• Grant Sabatier built wealth by saving and investing the majority of his money in index funds.
• He'll always recommend index funds, but he also thinks people should be investing in themselves.
• Specifically, he advises developing AI skills.

Grant Sabatier understands better than most the power of index-fund investing: The strategy helped him build a seven-figure net worth and hit financial independence by age 30.

Today, at 40, he still primarily invests in index funds.

"Ninety-plus percent of my assets are still just in a Vanguard total stock market index fund. I've been keeping it simple since I started investing in 2010 and we've all seen what the market has done over that time," he told Business Insider. "So, just being a passive investor in that sense has continued to pay dividends. I really haven't changed a whole lot, and I still stand by the strategy."

The self-made millionaire, author, and new bookstore owner will always recommend buying index funds. But there's one, perhaps overlooked investment that he recommends additionally: "Invest in your skills because skills are future currency."

Skills allow you to adapt to a world that's "changing faster than ever," he said. "Having those skills and keeping those skills up to date is something that you often don't have to spend much money on — it just takes some time — but it is really, really valuable. I would double down on that."

Specifically, he'd invest time into learning about artificial intelligence — how it works and how you can leverage it.

"AI is poised to transform most industries in ways we are only beginning to predict. Savvy entrepreneurs are already looking for ways to adopt and adapt so they're not left behind," he writes in his new book, "Inner Entrepreneur," which he describes as a blueprint he's designed after 15 years of launching, acquiring, and selling business.

Sabatier, who built wealth by buying, scaling, and selling websites, has always leveraged technology to save him time and money.

"We use technology to manage our payroll, health insurance, 401(k), human resource support, podcast editing, email funnels, and more," he writes. "AI is making this even more accessible and affordable."

Learning AI is beneficial to any working individual, not just entrepreneurs and business owners.

"More recruiters and companies are going to be adding those questions about AI fluency and experience to their interviews and screenings," he told BI. "The more you know about it and the more well-versed you are, the more attractive of a full-time job candidate you are, so it's just as useful in your full-time job hunting as it is pursuing entrepreneurship."

He acknowledges that AI is a massive space and "it's impossible to keep track of everything, so try to pick a lane and spend a couple of hours a week experimenting with one or two tools just so you can have a conversation and stay relevant."

Choosing to invest in yourself by honing a skill doesn't mean abandoning your investment portfolio.

"You should simultaneously be building your skills while you're growing your investment portfolio," he said, which is easier to do if you simplify your investment strategy. "It's pretty easy to passively invest in an index fund. Use all that additional time you're saving from tracking individual stocks to learn some new skills or beef up the skills that you have. The world's just changing so rapidly. I'd rather future proof my skills than add complexity to my investments."

One of America's greatest love affairs is with cheap stuff. Yes, consumers generally want things to come fast, and sure, they'd like them to be of decent quality — but above all, what they really care about is the price tag.

Many retailers understand this obsession and are eager to cater to price-sensitive customers. But serving this desire does not guarantee success: The single-minded focus on price means that often we can be pretty disloyal about where our cheap stuff comes from. And in a race to the bottom, there's always someone willing to go lower. At the moment, that's the Chinese online retailers Temu and Shein, whose rock-bottom prices are proving almost impossible to beat for American companies.

Some formerly hot big-name retailers have had a tough go of it as of late. Liberated Brands — the operator of the beloved millennial brands Billabong, Quiksilver, and Volcom — filed for bankruptcy in February and said it would close all its US locations. The fast-fashion retailer Forever 21 is reportedly mulling filing for bankruptcy for the second time in five years. According to the research and advisory firm Coresight, major US retailers announced 7,325 store closures in 2024, up by 33% from 2023 and the highest number since 2020. The bloodbath has continued into 2025: More than 3,000 store closures have already been announced this year. Names such as Big Lots, Party City, Joann, Kohl's, Dollar Tree, and Macy's are shuttering locations. And it's not just physical retailers that are struggling — shares of the online retailer Etsy tumbled after it reported disappointing sales numbers during the holiday season.

When a retailer is having a hard time, it's usually for a multitude of reasons — poor management, a declining brand, changing consumer tastes, etc. But in many of these cases, one quite new factor is contributing to their troubles: supercheap Shein and Temu, which are increasingly hard to contend with. Many American consumers love to cycle through stuff rapidly and thoughtlessly, and the Chinese retailers let them do that in an unrivaled manner.

"What they've done that hurts the competition the most is compete so strongly on price that, yes, it makes it very difficult for anyone else to compete in that way without losing that money," said Sky Canaves, a principal analyst of retail and e-commerce at EMARKETER. "It puts other retailers on the back foot."

In the realm of cheap stuff, there's no such thing as cheap enough.

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Liberated Brands has blamed several factors for its bankruptcy, including inflation and a volatile economy, but inexpensive online retailers are also contributing to its woes. In a sworn declaration accompanying the company's bankruptcy filing, its CEO, Todd Hymel, said the company had faced challenges from "shifting consumer preferences" toward fast fashion and e-commerce that harmed its pricing power and profitability.

"Consumers can cheaply, quickly, and easily order low-quality clothing garments from fast fashion powerhouses and have such goods delivered within days," he said. "These fast-fashion companies can cater to micro-trends as opposed to the traditional seasonal trend-forecasting retail model."

It's not a great look to admit that you're hemorrhaging customers because you can't compete with e-commerce companies selling the lowest-quality, lowest-priced versions of everything you make.

