Author: Silicon Bay Partners’ staff with assistance from ChatGPT
Photo: National Today

Walk down any shopping plaza in America right now and you’ll notice something unsettling: empty storefronts, dark windows, and “For Lease” signs multiplying like weeds.

No, it’s not your imagination. Stores and restaurants really are closing—and not just the struggling ones. Everyone from national chains to neighborhood staples is trimming the fat.

Across the United States and much of the world, restaurants and retail stores are closing at a faster pace than many consumers are used to seeing. While closures have always been part of the business cycle, the current wave is being driven by a combination of economic pressure, shifting consumer behavior, and structural changes in how people shop and dine. The result is a landscape where even familiar neighborhood businesses are struggling to stay open.

One of the biggest forces behind these closures is the rising cost of doing business. Inflation has driven up the price of ingredients, supplies, utilities, and insurance, while at the same time labor costs have increased due to wage competition and staffing shortages. Many restaurants, especially smaller independent ones, operate on thin margins, and even modest increases in costs can turn a profitable month into a loss.

Retail stores are facing a different but equally challenging set of pressures. The continued growth of online shopping has permanently changed consumer habits, reducing foot traffic in malls and shopping centers. At the same time, physical retailers are dealing with higher rent, increased security costs, and in some areas, rising levels of theft. These factors combine to make it difficult for brick-and-mortar locations to justify staying open, particularly when their online competitors have lower overhead.

Convenience store chains have not been immune to these pressures either. 7-Eleven, one of the most recognizable names in the industry, has announced closures of underperforming locations as part of ongoing efforts to streamline operations. While the chain continues to operate thousands of stores globally, it has also acknowledged that some locations are no longer financially viable due to changing demographics, shifts in commuter traffic, and increased operating expenses.

Another major factor is the lingering impact of the pandemic era, which accelerated both consumer expectations and business vulnerabilities. Many businesses took on debt to survive shutdowns, and now face higher interest rates that make repayment more difficult. At the same time, customers have become more selective, dining out less frequently or trading down to cheaper options, which further squeezes revenue.

Taken together, these pressures are creating a “perfect storm” for closures across both restaurants and retail stores. It is not one single issue, but rather the convergence of economic strain, evolving consumer preferences, and long-term structural changes in how commerce operates. Businesses that cannot adapt quickly—by reducing costs, improving efficiency, or shifting toward hybrid physical-and-digital models—are the ones most at risk of disappearing from local communities.

Source: MSN, Lauren Weber
Photo: ‘There’s a standard bell curve in statistics. It didn’t make sense that my failure rate was 100%,’ said Mobley.

U.S. job hunters submit millions of online applications every year. Often they get an automatic rejection or no response at all, never knowing if they got a fair shake from the algorithms that gatekeep today’s job market.

One worker, Derek Mobley, is trying to discover why.

Mobley, an IT professional in North Carolina, applied for more than 100 jobs during a stretch of unemployment from 2017 to 2019 and for a few years after. He was met with rejection or silence each time. Sometimes the rejection emails arrived in the middle of the night or within an hour of submitting his application.

Mobley, now 50 years old, noticed that many of the companies he applied to used an online recruiting platform created by software firm Workday. The platforms, called applicant tracking systems, help employers track and screen job candidates.

In 2023 Mobley sued Workday, one of the largest purveyors of recruiting software, for discrimination, claiming its algorithm screened him out, based on his age, race and disabilities. Mobley, a Black graduate of Morehouse College who suffers from anxiety and depression, said the math didn’t add up.

He says he applied only for jobs he believed he was qualified for. “There’s a standard bell curve in statistics. It didn’t make sense that my failure rate was 100%,” said Mobley, who has since gotten hired and twice promoted at Allstate.

His suit is now emerging as the most significant challenge yet to the software behind nearly every hiring decision these days. Last month—after several failed challenges by Workday—a federal judge in California said Mobley’s age-discrimination claim could proceed, for now, as a collective action. The ruling opens the door to millions of potential claims from job seekers over the age of 40.

While the judge has ruled that Workday didn’t intentionally discriminate against Mobley, she left open the door for him to prove that Workday’s technology still had the effect of penalizing him because of his age. She hasn’t addressed the race and disability claims.

Mobley still has a tough case to prove, and the suit may go through years of legal wrangling. Yet the case could force Workday to part the curtains on how its algorithm scores applications, a process that has remained a black box since job searches began moving online decades ago.

“Hiring intermediaries have pretty much been excused from regulation and they’ve escaped any legal scrutiny. I think this case will change that,” said Ifeoma Ajunwa, a professor at Emory University School of Law and author of “The Quantified Worker.”

Workday says Mobley’s claims have no merit. It said its software matches keywords on résumés with the job qualifications that its employer-customers load for each role, then scores applicants as a strong, good, fair or low match.

While employer clients can set up “knockout questions” that lead to automatic rejections—for example, asking if a person has legal authorization to work in the U.S. or is available for weekend shifts—the software is designed so employers make the final decisions on candidates who make it through the initial screen, Workday argued in court filings.

“There’s no evidence that the technology results in harm to protected groups,” the company said.

A rocky career path

Before his job search, Mobley’s career path hadn’t been smooth. He was laid off in the recession that followed the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and again after the housing meltdown in 2008. After that, he left finance and transitioned to what he viewed as a more recession-proof career in technology, earning an associate degree in network system administration.

