Journal Economics Reporter Chaodang (4:17)

Suggest. In recent months, the jobs market has cooled significantly. Companies aren't expanding their workforces because of rising inflation and tariff uncertainty. And then you have Trump's administration policies targeting immigrants. That's curbing the number of jobs job seekers. Economists generally describe the current environment as low fire, low hire, which basically means that companies aren't laying off workers in a huge, huge way, but they're also not willing to hire too many workers. And that's for several reasons. One of the reasons actually is executives believe that artificial intelligence may be able to handle more work, and that's leading to some announcements about white collar.

Luke Vargas (5:00)

Layoffs. And for more coverage on today's jobs data, head to WSJ.com in other markets, News Canada is giving the OK for mining companies Tech Resources and Anglo American to merge. The new company, called anglotech, would be one of the world's largest copper producers and could help to enhance Canada's processing of critical minerals. PayPal wants to form a bank. The digital payments company, which also owns Venmo, has applied to establish a Utah Chartered Industrial Loan company, enabling it to offer business loans and savings accounts and reduce its reliance on third parties. The application comes as payments companies crypto and buy now pay later Platforms have made moves to operate more like banks and big financial institutions. And Argentina's central bank will soon allow the peso to trade within expanded bands while still stopping short of letting it float freely like the US Dollar and other currencies. The move comes in response to investors who've demanded President Xavier Milei's correct, an overvalued currency. The central bank also said it planned to boost its foreign currency reserves. Both moves were welcomed by the imf, which has bailed out Argentina with tens of billions of dollars. Coming up, it's not just you. Christmas ads really did start early this year. We'll look at the fight to attract inflation weary shoppers after.

AWS Representative (6:26)

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Luke Vargas (6:56)

Innovation. We're not trying to spoil the holiday spirit here, but if you thought that the corporate sponsored Christmas cheer started a bit early this year, your intuition was right. Advertisers have been inundating TV screens with commercials despite many businesses trying to rein in costs to deal with President Trump's tariffs. For more, our producer Daniel Bok spoke to Journal advertising editor Suzanne.

Suzanne Vernica (7:27)

Vernica. So far it looks like advertisers have been much more aggressive this year, especially with TV advertising. Over the past nine weeks alone we've seen a 13% jump this year compared to a year ago, which is astounding given that most advertisers aren't even spending a lot on tv. And that's where they're pulling money away from on budgets to push to social media. And that's just a fraction of what's happening out there. Retailers alone spend about 4% more on digital ads just from November 1st to December 27th and that's up to about 5.8 billion. So you can just imagine how many ads people are getting bombarded with that have a holiday theme to them. The one other area that I'll tell you email protonmail just sent out a survey which is kind of have a staggering stat in it. 50 retailers that they looked at generated 42 billion emails in a 28 day period. So you could say it's a pretty aggressive advertising pace that we're in. This holiday season, consumers and retailers.

Daniel Bok (8:31)

Are dealing with both inflation and tariffs. How is that showing up so far and how money is being spent this.

Suzanne Vernica (8:36)

Year? Sure. Remember everybody's looking to get a piece of the holiday spending. So food manufacturers, retailers, clothing, electronics, they got an early read and realized that people were already wildly worried about inflation and the price of goods even before the tariffs hit. So what happened was they got a good signal early when lots of survey work was done and talking to consumers and they found out that consumers were actually going to start earlier looking for bargains. And they needed to figure out, as a consumer, how do I spread out the cost of my holiday shopping across a longer time period and therefore go earlier, look for the bargains and hopefully save some money? Despite tariffs, despite the fact that we think people are worried about spending, the estimates are showing that consumers are going to spend a trillion dollars this year during the holiday shopping season. And that's a record. So getting that signal then allowed a lot of these advertisers to get out there early. It's called the Christmas creep. You've seen it for years. We used to think that the starting bell was the day after Thanksgiving and it's Black Friday. But nowadays you're seeing holiday ads as early as.

Daniel Bok (9:49)

August. And who's spending that money? What retailers are we seeing that are spending.

Suzanne Vernica (9:54)

Big? Obviously the retailers, the big guys like the Amazons, the Walmarts and the targets, they're very aggressive in the market. Amazon actually has more minutes over the last nine weeks, I would say, than most people on TV with their holiday ads. There's a battle going on and retail tends to be where you see the most of.

Daniel Bok (10:15)

It. And how are people feeling about seeing all of these ads and seeing them a lot earlier this.

Suzanne Vernica (10:22)

Year? Obviously, consumers often like to say that they hate ads, right? There's times of the year when you really do hate it. Most people really can't stand the political season when those attack ads blanket every screen. But there are a few times of the year when they really don't mind. One obviously is Super Bowl. They love to watch super bowl ads. Holiday ads is another time. We enlisted morning consult to poll a thousand consumers to get a better read on this. And we found like 2/3 of respondents said they enjoyed holiday themed ads, either somewhat or a lot. Just only 9% said that they disliked them. Obviously, when things start hitting in August, that's when I think people get a little bit, oh, it's too early. And that's when you see some negative. So about 70% of baby boomers felt this year that the spots started way too early. I looked at some other survey data from another source, and one of the places where holiday ads do upset people, and I think in general, these are the types of ads that really annoy people. They're called retargeting ads. Those are those pesky ads that follow you across the Web when you buy something. Well, those ads people get upset about at Christmas because people often share laptops or their PCs at home. Or at work. And what happens, somebody in the household, you can get a spoiler and they find out that there's a surprise gift that your parents or your aunt or uncle has bought for you. So that's when retargeting ads really annoy.

Daniel Bok (11:46)

People. Suzanne Vernica is the Journal's advertising editor. Suzanne, thank.

Suzanne Vernica (11:51)

You. Thank you so much for having.

Luke Vargas (11:53)

Me. And that's it for what's news for this Tuesday morning. Today's show was produced by Hattie Moyer. Our supervising producer was Daniel Bach. And I'm Luke Vargas for the Wall Street.

Daniel Bok (12:03)

Journal. We will be back tonight with a new.

Luke Vargas (12:05)

Show. And until then, thanks for listening.

Business Roundtable Announcer (12:16)

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