Hey friends - I hope you are taking a break for the holidays. We are. This will be the last Scoops Spotlight for the year. We’ll be back on January 9th.

Thanks for another amazing year of reading our scoops. We have so much cool stuff on the way, and it’s going to be a big 2026. Make your resolutions and think positive thoughts. Wishing you all the love and happiness!

🌎 The Big Picture

The two big stories of the week were the updates on the job market and prices. The shutdown caused a pretty massive disruption to the data collection, and October reports weren’t even published, so this data has to be taken with a grain of salt. But, the good news is that it wasn’t too bad of news.

Job market:

There’s not a lot of hiring going on, and layoffs are rising. The Labor Department reported that employers added 64,000 new jobs in November after shedding 105,000 in October. Hiring has been essentially frozen since April, with almost no growth in overall employment.

Healthcare is the one industry where there continues to be steady hiring. Construction jobs also drove November’s new hires, but government and transportation continued to lose jobs. The federal government lost another 6,000 jobs on top of the 162,000 lost in October as deferred resignation plans began to show up in the data.

While hiring has stalled, employers are still mostly hanging onto their workers. The unemployment rate rose to 4.6%, the highest level since 2021, but about average for the past decade.

Wages kept climbing but not as quickly, with average hourly earnings up 0.1% over the past month and 3.5% over the year. While recent business surveys have pointed to a potential turnaround in sentiment that could encourage more hiring, workers should expect longer search times for new jobs and consider building their emergency savings in preparation for layoffs. Businesses have an advantage in the hiring market right now.

Cost of living:

Prices are still climbing, but not as quickly as before. The Labor Department reported that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose 2.7% over the year through November, less than economists expected and closer to the annual price inflation policymakers consider normal. This was the slowest annual increase in the cost of living since early 2021.

Unfortunately, due to data collection issues tied to the government shutdown, the department couldn’t release month-to-month inflation rates for November or October, so it’s hard to see exactly what prices have changed this fall and why. Gas prices, one of the few with monthly data, soared 3% in November after falling 2.1% in October. Over the past year, the main things driving up the cost of living have rent and housing costs, up 3%, and food prices, up 2.6%.

Several grocery items have gotten a lot more expensive: beef prices have surged almost 16% and coffee 19%, though eggs got 13% cheaper. Household electricity bills are up 6.9%.

Tariffs don’t seem to have had a significant impact on prices so far, but many retailers have reported significant discounting ahead of the holiday season. While this first post-shutdown inflation report is a welcome surprise, future readings will be crucial to determine if this is just a holiday discount blip or the start of a period of more stable prices that will allow policymakers to bring down borrowing costs.

🏭 The Companies Everyone’s Talking About

❔ The Big Question of the Week

Scoops app users: We have taken the beta app offline for a short period for some major updates. Can’t wait to show you all what we’ve been working on! Reach out if you have any questions.

We’re going to switch up the content in this spotlight for a bit to make sure you all have the info you need to master your week.