Morning Brew Daily
Small Bizz Leans on Layoffs & Netflix Investors Wary of Warner Bros. Discovery
05 Dec 2025
Chapter 1: Why are small businesses experiencing more layoffs than larger corporations?
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Good morning Brew Daily show. I'm Neil Freiman and I'm Toby Howell. Today the eyes of the globe will be on Washington DC with the World Cup draw.
Then remember American Eagles ad with Sydney Sweeney. It totally paid off. It's Friday, December 5th. Let's ride.
Good morning and happy Friday. Just a heads up, we recorded the show yesterday afternoon ahead of our live show Thursday night. So you're getting our PM energy rather than our AM energy for a change. If you detect a difference, please do let us know. Also, I'm not sure how to say this. Louvre? Louver? Seems no one does.
The Paris Art Museum that was the scene of a daring crime was among the most mispronounced words in the U.S. this year. This list comes from language learning company Babbel and the captioning group who teamed up to find the words that public figures like news anchors and politicians struggled with the most this year. The Louvre was up there. Nailed it.
Along with New York City Mayor-elect Zoran Mamdani, Monjaro, the weight loss drug, and acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol.
You nailed all of those, Neil, so hats off to you. If I had to make one of these lists for Morning Brew Daily, it would be long and humbling, but some contenders are Doering, which is a Neil Fryman special, as is Gasoline, which is an inexplicable injection of some South Jersey into your speech. I am certainly not off the hook, though. Turning known into no one is a Toby special.
That is not a compound word, as is mispronouncing Chipotle, which... I got no one else to blame but myself for that one. How do I not know how to say Chipotle yet? Now a word from our sponsor, LinkedIn ads. All right, smart guy. I answered yesterday. What's the best return on spend that you've ever gotten?
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Chapter 2: What impact will the FIFA World Cup have on the economy?
Just go to linkedin.com slash mbd. That's linkedin.com slash mbd. Terms and conditions may apply. The jobs market is looking like Bambi on ice, showing signs that it's weak in the knees once more after a strong September. The first sign things are not hunky-dory in labor land.
was an ADB report on Wednesday, which showed the US private sector shed 32,000 jobs in November, a surprising loss after a positive September. The losses, led by small businesses who cut a whopping 120,000 jobs last month, represented the largest private headcount dip since early 2023.
Then on Thursday, a separate report from Challenger Gray and Christmas said that layoff announcements crossed 1.1 million this year, the most since the pandemic. Companies announced 71,000 cuts last month, pushing the total to 54% higher than the same 11-month period a year ago. Where did all the jobs go?
The most cited reason for cuts were plain old restructuring, but market and economic conditions and tariffs were close behind. Sifting through all this data is the Fed, which is looking for signs on whether to pull the trigger on another 25-point cut or go bigger or hold their fire entirely.
The final piece of the puzzle is still hidden between the couch cushions, though, as the government's official November jobs report, originally due this Friday, was delayed until the 16th due to the shutdown. Neil, it's a messy puzzle for sure.
The big story here, I think, is the decline in jobs in small businesses. Small companies of companies that employ fewer than 50 workers do employ almost half of all U.S. workers in the economy. And things have been going in the wrong direction, not just last month, but over the summer as well. For the three month period ending in October,
Companies with 50 or fewer employees had a net loss of 88,000 jobs. Now, firms with more than 500 employees, the ones we mostly talk about on this show that are publicly traded or a bunch bigger than the small businesses, they gained 151,000 jobs. So it seems like a case of Wall Street doing pretty well while small businesses not doing as well. And they are just left to defend for themselves.
in the face of headwinds like tariffs, in a much more weakened position than someone like a Costco or Walmart that has scaled to diversify suppliers or tinker with things. They just have a lot more wiggle room than these small companies, and they're starting to start hurting.
Now, one confounding data point to all the data that I just expressed is the fact that unemployment claims actually fell to their lowest level in three plus years. That was another report that dropped on Thursday. So initial unemployment claims fell to just 191,000 in the week ending November 29th. That is below every estimate in Bloomberg's economist survey.
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Chapter 3: Which stocks are trending this week and why?
It's also the first with an expanded field, whereas the 2022 World Cup in Qatar had 32 teams. This one will have 48, meaning... more games, more venues, and more money. It will also have a very Trump flair if today's ceremony is any indication.
