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When Carly Kaprive left a job in Kansas City and moved to Chicago a year ago, she figured it would take three to six months to find a new position. After all, the 32-year old project manager had never been unemployed for longer than three months.Instead, after 700 applications, she’s still looking, wrapped up in a frustrating and extended job hunt that is much more difficult than when she last looked for work just a couple of years ago. With uncertainty over interest rates, tariffs, immigration, and artificial intelligence roiling much of the economy, some companies she’s interviewed with have abruptly decided not to fill the job at all.“I have definitely had mid-interview roles be eliminated entirely, that they are not going to move forward with even hiring anybody,” she said.Kaprive is caught in a historical anomaly: The unemployment rate is low and the economy is still growing, but those out of work face the slowest pace of hiring in more than a decade. Diane Swonk, chief economist at KPMG, calls it a “jobless boom.”While big corporate layoff announcements typically grab the most attention, it has been the unwillingness of many companies to add workers that has created a more painful job market than the low 4.3% unemployment rate would suggest. It is also more bifurcated: The “low hire, low fire” economy has meant fewer layoffs for those with jobs, while the unemployed struggle to find work.“It’s like an insider-outsider thing,” Guy Berger, head of research at the Burning Glass Institute said, “where outsiders that need jobs are struggling to get their foot in, even as insiders are insulated by what up until now is a low-layoff environment.”Several large companies have recently announced tens of thousands of job cuts in the past few weeks, including UPS, Target, and IBM, though Berger said it is too soon to tell whether they signal a turn for the worse in the economy. But a rise in job cuts would be particularly challenging with hiring already so low.For now, it’s harder than ever to get a clear read on the job market because the government shutdown has cut off the U.S. Department of Labor’s monthly employment reports. The October jobs report was scheduled for release Friday but has been delayed, like the September figures before it. The October report may be less comprehensive when it is released because not all the data may be collected.Before the shutdown, the Labor Department reported that the hiring rate the number of people hired in a given month, as a percentage of those employed fell to 3.2% in August, matching the lowest figure outside the pandemic since March 2013.Back then, the unemployment rate was a painful 7.5%, as the economy slowly recovered from the job losses from the 2008-2009 Great Recession. That is much higher than August’s 4.3%.Many of those out of work are skeptical of the current low rate. Brad Mislow, 54, has been mostly unemployed for the past three years after losing a job as an advertising executive in New York City. Now he is substitute teaching to make ends meet.“It is frustrating to hear that the unemployment rate is low, the economy is great,” he said. “I think there are people in this economy who are basically fighting every day and holding on to pieces of flotsam in the shark-filled waters or, they have no idea what it’s like.”With the government closed, financial markets are paying closer attention to private-sector data, but that is also mixed. On Thursday, the outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas unnerved investors with a report that announced job cuts surged 175% in October from a year ago.Yet on Wednesday, payroll processor ADP said that net hiring picked up in October as businesses added 42,000 jobs, after two months of declines. Still, the gain was modest. ADP’s figures are based on anonymous data from the 26 million workers at its client companies.Separately, Revelio Labs, a workplace analytics company, estimated Thursday that the economy shed 9,000 jobs in October. The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago estimates that the unemployment rate ticked up to 4.4% last month.Even when the government was releasing data, economists and officials at the Federal Reserve weren’t sure how healthy the job market was or where it was headed next. A sharp drop in immigration and stepped-up deportations have helped keep the unemployment rate low simply by reducing the supply of workers. The economy doesn’t need to create as many jobs to keep the unemployment rate from rising.Jerome Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve, has called in a “curious balance” because both the supply of and demand for workers has fallen.Economists point to many reasons for the hiring slowdown, but most share a common thread: Greater uncertainty from tariffs, the potential impact of artificial intelligence, and now the government shutdown. While investment in data centers to power AI is booming, elevated interest rates have kept many other parts of the economy weak, such as manufacturing and housing.