejuvenate for all the responsibilities you face. In fact, nature is a source of micro joy.
Part of the reason that nature is so powerfully positive is that it engages your diffuse attention. Youre generally aware of the light, the breeze, or the brisk air. This is in contrast to the focused attention that work or personal commitments require. Research published in Environment and Behavior found that a shift to a more diffuse focus contributes to well-being and renews you for tasks that require more concentration or intensity.
At the same time, avoid habits that detract from your well-being. For example, steer clear of doomscrolling or spending too much time online. These activities can have an especially negative impact because of the overwhelm caused from too much bad news; the urgency of most news sources, which creates a sense of worry; and the comparisons we naturally make to others. Instead, put your device aside or set a timer on your system to limit your time on social media platforms or news outlets. This will free you to spend more time with people or in nature.
5. Focus on gratitude
Finally, focus on gatitude. When youre consciously grateful, you contribute to your well-being and ensure you can keep going through it all. You have a lot of responsibilities at work, which is a signal that others value your contributions and rely on you. You have gifts to wrap, which is a reflection of all the loved ones youre able to provide for. You have gatherings to attend, which is an indication of how youre connected to your community.
Its also powerful to remind yourself that youre not alone. When youre under a lot of pressure, it can be natural to lose a broader perspective or feel like a victim of too much, too fast, all-at-once circumstances. But research experiments have shown that when people remind themselves that others are also going through hard times or similar challenges, they feel greater levels of happiness and well-being and less isolation, according to a study published in the Journal of Happiness Studies.
To embrace gratitude, think of two experiences youre grateful for before you go to bed or consider one relationship youre thankful for as you approach each new day. Also remind yourself that youre not alone, and that while you face a ton of demands, others have similar experiences. Focusing here will help you maintain your energy.
You can do it
Remember: Just do what you can. You dont have to be perfect, and youll certainly miss things or drop the ball sometimes. Be flexible and optimistic with yourself and others, leaving room for things to go well enough, even if they dont meet your ideal.
Reduce the pressure on yourself and youll not only get through such a busy time with your energy stores intact, youll also maintain greater joy in the process.
When Jon LaMantia, a Long Island-based business reporter, was in journalism school, his professor drilled one rule into his students: you get two exclamation points a year and no more.
So if you use them in January, LaMantia recalls being told, you better hope theres nothing to exclaim for the rest of the year.
The rule stuck. LaMantia still thinks about that rigid quota today. I use exclamation points all the time in texts and emails. If you dont, the message sounds more stern, he says. But I cant remember the last time I used one in a business article.
Strong feelings about the exclamation point arent uncommon. People tend to either love it or loathe it; lean on it constantly, or avoid it religiously.
Personally, I use multiple, but at work Ill only use one, says a woman who works in HR at an investment bank in New York City, who wasnt cleared to speak publicly but said she couldnt resist chiming in on this topic. People say Im bubbly and high-energy, so I use them to let my style come through in emailwhen appropriate.
A consultant in Ohio, who also asked not to be named, tells me he uses them to lighten the tone of written communication or reduce formality. Others tread more cautiously. I use way too many and then feel embarrassed later on, admits an artist from Brooklyn. A Boston-based consultant says hes begun actively metering his usage to set the right tone.
In short, exclamation points matter. They spark surprisingly strong feelings about tone, intention, and even etiquette. But according to new research, they also shape much more than just mood.
Warmer, But Less Analytical
A recent study published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, titled Nice to meet you. (!) Gendered norms in punctuation usage, found that women not only use exclamation points more frequently than men, but that this difference carries real consequencesboth for those writing and for those reading.
Across several experiments, participants judged writers who used exclamation points differently across measures that included perceived warmth, power, analytical ability, and competence. Heavy usersa group that overwhelmingly skews femalewere seen as warmer and more enthusiastic, but also as less analytical.
The study also showed that women were more likely to think about their punctuation choices, whether to end a sentence with a period or an exclamation point, for example, underscoring the invisible cognitive labor that often shapes womens communication.
All of it illustrates how something as small as punctuation can reinforce the subtle forces still underpinning stubborn gender norms and divides both at work, and beyond.
