Tropical Storm Fernand formed in the Atlantic on Saturday.
Day: August 24, 2025
The Trump administration has been planning for weeks to deploy National Guard troops in Chicago as part of an expanded crackdown on crime and immigration, according to reports in US media.
Lagarde Highlights Migration’s Impact on Eurozone Labor Market
The President of the European Central Bank (ECB), Christine Lagarde, emphasized the pivotal role of migration in bolstering the eurozone’s labor market, noting that without migrant labor, Germany’s GDP could be about 6 percent lower today, and Spain has seen significant recovery thanks to foreign workers, reports 24brussels.
Lagarde pointed out that since 2021, employment within the eurozone has increased by over 4 percent, despite the most aggressive interest rate hikes in decades implemented by central bankers. She argued that migration is essential to counteract Europe’s declining birth rate and the increasing demand for shorter working hours, which in turn facilitates business growth and mitigates inflationary pressures even as wages struggle to keep pace with rising prices.
However, Lagarde acknowledged the political ramifications of migration. The EU’s net immigration reached an all-time high of 450 million in the previous year, prompting governments from Berlin to Rome to impose restrictions on new arrivals amid rising pressures from voters leaning towards far-right parties.
“Migration could, in principle, play a crucial role in easing labor shortages as native populations age,” Lagarde stated. “But political economy pressures may increasingly limit inflows.”
She highlighted the current robustness of Europe’s labor market following recent economic shocks, but warned that this positive trend may not be sustained. Ongoing demographic decline, political pushback, and changing preferences among workers continue to pose threats to the eurozone’s stability.
Typhoon Kajiki drenches southern China’s Hainan island and heads toward Vietnam [deltaMinutes] mins ago Now
Mets infielder Brett Baty has the simplest of explanations for his success at the plate over the last several weeks.
Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto/Getty Images
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Welcome back to our Sunday edition, where we round up some of our top stories and take you inside our newsroom. A luxury gym, a massive food hall, and a 24/7 grab-and-go service. Those are some of the amenities at JPMorgan’s new 60-story Manhattan headquarters — and they send a clear message: work-as-life is here to stay.
On the agenda today:
- Inside America’s 250-year pursuit of the perfect morning routine.
- A psychologist and day trading coach shares his tips and tricks.
- Millennials’ favorite companies are growing up or dying out.
- The FDA caught radioactive shrimp headed to Walmart. Any takers?
But first: Forging a new (career) path.
If this was forwarded to you, sign up here. Download Business Insider’s app here.
This week’s dispatch
Fewer entry-level doors are opening
Jack Taylor/Getty Images
For college grads, giant consulting firms have been a great place to start a career — and sometimes finish one.
That path is narrowing.
Business Insider’s Polly Thompson reported this week that PwC plans to cut entry-level hiring in the US by almost a third over the next three years.
PwC US hired 3,242 tax and assurance associates in the latest financial year that ended in June, part of an internal presentation showed. Three years from now, that number is expected to be 2,197, a 32% decrease. The firm plans similar decreases in its advisory division.
PwC didn’t get into the details with Polly but confirmed it was lowering campus hiring goals, saying “the rapid pace of technological change is reshaping how we work.”
It’s AI, but not just AI. It’s also offshoring more work to less-expensive labor markets, the presentation indicated. Meanwhile, PwC also says it’s dealing with “historically low” attrition — people aren’t leaving. We’ve been covering that phenomenon lately, known as “job hugging,” or if a worker is down about it, “quiet cracking.”
Polly’s story should be an alarm bell for people in college or early in their careers. She wrote in January that the Big Four firms — PwC, EY, Deloitte, and KPMG — collectively employ 1.5 million people.
Less consulting hiring out of colleges means more grads will need to get creative. Small firms and startups can be a great option, and AI might enable more innovation. But as Aki Ito recently wrote for us, that means a much different approach to navigating your career.
So where does Business Insider fit in? We’re committed to bringing you the hard facts about the landscape, and then helping you succeed in it. One quick place to start is our job guide. As always, let me know what you think at eic@businessinsider.com.
The morning routine industrial complex
Peter Dazeley/Getty Images; BI
When Benjamin Franklin — who crucially woke up at 5 am — published his daily routine to promote the pursuit of happiness as a public good, it launched a centuries-long obsession with personal routines.
Spend any time on the internet today, and you’re bound to be inundated with the strange, sometimes masochistic regimens meant to boost productivity and enforce discipline. So, how did our quest for the perfect morning routine go from “early to bed, early to rise” to “at 8:45 am, rub banana peel on face”?