“The concentration of economic gains (in AI) has left the economy looking better on paper than it feels to most Americans,” Swonk said.Younger Americans have borne the brunt of the hiring slowdown, but many older workers have also struggled.Suzanne Elder, 65, is an operations executive with extensive experience in health care, and two years ago the Chicago resident also found work quickly three months after she left a job, she had three offers. Now she’s been unemployed since April.She is worried that her age is a challenge, but isn’t letting it hold her back. “I got a job at 63, so I don’t see a reason to not get a job at 65,” she said.Like many job-hunters, she has been stunned by the impersonal responses from recruiters, often driven by hiring software. She received one email from a company that thanked her for speaking with them, though she never had an interview. Another company that never responded to her resume asked her to fill out a survey about their interaction.Weak hiring has meant unemployment spells are getting longer, according to government data. More than one-quarter of those out of work have been unemployed for more than six months or longer, a figure that rose sharply in July and August and is up from 21% a year ago.Swonk said that such increases are unusual outside recessions.A rising number of the unemployed have also given up on their job searches, according to research by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. That also holds down the unemployment rate because people who stop looking aren’t counted as unemployed.But Kaprive is still sticking with it she’s taken classes abot Amazon’s web services platform to boost her technology skills.“We can’t be narrow-minded in what we’re willing to take,” she said. Christopher Rugaber, AP Economics Writer
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E-Commerce
Despite its status as an architectural celebrity, the Breuer building, commissioned by the Whitney Museum in the 1960s, has never had an easy relationship with New York City. With a hulking, top-heavy build, brooding dark-gray granite cladding, and nearly windowless facade, its as introverted as buildings come, standing confrontationally against its traditional Upper East Side neighbors. Either you love it or hate it. Critic Ada Louise Huxtable described the building as an acquired taste akin to olives or warm beer (how appetizing) yet celebrated the maximum artistry and almost hypnotic skill of its namesake architect, the Bauhaus-trained modernist Marcel Breuer. Now the historic building, also known as 945 Madison, has entered its latest chapter as the new worldwide headquarters for the 281-year-old auction house Sothebys. After a careful and subtle renovation by Swiss architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron, the space has now reopened to the public. For Sothebys, the updated building demonstrates the future of auction houses as cultural destinations. It wants its new headquarters to be a place people come for exhibitions, art fairs, lectures, panel discussions, retail, and fine dining, while better serving its collector clients with bespoke, high-end art-buying experiences. What better place to bid on masterpieces than from inside one? The hope is that the new building will bring a competitive edge to Sothebys. It arrives at a complicated time for the business, which has reportedly plunged into greater debt since billionaire Patrick Drahi took ownership in 2019. It’s also facing external headwinds as the art market slumps, prompting auction houses to diversify what they sell, cultivate new collectors, and digitize. Sothebys was responsible for $6 billion worth of sales in 2024, down from a record high of $8 billion in 2022. Architecture to the rescue? It’s museum quality, but it’s the art auction house philosophy, says Steve Wrightson, global head of real estate, facilities, and security for Sothebys. I think people who’ve been here before are going to be pleasantly surprised. [Photo: Stefan Ruiz/courtesy Sothebys] An untouchable history Change hasnt come easy to the Breuer building, and throughout its history suggestions of alterations have been met with severe skepticism. Soon after the Whitney Museum opened in 1966, it outgrew the quarters Breuer built for it, ushering in an era of uncertainty for the building. Numerous failed expansion attemptsby Norman Foster in the 70s, Michael Graves in the 80s, and Rem Koolhaas in the aughtsignited battles royal between critics and architects that played out on the pages of dailies and weeklies. Paul Goldberger, writing for The New York Times, described the building as a paradox: To add to it is to subtract from it. Eventually, the Whitney gave up on renovating and decamped for the Meatpacking District in 2015. Then a series of adaptations came, demonstrating that something different might be for the better. In 2015, the Whitney leased the space to the