Forever 21 finds itself in a similar position, struggling to contend with Chinese e-commerce companies that can undercut it on price and are relatively indistinguishable, quality-wise. (You probably can't tell if a dress was from Shein or Forever 21 without looking at the tag.) In 2023, Forever 21 announced a partnership with Shein in an "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" move. But apparently, even that hasn't been enough. For its part, Etsy made its name as a marketplace for personalized, handcrafted items from tiny creators. In recent years, though, it has expanded into offering inexpensive mass-produced goods in an effort to keep up. The problem is that whatever T-shirt you can get printed off Etsy for cheap you can probably find on Temu (or Amazon) for even cheaper.

Liberated pointed to a press release about its bankruptcy filing and otherwise declined to comment for this story. Forever 21, Shein, and Temu did not respond to requests for comment. Etsy declined to comment.

Most retailers don't outright say that Shein and Temu are a problem for them. It's not a great look to admit that you're hemorrhaging customers because you can't compete with e-commerce companies selling the lowest-quality, lowest-priced versions of everything you make. But if you read between the lines, the issue is present.

"Retailers sometimes are talking about consumer behaviors or cautious spending, and we think some of the siphoning off of sales to Shein and Temu is getting bundled up in the overall narrative of consumer caution," said John Mercer, the head of global research at Coresight. "Yeah, there's been some caution, totally, but some of what companies are reporting under that could be losing sales to Shein and Temu."

Coresight has estimated that Shein and Temu may be a $100 billion threat to traditional retailers.

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Shein and Temu mostly employ well-trodden tactics from other retailers and push them to the limit in ways other companies can't. Instead of American companies manufacturing their stuff in China and shipping it over to the US, they decided to cut in on the action by making and shipping stuff themselves. The more direct supply chain allowed Shein and Temu to get agile and efficient enough to feed the American consumerist beast.

"You have to appreciate the fact that China for decades was always known as the country that merely manufactured products for other retailers," said Brittain Ladd, a retail and supply-chain consultant. "Shein and Temu, what they did is they researched retail in the US and Europe and so forth, and what they determined is we can do better. We actually can take what makes us special, our capabilities and manufacturing and supply chains and low-cost sourcing, all of that, and we can create business models where we can beat the best retailers in the United States."

Shein, which has been around since 2008, can quickly identify fashion trends and get them marketed, produced, and shipped to consumers' doors. The garments may take longer to arrive than if they came from Amazon, but the price makes them appealing. Temu, a newer entrant that sells items well beyond clothes, has the benefit of a monster parent company, the Chinese giant PDD Holdings, that allows it to set super-low prices that essentially no other retailer can stomach. It's not all that different from what Amazon did when it started out, losing money on e-commerce to get customers.

"They're backed by a very deep-pocketed parent company that is willing to lose money for a sustained period of time to gain market share in the US and elsewhere in the world," Canaves said. "It's a very aggressive strategy."

Now, I know what you might be thinking here: What about Trump and the tariffs and all this talk of taking on China? Shein and Temu have a plan for that — or at least they may not have to worry too too much.

Historically, Shein and Temu have been able to take advantage of a tax loophole that allows importers to avoid paying duties and taxes on shipments worth less than $800, known as the "de minimis" exemption. (Because what they sell is so inexpensive, it's tough to get to $800 in a single order, so they can put a bunch of orders together, too.) For some context, nearly 1.4 billion shipments entered the US through the de minimis exemption last year. Early in his term, President Donald Trump signed an executive order trying to close that loophole. Shein and Temu were prepared and had already been fulfilling more orders from the US and building up inventory stateside. Still, the executive order caused so much chaos at ports that it was put on pause. If the pause is lifted, the scenario won't be ideal for Shein and Temu, but it won't be a killer either.

"They're just simply storing the inventory in the US, just like other retailers do," Ladd said. "And even though that's a higher-cost methodology, it still allows them to sell their products at a price point much cheaper than anyone else."

It's a similar story with the 10% tariff Trump has imposed on goods from China. It's not great for Temu and Shein, but it's also well below the 60% Trump was floating on the campaign trail. It's relatively easy to pass some of that increase on to customers, and since plenty of their competitors import from China, too, they can keep their relative price advantage.

You're not going to be able to outcompete Shein or Temu on price.

"Shein and Temu are rock bottom of the market," Mercer said. "If the whole market is rising in price, you can put your price up and still be rock bottom."

Some retailers have been able to ward off the Shein and Temu threat. Walmart and Amazon may not be able to go as low on prices, but they also offer things the Chinese e-commerce companies don't: faster delivery, groceries, different products. In November, Amazon launched Haul, a section of its app that, ironically, looks and works like a knockoff Temu. Other retailers at risk of going the way of Billabong or Forever 21 have managed to reinvent themselves and retain relevance, such as Gap and Abercrombie.

"You're not going to be able to outcompete Shein or Temu on price, so you have to build that almost emotional relationship with" customers, Mercer said. "You have to stand for more than low prices."

Ladd added, "Retailers go out of business because they lose relevance with customers."

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Not to let flailing retailers off the hook here, but they're not dealing with the easiest of circumstances. Inflation has been a problem. The economy is unstable. It's not clear what tariffs and trade conflicts will mean for the retail industry. They're also managing a price-obsessed American consumer who's easily lured away.