Unequal Cognitive Load
Cheryl Wakslak, associate professor of Management and Organization at Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California and one of the authors of the study, says she was particularly struck by how much mental energy women devote to these decisions.
Women are putting a lot of thought into this, she says. On one hand, intentional communication is valuable, she adds, but its also a lot of cognitive energy that men are simply not spending.”
Women, she explains, are constantly navigating what she describes as a warmthcompetence tightrope.
Theyre worried about not seeming warm, so they use exclamation points to appear warmer. But theyre also worried about not being seen as competent or powerful, and they may worry that exclamation marks undermine that. Men, the research shows, largely dont think about any of that.
Another finding that surprised her: the trade-offs of using exclamation points. Heavy users were perceived as more appealing collaborators and more enthusiastic, but also less powerful and less analytical.
For me, the most interesting finding, though, was about competence, says Wakslak. We didnt see a clear effect in either direction. That matters to me because, when Im walking that tightrope, Im mostly worried about the competence trade-off, she adds. I dont need to seem powerful in every context, but I do want to seem competent.
Still, she acknowledges that in some work environments, being perceived as analytical is crucial. In those situations, based on these findings, a woman might want to avoid using exclamation marks.
Perpetuating Stereotypes
Asked about the exclamation point research, Elaine Lin Hering, author of Unlearning Silence, a book about verbal and nonverbal communication, says shes not surprised.
[The findings] illustrate the downside of the conditioning women have long received and the contorting women do to try to meet expectations. It is simply one of many examples of the double standards women are held to and the tension that women navigate every day, she adds.
It’s akin, Hering says, to women being told to smile more in order to appear warmer and more approachableand then finding themselves being taken less seriously because they smile too much.
And the issue extends beyond punctuation. Workplace communication norms are typically defined by the groups with the dominant identity. Not just that everyone should talk like a man, but that how people communicate should fit into the stereotypes that the dominant groups have of that other identity, she says.
Social norms exacerbate inequality by perpetuating existing stereotypes that the dominant group holds, she explains, like that women are too emotional or Asians are good workers but not leaders or that Gen Z is lazy.
So what can be done? As ever, when the problem is rooted in social conditioning, theres no easy fix. But Hering says that, especially in workplace settings, systems can be put in place to help control for biases like the ones that creep in when we read something someones written.
We can challenge the social norms and exacerbated inequalities by having clear and consistent criteria for evaluating performance, she says.
Research published in 2022, shows that womenbecause of systemic biasare often assessed in workplaces based on their actual performance, while men are assessed based on their future potential creating what the academics dub a gender promotion gap. Having more rigid criteria for assessment can offset that divergence.
A wide awareness of the existence of these biases and this conditioning is alsoof coursecritical to making workplaces fairer. And Cheryl Wakslaks coauthor Gil Appel is the first to admit that. Appel, Assistant Professor of Marketing at the GW School of Business at George Washington University, says that spending time researching gender and communication has made himmuch more of a feminist.
There are some things that men just dont have to think about at all, and women have to think about all the time, he says. Whether thats to ensure their safety, or whether its to make sure theyre coming across as competent, he adds. They just always have to be thinking.
And beyond becoming more feminist, theres one other thing thats changed for Appel since working on the research: I have to admit, he says, I definitely use more exclamation marks now.
Its been a tumultuous year for the legacy retailer, shaped by new tariffs, shifting consumer habits, and the constant flip between wartime and peacetime leadership. Macys Inc. Chairman and CEO Tony Spring shares why his team is now on version twenty-seven of the plan, and what it really means to court the next generation of shoppers.
This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by the former Fast Company editor-in-chief Robert Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Responsefeatures candid conversations with todays top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode.
The Thanksgiving Day Parade, the sprint to Christmas, it’s like your Super Bowl. What’s waw distinctive about 2025? I mean, the economic and shopping environment has been pretty chaotic.
I think the news certainly makes things more complicated. I think people are confused. We had a terrific second quarter. We talked about the back-to-school business being pretty healthy, and yet we all see potential storm clouds on the horizon. So we’re trying to be cautiously optimistic You could stay up all night worrying But in reality, our job is to make sure we create a better shopping experience for the customer. There’s plenty of things that are out of our control that we could obsess about, but it really doesn’t satisfy anything or make you feel any better.