The draw was originally supposed to be held in Las Vegas, but Trump convinced his friend, FIFA President Gianni Infantino, to move it to the Kennedy Center, the storied venue Trump took over earlier this year. Trump will be present at the event alongside sports figures he's friendly with, like Brady and Gretzky.
The village people will also sing YMCA, one of the president's favorite tunes, in another gesture by Infantino to get in his good graces. Toby, the entire world is going to be watching to see whether their team ends up in a friendly group or the group of death.
I really hope the U.S. gets an easy group. And if Trump's relationship with Infantino is any indication, maybe we will. You never know. Read between the lines there. But I think you summed it up perfectly. Big is the word to describe this World Cup because not only are we having the expanded field, everything is just going to be so expensive this year. FIFA is selling...
tickets for up to $6,730 for a single ticket. Hospitality package, if you want to go big, can run you $73,200. If you go back to 1994, which is the last time the World Cup was in the United States, you could pay $25 for parking and get a hospitality package for $475.
Obviously, inflation has something to do with that, but it just goes to show how much of a moneymaker this event is expected to be for the United States and FIFA as well.
There are a lot of questions around the logistics of this, too, because all U.S. World Cup game World Cup venues are NFL stadiums. And if you've ever been to an NFL stadium, there's not a lot of public transit options, especially for MetLife Stadium here in our backyard in New Jersey, which is hosting the semifinals tonight. And the finals getting there by train is a little difficult.
It's possible. But there are going there is going to be a lot of parking. And that does seem to be another facet of what I'm going to call a money grab by FIFA. FIFA is selling parking spots near these World Cup stadiums, these NFL stadiums that go for minimum seventy five dollars and maximum one hundred and seventy five dollars per spot and per game day.
That is more than the price of some actual match tickets at previous World Cups. FIFA is saying that for all of this, US and Canada and Mexico, you're going to get a huge economic boost. We're saying this World Cup is going to generate $25 billion for the economy, create almost 200,000 temporary jobs. There's going to be 1.2 million people entering the country to see these games.
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Chapter 4: What are the implications of Netflix's bid for Warner Bros. Discovery?
The company has also partnered with Travis Kelsey on a merch collab with with their creative director saying that the Kelsey and Sweeney partnerships alone garnered more than 44 billion impressions. Zooming out, denim in general is hotter than wearing jeans on a beach. American Eagle stock is up 41% in the last month.
Levi's is up 15% over the same time, while Gap, who also ran a successful marketing campaign that featured the girls group Cat's Eye, is up 20%. Neil, time to dig out your pair of skinny jeans from the closet.
So there's this big question about who would win the denim wars of 2025. Was it American Eagle was seen as Sweeney gap with cat's eye Levi's with Beyonce. And I think the answer is everyone. Everyone was a winner brands aired nearly 70% more denim TV spots this year compared to the last year as they just leaned into this growing market. And it is a rapidly growing market.
The global jeans market is up to $101 billion. That's up 30% since 2020. So everyone's wearing jeans these days. And they say the reason is, is because in the past, there's been one type of jean that everyone wears. And that is the style for that particular year or era, whether it's skinny jeans or bell bottoms.
But now everyone is wearing all types of jeans and not just on their legs, but on their arms and their torsos as well. Everyone's just denim head to toe and all these companies are doing really well because of it.
Some people attributed the rise in denim to coming out of the pandemic. Pandemic era was definitely a time for sweatpants and just wearing whatever you wore in your house everywhere because you couldn't really go outside. When COVID kind of started waning off, said bust out the jeans again. Like, let's go outside. I'm going to put on my skinny jeans. I'm going to put on my wide flare jeans.
So that is one driving force. The one thing I would be wary of if I was one of these brands that are fighting over consumers is a lot of Gen Z has been indicating that they value price above anything rather than actual loyalty to a specific brand. So, yes, you can do these massive marketing campaigns.
But if you are pricing your jeans above what your core audience wants, then they're going to shift to American Eagle if they were a fan of Levi's and vice versa if the prices switch.
Are you wearing jeans?
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Chapter 5: How are job losses affecting the U.S. labor market?
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Absolutely. There was a solid week where I got ads for 55 plus senior living communities in the Midwest.
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Just go to LinkedIn.com slash MBD. That's LinkedIn.com slash MBD. Terms and conditions apply only on LinkedIn ads. My dog of the week is Netflix because investors don't really want it to adopt Harry Potter. Shares fell more than 5% after Netflix submitted a mostly cash bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, the film and TV giant whose IP includes DC Comics, Friends, Harry Potter, and everything HBO.