Met, which commissioned a $15 million restoration by Beyer Blinder Belle that brought renewed luster to the buildings bluestone floors, concrete walls, and bronze fixtures. Then the Frick Collection moved into the space temporarily to critical appeal; turns out Breuers austere brutalism is a transcendent setting for traditional portraiture. In 2023, the revolving door of tenants closed when the Whitney sold the building to Sothebys for an astounding $100 million. The acquisition was part of a real estate strategy that began at Sothebys about six years ago. Instead of housing all of its functions under one roof, as it did at its former York Street headquarters, the company decided to assemble a portfolio of spaces dedicated to a single purpose. A building in Long Island City that Sothebys purchased in 2022 is now its processing and storage center. Though the company sold its York Street building to Cornell Universitys medical school in October, it will lease four floors for offices. For auctions and exhibitions, it sought a location central to collectors with a street-facing presence. The Breuer building was right at the bulls eye of the area the real estate team identified, Wrightson says. This was the heart of the arts and culture scene in New York City, he says. [Photo: Max Touhey/courtesy Sothebys] Same structure, new function While museums and auction houses both display art, the shift in function from a space that stewards culture to a sales floor represents a major conceptual shift. Because of this, Sothebys and Herzog & de Meuron (who collaborated with the local architecture firm PDBW on the project) had their work cut out for them, even though they always intended to apply a gentle hand to the renovation. Our deep respect for Breuer drove the project from the outset, says Wim Walschap, a senior partner at the firm. Portions of the building are still under construction, including a new freight elevator and Marcel, the Roman and Williams-designed restaurant on the lower level. But the majority of the renovation, which encompasses a refreshed lobby and four floors of gallery and auction space above, is complete. Sothebys Breuer lobby gallery features works from the collection of Dorothy and Roy Lichtenstein. [Photo: Max Touhey/courtesy Sothebys] Still, preservationists worried that the Breuer building would be permanently and unsympathetically altered; they successfully lobbied the city to designate it as an individual and interior landmark, which affects the exterior plus the lobby, staircase, and portions of the restaurant visible from the street. Moreover, even though Sothebys is keeping the building open to the public, theres a distinction between that notion and a public building, wrote Philip Kennicott in The Washington Post. Museums exist to preserve culture; the art market exists to make a profit off the exchange of a commodity. Going to the Breuer will be like going to a wake. The actual experience is more like visiting your old home after the new owners have moved in: The spaces are familiar but different. For the Breuer, we kept what carries identity and public life: structure and spatial sequence, primary materials and tactility, calibrated light, and the way a building meets the street, Walschap says. We removed later accretions that cloud the original intent and revived lost spaces where they clarified the experience. Limited-edition Herms Birkin bags [Photo: Stefan Ruiz/courtesy Sothebys] All the features that made the building distinctivecrossing over the moat of the sculpture garden, the luminous lobby ceiling, the large windowsare still there. But the concrete benches in the lobby are now vitrines, and the coat check in the corner is a retail space selling luxury lifestyle products like Patek Philippe watches, first editions of literary classics like Alice in Wonderland, and limited-edition Birkin bags. The original galleries, which were not landmarked, are structurally the same as before. However, the second levels dark parquet floor has been changed to white oak. We tried to get it refinished and it was just splintering so we had to replace it, Wrightson says. A bit like theater The most major interventions to the Breuer involved modifying the building to better serve the logistical needs of Sothebys, which are more demanding than a museum due to the volume of objects and number of exhibitions it displays in a year. A museum might have a dozen special exhibitions over the course of a year; Sothebys averages 125. It’s a bit like theater, but it’s also like a Formula One event, Wrightson says of the precision turnover that happens. The goal is to be able to change an entire exhibition in 48 hours. Most changes to the building that make this possible are completely out of sight from visitors: Herzog & de Meuron lengthened the loading dock and inserted a new freight elevator in what were formerly administrative spaces in the northeastern section of the building. This way, Wrightson says, we can maneuver in the background. In