And for the parade, how do you keep it fresh?
Making sure every year the parade has, again, newness: We have partnerships with Disney, Pokemon, Pop Mart, Labubus We want to make sure that whatever is popular and whatever’s interesting weaves its way, not only into our merchandise strategy, but also into an iconic event like the Thanksgiving Day Parade. 32 million people approximately are going to watch it on TV, and we have several million more that come live in person in New York City on that day.
Macy’s has an iconic place in American culture, although obviously it hasn’t been immune to the challenges in retail. You launched what you call a bold new chapter after becoming CEO in 2024. It’s showing traction in your financial results, but you’re still sort of in the midst of it. What’s working, what’s not?
Well, let me break it into the three parts: The first was strengthening and reimagining Macy’s, and that included closing underproductive stores and betting on our future state stores, so putting more colleagues into the stores, putting new merchandise into the stores.
We also improved our digital platform and doubled down on our luxury businesses, which include Bloomingdale’s and Blue Mercury.
And then the final part of the strategy is end-to-end operations, and that’s making sure we’re utilizing automation and robotics and AI, and making sure the complexity that might exist in our business doesn’t affect the consumer.
Your stores face pressure from everywhere, fast fashion and e-commerce and social shopping and live shopping. How do you think about in-person, human interaction, versus digital commerce?
I talk to our team all the time about the word balance, and I don’t think the word gets enough volume or credit There’s some reports out now that the next generation is longing for socialization, and in-person shopping is a big part of what they’re doing together. There is a place, I think, for all these types of businesses, as long as we pay attention to what the consumer wants. Almost 70% of our business still remains in physical retail, which is very consistent with the industry averages. That doesn’t mean we don’t love our digital business. If we were selling paper towels, who wants to go shopping for paper towels? I’d like to have those delivered to my house right before I run out of them. But I think there are other things that are fun to do in person.
And by the way, when we have a DJ on a Saturday, when we do bottle engraving, when we, people show how to do flower arranging, you can get people to turn out to the stores because it becomes an extension of what they want to do for the weekend. I think a big part of our bold new chapter is stepping up to the fact that a good retail experience, people are looking for. A bad or mediocre retail experience. People, people can do digital. They don’t need to exhaust themselves with that experience.
I want to ask you about planning and decision-making in 2025. One CEO I talked to recently told me that things change so fast that he’s been forced to update his plans as often as weekly. You get new data constantly. I’m curious what you look at and how fluid you have to be with your plans?
You have to be very fluid. I mean, to be candid, in the age of tariffs and in the uncertainty of supply chains, plans are the guardrails, and the longer the plan, the less accurate it is. So you do deal with a rolling operating forecast, which is something that we update on a weekly and monthly basis, and that kind of gives us a greater visibility into how to allocate inventory, how to plan our staffing, how to change our marketing, so that we’re doing it in real time, not based on some plan that we developed three or six months ago, which may at this point be somewhat outdated. I think we’re on version number 27 of our forecast and plan, because of the interesting environment that we’re operating in 2025.
There’s an analogy that people sometimes use, that sometimes you need a wartime leader and sometimes you need a peacetime leader, and there’s a different strategy for each one of them. And I’m curious whether you feel like for Macy’s, is today wartime or peacetime? And how would you cast yourself in that?
I’d like to say it depends on the day of the week you ask me, and I think the challenge for our business is, on Tuesdays, I might have to be a peacetime leader, and on the first day of November, you may need to be a wartime leader. And in the environment we’re operating with, with unexpected tariffs by the middle of the year that didn’t exist at the beginning of the year, there is a lot of wartime philosophy. The same time, we are in a business for the long term. We are not trying to just have a great third quarter. We’re trying to have a great business that lasts decades, if not more. What matters tomorrow is going to be different than what mattered yesterday. I use a phrase, graciousness and kindness don’t cost money. So, how do we make sure that we imbue and express those things on a regular basis?
What’s your role when it comes to the Thanksgiving Day Parade itself?
Stay out of the way.