Still, steady jobs were hard to come by. He spent a year as a contractor at IT firm HPE, hoping the stint would turn into a permanent position. Mobley said he was let go, and he later joined a lawsuit against HPE alleging age and race discrimination. The case was settled in 2020. HPE declined to comment.

That job loss led to two years of unemployment, starting in 2017. He applied to more than 100 jobs and found himself on Workday’s recruiting platform over and over.

He didn’t get a single interview, let alone a job.

Soon, Mobley felt he discerned a pattern. “It dawned on me that this must be some kind of server reviewing these applications and turning me down.”

He worried that hiring software screened him out because it picked up on his age and race through details on his résumé or that it detected his anxiety and depression through personality tests he took as part of some job applications.

The frustrations of the job search weighed on his emotional health, credit and retirement savings, he said. He stayed afloat by driving for Uber and working short-term jobs.

Mobley eventually did find a job, the old-fashioned way. In 2019, he said, a recruiter for Allstate called him. A phone screen led to an interview with a hiring manager and then an offer. He is now a catastrophe controller, managing the workflow of customers’ property and auto damage claims.

Mobley said he suspects Workday’s software flagged his profile, essentially blackballing him across its entire system, regardless of which company he applied to.

Workday disputes that idea, and HR technology experts are skeptical of the theory. Employers customize recruiting software with their own criteria, they say, creating closed systems that shouldn’t theoretically speak to each other.

But there is evidence that underlying scoring algorithms can shut out certain job seekers, said Kathleen Creel, a computer scientist at Northeastern University who has been following the Workday case. That might happen, she said, through mechanical errors such as misclassifying a previous job title, or by incorporating more complicated algorithmic mistakes that penalize members of a single group or people with certain combinations of characteristics.

Such scoring systems can disadvantage qualified workers, according to researchers at Harvard Business School, who have found that the systems effectively screen out millions of workers by scoring them low for all kinds of reasons, such as having gaps in their résumés or not matching every qualification listed on a lengthy job description. The researchers didn’t test for illegal discrimination, such as discrimination based on age, gender or race.

Since 2022, Workday has built a team focused on ensuring its products meet ethical artificial-intelligence standards. “Our customers want to know, can I trust these technologies? How were they developed?” Kelly Trindel, who leads the ethical AI team, said at a conference this month at New York University Law School.

Still, the company has fought some efforts to regulate automated hiring tools. In 2023, a New York City law went into effect requiring employers that use technology like chatbot interviewing tools and resume scanners to audit them annually for potential race and gender bias, and then publish the results on their websites. When the bill was proposed, Workday argued to loosen some of the rules.

If Mobley succeeds, software companies and their customers may be required to do more due diligence and disclosure to ensure they don’t enshrine bias. Employment lawyers say any finding of liability could open the door to job seekers also suing employers who use them.

“This isn’t a personal vendetta,” Mobley said. “I’m an honest law-abiding person trying to just get a job in an honest way.”

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/careersandeducation/millions

Source: Knowledge@Wharton, Angie Basiouny
Photo: Getty Images

More money can buy a bigger house or a better car, but it can’t buy a nicer boss, says Wharton’s Matt Killingsworth.

Whoever said money can’t buy happiness never saw heaps of research from economists and social scientists proving that it most certainly does. Wharton senior fellow Matthew Killingsworth adds to the pile with his latest paper, which takes the positive correlation a step further.

His study of nearly 30,000 employed adults in the U.S. found that people who make more money are indeed happier in their lives — just not while they are at work.

“When I break down the relationship between money and happiness, there’s a big situational difference,” Killingsworth said. “The more people earn, the happier they tend to be. But when they are actually at work, more money is not associated with greater happiness.”

Killingsworth has spent years measuring happiness through trackyourhappiness.org, a platform he created to gather scientific insights on the quality of human life. Participants are signaled at random times of day to report details of their experience, such as their location, activity, and level of happiness at that moment. The method, called experience sampling, is considered the gold standard for measuring the happiness people experience in daily life.

After collecting more than 1.8 million observations, Killingsworth found an unmistakable pattern. Outside of work, happiness rose steadily with income. But more money didn’t move the happiness meter while people were on the job. In fact, the higher the pay, the lower the happiness at work for most people. It’s ironic, Killingsworth noted, because higher earners tend to spend more hours at work, leaving less and less time to benefit from their larger incomes.

He offered two explanations for the results. The first is that it’s difficult to convert money into happiness at the office.

“Outside work, we can spend money on things that make our lives more enjoyable. We can go to a nice restaurant or buy a bigger TV or a better vacation. We can pay someone to mow the lawn or move our furniture,” he said. “But you can’t pay your boss to be nicer to you or buy your way out of drudgery tasks at work.”

The second explanation, which was also supported by the results, is what Killingsworth calls a net-zero effect: Higher paying jobs come with a range of pros and cons that cancel each other out when it comes to happiness at work. In other words, a larger income might provide some genuine benefits to happiness while working, yet higher income jobs might come with downsides that offset those very benefits. A related idea dates back to 18th century economist Adam Smith, who argued that less pleasant jobs need to pay a higher salary precisely to offset their unpleasantness.

