The holiday season is approaching quickly, bringing with it the biggest shopping event of the year: Black Friday, just 23 days away. Traditionally a day for hunting deals on big-ticket items like TVs and luxury appliances, this year’s shopping spree is shifting focus. Due to the heavy impact of inflation in 2025, a recent survey by Lightspeed shows that one in four consumers plan to use Black Friday primarily to purchase everyday essentials such as groceries, toiletries, and household basics.
“Black Friday remains crucial for retailers, but consumer behavior is changing,” said Dax Dasilva, founder and CEO of Lightspeed Commerce. “With the ongoing high cost of living, values like fairness, transparency, and empathy matter more than ever.”
Lightspeed surveyed 3,000 adults across the U.S. and Canada, finding that nearly half intend to split their spending between necessities and premium items.
Despite President Donald Trump’s claim at the UN General Assembly that inflation has been “defeated” and that grocery prices are down, evidence suggests otherwise. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell acknowledged in August that inflation remains somewhat elevated, though lower than pandemic peaks.
Experts warn grocery prices may continue to increase—and possibly double. Raymond Robertson, labor economist at Texas A&M, expects produce prices alone could rise between 50% and 100% by early next year, likening the coming surge to an unavoidable tsunami.
Walmart CEO Doug McMillon noted stressed customer behavior earlier this year, coinciding with consumer confidence hitting a 12-year low. He observed people running out of money before the month’s end and opting for smaller package sizes.
Perhaps most troubling for retailers is the deep skepticism consumers hold about Black Friday discounts. Lightspeed’s survey reveals 84% of shoppers believe retailers inflate prices before sales to make discounts appear larger, echoing recent allegations that Target and Walmart employees were pressured to remove price tags to facilitate tariff-driven price changes.
“Shoppers buy quickly and decide later, so retailers must steer that journey with transparency,” Dasilva added. “Clear communication about real discounts, product fit, and shipping details builds shopper confidence. In a strained economy, transparency is the best sales strategy, helping customers buy smarter and return less.”
Recent examples from the workforce highlight how younger generations, especially Gen Z, are reshaping expectations around work and personal boundaries, emphasizing transparency and emotional honesty. A notable incident involved a Gen Z employee requesting a 12-day leave to recover from heartbreak, which was openly shared and ultimately approved by a millennial CEO, Jasveer Singh .
Changing Attitudes Toward Work and Personal Life
Unlike previous generations, Gen Z distressingly integrates personal well-being directly into their professional narratives, advocating for authenticity and emotional transparency. Singh’s response exemplifies this shift, where personal issues are considered valid reasons for leave—highlighting an evolving attitude that values human experience over traditional workplace norms.
Impact on Workplace Culture
Research indicates that Gen Z prefers flexible, human-centered work environments where emotional wellbeing is prioritized . Their willingness to openly discuss mental health and personal challenges is increasingly seen as a positive trait, potentially fostering a more compassionate workplace culture .
Implications for Employers
Companies ignoring these changing expectations risk talent loss, as younger workers value flexibility and emotional understanding over traditional compensation. Singh stresses the importance of adapting workplace policies to accommodate these norms, suggesting that empathy and transparency will be key to retaining Gen Z talent.
Summary
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Gen Z advocates for honesty and transparency in the workplace, including candid discussions about mental health and personal issues.
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Flexible work policies are highly valued, often outweighing financial considerations.
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Employers are encouraged to adapt to these cultural shifts to avoid losing valuable talent.
This shift signals a move toward more authentic, emotionally intelligent workplaces, where being human is increasingly seen as an asset.
As U.S. corporate profits rise and the stock market hits new highs, investors are reaping the rewards. Yet beneath the surge, companies have cut nearly 1 million jobs this year — the most since 2020, when the pandemic slammed the economy.
The disconnect between soaring company earnings and mounting layoffs amounts to what Chen Zhao, chief global strategist at investment research firm Alpine Macro, calls a "jobless boom." Typically, layoffs accelerate when companies are struggling with declining profitability and need to pare costs.
"This is something that is completely different from a historical playbook," Zhao told CBS News. "It's kind of odd to see Amazon laying off 30,000 people even though the profit is doing really, really well."
At the heart of the issue, Zhao said, is the rapid adoption of artificial intelligence, which is boosting business productivity across multiple industries and the economy at large, while also suppressing demand for workers. Although that trend has initially taken root in the technology sector, it is spreading to other industries as businesses adopt AI as a way to boost productivity and lower costs, he noted.
"You have a labor demand that basically has come down to probably 0% in terms of growth, maybe even a mild contraction, even though the economy is doing fine — profits are doing great," he said. "We've never seen anything like that."
For much of 2025, the job market was described by economists as "no hire, no fire," meaning an environment where workers could count on job security even as hiring around the U.S. cooled. But conditions have changed, and the Federal Reserve cut its benchmark interest rate in both September and October, citing increasing risks to employment growth, and with Fed Chair Jerome Powell noting that policymakers are closely watching layoff announcements by big employers.
The Department of Labor's monthly employment report has been on hold since the government shutdown began on Oct. 1, which delayed September's labor market data and is likely to also postpone October's report. Still, economists are turning to other employment measures to assess the health of the labor market, such as data from payroll processor ADP.
By those metrics, job growth looks muted. ADP, which only tracks private-sector hiring, said Wednesday that private employers added 42,000 workers in October, a modest rebound after two months of subpar hiring.
"Employment is stagnating in the fall, according to data available during the shutdown," Bill Adams, chief economist for Comerica Bank, said in an email. "While private employment grew in October, overall employment was likely about flat in the month after accounting for federal layoffs, which aren't measured by ADP."
Why unemployment isn't spiking
The nation's unemployment rate has remained relatively low despite the shifting tides of slower hiring and more layoffs, experts have noted. The jobless rate stood at 4.3% in August, according to the most recent data available.
Unemployment has remained in check because the nation's labor pool is shrinking due to the retiring baby boom generation and lower immigration stemming from the Trump administration's tighter policies, Zhao said.
"You basically have a labor demand that is going nowhere, and labor supply going nowhere, too," he said. "So that creates a very odd equilibrium."
Not everyone thinks AI is driving the recent bout of layoffs. Instead, the job cuts are more likely due to businesses recalibrating their needs after the pandemic, when many employers expanded and may have overhired, said Art Pappas, the CEO of Bullhorn, a software company that works with recruitment and temporary agencies.
Companies feel more emboldened to cut workers now because it's easier to find new talent than during the pandemic, when the labor market was tighter, he said. Pappas also believes businesses that point to AI as a reason for layoffs are using it more as a buzzword.
"These companies announce layoffs and their stock goes up — it's a perverse incentive to announce layoffs," he noted.
But the change in the labor market is very real, with companies cutting back on hiring for entry-level jobs, Pappas said.
"People point to AI, and say, 'That's because AI is replacing entry-level jobs,'" he said. "I say, 'No, that's a sign companies aren't hiring, because companies do most of the hiring at the entry level'."