Twenty years ago, not too long after Youtube itself launched, Ian Hecox and Anthony Padilla started uploading videos to the platform. What started as two teenagers trying to make each other laugh turned into the biggest channel on YouTube. It was the first ever to reach 10 million subscribers. Eventually Smosh was acquired by a company called Defy Media. The company would expand rapidlymore videos, more cast members, even a moviebut then came turmoil and uncertainty for Smosh.
Padilla left the company in 2017, largely due to creative differences with Smoshs parent company. He returned to the business in 2023, when he and Hecox purchased Smosh from YouTuber-led media company Mythical (which acquired the brand in 2019 following Defy Medias abrupt collapse).
From left: Ian Hecox, Anthony Padilla, Ale Catanese [Photos: Brennan Iketani (Catanese)/courtesy Smosh]
Alongside the purchase, Hecox and Padilla hired Alessandra Catanesean executive with over a decade’s experience in digital mediaas CEO. In the ensuing two years, the company has steadily expanded its content offering while picking up new subscribers across five YouTube channels. With more content in development than ever, and more than twice as many employees as it had in 2023, Smosh is moving into a 32,000-sq.-ft. Los Angeles studio thats roughly twice the size of its current headquarters.
[Rendering: courtesy Smosh]
Hecox, Padilla and Catanese joined me on the Most Innovative Companies podcast to talk about the companys growth, its new space, and how they approached designing a space for the next generation of the company.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Smosh is making a big move in 2026. Can you tell me why now is the right time to expand?
Alessandra Catanese: We physically just could not launch another show or take on a new project, no matter how much we loved it. So in this new building, it’s both going to allow us to expand what we’re doing, and more appropriately house the employees that we have and create a little bit more of a structured environment.
Its really important to us to balance the structure with the startup vibe that we still feel we have today. We don’t feel this need to elevate ourselves to this corporate structure where there’s a lot more red tape and there’s a lot more rules. We do have a lot of guidelines, but we love that a lot of the things we have and processes we have in place here are very fluid. They have a sandbox in which they play in.
And on the business side, I stay out of the creative decisions they do know to bring me things. So yeah, so we want to honor that. And then this building allows us to create more space and communal areas where we can celebrate what we do, but also be professional and feel a little bit more polished.
[Image: courtesy Smosh]
What will the new space help achieve for Smosh?
Ian Hecox: I think one of the major focuses for this is just working out a better flow for production and talent, getting talent to the stages, production knowing exactly where the talent is.
I mean, we love our cast, but sometimes it is herding cats. Creating a space for them to feel comfortable in and to congregate in I think was really important. And then we have, we’ll have a private room. If there’s maybe a celebrity coming in that wants a little more privacy, we can have a room specifically for
AC: A proper green room with a closing door.
Anthony Padilla: Not a weird little makeshift curtain.
We wanted to level up the space and bring a level of professionality, but also we want it to feel fun and embody that element of creativity and working together as a team. Right now, a lot of our lights are big, fluorescent overhead lights and we wanted a lot more soft lighting and stuff that feels more comfortable. You’re hanging out with your friends, not at someone’s house, but you’re hanging out with your friends in a professional environment.
[Rendering: courtesy Smosh Studios]
Since the pandemic,office design has been moving towards a more living room, or lounge, feel. It sounds like you are embracing that as well.
IH: I think we want it to be somewhere comfortable, but I also don’t want people falling asleep because I’ve seen some of these production companies and everything looks very calm. So I think it was striking a balance between comfortable, but also you’re going to stay awake, but also not hitting people with Nickelodeon greens.
AC: We want it to feel grown up and mature, but in a way that still honors the comedy, the internet of it all. So I think we brought color in very intentionally. And Studio Keya obviously did an excellent job.
[Rendering: courtesy Smosh]
It’s amazing to be able to intentionally design a space for where you are now. Its been two and a half years since buying back Smosh, does this move feel like a completion of that transition or like you are officially making a home in the newest iteration of the company?
IH: I don’t think we would’ve expected to be here this quickly. I think this was more of a five-year plan or a 10-year plan. We feel very grateful. We’re still doing this within our scope. We don’t have a giant backer. We’re trying to do everything in a sustainable way.
AP: I think it’s really about continuing to hone in on what we do best. The comedy rooted in friendship element. You’ll probably start to see more faces on camera. There’ll be more people working behind the scenes. Really, we want to create an environment where people either in front of camera or behind camera get to live out some of those dreams that Ian and I got to experience in the early days.
