Though Spirit Halloweens come and go like specters every October, the people who work there are very real. And there are more and more of them looking for work each year, even if there may not be enough jobs to go around.

To kick off spooky season, we’ve got a few more frights for you: video surveillance at the border, permanent car loans, and of course, inflation. 

Scariest of all: It’s the final day of our fall fundraiser and we’re still short of our goal. 😱 A gift of any amount gets us one step closer, and lets us keep stories like these free to read (and listen to). Donate before midnight! Or risk turning into a pumpkin! 🎃 — Rachel Kahn, temp newsletter writer

This week’s data deluge from the labor market has turned in a solid (though not spectacular) report card thus far: Hires, quits, and layoffs haven’t changed much, and unemployment claims ticked down.

However, seasonal work is struggling to keep up. According to new data out today from Challenger, Gray & Christmas, announcements of seasonal hiring plans are muted so far this year — down 23% from this time last year.

Although it may seem early to think about holiday hiring, Cory Stahle, a senior economist with the Indeed Hiring Lab, said it’s really not.

“We do start seeing employers ramping up seasonal hiring in August and in September,” Stahle said.

He said that according to postings on Indeed, August was a strong month for seasonal jobs.

“But what's interesting is we moved into September, and it kind of came down more in line with what we saw in 2025,” he said.

Yet he noted that the number of people who are looking for seasonal work is rising.

“We're seeing that very clearly over the last two or three years,” he said, “the number of job seekers looking for these types of jobs have continued to grow, but the job postings, at best, have remained within a range around the previous year.”

It’s still early to know how this holiday season will go. But what could this mean for the rest of the labor market as we head into the year’s busiest shopping season? David Swartz, a senior equity analyst at Morningstar, said that there are some early indications that hiring in retail might be slower as well.

Before writing her new novel American Hagwon, Min Jin Lee conducted hundreds of interviews with Koreans around the world. She found that overwhelmingly, families were concerned with education. But is higher education still the best way for parents to ensure a financially stable future for their children?

On the latest episode of This is Uncomfortable, Reema Khrais speaks with Lee about class, family, and higher education.

The 0.1% now holds about 15% of the total wealth in the U.S., according to new data from the Federal Reserve – that’s roughly 137,000 households that together hold around $28 trillion. 

Income inequality is nothing new (avid listeners may have heard us mention a little thing called the K-shaped economy), but increasingly, there’s not just a widening chasm between the wealthy and average Americans, but between the rich and the very, very rich: The ultrawealthy gained $14.5 trillion between 2019 and today, and the rest of the top 10% gained $38.2 trillion in that same period – but split across nearly a hundred times as many households. 

Most of the gains, around $10 trillion, came from the stock market and mutual funds. (Keep in mind that the bottom 50% of Americans have a total wealth of only $4 trillion – less than half of what the 0.1% made just from stocks since 2019.)

Just something to think about next time you hear that the stock market is doing great … while you’re using Klarna to keep the lights on.