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Chapter 6: What are the latest headlines you need to know before the weekend?
favoring netflix pretty explicitly that they want to tie up with netflix and they say this is not a fair process to us at all so they're already sending strongly worded letters to lawyers i mean it makes sense this is a once in a generation reshuffling of the entire entertainment landscape so it's not going to be a smooth process but fascinating to see the different stock reactions as these rumors come out it's a very confusing you know entertainment landscape
out there right now where everyone seems to have the ability to license everyone else's content when it comes to theme parks, when it comes to the actual studio business. So I don't know how this is all gonna shake out. You said Paramount's leader in the clubhouse. I'm just gonna put my hat on Netflix. I mean, the biggest usually wins in situations like this or just in life in general.
So I'm just gonna pick Netflix
We'll find out mid-December. So right now, Warner Bros. Discovery, their board is, you know, they're probably going to spend their weekend looking at huge stacks of paperwork, talking amongst themselves, saying which do we want to go with, whether it's a fair process or it's not a fair process. Who are we going to get by regulators with easier? There's a lot of different variables.
And we will be on this story for the next few weeks as they announce it, perhaps mid-December.
I'm going to watch some Harry Potter to brush up, you know.
Okay. Let's run to the finish with some final headlines. Remember the Metaverse? No? Well, even the company that renamed itself Meta is looking to move on. CEO Mark Zuckerberg is expected to significantly slash resources to his Metaverse group, Bloomberg reported, cutting its budget as much as 30% for the next year.
Those cuts will fall heavily on Meta's virtual reality group, which belongs to a Metaverse business unit that's lost more than $70 billion since the start of 2021. Investors were thrilled that less money would be set on fire, sending Meta stock up more than 4% on the report. Toby Zuck is full steam ahead on AI and cutting some of the baggage of the Metaverse. Time to change the name again.
I mean, reality labs has lost over $70 billion since 2021. So in terms of like the greatest money incinerating machines in corporate America right now, reality labs is absolutely up there. So any cuts was just the market saying, finally, like you're seeing the light here. Apparently internally Zuck is still bullish on the vision that people are going to hang out and work in a virtual worlds, but
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Chapter 7: How is the World Cup draw changing the landscape of international sports?
He could have chose any other thing, and therefore I don't think, I think they're just going to stick with Meta and not change it to anything else. But it's pretty clear that this massive bet on the Metaverse that everyone was so convinced about at the time, at least in Silicon Valley, has not turned out the way expected.
Moving on, do you know who the singer David is? The one who spells his name D for VD. If it's not ringing a bell, you are not alone because he was Google's most searched person of the year according to its year end report. Google's year in search dropped on Thursday showing the topics that have seen searches spike from last year. So no, David was not the most Googled person by sheer volume.
That was probably Neil Freiman, but he did see the biggest bump. David's popularity stems from his music career, but also a viral murder case involving a teen girl, which he remains an active suspect in. Other trending searches, including Charlie Kirk assassination in the news category, Mikey Madison for actors, and hot honey in the food and drink section.
In a real life version of the Spider-Man pointing meme, Google's own chatbot Gemini was the most Googled term of the year. Neil, what else stood out to you about the year in search?
What stood out to me is that people, it appears to me that people are starting to use Google search with the expectation that they will get an AI overview in response. They aren't looking for blue hyperlinks anymore, a list of just links that they can click on. They're looking for full paragraph answers, which they've come to expect from Google search now.
So what's the deal with phrases like what's the deal with as a start of search were more recorded more than ever by Google searches for Tell me about dot, dot, dot. We're up 70% year over year. Queries starting with how do I dot, dot, dot reach an all-time high with a 20% increase from last year. So these more open-ended, big-picture questions stood out to me.
And also as a searcher myself, I may be doing this implicitly or subconsciously because I do want to read an AI overview that is very similar to a Gemini response or a ChatGPT response instead of the traditional hyperlink. And it shows how Google search is changing with the times.
And yeah, just evolving into the age of AI. The other thing that stood out a lot about this report was that there was this Polymarket user that showed a suspicious level of understanding of what people were going to use the search engine for.
He opened, or he or she opened a series of position on Polymark's number one search person on Google this year market and made $1.2 million by betting $10,000 on yes, that David would end up being the most searched person of the year, that netted them $200,000.
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