Smosh at VidCon 2024 [Photo: Smosh]
Shares of Meta Platforms, Inc. (META) rose on Thursday after Bloomberg reported the technology company was planning to cut spending across its division by 10%, with as much as 30% cuts to its virtual reality group, which includes the so-called metaverse.
These cuts could potentially include layoffs, which could come as early as January, and are part of the company’s 2026 budget, according to the article.
Metathe owner of Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Messenger, and WhatsAppdevelops metaverse technologies, such as the Horizon Worlds platform, its flagship virtual-reality game.
Fast Company has reached out to Meta for comment.
Meta stock rose 5.7% in early trading Thursday, before settling up a few percentage points. At the time of this writing on Thursday afternoon, Meta’s stock price was up by about just under 4%.
Bloomberg cited anonymous sources and said Wall Street investors reportedly sees the division “as a drain on resources,” while internet watchers have concerns about VR’s ability to safeguard children.
The news is significant because the metaverse is widely considered a pet project of Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who had previously identified it as the future of Meta, even changing Facebook’s name to Meta for that very reason. Zuckerberg has also reportedly spent billions and employed thousands to make this dream come to fruition, according to The New York Times.
Ultimately, however, it seems critics and young consumers have not embraced the metaverse and Horizon Worlds as the company had hoped.
Meta financials
Meta’s third-quarter earnings for 2025 beat analyst sales estimates, but it also reported a one-time $15.93 billion tax charge.
The company’s revenue grew 26.2% year-over-year to $51.24 billion, beating the estimated $49.41 billion, with earnings per share coming in at $7.25 adjusted, beating analyst expectations of $6.69.
In the earnings report, Meta said the company plans to spend up to $72 billion on artificial intelligence in 2025.
The numbers are in for Spotify Wrapped: After the streaming music app dropped its popular year-in-review recap for 2025, the company said it has already seen a huge increase in user engagement, hitting 200 million users just 24 hours after the recap’s release, a 19% increase year-over-year (YOY).
Compare that with last year, when it took 62 hours to hit that same number.
Why the uptick in user engagement?
One reason could be because the platform is growing. A look at the numbers shows Spotify’s monthly active users grew 11% YOY to 713 million in Q3 of 2025, according to the company’s third quarter earnings report.
Spotify Wrapped is for sharing
Sharing is caring, and this year’s Spotify Wrapped sharing features seem to be working.
According to the company, 500 million users shared their stories all over social media in the first 24 hours, an overall increase of 41% YOY from 2024 (I was, of course, one of them). Those shares included screenshots of different features, such as top songs (for me, it was “Promises, Promises”), top artist (“The Psychedelic Furs”), top albums (“The Life of a Showgirl”), top genres (“New Wave”), and listening minutes (“11,721”).
While the numbers increased across the board globally, India, Indonesia, Japan, Colombia, Thailand and the U.S. saw the most growth.
This year, we pushed to make Wrapped bigger, bolder, and rooted in human creativity and connection,” Marc Hazan, senior vice president of marketing and partnerships at Spotify said. “That spirit drove the record numbers were celebrating. Spotify is where people proudly express who they are through the music, podcasts and books they love most.”
Age is just a number
One complaint, albeit a funny one, is that Spotify Wrapped’s “listening age” feature, which predicts your age based on your listening data, is making people older than they are.
On Bluesky, people are posting screenshots of their Spotify “age,” which for some millennials and Gen Xers, is hitting upwards of 82. (At 61, it looks like I am in good company!)
U.S. applications for unemployment benefits fell to their lowest level in more than three years during Thanksgiving week, potentially complicating the Federal Reserves upcoming decision on interest rates.
The number of Americans applying for jobless benefits for the week ending Nov. 29 fell to 191,000 from the previous weeks 218,000, the Labor Department reported Thursday. Thats the lowest level since September 24, 2022, when claims came in at 189,000. Analysts surveyed by the data provider FactSet had forecast initial claims of 221,000.
Kathy Bostjancic, chief economist at Nationwide, said that unemployment benefit filings are often distorted by the Thanksgiving holiday, which can cause some people who may have lost jobs to delay filing claims.