We're attracted to cheap stuff not because of its quality but because it has a low enough price that allows us to constantly churn through the stuff, said Wendy Woloson, a history professor at Rutgers University who wrote "Crap: A History of Cheap Stuff in America."

"We don't have to make commitments to the things around us because if they're cheap enough and if they're available enough, then I can always buy something else," Woloson said.

When the barrier to entry is so low, there's no significant consequence of consuming like this. Hate that mousepad you got on Temu? Who cares; it was $2.74. Woloson noted that some people can't afford to buy something nicer, but even if everyone could, it's not clear they would. We live in an era of flash fads. People don't want a $200 pair of jeans that'll last for a decade — they want a $20 pair they can toss when the next trend cycles through.

"I think we're really bored," Woloson said.

At the moment, Shein and Temu are winning a race to satiate the insatiable American consumer, and they're undercutting retailers big and small in the process.

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Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.

• Chipotle is using AI chatbot "Ava Cado" to hire 20,000 workers for burrito season.
• AI hiring tools streamline recruitment but can frustrate applicants.
• It's unlikely AI hiring chatbots are going anywhere soon, they just have some kinks to work out.

Evalyn Mendoza has applied to work at Chipotle twice in the last 12 months. Last June, submitting her materials was a breeze. This January, the 33-year-old worked with a new kind of recruiter: an AI chatbot named "Ava Cado."

After asking some simple questions about her name, contact information, and availability to work, Ava Cado scheduled an interview for Mendoza at a Chipotle location 35 minutes away in Selma, California.

But the chatbot misled her. "There was pretty much no way to really contact them," Mendoza said of trying to reach the store. Upon arriving, the manager told her there were no open positions and that the AI system had mistakenly scheduled the appointment.

"I was really frustrated at that time because I had that problem with McDonald's and other AI," Mendoza said. "Having this problem be the third or fourth time that I've had issues with AI — it was just getting to me."

Chipotle is one of several major companies that use AI-powered recruiting. Paradox, the company that supplies the software for Chipotle's Ava Cado, has been working with other large retail, fast food, and service companies like Lowe's, FedEx, and McDonald's to hire new talent using AI. Other workplaces like Mastercard and Stanford Health Care partner with Phenom's AI-recruiting platform. A recent survey by Resume Builder found that 70% of surveyed business leaders were using AI to hire.

We're about to enter "burrito season," Chipotle's busiest time of the year from March through May when customers awaken from their winter slumber craving the fast-casual Mexican grill. This year, the chain is firing up Ava Cado to help hire 20,000 new workers to meet the demand.

"'Ava Cado' has helped streamline our processes in order to capitalize on top talent faster and remain competitive in high volume hiring," Ilene Eskenazi, Chipotle's chief human resources officer, wrote in an email to Business Insider.

While companies like Chipotle are reaping the benefits of expediting their hiring process, it hasn't necessarily made it easier for every candidate to apply.

Mendoza said the opaqueness of the AI hiring process has left applicants like her stranded and isolated.

"It's made the whole process a lot less personal and I feel like that's why it's become a harder time finding a job through AI because it just treats the people like me like a number," she added.

Pros and cons of AI hiring

In a press release, Chipotle said applications have nearly doubled since it started using the recruiting software Paradox to power Ava Cado last October. The completion rate has increased from 50% to over 85% and the average time it takes for a candidate to start work after applying has been cut from 12 days to just four.

Adam Godson, the CEO of Paradox, said the key to recruiting for these kinds of roles is making it easy and fast.

"That's actually the paradox for which we're named," Godson said. "By using technology, you actually spend more time with people and not software."

Answer a few fact-based questions like contact information, availability to work, and ability to physically lift items and voilà, a candidate is scheduled for an interview that could happen as soon as the next day.

"If you make it easy with the device they have, through text messaging, for example, and you can make it fast, then people will come to work," Godson said.

More and more companies are trying it out, said Andrew Chamberlain, a former chief economist at Glassdoor, even if small businesses aren't likely to use such technology.

"Less than 1% of employers have 500 or more employees, but those are really huge companies, and they employ a lot of people," Chamberlain said, referring to Glassdoor's US research. "This is the future that they're going to increasingly invest in this technology, and they'll be more and more automated."

He added that young people, those without a college degree, and lower-skilled workers in retail and customer service are most likely to encounter AI in their experiences. While companies stand to gain dividends from this hiring technology, candidates applying for roles might not equally share those benefits.

"I wouldn't be very excited about going through an interview process just dealing with a chatbot," Chamberlain said. "The tools are better today than ever before, and they're getting better. They're definitely not as good as talking to a human being."

On Reddit, at least half a dozen posts in Chipotle-themed forums discussed the difficulty in scheduling an interview. Candidates described arriving at a store for an appointment with a manager only to be stood up. Managers described having AI schedule appointments outside of their stated availability.

In written statements to Business Insider, Paradox said that clients have the option to integrate their calendar to schedule interviews automatically. Chipotle said that Ava Cado notifies managers when interviews are scheduled.

Godson said Paradox incorporates a short survey that allows candidates to rate their interactions with AI chatbots in the hiring process—98% of applicants, he said, report satisfaction. For Chipotle, that rating is nearly 89% positive, according to the fast-casual chain.

With any emerging technologies, there will be bumps in the road. One of the drawbacks and risks of using automation in the hiring process, said Chamberlain, is that it could negatively impact how they perceive a company's work culture. This could impact hiring as more and more young people are already feeling more alienated from work.