Tricks of the (day) trade
Courtesy of Andrew Menaker
Andrew Menaker was a Navy psychologist before Wells Fargo tapped him to be a psychological consultant on their trading desk. Now, he runs his own coaching practice, where he works with traders on and off Wall Street.
Menaker said he’s seen traders struggle for a common set of reasons, like having a big ego, being too aggressive, or being too scared. He told BI the usual mistakes he sees traders make.
Millennial brands hit middle age
Reuters / Getty Images
In the 2010s, direct-to-consumer brands like Glossier and Warby Parker wooed millennials with their pastel packaging, quirky ad copy, and mission-forward focus.
Now, though, harder times have fallen on beloved brands like those. Many have been snapped up by bigger companies or closed completely. The ones that remain have largely settled into boring, old retailers — aptly analogous to the middle age millennials themselves are adjusting to.
Isotope cocktail
Kevin Trimmer/Getty Images
A batch of frozen shrimp from Indonesia tested positive for the radioactive isotope Cesium-137, the FDA said. The shrimp was set to be sold under the Great Value brand at Walmart.
That would probably make most people want to chuck whatever shrimp might be sitting in their freezer right now. It also creates a unique opportunity for anyone feeling like they could be the shrimp equivalent to a certain spidery superhero, writes BI’s Katie Notopoulos.
This week’s quote:
“People are going to start putting those homes back into the market, and I think it’s going to be a bit of a shock to them, what they have to reprice at.”
— Rick Palacios Jr., the director of research at John Burns Research and Consulting, on the growing risks of mortgage rate buydowns for homebuyers.
More of this week’s top reads:
- Exclusive: AT&T is directing more managers to relocate or face layoffs.
- America’s great people shortage.
- Paper résumés, trick questions, in-person job interviews: Hiring is going old school to escape AI slop.
- Cracker Barrel’s new look isn’t everyone’s cup of sweet tea.
- Leaked Microsoft pay data shows how much hundreds of employees report making in AI, cloud, and other teams.
- Investors warn AI FOMO could be fueling a risky bubble in companies like OpenAI and Anthropic.
-
Americans want their stuff delivered fast — and they’re willing to pay.
The BI Today team: Jamie Heller, editor in chief, in New York. Lisa Ryan, executive editor, in New York. Akin Oyedele, deputy editor, in New York. Grace Lett, editor, in New York. Amanda Yen, associate editor, in New York.
Read the original article on Business Insider
Here are five college football predictions and round-by-round picks for the college football playoffs:
Courtesy of Terri Peters
- I started homeschooling my two kids six years ago. This year, my oldest is a high school senior.
- Homeschooling high schoolers has been different, but incredibly rewarding.
- There are things I wish I’d known when I first started homeschooling a high schooler.
I started homeschooling my kids six years ago, when one was entering 7th grade and the other was going into 5th grade. The task felt daunting, but I did lots of research and made the switch, mostly to lessen the pressures my kids were feeling in the public school classroom and increase the amount of learning we could do together through travel.
Homeschooling my kids has paid dividends: My son started his senior year of high school dual-enrolled with a local college because, on our own, we were able to work through his lessons more quickly. My daughter, now a sophomore, uses most of her free time to work with elementary-aged kids in local theater programs and hopes to become a teacher. I’ve watched my kids blossom into little versions of who their adult selves will be, and I feel a sense of pride knowing I played a hand in shaping who they’re becoming.
Homeschooling during high school is just different
Courtesy of Terri Peters
Still, homeschooling high schoolers requires more work than the middle and elementary years. There’s record-keeping, transcript-making, SAT-taking, and more. And, without the support of a school system to successfully get my kids through high school and off to college, I’ve been learning right along with them. At the end of the day, homeschooling a high school student isn’t hard, necessarily, it just requires extra work beyond simply following a homeschool curriculum.
The biggest advice I’d give to parents about to start homeschooling for the high school years is to do a lot of research about the graduation requirements within your state and county. In Florida, where we live, homeschool students do not get a standard high school diploma from the state.
I keep detailed grade records and transcripts myself instead. When my son graduates at the end of this school year, I’ll issue him a diploma I create and keep on file, along with his high school transcript and a notarized affidavit saying he completed the necessary coursework.
Homeschooling opens up so many opportunities for learning
Courtesy Terri Peters
My favorite thing about homeschooling is that I have some say in what counts as school for my kids. Our high school curriculum primarily comes from online schooling programs, but we also use things like community theater and group fitness classes at our gym to fill elective credits like performing arts and physical education.
