The Weekly Scan November 7, 2022

Welcome to the Weekly Scan. Here’s what we’re following for the week of November 7, 2022. 

Job market stays strong. The U.S. added 261,000 jobs in October, indicating a solid job market, despite a decline from September’s addition of 315,000 jobs. Healthcare, professional and technical services, and manufacturing saw the biggest increases in jobs. Average hourly earnings also ticked up to 0.4% in October, compared to 0.3% in September. The unemployment rate, however, rose to 3.7%, up from 3.5% during the previous month. While the total number of available jobs in the U.S. has fallen from the March high of 11.9 million in March, it remains high, which could indicate that employers are facing difficulty filling their open positions. 

Wall Street Journal

Clothing optional. Last week, social media site Tumblr reversed a decision made in 2018 to ban nudity from its site. Content posted on Tumblr can now include “nudity, mature subject matter, or sexual themes.” The posts cannot have sexually explicit visual content. In 2018, Tumblr banned explicit photos, videos, GIFs, and illustration and said that it would focus on creating a welcoming environment. But the news resulted in Tumblr losing one-third of its users. The platform was sold to Automatic by Verizon in 2019. 

New York Times

It’s all about the Benjamins. Rapper Sean Combs, also known as Diddy, will acquire licensed cannabis operations from New York, Massachusetts, and Illinois-based Cresco Labs Inc. and Columbia Care Inc. in a $185 million deal. The new cannabis company will become the first minority-owned, vertically integrated, multi-state cannabis company in the U.S. In acquiring the companies, Didddy will be able to operate cannabis sales in major U.S. cities like New York, Boston, and Chicago. 

CNBC

Musk cleans house. Following his takeover of Twitter, Elon Musk began massive layoffs at the social media platform on Friday. In an email to employees ahead of the layoff, Musk wrote: “In an effort to place Twitter on a healthy path, we will go through the difficult process of reducing our global workforce on Friday.” The firings affected teams across the company including sales, trust and safety, marketing, product, engineering, and legal. Musk may be trying to mitigate his losses from the acquisition of Twitter. The Tesla CEO paid $44 billion for the site, which is valued by some analysts at $25 billion. 

Washington Post