"If they get a reputation from their AI tool, that somehow this terrible place to apply, it definitely will hurt them in the long run," Chamberlain said. He said that companies might lose out on the best candidates if their reputation is tarnished. "It'll cancel out the benefits they're expecting to get."

So far, there's been no AI backlash at Chipotle. Since announcing their hiring spree, the company has seen a 20% increase in applications, Chipotle representatives said. And it doesn't seem they plan on firing Ava Cado any time soon.

"We will continue to leverage AI to relieve General Managers of administrative tasks, so they can focus on their day-to-day operations and providing excellent hospitality for guests," Eskenzani wrote.

Do you have a story to share about AI and the job search? Contact this reporter at [email protected] or securely via Signal at jdeng.20. Use a personal email address and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.

The president promoted "Trump Was Right About Everything" hats with his heath secretary standing behind him on Tuesday.

Three studios under the WB Games banner, including Monolith Productions, are being shuttered.

Under the legislation, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing would be ordered to design a $250 bill bearing President Trump's face.

With the help of President Trump, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) muscled a budget package through the House — a win he claimed will give him momentum to pass "Trump's full America First agenda — not just parts of it."

Why it matters: Johnson's dream of one big, beautiful bill will live another day. But so will the reality of his razor-thin House GOP majority.

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• The extraordinary evening was an early taste of the chaos to come.

Zoom in: Just before 7:30pm ET, lawmakers began filing out of the House chamber after being told votes were done for the evening. Leadership thought they had too many holdouts to risk a vote.

Just 13 minutes later lawmakers were streaming back in — the vote was on.

• "I just got a call from my office, they said 'Come back, the vote is back on,'" exclaimed a befuddled Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.).
• Some lawmakers had already been long gone. Several told Axios they were at dinner. At least one was at a Capitol Hill bar. Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.) said he was "halfway home."
• "I was already in my pajamas," quipped Rep. Scott Fitzgerald (R-Wisc.). The whole dynamic was "very odd," said Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.).

Between the lines: Both parties pulled out all the stops to try and ensure their preferred outcome.

• Rep. Brittany Pettersen (D-Colo.) showed up despite giving birth less than a month ago. Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas) voted despite being sick.
• Rep. Kevin Mullin (D-Calif.), who is recovering from a blood clot in his leg and a knee infection contracted from surgery, arrived to vote using a walker.
• Only Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Calif.), 77, who has missed nearly every vote since Jan. 3 as he undergoes cancer treatment, was absent.

Zoom out: Remember, this procedural bill was the easy part.

• Passing the actual bill — which could include deep cuts to Medicaid — will require Republicans of all stripes to subordinate their personal goals for the overall ambitions of the party and their president.
• House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) is salivating at the opportunity to put Republicans on the record on their planned cuts, especially on social safety net programs.

What's next: Now Senate GOP Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) has to decide whether he wants to accept, or try to amend, the House budget reconciliation package.

• Many of his members, including Senate Finance Chair Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), want to make dramatic changes, including how Congress counts the cost of Trump's 2017 tax cuts.

Apple said Tuesday it's working to fix an iPhone bug after some users reported its automatic dictation feature briefly displays "Trump" when they say "racist" before the text-to-speech transcription software corrects itself.

The big picture: A viral TikTok video of the glitch that Apple says erroneously suggests the word "trump" when users dictate some words that also include an "r" consonant caused outrage among conservatives online who've accused Big Tech of political bias.

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• The glitch underscores artificial intelligence's accuracy problems as the technology develops and as companies like Apple move to make AI a key differentiator in choosing a smartphone.

Zoom in: Apple says the glitch is sometimes occurring during initial analysis when the speech recognition models that power dictation have on occasions displayed words that contain some phonetic overlap, but then further analysis identifies the intended word.

What they're saying: "We are aware of an issue with the speech recognition model that powers Dictation and we are rolling out a fix today," an Apple spokesperson said in an emailed statement Tuesday evening.

• WNBA player Aaliyah Edwards follows a vegetarian, high-protein diet to stay at the top of her game.
• Tofu, beans, and Greek yogurt feature heavily in her meal rotation.
• A sports dietitian said this diet is perfect for anyone who wants to avoid injury and level up at the gym.

WNBA rising star Aaliyah Edwards is under a lot of pressure. One key way she stays focused and fuels her recovery for peak performance is diet.

At just 22 years old, Aaliyah Edwards already has an Olympics under her belt, repping Canada's women's basketball team in Tokyo in 2021 as the then-youngest member of the team. She's also racked up accolades as a college forward, helping to bring UConn to the Final Four of the NCAA's D1 women's basketball tournament in 2024 before signing with the Washington Mystics for her rookie season of the WNBA.

Now in the WNBA — one of the world's hottest sports leagues right now — Edwards said it's a perfect moment of opportunity, and responsibility, to rep women's athletics. "The momentum for women's pro sports is building," she told Business Insider.

Edwards is a plant-based athlete, an increasingly popular choice favored by superstars like Serena and Venus Williams, Alex Morgan, and Kyrie Irving.

Being a vegetarian in pro sports is all about balance for better energy and recovery, Edwards told BI in the interview, coordinated through her partnership with plant-based food company Nasoya.

"I have to make sure I have high-protein meals throughout the day so I can perform on the court," she said. "It's not as difficult as you think."