Better pay may come with more autonomy and prestige, but those jobs may also tend to have more hours, responsibility, and stress.

“You get a net effect of approximately zero,” Killingsworth said.

What About the Highest Earners?

Although the study showed a flat to downward slope in the relationship between money and happiness at work for most people, there was one surprise. People who earn an annual income between $200,000 and $600,000 report the highest levels of happiness at work. They represent only the top 3% of earners in the study, and the jump doesn’t close the happiness gap with time spent outside of work. But it is a curious anomaly, Killingsworth said.

His results show the reason may lie in the significant amount of control that comes with a very high paying position. His theory is consistent with previous research that determined happiness keeps growing with income.

“The new hire doesn’t get to stay home with their kids when they need to, but the new boss might,” Killingsworth said. “There are a lot of ways that being at the top of the pecking order gives you a bit more of the control. It’s a perk that comes with the corner office.”

Household Income and Happiness

The study also found that nonpersonal income was positively related to happiness during both work and leisure time. To understand this, Killingsworth said, consider the total income in a household. Once total household income is held constant, making a smaller fraction of household income was associated with increased happiness at work, while earning a larger fraction of household income was associated with decreased happiness at work.

Killingsworth posits that the money a person does not earn themselves can provide the benefits of money without being bundled with the headaches of a higher paying job. Think of a higher-earning spouse whose salary alleviates the income burden for their lower-earning partner, or a parent whose income covers an adult child who works but lives at home.

“In other words, the more your spouse earns, the better your own work life tends to be,” he said.

Why Happiness at Work Matters

Killingsworth’s study does more than quantify feelings of happiness. He said the results convey useful information for those seeking more joy in their lives. He encouraged people to think about how money and happiness correlate for themselves and to consider a realignment if they are out of balance.

“A lot of people have a false idea, a silver-bullet theory of happiness. If I just have more money, everything will be better. Perhaps your life outside work will be a bit better, but your work likely won’t,” he said. “If you want to be happier at work, you have to look for other ways to improve it.”

There’s also a message for managers. Killingsworth said his study expands research that shows happier people perform better at work. If greater happiness at work produces higher performance, and higher pay doesn’t improve happiness while people are working, then you likely need to consider ways of boosting happiness at work beyond pay. He urged business leaders to explore ways they can improve their employees’ lives and, especially, their experience at the office.

One idea everyone might consider is striking the right balance between a higher income and longer work hours. “Earning more money appears to make Saturday happier but not Wednesday afternoon,” he said. “The more money people earn, the longer their hours tend to be. If you want to experience the benefits of a higher income, you need to have time to enjoy it.”

https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/more-money-makes-people-happier-but-not-at-work

Author: Randy Hucks with some assistance from ChatGPT
Photo: Ben Iwara on Unsplash

We’ve all had a disappointing meal—slow service, cold food, a wrong order. But every so often, a restaurant experience crosses a line from inconvenient to deeply unsettling. These are the moments that linger long after the check is paid—not because of what was on the plate, but because of what happened around it.

More Than Just Bad Food

A “bad” restaurant experience is rarely just about the food. In fact, many of the worst stories begin with meals that are perfectly fine. The real breakdown happens elsewhere: inattentive service, chaotic environments, or, in extreme cases, a complete failure to ensure customer safety. Restaurants are, at their core, public spaces where people expect a baseline level of comfort and security. When that expectation is shattered, the impact is immediate—and lasting.

An Easter Brunch Gone Wrong

Take what should have been a simple holiday gathering.

A group of friends gathered for Easter brunch at Don Ramon Restaurante Cubano & Social Club, a place well-loved by several in the party. Expectations were high—and initially, everything delivered. The food was vibrant, the service attentive, and the atmosphere exactly what you’d hope for on a celebratory afternoon.
Then, without warning, everything changed.

Seated behind the group was a man with a child who overheard a casual political remark expressing admiration for Gavin Newsom. What should have been an innocuous comment triggered an aggressive outburst. The man began shaking the booth, shouting accusations rooted in conspiracy theories reminiscent of Pizzagate, and escalating his behavior to the point of making a direct and chilling threat—that the group might not leave the restaurant alive.
In that moment, the experience stopped being about dining altogether.

To their credit, the waitstaff responded quickly when asked to move the group. But the larger issue remained: the disruptive and threatening patron was not removed, and management appeared to downplay the severity of the situation. What should have been an immediate intervention became an uncomfortable afterthought.
The result? A table full of shaken guests, a ruined holiday meal, and a lingering sense that something far more serious had been mishandled.

Where Restaurants Fail

This kind of experience highlights a critical truth: restaurants don’t just serve food—they manage environments. And when they fail at that, the consequences can escalate quickly.

Common breakdowns in truly bad restaurant experiences include:

Failure to Address Disruptive Behavior

Loud or rude guests are one thing. Threatening or aggressive behavior is another entirely. When management hesitates to act, it sends a message that customer safety is negotiable.

Lack of Situational Awareness

Staff may be trained to serve, but not always to assess risk. Recognizing when a situation is escalating—and intervening early—can prevent a bad moment from becoming a dangerous one.

Minimizing Serious Incidents

Brushing off a serious complaint, especially one involving threats, erodes trust instantly. Guests need to feel heard and protected, not dismissed.