Still, the low claims figure also suggests that overall layoffs remain muted, despite the high-profile announcements. Hiring is also sluggish, which makes finding a job for those out of work challenging.
The labor market is kind of frozen, Bostjancic said. Companies are in wait-and-see mode.
Applications for unemployment aid are viewed as a proxy for layoffs and are close to a real-time indicator of the health of the job market. The job cuts announced recently by large companies such as UPS, General Motors, Amazon, and Verizon typically take weeks or months to fully implement and may not be reflected in Thursdays data.
For now, the U.S. job market appears stuck in a low-hire, low-fire state that has kept the unemployment rate historically low.
On Wednesday, private payroll data firm ADP estimated U.S. job losses of 32,000 in November. The surprisingly weak report may be discouraging for people looking for jobs, but it bolstered expectations that the Fed will cut its main interest rate next week.
Its not clear how much weight this weeks layoff figures will carry with the Fed as the numbers can be volatile and prone to revisions.
Complicating the Feds upcoming decision is inflation, which remains above the central banks 2% target. The Feds preferred measure of inflation will be released in a government report on Friday and will also be factored into its rate call on Wednesday.
Two weeks ago, the government said that hiring picked up a bit in September, when employers added 119,000 new jobs. That mixed report, which also showed employers had shed jobs in August, was delayed due to the government shutdown. The unemployment rate ticked up to 4.4%, its highest level in four years.
Novembers comprehensive jobs data has been delayed for release until later this month, after the Feds meeting, also due to the government shutdown.
The government also recently reported that retail sales slowed in September after three months of healthy increases.
Consumer confidence has plunged to its second-lowest level in five years, while wholesale inflation eased a bit.
The data suggests that both the economy and inflation are slowing, which has boosted financial markets expectations that the Federal Reserve will reduce its key interest rate at its meeting next week. If the Fed does reduce its benchmark rate next week, it would be the third cut of the year as it attempts to support a job market that has been slowing for months.
Thursday’s report from Labor also showed that the four-week average of claims, which evens out some of the week-to-week volatility, fell by 9,500 to 214,750.
The total number of Americans filing for jobless benefits for the previous week ending Nov. 22 dipped by 4,000 to 1.94 million, the government said.
Matt Ott, AP business writer
AP Economics Writer Christopher Rugaber contributed to this report.
As the rest of the world speeds ahead toward an electrified future, the U.S. is doubling down on gas-powered cars.
President Trump announced a proposal this week to slash stricter fuel economy standards put in place during the Biden administration. By reversing the standards, the White House further aligns itself with the oil and gas industry, with some automakers happily going along for the ride.
“We’re officially terminating Joe Biden’s ridiculously burdensome, horrible actually, CAFE standards that impose expensive restrictions,” Trump said, referencing the Corporate Average Fuel Economy rules. “And all sorts of problems all sorts of problems for automakers.”
The president was joined by Ford CEO Jim Farley, Stellantis CEO Antonio Filosa and a representative from General Motors for the announcement, which took place at the White House on Wednesday. Today is a victory for common sense and affordability, Farley said at the event. We believe that people should be able to make a choice, as you said, Mr. President, and we will invest more in affordable vehicles.
Regulations put in place during the Biden administration would require new cars sold in the U.S. to average more than 50 miles per gallon by 2031. That rule, designed to push automakers to reorient their business around EVs, will drop to 34.5 miles per gallon under Trumps proposal. The president also reiterated his plans to end a set of EPA rules that limit tailpipe pollution, a change that the oil and gas industry pushed for.
Fuel rules tend to shift between presidential administrations, with Democrats pushing for environmentally-minded standards and Republicans stripping away regulations. The White House characterized the changes, designed to slow the U.S. shift toward electric vehicles, as a cost-saving measure for consumers.
The Biden standards would have compelled widespread shifts to EVs that American consumers did not ask for, accompanied by significant cost-of-living increases, the administration wrote in a fact sheet on the changes.
In 2025, high car prices are one part of a puzzle for Americans trying to make ends meet. High interest rates, persistent inflation and Trumps own tariffs on imported cars and car parts have created a perfect storm of unaffordability for car buyers.