Edwards said her routine includes nourishing staples like tofu, tempeh, and lentils for meals and energy-boosting, high-protein snacks to fuel intense training.

Her high-protein staples include tofu and legumes

Edwards said tofu is a regular ingredient in her meals because it's deceptively simple to prepare and it takes on the flavors of any sauces or condiments you add.

One of her favorite dishes is crispy soy garlic tofu — the secret to great texture is in coating the tofu in cornstarch before frying.

"It may look intimidating but it also takes about 30 minutes to make it," she said.

Edwards said she also eats tempeh, another soy product, as well as lentils and chickpeas.

"I'm always looking for new protein-packed recipes," she said.

Legumes are a great source of protein for athletes because they're also high in carbs for energy and fiber for healthy digestion.

Getting enough protein on a plant-based diet comes down to eating enough and eating the right balance of foods, according to sports dietitian Nancy Clark.

Plant sources of protein can have a different combination of amino acids, essential building blocks of protein, so it's important to get all of them.

"That's where mixing and matching comes in, like rice and beans. Mixing and matching can happen over the course of the day, it doesn't have to be at each meal," Clark told BI.

Athletes need more carbs than sedentary people to help muscles recover after exercise, according to Clark. She recommends adding chickpeas to salad or making lentil soup as healthy, high-protein meal ideas.

For energy: a pre-workout parfait

Edwards said she makes sure to get a snack before training, since she often has two workouts in a day.

Her go-to snack is a parfait with Greek yogurt, fruits, and granola, offering a combo of pre-workout carbs for energy with protein from dairy.

It's particularly important for athletes to get the right balance of carbs and protein if they're working out more than once per day, to give their muscles the best chance to recover, according to Clark.

Edwards said nutrition can be highly personal, and finding exactly what works best for her body has been a process. Her current routine is dialed in to help her keep up with the intensity of the WNBA.

"You can be super committed to what you do on the court in the moment, but it's what you do in prepping your body and your recovery that's the biggest thing in long-term performance," she said.

• Trump made cuts to the Department of Education's research arm, which fuels the Nation's Report Card.
• Research and data collection at the department are critical to tracking students' math and reading progress.
• One department employee told BI the cuts amount to a "dismembering" of the agency.

The Nation's Report Card is on notice.

Employees said the Department of Education's ability to conduct its periodic measure of US students' progress in math and reading could be severely hampered after the White House DOGE office announced earlier this month that it ended more than $900 million in research contracts.

The Trump administration says the cuts will promote efficiency. Department employees BI spoke to said they'll halt crucial funding for the neediest schools and cripple its ability to measure student achievement.

The cuts impact a vast array of research that allows the agency to dole out billions in grants and other programs that education policy experts said are crucial for the most underresourced schools and students. This includes contracts that analyze data to identify rural school districts eligible for federal assistance, and those that study early childhood and school safety issues.

This also includes the Education Department's National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) tests, more commonly known as the Nation's Report Card, which tracks kids' progress in subjects including reading and math. NAEP has assessed student academic achievement for the last three decades. Last year, it found that eighth-grade reading levels hit a 30-year low.

"I have grave concerns about our future, even if the lights were able to turn on tomorrow, I don't know — what's already been done is just very detrimental," one employee of the Institute of Education Sciences — the Department's research and statistics arm facing severe spending cuts — told BI.

Three employees BI spoke to requested anonymity because they fear retaliation from the Education Department or DOGE for speaking with the media.

Madi Biedermann, deputy assistant secretary for communications at the Department of Education, told BI, "The agency continues to support NAEP and transparency around measures of student outcomes," Biedermann said.

Biedermann said the Department canceled the long-term trend assessments for 17-year-olds, but other tests, including those for fourth and eighth graders, are "continuing as normal."

The Education Department posted on X on February 12, "We want to ensure that every dollar being spent is directed toward improving education for kids — not conferences and reports on reports."

Still, some agency employees and experts said contracts — including those that manage EdFacts and the Common Core of Data — to collect the data necessary for those studies have been canceled, which would make conducting them much more difficult.

The IES employee insisted that NAEP could not continue without certain canceled DOGE contracts for data collection. In a February 21 letter to the Education Department, a dozen Democratic members of Congress condemned the contract cancellations and said the administration's claim that NAEP and other key programs would not be impacted "simply is not true."

"This is the absolute worst time to divest from education research," another Department employee told Business Insider, referring to the recent NAEP scores. "To just cut all of our datasets for what's leading to that, what indicators, what states are falling behind — it's so bad for being able to make any type of data-driven decisions for how to help get kids back on track."

The Institute of Education Sciences is a nonpartisan data collection and research arm that measures educational outcomes to help the department allocate funds to students with disabilities, low-income schools, and rural schools.

With the cuts underway, the IES employee said the Department's work is at a standstill.

"That essentially is like cutting off our arms, our legs, and it's essentially totally dismembering us, and it's keeping us from being able to actually do our work," she said.

Jeopardizing billions in funding

IES's research and data support a wide range of Department functions, including billions of dollars in funding for high-poverty schools and students with disabilities. Every state receives Title I funding to help low-income students, but the amounts vary on school needs.

"You can't do anything if you don't actually know where are the schools, what are the schools, are they open or closed? And how many kiddos go to them? You can't do really anything if you don't have that very first building block," the IES employee said. "Without that, everything else falls."