Inconsistent Accountability

Moving affected diners is a temporary fix. Addressing the source of the problem is the real solution—and too often, it’s avoided.

The Lasting Impact

The irony of these situations is that the restaurant can do many things right and still fail completely. In this case, the food and service were strong—but they became irrelevant the moment safety was compromised.

A bad meal is forgettable. A threatening experience is not.

Restaurants run in a competitive space where reputation matters. In the age of instant reviews and viral stories, one mishandled incident can outweigh dozens of positive ones. More importantly, it can deter customers who simply want to enjoy a meal without fear or disruption.

Raising the Standard

For diners, the lesson is to trust your instincts—if something feels off, speak up, relocate, or leave. No meal is worth personal safety.

For restaurant owners and managers, the takeaway is even clearer: hospitality goes beyond food and service. It includes vigilance, accountability, and the willingness to act decisively when situations escalate.

Because at the end of the day, no one walks into a restaurant expecting perfection—but they do expect to walk out feeling safe.

Source: Creative Bloq, Natalie Fear
Photo: Getty Images

Last Sunday, the greatest of tragedies occurred as 12 tonnes worth of KitKat products were stolen in Europe. Fans were distraught. Would this mark the great KitKat deficit that the scriptures spoke of? It was all-out societal chaos as sweet treat lovers wondered which iconic brands would be targeted next.

Thankfully, KitKat swooped in to address the heist, confirming that the robbery wouldn’t affect KitKat stock. As we all breathed a sigh of relief, attention soon turned to justice. Who were these thieves, and how would they be stopped? Luckily, KitKat had an ingenious solution – enter the Stolen KitKat Tracker.

Released on 1 April, the new tracking tool understandably had some fans raising eyebrows, leading the brand to clarify: “This is not a stunt, or an April Fool’s Joke. Someone really stole 12 tonnes of KitKats. And we really want to know where they’ve gone.”

The simple tracker requires you to enter your KitKat’s batch code, which will determine whether yours was among the stolen 413,793. Hopefully, it comes up clean, and you can revel in the ethical consumption of your chocolate treat, but for those with a theived KitKats, instructions will be given on how to help the brand on its search for the culprits.

While the circumstances are less than ideal, KitKat’s humorous approach to its misfortune has been a golden marketing opportunity. From its candid statements to its interactive search tool, the brand’s response to the drama has become a collective, real-world detective story that’s got the internet on its side.

Natalie Fear, Staff Writer

Natalie Fear is Creative Bloq’s staff writer. With an eye for trending topics and a passion for internet culture, she brings you the latest in art and design news. Natalie also runs Creative Bloq’s 5 Questions series, spotlighting diverse talent across the creative industries. Outside of work, she loves all things literature and music (although she’s partial to a spot of TikTok brain rot).

Source: MSN, Ariel Zilber
Photo: The NYC flagship includes a coffee bar serving drinks from Buddies Coffee Roasters alongside interactive exhibits tied to skate culture and local artists. (META)

Meta announced it is signing a 10-year lease with Vornado Realty Trust to turn its Meta Lab location in Midtown Manhattan into a permanent flagship.

The company said Wednesday that the 697 Fifth Ave. store, which opened as a pop-up in November, will now serve as a permanent showcase for its lineup of AI glasses and virtual reality products.

Meta Lab is designed as a hands-on retail space where visitors can try the latest AI glasses offerings, immerse themselves in virtual worlds with Meta Quest, and explore other Reality Labs hardware.

“We’re proud to make a long-term commitment to Fifth Avenue, the heart of US retail,” Meta exec Matt Jacobson said in a statement.

Bob Phibbs, CEO of retail consulting firm The Retail Doctor, voiced skepticism of the undertaking.

“Sunglass Hut is selling more Ray-Ban Metas before noon on a Tuesday than this store will sell all week,” he said. “Meta knows that. This location is a press release with a lease.”

The location includes an archival wall and timeline developed with Zoo York, a mural and artwork from Zered Bassett’s “Paper Skaters” series, gear and ephemera from Rookie Skateboards and an interactive gallery from Evan Mock.

The store also features a coffee bar serving beverages from Buddies Coffee Roasters.

Meta said each Meta Lab is shaped by its neighborhood and will continue to evolve over time, with the New York flagship expected to highlight elements of culture in the city and beyond.

The Manhattan store builds on a broader Meta Lab expansion that includes locations in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Honolulu and Burlingame, Calif.

Meta has said demand for in-person demos has been strong, particularly for products such as Meta Ray-Ban Display and the Meta Neural Band.

Meta’s footprint in New York City remains sizable but has been streamlined in recent years, with roughly 5,000 employees now concentrated across a handful of major Manhattan office hubs.

The company’s largest Big Apple presence is anchored at 50 Hudson Yards, a roughly 1.5 million-square-foot lease signed in 2019 that serves as its primary New York base, alongside major offices at the Farley Building on Ninth Avenue and 770 Broadway near Union Square.