The high cost of driving
Cars are really expensive right now. The average price for a new vehicle inched above $50,000 for the first time in September, according to a report from Kelley Blue Book. That average rose by almost $2,000 compared to 2024. The average price of EVs, which cost more up front and save drivers cash in the long run, was $8,000 higher during the same time frame.
The $20,000-vehicle is now mostly extinct, and many price-conscious buyers are sidelined or cruising in the used-vehicle market, Cox Automotive Executive Analyst Erin Keating said in the report, which also noted the impact of cost pressure from tariffs. Today’s auto market is being driven by wealthier households who have access to capital, good loan rates and are propping up the higher end of the market.
While auto makers secured some relief from the presidents flurry of tariffs, car makers didnt make it through the year unscathed. In a mid-year earnings call, Ford estimated its tariff costs to total up to $2 billion for the year.
The fuel economy changes are just the Trump administrations latest effort to unravel signature climate-friendly policies from the Biden years. Trumps Big Beautiful Bill, passed earlier this year, stripped away Biden era tax credits that lowered the price tag of eligible EVs by as much as $7,500. The death of those tax credits prompted a major short term boost in EV sales this summer, as buyers rushed to make their purchases in time to secure more affordable electric cars before the end of September.
President Donald Trump plans to travel to Pennsylvania on Tuesday to highlight his efforts to reduce inflation even as fears mount about a worsening job market and amid signs that Americans are still feeling squeezed by high prices.
A White House official said Trump would be making the trip to discuss ending the inflation crisis that he says was inherited from his predecessor, Joe Biden. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the trip has not been formally announced. It was not immediately clear where in Pennsylvania Trump would be visiting.
Last month’s off-year elections showed a shift away from Republicans as public concerns about affordability persist. White House officials said afterward that Trump who has done relatively few events domestically would put a greater emphasis on talking directly to the public about his economic policies.
The president has said that any affordability worries are part of a Democratic hoax and that people simply need to hear his perspective to change their minds an approach also embraced by Biden, who in early 2024 went to the Pennsylvania borough of Emmaus to take credit for economic improvements after inflation spiked in 2022.
The trip hints at the dilemma faced by Trump. He wants to take credit for rewiring the U.S. economy with his large tariff hikes and extension of income tax cuts, but he also continues to blame Biden for the increase nationwide in inflation rates that occurred this year during his own presidency. Overall, inflation is tracking at 3% annually, up from 2.3% in April when Trump rolled out a sweeping set of import taxes.
We fixed inflation, and we fixed almost everything, Trump said at Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting. He called affordability a hoax that was started by the Democrats who caused the problem of pricing.
Trump won Pennsylvania narrowly last year with 50.4%, besting Democrat Kamala Harris by roughly 120,000 votes. The win was part of a broader sweep in battleground states that helped return him to the White House after his 2020 loss.
AP VoteCast, an extensive survey of voters in the 2024 election, found that 7 in 10 Pennsylvania voters were very concerned about the cost of food and groceries. Roughly half expressed the same degree of worry over health care costs and the price of gasoline.
While Trump can point to a decline in gasoline prices, hes now facing inflationary pressures on utilities and a massive increase in insurance premiums for people who get their health care through the Affordable Care Act.
Pennsylvanians who buy their own health insurance coverage are likely to see their costs increase on average by 21.5% because of the expiration of tax credits tied to the Affordable Care Act, the state said in October.
Pennsylvania has yet to see the boom that Trump promised would instantly happen with his return to the White House.
The state has largely preserved its Biden era job growth under Trump, but its unemployment rate has risen to 4% from 3.6% over the past 12 months, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. There has been an increase of roughly 24,000 people who say theyre unemployed.
Annual inflation in the Philadelphia area is 3.3%, roughly the same as last year.
The Philadelphia Federal Reserves Beige Book in November documented an economy in decline, saying that hiring has flattened, warehouse workers are getting fewer hours on the job, inflationary pressures are coming from tariffs and sales of existing homes are decreasing. Separately, the regional Fed branchs manufacturing survey last month showed that factory activity weakened.
The news outlet Axios first reported Trump’s plans to travel to Pennsylvania.
Josh Boak, Associated Press