One of these grants — the Rural Education Achievement Program — helps rural schools that need more support than they get from their state and local governments. But without the data IES collects on students and schools across the country, the federal government won't be able to determine school eligibility and make funding allocations, said one employee of the Department's Office of Elementary and Secondary Education (OESE).

"All of sudden, this money is going to be gone because we can't make awards because they canceled this IES data contract," the employee said.

Tracking the progress of America's students in math and reading

Without studies like NAEP, Department employees and education experts said states and local governments will lack crucial information on best practices for K-12 learning and methods to improve teacher training and quality.

Weadé James, senior director for K-12 policy at the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank, pointed to kids' literacy as one example, which has sunk to its lowest levels in decades.

"We know that research advances our knowledge of what evidence and research-based practices should look like in teaching and learning, and with cuts at IES, we're going to have limited knowledge around the science of reading and how to improve teaching students' literacy skills," James said.

James referred to the "Mississippi Miracle" as an example of NAEP's significance; between 2013 and 2019, NAEP scores showed that literacy in Mississippi continued to rise after it adopted better evidence-based methods for teaching reading, even in areas with high child poverty rates that usually align with lower literacy levels.

Rachel Dinkes, the president and CEO of Knowledge Alliance — a nonprofit focused on improving K-12 public education through research-based practices — told BI that some of the project cuts dealt with improving math achievement in Appalachia and improving teacher recruitment in rural areas in Alaska.

"The cancellation of this work will not only derail the current work, but leave communities, parents, teachers, looking for evidence-based information that they may not be able to find," Dinkes said.

Eliminating the Department of Education

The research cuts mark a key step toward Trump's overall aim to dismantle the Department of Education. He has not yet signed an executive order to officially begin that process, but he previously said that he wants the agency to be eliminated "immediately" and for Education Secretary Linda McMahon to put herself out of a job.

While McMahon and some GOP lawmakers have suggested shifting the Department's responsibilities to other federal agencies, like the Treasury Department, but that could be tricky now that so many contracts have been canceled this month.

"The contracts are gone. You can't just renew them," the OESE employee said. "Even if we're outsourced to other agencies to do the work, that's essentially starting from scratch."

And James said that there's no proof those efforts would actually improve the US education system.

"There's nothing that shows us that this is actually a solution that is that's going to lead to better results than we do have now," James said.

Trump has accused the Department of Education of promoting extreme ideology in the name of diversity, equity, and inclusion, part of a broader anti-DEI campaign by the Trump administration. Earlier this month, the Department ordered schools across the country to end "racial preferences" in admissions, hiring, and other areas or risk losing federal funds. The agency legally cannot shape curriculum in classrooms.

NBC News reported earlier this month that dozens of Education Department employees who attended a diversity training course during Trump's first term in office were put on paid leave. On February 20, the Department said that it had so far canceled $350 million in "woke spending" at the Department.

"They are basically Control F-ing for their buzzword," the OESE employee said. But "the entire purpose of the Department of Education is equity, not in the DEI sense, but in like, we make up the gaps in local and federal funding and regulations."

Dinkes said that the future of the US education system is too important to be making cuts across the board without acknowledging the longer-term implications.

"There's even an efficiency argument to be made of having the federal government provide these sources of support at the national level of what works for whom and where," Dinkes said. "Who's to say when we cut it that it's ever going to come back. So let's continue to work on making this better, but let's not cut short what we currently have."

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When Louis Chiappetta started working as a ski instructor at 19, he saw it as a way to turn his hobby into a job. Growing up in central Maine, he'd already spent his winter months on the slopes. So a paycheck and a free ski pass were enough to seal the deal.

"There are not many people who, when asked what they do for fun, say, 'Well, I go back to where I work,'" he said.

After one of his friends got established as a ski patroller in Utah, Chiappetta followed, taking a job in 2021 in the rental shop at Canyons Village, one of the two ski areas in Vail's Park City Mountain resort. The pay was meager — $12.25 an hour — but he got three days off a week to ski the mountain's long, powdery runs. If the price of entry was couch surfing at friends' places, so be it.

His view on that trade-off quickly changed. Park City Mountain is one of 42 resorts owned by the international conglomerate Vail Resorts. The cost of a lift ticket at Canyons climbed 25% from $230 in 2022 to $290 for the current season, making it one of the most expensive resorts in the country. Chiappetta said he remembered ringing up customers for $2,000 to $3,000 worth of equipment, "making money hand over fist" for the resort. It was hard to ignore the gap between what people were paying for the experience and what he was making as an employee. "It was like getting my nose rubbed in it," he said.

Through a scholarship, Chiappetta was able to get his EMT certification and join the ski patrol, something he had always wanted to do. But the $20-an-hour entry-level salary still wasn't enough for him to get by. He joined the Park City Professional Ski Patrol Association, the union representing ski patrollers at Canyons, to push for a livable wage that took into account the specialized medical training and avalanche-prevention work he and other patrollers were asked to do. Starting on December 27, he and the union went on strike for 13 days. It worked; Vail agreed to raise their pay by $2 across the board, with additional increases for training, certifications, and experience.

Now 31, Chiappetta is in his third season as a ski patroller and makes roughly $29 an hour. He feels much more confident in his ability to support a future family on a ski patroller's salary. "There's nothing I'd rather do," Chiappetta said.