After a wave of layoffs and cost-cutting, Meta has scaled back on space — including giving up offices at other Hudson Yards buildings — and consolidated operations into its core sites.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/meta-locks-in-fifth-avenue-flagship-retail-store-with-10-year-lease

Source: MSN, Emily Davies, Meryl Kornfield
Photo: © Roberto Schmidt/AFP/Getty Images

A year after Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency allies purged hundreds of thousands of federal employees, the Trump administration is ramping up hiring — a reversal that reflects a quiet retreat from one of the president’s defining early priorities and marks a new phase in efforts to reshape the bureaucracy in his image.

“We probably have some skills that we now need to hire back, quite frankly,” Scott Kupor, the head of the Office of Personnel Management, said in an interview with The Washington Post. “There’s no question anytime you do restructurings … sometimes you over-restructure, sometimes you under-restructure.”

The hiring push is unfolding under new rules designed to give the White House greater influence over the government’s 2 million-person civilian workforce. The administration has lifted restrictions imposed during last year’s reductions and created job classifications that make it easier to hire employees aligned with the president’s priorities — and fire those who aren’t. Kupor, who was sworn in last July, said the administration hopes to rebuild in part by rebranding the government as a launchpad for college graduates and early-career professionals and by focusing on recruitment for health care, program management and technology roles.

In recent months, the administration has moved to centralize hiring decisions, expand the role of political appointees in recruitment and roll back diversity initiatives adopted under previous administrations. Together, the shifts amount to changes supporters say will make government more responsive to elected leadership. But critics warn they could erode long-standing protections meant to keep the civil service nonpartisan.

“The president has certain priorities in the administration, and when we decide to actually exercise and do those priorities, people may call that political,” Kupor said. “But to me, that’s the way the process was designed.”

Even with the renewed hiring, officials expect the federal government to remain far smaller than when Trump took office and unleashed DOGE, a department that deleted entire agencies, eliminated offices devoted to civil rights and diversity, and imposed a hiring freeze for most of the calendar year. At the height of DOGE’s power, Trump and his senior staff said the cuts would slim a bloated, corrupt bureaucracy and promised to expose waste and fraud at a scale that would meaningfully reduce the national deficit. No large-scale evidence publicly emerged, and the government spent more in 2025 than it had the previous year. Musk later split with the president over his signature tax and domestic policy bill and DOGE quietly dissolved, its members dispersing inside and outside government.

“President Trump was given a clear mandate to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse from the federal government. In just a year, he has made significant progress in making the federal government more efficient to better serve the American taxpayer,” Davis Ingle, a White House spokesman, said in response to questions about the president’s plans for rebuilding parts of the federal workforce and why Trump has stopped talking about DOGE.

The Trump administration fired, laid off or accepted buyouts from more than 387,000 employees since the president’s inauguration. During that same period, the administration hired roughly 123,000 workers, according to data from the Office of Personnel Management.

A year later, current and former officials warn of vacancies that have created operational blind spots.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, responsible for defending domestic infrastructure against cyberattacks, lost nearly 40 percent of its workforce last year — a reduction in capacity as cyberthreats from nation-states remain a concern.

“With the loss of hundreds of experts, CISA’s ability to detect threats from the most significant adversary, China, as well as others like Russia and Iran, is severely diminished, and now is not the time for the U.S. to let down its guard,” said a former agency official, who, like others in this piece, spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid retribution.

CISA did not respond to a request for comment about the shortages.

One of the hardest-hit agencies during last year’s cuts, the U.S. Agency for International Development, is hiring again for contractors to wind down aid programs but with an exception: Those who were pushed out are not welcome back. Agency leaders are seeking to preclude a contractor from hiring anyone who used to work there “to avoid the risk of impaired objectivity — a conflict of interest that occurs when former personnel are tasked with auditing, closing, or settling actions they may have previously initiated or overseen,” according to an internal memo obtained by The Post.

Other agencies are struggling to stabilize basic services or recruit enough applicants to fill vacancies.

At the Department of Veterans Affairs, job applications for all positions including nurses are down 50 percent so far in fiscal year 2026 compared with the previous year, according to the agency’s workforce dashboard. At the Social Security Administration, employees in IT, policy and other offices were reassigned to answer phones and handle customer inquiries as call volumes surged.

Some agency heads have said they can manage with a leaner staff. Internal Revenue Service CEO Frank Bisignano told the House Ways and Means Committee on Wednesday that he believes the agency is sufficiently staffed. “I feel good about the number of employees I have right now,” he said.

But the agency’s inspector general reported that the IRS had onboarded only 50 of the roughly 2,200 employees it expected to hire to help process tax returns for the 2026 filing season — about 2 percent of its target as of the end of last year.

Kupor said the administration remains committed to building a leaner, more effective government, noting that just 7 percent of the federal workforce is under 30 — a demographic imbalance he said he intends to address.

With White House backing, he launched “Tech Force,” a two-year program partnering with companies including OpenAI and Meta to deploy teams of software engineers and data analysts across federal agencies. Participants will have streamlined pathways to private-sector roles after completing the program.

“My goal is to demonstrate that not only can you do great public service here if you’re a part of Tech Force, but you will learn and develop skills that are going to be translatable no matter what industry you decide to go into,” Kupor said.

Senior White House officials have been personally involved in shaping the rebuild. Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller has been active in hiring discussions, according to two people familiar with the process. He has emphasized recruiting young staffers and ensuring that new hires are aligned with Trump’s agenda.