the lobby: Frank Stellas Concentric Square (left) and Jean Arps Ptolémée III [Photo: Max Touhey/courtesy Sothebys] Sothebys has 30% more exhibition space than the buildings previous incarnation as the Frick Madison. To find this room, Herzog & de Meuron converted back-of-house and administrative areas into galleries, which sometimes resemble typical white-box galleries that feel like they could be anywhere. Instead of replicating Breuers tectonic sensibility in the new exhibition spaces, the firm channeled his intentions. New work aligns with the existing rhythms and joints, remains legible and light touch, and, whre possible, is reversible, Walschap says. From left: Dorothea Tannings Interior with Sudden Joy, Frida Kahlos El sueo, and Victor Brauners Maison hantée will be auctioned November 20, 2025. [Photo: Max Touhey/courtesy Sothebys] Back when Breuer designed the building, the Whitneys collection primarily consisted of painting and sculpture, and his structure is well suited for those mediums. Sothebys sells a far wider range of objects and artwork, so having a blank canvas gives the exhibition teams more options for viewing experiences. We could have a dinosaur in a gallery one day and then the next day it could be a basketball jersey, Wrightson says. So we really have to be able to plan for all of those different needs. The fifth floor, which the Frick used for offices, is now primarily gallery space, plus flexible work space for about 50 Sothebys employees who need to be on-site. The public hasn’t seen [this floors] windows and skylights for the better part of a decade, Wrightson says. He thinks jewelry and watches, which benefit from natural light, will look especially good here. A site for desire Adaptability was a critical element of the renovation to support the range of objects Sothebys sells but also the new formats it uses to sell them, like online auctions and livestreams. To make installations efficient, the design team created a metal-framed wall system that straps to the concrete coffered ceiling that Breuer designed. And to give curators more options to illuminate art, Herzog & de Meuron created custom LED track lighting, which nestles into the concrete ceiling, that can be operated remotely. The ceiling also proved to be an ideal mount for cameras that Sothebys uses for virtual sales. When we first started doing livestreams back in June of 2021, it was an army of people who would come in with multiple giant boom cameras and we’d have massive control rooms set up with cables spread out everywhere. That’s gone, Wrightson says. Most of that is now happening remotely with what looks like joysticks. The redesigned fourth floor of the Breuer currently holds works from the Leonard A. Lauder collection scheduled for auction on November 18, 2025. [Photo: Max Touhey/courtesy Sothebys] The Breuer building gives Sothebys more options for what an art buying, shopping, or appreciation experience embodies. The buildings fourth floor, which is a double-height space, will serve as the main gallery space most of the time and convert into an auction room whenever there is a sale. (Sothebys is still working out what the auction room will look like.) This also means creating more opportunities for exclusivity. The levels mezzanine, which also used to be offices, now features private viewing areas and skyboxes for clients who want a birds-eye view of the action. A former conservation studio is now a viewing area for works that require black lights to examine. Meanwhile, the auctioneers who prefer to have more intimate sales, like those who specialize in wine and watches, have the option to use the restaurant, which visitors will be able to access directly from Madison Avenue once its open next year. They like more of a banquet-style table and more of a playful experience, Wrightson says. With its new headquarters, Sothebys architectural language is more aligned with the mass appeal of a major cultural institution than the art market. Its trying to make auction houses cool. I can imagine regular museumgoers who havent stepped foot in an auction house before will be thrilled about admission-free access to see Kahlos and Klimts before collectors squirrel them away, just as I can see the thrill collectors might take in going shopping in what feels like a museum. As its viral auctioneer Phyllis Kao told Ssense, Sothebys really sells desire; a pedigreed set and setting enhances that effect. During the peak of the Breuer building style in the 1980s, Village Voice critic Michael Sorkin summed up the challenges of retooling an architectural darling. Adding to a masterpiece is always difficult, calling for discipline, sensitivity, restraint, he wrote. Above all, though, it calls for respect. Thankfully, outstanding original architecture remains crucial to all the audiences Sothebys wants to welcome into its world. Whether or not visitors will be pleasantly surprised, as Wrightson hopes, may come down to how they feel about the art market itself.