Since 2020, people across industries have been rethinking their relationship to work. Frustrated with their bosses' lack of loyalty and support, many have quit, changed positions, or found ways to claw back their autonomy by quiet quitting, secretly working multiple jobs, slyly outsourcing parts of their jobs, or unionizing. The Economic Policy Institute says 16.2 million American workers were represented by a union in 2023, an increase of roughly 400,000 since 2020.

Lately, workers in jobs that were always sold as a dream experience — the kinds of jobs Meryl Streep's character in "The Devil Wears Prada" says "a million girls would kill for" — are realizing that they, too, have gotten the short end of the stick. In exchange for these people "living the dream," companies paid very little: The job itself was supposed to be the reward. Now these workers, including ski patrollers, Minor League Baseball players, Disneyland character performers, and Chippendales dancers, have decided that the dream is no longer enough. They want a real living wage.

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America's ski industry has been one of the most visible examples of how workers are trying to turn their dream jobs into careers. During the busiest time of the year, the ski patroller strike shut down most of Park City Mountain. Guests were furious — not at the workers but at Vail for letting the strike happen. It brought attention to how little ski patrollers are paid. In 2023, the average hourly wage for lifeguards, ski patrollers, and other recreational workers was just $15, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Until recently, ski jobs were primarily seen as seasonal work for college kids or ski bums — people who would tolerate low wages in exchange for a romp on the mountain. Vail still bills its mission as creating "the experience of a lifetime" for its employees.

Over the past six years, workers have pushed to make ski work a sustainable career. Unions representing ski patrollers and lift mechanics have formed at more than 16 resorts across the US. A major concern for these workers is the rapidly growing cost of living near resorts. As of December, it cost about 33% more to live in Park City than in the average US city, the Economic Research Institute found in its research. As of 2023, census data shows the median income in the city was more than $101,000, while the median salary for ski patrollers was just over $30,000. While Vail provides some affordable housing options for its workers, there isn't enough to go around. To make ends meet, some patrollers have had to work second jobs.

Meanwhile, the ski industry has been consolidating. In the past decade, American companies have acquired nearly 100 ski areas. Since 2019, Vail alone has purchased 19 resorts. Those massive investments haven't gone unnoticed by the rank and file.

Mike Reilly, 33, moved to Park City about 10 years ago after graduating from college in Ohio. He didn't know how to ski when he arrived but practiced in his time off from working as a barista at a local coffee shop. About a year in, he took an entry-level ski patrolling job, making $13.25 an hour.

Initially, Reilly and Chiappetta both had to find work in the offseason to make ends meet. Reilly led youth backpacking trips, worked as a bike patroller at the resort, and occasionally picked up shifts as a barista. They didn't see their ski jobs as a side gig. "The longer I lived out here and saw that it was possible, the more I wanted to do this as a career," Reilly said.

Since the union ratification, that's become more of a possibility.

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Before Minor League Baseball players unionized in 2022, they made between $290 and $500 a week, weren't paid during spring training, and had to find other jobs during the offseason. Despite the fact that nearly every major league player has to start in the minors, the finances never added up.

Gavin Lux, a second baseman for the Cincinnati Reds, told The Nation that when he was with the Los Angeles Dodger's Single-A affiliate in Rancho Cucamonga, California, there were five or six players sleeping on air mattresses in a single apartment. The situation didn't get much better as he progressed to Triple-A. "I had to pay for my new place, plus an apartment that no one was living in anymore," Lux said.

After winning their contract in 2023, players saw their wages more than double to between $675 and $1,200 a week. They also secured a salary during spring training and the offseason, better healthcare benefits, and control of their name, image, and likeness rights, allowing them to make money off brand deals. It was a game-changer.

Paul Clark, a professor of labor and employment relations at Penn State University, said the unionization effort represented a shift in the way society views so-called dream jobs. For decades, there was a consensus that people working these jobs shouldn't complain about wages because they got to play a game for a living, Clark said. That has changed as Major League Baseball has become more profitable. Last year, the MLB earned $12.1 billion in revenue, a 15% increase since 2012. Meanwhile, minor league teams have continued to go up in value, prompting a wave of acquisitions.

"The players are what fans pay for, and therefore they are the game," Clark said.

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Entertainers are having a similar realization. Nothing says "dream job" like spending all day in a Disney park making little kids' dreams come true — as many as 900 people might audition for a single role as a Disney character. But it's not all sunshine and rainbows for those hired at the Southern California theme parks. The Actors' Equity Association says the base pay for Disney characters at Disneyland is $24.15 an hour and that many workers face unpredictable schedules and unsafe working conditions, like limited water breaks and long hours wearing heavy costumes in the California heat.

To change things, 1,700 employees who dress up as characters, march in parades, and train performers voted to unionize in May with the Actors' Equity Association. The union, known as Magic United, began negotiations this past fall for higher pay, medical coverage for injuries sustained while in costume, and better insurance benefits.

Other Disneyland employees, represented by United Food and Commercial Workers Local 324, filed an unfair labor practice charge last year alleging that about 28% of cast members faced food insecurity, 42% did not have enough sick time to see a doctor, and 64% were spending more than the recommended 30% of their income on rent and utility costs. After filing the charge and threatening to strike, the union secured a higher base rate of $24 an hour and better policies around sick leave.