Some job postings now reflect that ideological framing. An immigration services officer position titled “Homeland Defender” urges applicants to be ready to “protect your homeland and defend your culture.” Prospective hires must explain how they would advance Trump’s executive orders and policy priorities.

Kupor said there are more “opportunities to reshape” agencies this year, suggesting additional staff reductions could come in some departments, though he declined to specify which ones. He also declined to release agency hiring plans submitted to OPM under Trump’s executive order, calling them “predecisional.”

At Veterans Affairs, Secretary Douglas A. Collins has told lawmakers he wants to hire more health care workers but faces stiff competition in a tight labor market. He has asked Congress to lift salary caps that he said make it difficult to recruit specialists.

“When you have starting salaries of $600,000 for anesthesiologists in the community and I can’t pay that, I don’t blame them going somewhere else,” Collins said at a recent hearing.

But critics have said that the agency stifled recruitment when leaders threatened mass layoffs last year and eliminated openings at hospitals.

VA spokesman Pete Kasperowicz said the agency is “always looking to hire people who are dedicated to providing the best possible care and service to Veterans, families, caregivers and survivors.”

At the Social Security Administration, officials are moving forward with plans to hire at least 700 customer service representatives this year, according to two people familiar with internal discussions. The agency aims to increase its workforce by roughly 1,000 employees after losing about 7,000 last year.

“We are currently hiring as part of the agency’s commitment to providing better, faster service to the public, whether it’s online, on the phone, or in-person,” SSA spokesman Barton Mackey said in a statement.

Meanwhile, various lawsuits about last year’s dismissals are also still making their way through the courts, resulting in continued uncertainty for thousands of federal employees and triggering new staff reduction tactics from agency heads.

The U.S. Agency for Global Media, which runs Voice of America, offered employees a “deferred resignation program.”

The deadline was Monday, but a U.S. District Court judge ruled Saturday that earlier efforts to lay off the majority of the staff were invalid.

The future of the federal workforce, and whether DOGE is viewed as a success or a misstep, is playing out on the campaign trail, with Democrats working to capitalize on the fallout.

Michael Duffin, a former State Department official running for Congress in Virginia, said Democrats should be loud about the consequences of losing expertise in government. He has called to reinstate federal workers, warning that without subject-matter experts and adequate staff, the government cannot deliver on its core responsibilities.

“It’s about services,” Duffin said. “It’s about this war with Iran, with the lack of diplomacy, with the lack of expertise, it could spiral out and then all of a sudden gas at the pump doubles. I think it’s about the bottom line. How does it impact their lives?”

Ellen Nakashima and Clara Ence Morse contributed to this report.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/after-slashing-federal-jobs-trump-administration-ramps-up-hiring

Source: ModernRetail, Mitchell Parton
Photo: Courtesy of Ikea

IKEA has reimagined how it shows up to customers, thinking outside of the big, blue box that has long defined its image in the U.S.

On Feb. 17, IKEA U.S. announced plans to open four new U.S. stores in Chicago, Tulsa, Fort Collins and Los Angeles, marking 10 new stores in 2026. This includes its first Los Angeles city-center store and the first store in Oklahoma. The company reported $5.3 billion in total sales, including $1.9 billion in e-commerce sales for fiscal year 2025, which ended in August, in IKEA U.S.’s annual summary released Feb. 17.

Some of the new locations are among the first small-format stores that bring some elements of the larger IKEA big-box stores to a smaller footprint. It’s a middle ground between the larger boxes and the smaller concepts the company has experimented with in the past, like Plan & Order points and The Planning Studio. The company continues to operate Plan & Order points as a small-format store where customers can order products and plan areas like kitchens. Additionally, IKEA late last year launched a partnership with Best Buy to open Plan & Order Points within Best Buy stores. There, customers can work with IKEA employees to plan and design their spaces, order IKEA products and look at room displays.

The Planning Studio, meanwhile, was a previous concept where customers would similarly plan and order products. Last fiscal year, IKEA also opened two new small-format stores in Arcadia, California and San Marcos, Texas.

As an example of what customers may find in the new small-format stores, the San Marcos store opened with more than 2,500 products on display, 2,000 items available for immediate purchase and a small range of food items. This is just a slice of IKEA’s full range of 10,000 products, but still a significant number of products to purchase.

The company also said its IKEA Family rewards program reached 25 million members in fiscal 2025, up 17% year over year.

Modern Retail spoke with Rob Olson, interim CEO of IKEA U.S., about how the retailer embraced its new small-format strategy last year and what to expect from the company moving forward. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

What was IKEA’s biggest accomplishment last year?

“We’ve worked heavily on bringing IKEA closer, with pickup points [at third-party locations like universities], where if you order something online, you can come grab it easier than normal services. We have also worked on Plan and Order Points, where you can plan a kitchen, plan a wardrobe and sit down more one-on-one, as well as continuing to open stores.

We’re now focusing on smaller-format stores so that we can really come in closer to many Americans. For example, in Dallas, we’ll soon open an additional location in University Park, as well as in Rockwall, to supplement the larger stores we have in Grand Prairie and what we have in Frisco, along with some other pickup points and plan-and-order point solutions.

We’ve focused heavily on creating that accessibility and getting closer to the consumer, but also really enhancing our digital aspects, if you’re on the web. And, we’re really improving and working with how we show visibility and availability of the product, focusing on our services to make sure we can meet the customer in a good way. That is whether you’re ordering online, doing home delivery or adding on installation and assembly.