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E-Commerce
When he takes office next year, Zohran Mamdani will be the first mayor of New York City in decades not to own a car. Mamdaniwho bikes and rides public transit to workwants to make city buses both faster to ride and free, building on a fare-free pilot he helped run in 2023. He also plans to expand the citys network of bike lanes, add more car-free streets in front of schools, and wants to pedestrianize more areas in Manhattan as congestion pricing has reduced traffic. “In a city where the majority of households are car-free, we haven’t had a car-free mayor in a really long time,” says Alexa Sledge, communications director at the nonprofit Transportation Alternatives. “It’s really exciting to see how he can prioritize the vast majority of the New Yorkers who do walk, bike, and take public transportation every single day.” Mamdani inherits a city with streets that have massively transformed over the last two decades. “People have seen their streets change in real time,” says Janette Sadik-Khan, the former commissioner of the New York City Department of Transportation under the Bloomberg Administration. Sadik-Khan, now a principal at Bloomberg Associates, built nearly 400 miles of bike lanes, launched Citi Bike, introduced new rapid bus lanes, created dozens of plazas, and pedestrianized Times Square. The changes have continued to roll out. New York now has 1,500 miles of bike lanes, more than half a million daily cyclists, and a mile-long stretch of 14th Street dedicated entirely to buses. Under the city’s Streets Plan, passed in 2019, Mamdani’s administration must add 50 miles of bike lanes and 30 miles of bus lanes each yeartargets the Adams administration missed. But he wants to go farther. He’s proposed making buses free to ride, though that’s likely to be a tough sell with the MTA. He also wants to bring true bus rapid transit to the city. “A car-free bus lane can move 8,000 people an hour; meanwhile a busway on a car-free street can move 25,000 people an hour in each direction,” he told Streetsblog earlier this year. “This is an essential service that New Yorkers need, especially those in transit deserts or those forced to rely on the poor service of our current bus system.” Right now, he says, city buses only move at an average of 8 miles an hour. The 14th Street Busway sped up buses by 30%, and other major roads across the cityincluding in the outer boroughscould see the same results with a similar design. “People walking and biking and taking transit far outnumber those in cars, but the street does not reflect that reality,” says Sadik-Khan. Improving reliability matters as much as cost, she says. “New Yorkers don’t just want more affordable transit. They want more frequent and reliable service, so they’re not rolling the dice every time they go to and from work,” she says. Other than dedicated bus lanes, other tweaks to street design could help improve speeds, including “bulb-out” bus stops that allow buses to pick up passengers without pulling over to the side of the road. The city can also roll out more traffic signals that give buses priority at lights. To improve the experience of biking, Sadik-Khan says that the city needs to find a way to deal with the surge of e-bikes and scooters that are too fast for bike lanes now. Mamdani could consider a new type of bike lane, she says. “New York City could be the first in the nation to dedicate lanes on avenues and in crosstown streets to faster bikes and scooters, which would take them out of the way for regular bike riders and pedestrians and make the streets much safer for everybody,” she says. Mamdani wants to pedestrianize “vast swaths” of the new congestion pricing zone, along with streets near public open space and schools. It’s an ambitious vision, though not impossible. Paris has transformed even more radically than New York, turning a highway into park space, planting tens of thousands of parking spaces with trees, closing more than 100 streets to cars, charging SUVs extra to park, and making rush hour look more like Copenhagen, with streets filled with bikes. Other cities have also reshaped around pedestrians, like Barcelona, which now has several car-free superblocks. The same scale of change could happen in New York. “There’s absolutely no reason we couldn’t do it here,” says Sadik-Kahn. “We have all of the scaffolding for it. I think it’s really a matter of imagination and implementation.” Even after years of improvements in New York, it’s still a challenge to get support for new bike lanes and other changes. But Mamdani has one key advantage: he’s skilled at communicating a vision. “I think he’s done an extraordinary job of communicating the importance of change in this election,” she says. “He’s definitely laid things out. And now I think the implementation is the next step.”
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E-Commerce
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