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U.S. consumer confidence declined sharply in January, hitting the lowest level since 2014 as Americans grow increasingly concerned about their financial prospects. The Conference Board said Tuesday that its consumer confidence index cratered 9.7 points to 84.5 in January, falling below even the lowest readings during the COVID-19 pandemic. A measure of Americans short-term expectations for their income, business conditions and the job market tumbled 9.5 points to 65.1, well below 80, the marker that can signal a recession ahead. Its the 12th consecutive month that reading has come in under 80. Consumers assessments of their current economic situation slid by 9.9 points to 113.7. Confidence collapsed in January, as consumer concerns about both the present situation and expectations for the future deepened, said Dana Peterson, the Conference Boards chief economist. All five components of the index deteriorated, driving the overall index to its lowest level since May 2014 surpassing its COVID19 pandemic depths. Respondents references to inflation, including gas and grocery prices, remained elevated. Mentions of tariffs and trade, politics, and the labor market also rose in January as did comments about health insurance and war. Perceptions of the job market also declined this month. The conference boards survey reported that 23.9% of consumers said jobs were plentiful, down from 27.5% in December. Also, 20.8% of consumers said jobs were hard to get, up from 19.1% the month previous. The countrys labor market has been stuck in a low hire, low fire state, economists say, as businesses stand pat due to uncertainty over Trumps tariffs and the lingering effects of elevated interest rates. Earlier this month, the government reported that employers added just 50,000 jobs in December, nearly unchanged from 56,000 in November. The unemployment rate is 4.4%. Job gains have been subdued all year, particularly after Aprils liberation day tariff announcement by Trump. The economy gained just 584,000 jobs in 2025, sharply lower than that more than 2 million added in 2024. The dramatic drop on confidence is a direct result of the hiring recession, said Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union. The fact that 2025 was the weakest year for job gains outside of a recession since 2003 is not going over well with the middle class. This is a warning sign to policymakers that they need to focus on affordability and reviving hiring in 2026, Long added. The softening job market comes even as the U.S. economy keeps growing, often beyond projections. Powered by strong consumer spending, the U.S. economy grew at the fastest pace in two years from July through September, according to the governments latest estimate. Matt Ott, AP business writer
Category:
E-Commerce
Amazon will double down on the Whole Foods brand, killing two of its own physical retail experiments in the process. The online retail giant said Tuesday that it will close all of its Amazon Go convenience stores and Amazon Fresh brick-and-mortar grocery stores. In total, around 70 locations across the two sub-brands will close starting at the beginning of February, with some to later reopen under the Whole Foods brand. Amazon Fresh stores served as a physical counterpart to Amazons online grocery delivery service by the same name while Amazon Go stores offered convenience store staples with a high-tech checkout twist. After a careful evaluation of the business and how we can best serve customers, weve made the difficult decision to close our Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh physical stores, converting various locations into Whole Foods Market stores, Amazon wrote in a blog update, adding that it gathered valuable insights during their operation. The Amazon brand might take a back seat in its brick-and-mortar strategy, but the retail giants IRL ambitions remain. Amazon also announced plans to open more than 100 new Whole Foods stores over the next few years. When the latest Go and Fresh store closures are wrapped up, Amazons network of Whole Foods stores will serve as the companys only physical retail footprint at least for now. With the closures, Amazon is backing off of its long experiment with Fresh and Go physical retail stores, which tested emerging retail technology and pushed its brand into new shopping categories. Amazon Go was known for allowing shoppers to pick up what they wanted and Just Walk Out instead of individually scanning items in a traditional checkout counter. That system, which relied on sensors and overhead cameras to track what shoppers purchased and linking it to their accounts digitally. While Amazon once held an ambitious roadmap for a vast network of physical stores centered around its Just Walk Out technology, the company has scaled back consistently in recent years. In 2018, Amazon was reportedly planning to open up to 3,000 cashierless stores running the technology over the next three years. By early 2026, Amazon Go was down to just 14 stores. The high cost of outfitting stores with a sophisticated array of sensors eventually dimmed those ambitions, with the company backtracking to a system that lets customers scan items to smart carts as they shop. Amazon now licenses the Just Walk Out technology out to third parties, including a number of merch, food and beverage locations in Lumen Field, home of the Seattle Seahawks. Amazon is still tinkering around with ways to bring its digital storefront into the physical shopping realm. Even as it rolls back some smaller-scale retail plans, Amazon clearly still wants to take a bite out of the everyday shopping and grocery success that brands like Walmart and Costco enjoy. As soon as next year, Amazon plans to open its first massive, big box-style store stocked with home goods, groceries and prepared food in the Chicago area. Its purpose-built for what we see retail customers demand today, an Amazon lawyer told local officials, who went on to greenlight the project last week.
Category:
E-Commerce
Downloads of UpScrolled, a new short-form video app, are surging after TikTok’s recent change to U.S. ownership. Developed by Palestinian-Australian Issam Hijazi, the social media app currently ranks #2 in the U.S. in the Apple store among free apps, following ChatGPT, and markets itself as a place “where every voice gets equal power.” “No shadowbans . . . No pay-to-play favoritism. Just authentic connection where your content reaches the people who matter most,” reads UpScrolled’s website. Last week, Chinese-owned TikTok closed a $14 billion deal, brokered by the Trump administration, to avoid a ban in the U.S., creating an American subsidiary with new ownership going to a joint venture that includes Trump allies Oracle founder Larry Ellison and Dell Technologies’ Michael Dell. The surge in downloads is also happening amid allegations that TikTok censored videos of ICE agents in Minnesota and other anti-Trump content. What is UpScrolled? UpScrolled is a platform for sharing photos, videos, and text. It says its mission is to “always remain impartial to political agendas, conflicts, and unjust views.” It brands itself as a “no-censorship” platform with a focus on free speech. It’s available on iOS and Android. UpScrolled says it was developed as an alternative to popular Big Tech-run social media platforms such as Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta and Instagram, Elon Musk’s X, and, of course, TikTok. “UpScrolled exists because we were tired of waiting for Big Tech to do the right thing,” its website states. “We needed a place where people could speak freely without playing algorithm games or being punished for telling the truth.” Other TikTok alternatives are also seeing a surge UpScrolled is not the only TikTok alternative seeing a surge after the U.S. deal. Skylight Social, or Skylight, also saw an uptick to over 380,000 users, per TechCrunch. Backed by Mark Cuban and built on open source tech, has over 42 million users.
Category:
E-Commerce
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