Travel also makes its way into the mix: This year, my son fulfilled a language credit by studying Italian, and then we took a family vacation to Italy to further his knowledge. One year, when my kids studied marine biology, we took a whale-watching cruise in Baja California, Mexico, to make the experience feel more real to them.
During my son’s junior year, I learned a great deal about taking the SATs and tracking volunteer hours for college scholarships. My husband discovered through his employer that we had a college counseling benefit and an SAT tutoring benefit, so we utilized those to get a little outside help.
One of the best things parents of high schoolers can do when homeschooling is to research what support groups and community programs exist in their area, because, like anything, it takes a village to raise a homeschooled child.
Homeschooling can feel overwhelming, but it’s been worth it for me
Courtesy of Terri Peters
The year before we started homeschooling, I was at dinner with a friend whose twin daughters were about to graduate as homeschooled high school seniors. As she regaled me with tales of her girls being fluent in Mandarin and headed to college on full academic scholarships, I remember saying, “I love that you did all of tha, but I could never. I’d be too overwhelmed about where to get started.”
Months later, I found myself checking out books (one was literally titled “Homeschooling for Dummies”) and digging deep into how to homeschool.
Now, I’m about to graduate one kid and two years from repeating it with the other, I can say the biggest thing I wish I’d known about graduating a homeschooler before I started is this: Like anything, it isn’t overly complicated if you find out exactly what’s required in your state and county and work your way through it, checking the boxes as you go.
Sure, homeschooling has caused me to take on titles I never imagined for myself, from principal to record-keeper, but it’s also given me precious time with my kids that feels even more fleeting now that we’re almost finished with our homeschooling journey.
Read the original article on Business Insider
Courtesy of Alexandra Frost
- I’ve long struggled with the limitless questions that arise while parenting five kids.
- I’ve adapted Mel Robbins’ 5 Second Rule which allows me to consider a problem for just five seconds.
- The rule has helped me come to decisions faster, which helps my family and my job.
Should I hire a nanny? Should my kids go to a different school? Should they be packers or buyers? Should I teach them to get the mail? But the road is right there!
This is just a tiny, tiny fraction of the six zillion (actual number) decisions busy parents like myself make every day.
Micro decisions crowd my mind, and in 10 years of parenting five kids, not much has helped. But recently, I learned a trick that’s significantly changed this burden: Mel Robbins’ 5 Second Rule.
Five seconds to more bandwidth
You know that dopamine hit when your desk or kitchen counter is cleared off? That’s what the five-second rule is all about. The concept is about counting down from five, and giving yourself just that much time to think, ruminate, decide, or wonder about the outcome. When you hit zero, you have to act.
For example, I recently asked myself: Should I go to the gym or pick up the kids a few minutes early? I could easily spend 20 minutes debating it, during which I’d miss my chance to grab my workout clothes and make it happen. With just five seconds to consider, I make a decision.
Christina Granahan, a licensed social worker and therapist, told me, “Often, people think that something outside of them is causing the stress or suffering, but more often than not, it’s the open loop that is stressful and accumulating in their mind, draining their physical and mental energy.”
How to give it a try
This hack works best with two answers that are both “OK.” For example, recently, I had to let go of a babysitter who was having trouble managing one kid’s tantrums. I was getting calls throughout the day, causing a similar stress level to if I had no sitter while working. The reason I couldn’t make the decision is that neither answer was a great solution.
So, one day, I counted down from five and hit “call” on my phone to let her know we needed to take a break. By just picking something, I could move forward with other problems occupying brain space.
“Mel’s practice can be helpful when there is either low risk or when a perfect decision would be impossible to make. It’s a great practice to cut through the messiness of overthinking and move to action,” Granahan said. “The fine line the practice walks, though, is with impulsivity or with higher risk decisions [where] you want to make sure you are taking in all relevant information.”
I’ve found it’s easiest to start with daily tasks, like the day’s plans or meals. But then, I get the most impact from this rule by applying it to situations I’ve been overthinking for longer than I know I should.
The paralysis of making the “right” decision
Emily Oster, a parenting data scientist, once wrote, “There is no secret option C.” An imperfect decision is better than the paralysis of making a perfect decision.
I had no idea that having five kids meant each decision carried such weight, with little lives and futures depending on making the “right” one, that I’d constantly be scanning for that better option C. Often, usually, there just isn’t one.
So, next time I find myself searching for the right choice, or a better choice, whether it’s been minutes of analyzing or weeks, the countdown begins. After all, my kids — and the life we’ve already built together — are waiting for me to enjoy it.
Read the original article on Business Insider
Russian officials said several power and energy facilities were targeted in the overnight strikes.