On the sustainability side, historically, we have done a lot with wind farms, with solar panels. We continue those journeys, but have dove into the service side. And we’re looking at how we supplement the EV for the final mile to get the product to the consumer’s house.

We really dug into the IKEA Family program and enhanced the package we have there. Fifty-six percent of our sales are now through the Family program. And we added a program where you earn points and rewards to use at a later date.

We [Modern Retail] have written a lot about the different small-format stores IKEA has played around with over the years. How has that evolved? How did you land on what you’re doing now with these different store formats and ordering locations?

“The big-box store has been our way forward for many, many years. But as we’ve studied the consumer and seen what they’re looking for, they are looking for that convenience and accessibility, and those big units we can’t bring into the smaller communities, and we can’t penetrate heavily into the bigger communities

In our new, smaller stores, we take a focus on our key articles — the key products that we know the consumer wants — while still giving the inspiration of room settings and showing the solutions within the location. But we’re also layering in QR codes and the ability to take you to the web to see where you might find a broader solution.

And then, we have the accessibility, where we have the more sought-after items there for takeaway immediately, but you can also order anything and pick it up at that location. It’s trying to balance that instant gratification of the top articles the consumer wants, and still having the availability of the entire range for the customer, as well, where they can order and collect on site.

That’s more on the store side. At the Plan and Order Points, you can still order and pick up everything in these locations, so you still have full accessibility. But those are really about having that opportunity to sit down one-on-one with the co-worker and plan your kitchen, as an example.

What are you most looking forward to this year?

“It goes to that convenience and accessibility, again. It is continuing to expand the smaller-footprint locations into markets that, historically, we wouldn’t have been able to.

On Feb. 25, we’re going to open a location in Huntsville, Alabama, which is an amazing opportunity. We’ve been looking at Alabama for a while. The big locations like we normally had, we wouldn’t have been able to come into the market and succeed, where now we can come in with these smaller solutions.

That’s going to help us. Same thing in the Chicagoland area — we’re going to open up in Gurnee Mills, which is right on the border of Wisconsin. That opportunity we wouldn’t have had beyond the Schaumburg and Bolingbrook stores we have today.

The normal, large stores that we open are 300,000-350,000 square feet. So when you go in, the cost of establishment, the cost of operations on a unit that big is a whole different scale than going in with a store that’s closer to 50,000 square feet. You also have an opportunity to be closer to the customer in those smaller locations and to connect and engage with the community in a good way, and to still have access to the full product selection.

On the digital side, we continue to partner to see how we can really improve the personalization and the connection to the customer, so they feel that connection with us in a stronger way, regardless of whether they decide to come into a store, use the app or use the web. We’re working on analytics and digital enhancements to really improve the experience for the customer, from that aspect.”

How is your partnership with Best Buy going? Would you expand it to more locations or other retailers?

“We just opened the first Best Buy locations in early November, so it’s just been a few months. It’s probably too early to say how well it is or isn’t going, but we’re really pleased with what we’ve seen so far, and Best Buy seems to be, as well. We’d let them speak to that, but we’ve really enjoyed the relationship together.

Customers are really enjoying the opportunity to come in so close to where they’re at, and also merge their shopping experience, where you can sit down and plan a kitchen with us, and then you can work with Best Buy to accessorize it from the electronics aspect.

We’ve just added order collection at all 10 locations that we’ve done. I think we’re going to see the customers be even more satisfied now that they have the opportunity both to plan and also to collect their orders at Best Buy. So, so far, so good. We’re quite optimistic about where it’s headed. We are taking the time to evaluate these first 10 together with Best Buy before we determine what the next steps are.”

https://www.modernretail.co/operations/how-ikea-got-closer-to-its-shoppers-with-new-small-format-stores-best-buy-partnership

Source: Fast Company, Hunter Schwarz
Photo: Spangler Candy Company

Thank the Sweethearts index.

Valentine’s Day may seem romantic, but to candy companies, it’s serious business. Our annual ode to St. Valentine is one of the most important and competitive days on candy company calendars, and every year, confectioners roll out special-edition heart-shaped chocolate bars and other product innovations to capture consumers’ dollars (nevermind hearts).

When it comes to speaking to modern courtship, though, one candy brand has a unique leg up on the competition—and it’s built into the candy itself. Sweethearts were designed to be updated.

The pastel-colored conversation hearts stay relevant year over year because their embossed messages can be easily and quickly updated, transforming a generic shape into a crunchy candy canvas that’s adaptable to the moment. That makes the face of these tiny hearts some of the most valuable real estate in the Valentine’s Day candy landscape, because the right quip could convert a passerby into a sale. And this year, their newest messages are all about the struggles of dating in today’s economy.

Sweethearts’s latest sayings have been dubbed “Love in This Economy” after an online survey that the brand’s owner, the family-owned, Ohio-based Spangler Candy Company, conducted last December of 2,000 Gen Z and millennials who are single, casually dating, or in a serious relationship, making an edible sort of consumer sentiment index.

