Hi! You might have come across people with an illustrious sense of fashion, or complete hygiene freaks and James who likes to drink but the best of these exquisite hobbyists are the ones with a well furnished speech:

Sesquipedalian in speech, my tongue writes like a draft,
Grandiloquent in reach, my words neck with a giraffe;
Loquacious when I preach, sounds borderline witchcraft,
So awkward and so niche, my friends hate my oral math.

A mighty word salad to appetize ourselves on the occasion of Big Word Day. Not such a great day for Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobic people though. So, don’t forget to grammar police your friends, and let’s get started with our regular!

Today’s special:

An Employer In Need: U.S. employers think good candidates are a thing of the past…

A Climactic Scorecard: Which American state has the best quality climate & health scorecard!

LVMH’s Down A Gear: Does LVMH's revenue slump indicate an unexpected luxury fatigue?

America’s hiring engine is still humming but recruiters aren’t exactly celebrating, most of them are swallowing the hard pill that more noise doesn’t necessarily imply more signal. Even with continued investment in recruitment tools and tech, the search for the ideal candidate remains unsolved. 63% of employers found it ‘harder to scout great talent’ in 2025 compared to 2024, making the whole process a high stakes search for needle in a haystack.

Traditional resume screening, long considered the backbone of candidate evaluation, isn't delivering either. In response, 85% of employers now use skills-based hiring, often paired with tests to better validate capabilities rather than credentials alone. The logic is simple: if traditional CV screening isn’t surfacing strong performers, then perhaps a test for ability directly might just do the trick.

Meanwhile it’s becoming harder to find competent employees to fill up professional roles that keep the country running, 48% of employers say filling positions is very difficult, with another 37% calling it somewhat difficult in high medical roles. Skilled trades aren’t far behind, with 39% reporting very difficult and 44% somewhat difficult, while engineering and architecture roles see 36% very difficult and 45% somewhat difficult as though the economy has drawn up ambitious plans for growth but left the toolbox frustratingly light.

For context, the average job posting now attracts 257.5 applications, up 24% year over year but only 11.5% of those applicants are deemed qualified. But to be fair, candidates aren’t entirely at fault, non-responsive hiring processes and employers failing to signal next steps exacerbates their disengagement and diminishes employer brand strength.

Recruiters are moving faster through this swelling stack of resumes, screening candidates 13% more quickly and filling roles four days faster on average than last year yet speed, however, isn’t synonymous with satisfaction.

Meanwhile, there are more pressing matters at hand for employers because even after hiring the real task is keeping employees around for a quantifiable time. As turnover and disengagement threaten to reopen roles almost as quickly as they’re filled, 52% of employers are prioritizing retention this year.

If climate health had a scoreboard, it wouldn’t crown just one winner. It would look more like a diverse leaderboard of progress with different states advancing in different brackets. Starting it off with the most fundamental bracket: ‘the air’ as per the 2022–2024 average fine particle pollution, Wyoming ranks cleanest at just 4.1 µg/m³, while California comes in worst at 11.7 µg/m³ and the national average sits at 8.8 µg/m³. In California, 88% of residents live in areas with unhealthy air.

Then there’s the quiet metric called efficiency that rarely makes headlines but quietly shapes bills and emissions. In 2025, Vermont was the most energy-efficient state with residents averaging 21 miles per gallon, the highest vehicle fuel efficiency in the country. The state also posted the second-highest home energy efficiency alongside the seventh-lowest residential energy use per capita. That’s not a feat to be dismissed when the average American family spends about $2,000 a year on utilities. Efficiency isn’t abstract; it basically means fewer miles driven, less gas burned and smaller emissions footprints baked into daily life.

Meanwhile, the nation’s strongest climate-health performers remain grouped as overall livability scores in the U.S. are tightly clustered between 39.03 and 47.38. Washington posts the highest score at 47.38, followed by Maine which sits at 45.33 while even the lowest top-tier performer, Maryland, still scores 39.03.

Even states that score well on lifestyle metrics aren’t automatically low on emissions. A look at the nation’s carbon mapping, and it shows that emissions aren’t evenly spread across the country instead they’re clustered. The output of fossil-fuel CO₂ can be traced down to power plants, road segments, and city blocks. About 13,000 facilities emit more than 25,000 metric tons of CO₂ equivalent annually and are responsible for 85% to 90% of total U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.

That means the carbon scoreboard isn’t shared evenly among 50 states. It’s concentrated in heavy industrial hubs, including states like Texas and the concentration doesn’t stop at emissions even climate risk is uneven too.

In 2024, the U.S. saw 27 disasters which cost $1 billion or more, and the total cost was $182.7 billion. As climate risks intensify, resilience is increasingly defined by energy transition and exposure management. If resilience leads, then Nevada ranks first, pairing 64.1% renewable energy with a 34.64% Climate Extremes Index while Michigan keeps just 9.23% of properties at major disaster risk. There’s no single only different columns of strength.

Luxury is supposed to be recession-proof, but 2025 tested that theory because in that year the world’s largest luxury group LVMH reported a 13% drop in net profit to €10.9 billion. For a company long seen as the industry’s most reliable growth engine, that’s a sharp reversal.

It would be an exaggeration to say that LVMH is falling off a cliff, but gravity is definitely kicking in. The luxury group closed 2025 with revenue, down by 5%, while profit from recurring operations slid 9% to €17.75bn. Momentum’s fading after an exceptional run as revenue rose from $40.6bn in 2016 to $93bn in 2023, before easing to $91.5bn in 2024 and $87.3bn in 2025.

Asia was supposed to spark the comeback, instead, it’s extending the setback. Investors briefly rushed back into LVMH in October 2025 on early signs of a China rebound, fueling an $80bn luxury rally only for the stock to give most of it back and sliding to 9%.

If luxury fatigue is emerging, then fashion appears to be ground zero. LVHM's most profitable segment, that is, the fashion and leather goods division saw sales decline by 2% in Q3. That’s a rare stumble for brands like Louis Vuitton and Dior, and it matters because this division typically carries the highest margins and sets the tone for the rest of the portfolio. Wines and spirits saw organic revenue fall 5%, with profits plunging 25%, hit by weaker cognac demand. Meanwhile, organic revenue slipped 1% in 2025, with Q4 growth stuck at 1%, unchanged from the previous quarter.

To be clear, LVMH isn’t framing this as a downturn. In fact, it doubled down and in its official annual communication, the company described 2025 as a “solid performance”, emphasizing resilience over acceleration. There were, in addition, a few bright spots beyond the surface of setback. Operating free cash flow jumped 8% to €11.33bn, and net financial debt dropped 26% to €6.85bn.

LVMH is reminding everyone that it's still a cash cow generating serious revenue, even in a softer demand environment. Strong cash flow shows the luxury brand isn’t in trouble, but softer growth shows that luxury demand is cooling, and LVMH is learning that even high-end demand has a speed limit.

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