Over in Las Vegas, the city's famous Chippendales dancers are hoping for a similar win. Despite the group's popularity and the talent required to be a performer, they're paid a flat fee of $100 a show, a rate that has not changed in more than a decade. Dancers are not paid for rehearsal time unless it exceeds 15 hours a week and are expected to perform eight 80-minute shows each week. They are also expected to take pictures with guests after each show — photos that cost fans $35 but earn dancers just $0.50. They receive no benefits. In October, the Sin City dancers voted to form a union with AEA to make their jobs more manageable.

"It's a competitive market. And unfortunately, the entertainment industry breeds this concept of disposability, you know — one in, one out," one of the dancers who organized the union told In These Times. Chippendales did not respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.

Wilma Liebman, who served as chair of the National Labor Relations Board during part of the Obama administration and teaches as an adjunct professor at the NYU School of Law, said she expected some of the unionizing activity to continue and perhaps increase. "If employers become emboldened to oppose unionization because Trump is in the White House, and they think it's going to be pro-business, it may incentivize workers to keep up the activism," she said. "There comes a point where you might be frustrated or you might be fired."

Even if the work is great, it's still work. Despite the tough labor market, these campaigns might just encourage other people working hot jobs to try their hand at getting a better deal.

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Robert Davis is an award-winning journalist who lives in Denver.

• If you've been fired for performance, you can do a few things before applying to new work.
• You can talk to someone you trust about what your performance is really like.
• Be ready to talk about your skills and why you're looking for work during an interview.

One of the toughest things you can hear at work is your boss saying you suck at your job.

Being told you're a low-performer, as thousands of former workers from Meta, Microsoft, and the federal government know firsthand, is rarely easy. That's especially the case if you believe the poor job assessment is unfounded.

In the vernacular of Elon Musk, it can mean workers find themselves at a fork in the road — and often jobless.

Being out of work after suffering a rhetorical body blow calls for self-evaluation, getting feedback from a mentor, and being careful about how you talk about your former job and employer, career experts told Business Insider.

Workers pushed out in a high-profile culling of ostensibly poor performers could struggle even more to find work, Dan Schawbel, managing partner at Workplace Intelligence, told BI.

"Employers know that that's the reason why they got laid off," he said.

That might necessitate that job seekers take special care. Here are four things to keep in mind.

Reflect on what happened and then take steps to improve

Before applying to jobs again, workplace observers suggested taking a step back and reflecting on what your former employer said.

Amanda Augustine, the career expert at TopResume, said it's important to think, "Was I really bad at this, or was I not doing a great job of communicating my work and my performance?" Whatever you learn, work on that in your next role.

If you were told you were underperforming in a particular skill, you could get a certification or complete some training to improve, Harshal Varpe, a career expert at Indeed, said.

Job seekers should also consider who can vouch for them.

"Your references are almost your living testimonial of what your performance has been," Varpe said.

Augustine suggested two potential job references: someone in human resources from your previous company or a former colleague who can attest to your skills. If you put down a former boss, a prospective employer "might get some insight" into your performance, she said.

Get an honest assessment from someone who knows you

Getting canned for falling short of an employer's expectations hurts. And, of course, there can be numerous reasons you drew the underperformer tag. Perhaps your skills weren't well suited for the role, or maybe your employer didn't give you what you needed to succeed, Vicki Salemi, a career expert with Monster, told BI. In some cases, that might be training or a set of clear expectations.

Finding a mentor or someone else you trust who knows your work can be a big help, she said, because you can ask the person for an honest assessment of your strengths and weaknesses.

"You might actually truly be a poor performer," Salemi said. If you get a sense that's the case, it's reasonable to ask how you might improve, she said.

If you believe your poor performance rating isn't justified or that you faced other obstacles, like an unreasonable workload, Salemi suggests gathering qualitative measures of your success and clearly defined accomplishments.

She said having specific examples in your back pocket will help "demonstrate that you are a strong performer."

Be careful with your digital footprint

Some workers Meta terminated after labeling them as low performers pushed back with LinkedIn posts asserting that they'd earned solid reviews.

That's a departure from a more discreet approach some fired workers might have taken in the past.

If you're planning to post about your termination, Augustine said to consider what you include because it reflects your professional — and personal — brand to prospective employers and others, such as people you're hoping to set up informational interviews with.

Instead of talking about your performance or calling out your past employer, Augustine said to talk about the kind of areas where you're seeking opportunities, what skills you are hoping to use, and, of course, that you are hoping for job leads.

"You want to be cognizant of what reputation you're promoting for yourself, how you're positioning yourself, and your experience to the world," she said.

Focus on your skills

Augustine said prospective employers usually ask candidates why they left a job or are seeking a new one. She advised answering with, "I'm now targeting roles that really leverage my X, Y, and Z skills, which are really strong," rather than discussing performance or badmouthing a former employer.

Salemi said that job seekers should have ready a simple statement that explains why they left their last role. It's similar, she said, to how you might be prepared to talk about employment gaps on your résumé. Salemi said that after briefly explaining why you left, it's time to shift toward the role you're seeking.

"You want to pivot to your top skills and strengths," she said.

Before landing a role, you can get insight into performance expectations during the job interview. Augustine said you can ask, "If I were to take on this job, what would you expect me to accomplish in the first three months or the first six months?"

She said this can help inform your relationship with your potential manager. Once you get the job, she said to align with your boss about your goals and how you should be communicating progress toward them.

Do you have a story to share about your job search? Contact these reporters at [email protected] or [email protected].

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"Your hooman is somewhere looking for you I hope you get together soon!" one user commented.