The candy company’s survey found 80% of respondents said the economy was impacting their Valentine’s Day plans. Their new two-line messages, then—”Split Rent,” “Share Logn,” “Car Poll,” “Buy N Bulk,” and “Cook For 2″—reflect the realities of dating and courtship during a time of high prices, persistent inflation, and low consumer confidence.

But just because the company has introduced new messages doesn’t mean it’s abandoned more evergreen ones. “We’re careful about evolving the sayings because Sweethearts must be both nostalgic and new,” Spangler Candy Company vice president of marketing Evan Brock tells Fast Company.

Classic messages like “Marry Me,” “Cutie Pie,” and “Ooo La La” are included every year, while new sayings reflect how people express affection and connection today, she says. “Our role is to strike a balance between enduring tradition and modern expression.”

Some of the original messages stamped into the first Sweethearts from 1902 were “Be Mine,” “Be True,” and “Kiss Me,” according to Smithsonian Magazine. But over the years, the candy has been updated with the times. “Fax Me” turned into “Text Me,” and in 2024, the candies were purposefully misprinted to symbolize the confusion and mixed messages of situationships.

Unlike M&Ms or Skittles, which use the surface of their candy shells to display their visual brands, Sweethearts has more flexibility to adapt to culture. But even so, it’s thoughtful about adding new sayings. Embossing the hearts is a highly coordinated process that involves engraving new phrases onto custom-made printing plates that will stamp the words onto each individual candy.

There’s no understating how important Valentine’s Day is for candy sales. Along with Easter, Halloween, and the winter holiday season, the four holidays generate a whopping 62% of annual sales for the $54 billion confectionery industry, according to the National Confectioners Association.

For Sweethearts, it’s practically the whole ballgame, since no one’s buying conversation hearts for Christmas. By tapping into current events and changing trends in courtship, the more-than-a-century-old brand is resonating with Valentine’s Day now.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Hunter Schwarz is a Fast Company contributor who covers the intersection of design and advertising, branding, business, civics, fashion, fonts, packaging, politics, sports, and technology.. Hunter is the author of Yello, a newsletter about political persuasion.

https://www.fastcompany.com/91489503/sweethearts-has-the-most-valuable-real-estate-in-all-valentines-day-candy

Source: ModernRetail, Mitchell Parton
Photo: Courtesy of Michaels

The closure of Party City in late 2024 left a huge gap in the parties and events space. Executives at Michaels saw an opportunity.

“There was nobody else in North America that did exactly what Party City did, and we felt like we had the opportunity and the position to really meet that need,” Nicholas Bertram, president and COO at Michaels, told Modern Retail in a new interview.

Last year, Michaels added “The Party Shop” to its stores with a dedicated “Balloon Bar” that blows up latex and foil balloons in stores. The company added 700 new products, such as balloon arch kits, tableware and themed paper products to its selection. Previously, the company had packaged balloons, but the inflation service was new to many stores.

This is on top of the company’s simultaneous effort to also replace Joann’s space in the fabrics market. The company’s new CEO David Boone told Modern Retail last year that the focus of Michaels since he joined has been to seize on opportunities in the market such as party, celebrations, knit-and-sew and balloons.

“Of all the things that I’ve done in my career, moving at this pace is not something that I can say I’ve experienced before,” Bertram said. “Once we really wanted to establish ourselves as the destination for celebrating, that required going all in on balloon and balloon inflation.”

Bertram added that, with around 1,300 locations, Michaels has more stores than Party City’s 700. “Our footprint allowed us to be in even more communities,” he said. “We just needed both the product and also the expertise in order to bring it to life.”

The balloon business is more complicated than it may seem, Bertram said. He added that the company had to create an entire helium network that didn’t exist in the past, negotiating and diversifying its helium supply with various wells, providers and brokers to avoid helium shortages. The company also had to train, teach, purchase equipment and change layouts to make way for the new party shop.

Michaels also added dedicated hours to staff the balloon bar, with the amount depending on volume. Bertram said it even had overnight shifts for New Year’s Eve and plans to do the same for graduation in some markets.

The company just launched time-based balloon reservations, adding to the balloon pickup and delivery services it rolled out last year. “We’re actually very intentionally and methodically making sure that the experience is a good one for customers, however they want to engage with us,” Bertram said.

The ability to schedule pickup times for inflated balloons, Bertram said, has unlocked new commercial business for the company, including with other retailers and restaurants. Some of the orders will be for hundreds, if not thousands, of balloons.

Bertram said the company already sees the need for more space in the stores to service the balloon business, or a larger balloon bar.

Walter Holbrook, a retail consultant and former Kmart executive, imagines Target, Walmart and Dollar Tree to be its main competitors for party supplies. Target added pre-filled balloons late last year.

Still, he said the retailer could better use its space to expand the party selection. At Holbrook’s local Michaelsstore in Florida, he added, a large portion of the store remains dedicated to discounted Christmas merchandise.

“If I were them, I would have moved The Party Shop up front to take advantage of all of the Christmas and New Year’s parties that would be taking place in the last part of December. I thought they missed an opportunity there; they had a lot of empty counters,” Holbrook said.

“Michaels has the opportunity here, if they play it right, to be the dominant focus for this party merchandise and use their floor space to drive that marketing and promotional piece,” he added.

https://www.modernretail.co/operations/how-michaels-moved-quickly-after-the-closure-of-party-city-to-become-a-balloon-and-party-giant