Hi! Ben minus Jerry… Iconic ice cream co-founder Jerry Greenfield is leaving the brand after 47 years, saying its social activism has been “silenced” by parent company Unilever — just as the consumer giant plans to spin off its ice cream unit. Today we’re exploring:

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Long-term unemployment in the US has risen to a postpandemic high

Following a series of weak jobs reports and ongoing revisions turmoil, the number of Americans who’ve been unemployed for more than six months is now at the highest level since the pandemic.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics recently released employment data for August, which reported that 1.9 million people in the US were long-term unemployed (jobless for 27-plus weeks) — almost double the number of people recorded in early 2023.

Currently, those facing a prolonged workless stretch account for about a quarter of unemployed people (25.7%). Going back to 1950, the long-term unemployment rate has exceeded 25% only during times of serious economic turmoil — and always following a recession. The all-time high of some 7 million unemployed Americans was seen after the global financial crisis of 2008.

As noted by The Washington Post, the six-month mark typically denotes a turning point in the course of someone’s job search, when they’ve likely run out of unemployment insurance benefits and severance payments. Long-term joblessness can also be more structurally damaging to the economy, and often affects individuals’ skills, confidence, employability, and sometimes even health.

In the absence of a recession, what we seem to be seeing in 2025 is a cooling labor market coinciding with a hiring freeze for a growing cohort of job-seekers.

Apply and demand

The US job market has been in “hire less, fire less” mode for some time. But what’s surprising is that the lack of growth is disproportionately affecting a demographic that previously would have been considered highly employable: college graduates.

Indeed, the share of long-term unemployed people with a college degree has grown from roughly a fifth a decade ago to one-third today, according to data cited by The New York Times. Blame AI, maybe.

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VF Corp is shedding its century-old workwear icon, Dickies, after years of struggle

Apparel giant VF Corp, the owner of The North Face, Vans, and Timberland, is offloading its largest workwear brand, Dickies, to Bluestar Alliance for $600 million — ending its ownership of the 103-year-old label it acquired for $820 million in 2017.

Losing more than one-quarter of its investment in just seven years shows how the brand has fared — and cutting it loose is just the latest step in VF’s turnaround plan, launched in 2023 to cut costs, reduce debt, and reignite growth. The company has already trimmed a string of underperformers, including nine workwear brands in 2020 and Supreme in 2024.

In fiscal 2025, Dickies contributed just $542 million, or about 6%, of VF's $9.5 billion revenue. More than 80% of the group's sales came from its “big three” companies: The North Face (39%), Vans (25%), and Timberland (17%).

Despite its small size, though, Dickies has remained a persistent drag on the company, posting double-digit sales declines both globally and in the US over the past three years. Analysts expect that unloading the brand won’t hit profits much, but will help VF reduce its debt load by a meaningful amount.

Founded in 1922, Dickies made its name in uniforms and affordable workwear, before gaining traction in skateboarding and street culture. Its new owner, Bluestar Alliance, has been expanding its streetwear portfolio in recent years, acquiring brands like Scotch & Soda, Off-White, and Palm Angels.

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An ETF investment for indirect Bitcoin exposure — and potential income.

Bitcoin’s expansion has been hard to ignore. In just the past 5 years, the monthly market cap of Bitcoin has broadened 13x to $2.1 trillion (as of June 2025). But for those who aren’t familiar with crypto trading, the volatility of Bitcoin is often a barrier to adoption.

Fortunately, there are ways to get Bitcoin exposure¹ without buying the coin — like the newly-launched Bitcoin Covered Call ETF (BCCC) from Global X. 

The actively-managed fund provides exposure to Bitcoin Exchange Traded Products (ETPs) with a partial covered call strategy. That means the fund seeks to capture a portion of Bitcoin's capital appreciation¹ while aiming to manage its inherent volatility through the pursuit of option premiums and distributions.

The benefit? Income potential (with weekly payouts) and exposure to a portion of Bitcoin’s growth potential — in an efficient and familiar ETF wrapper.

¹ The Fund does not invest directly in Bitcoin.

Gen Z thinks iPods are cool again

Each generation feels a sense of nostalgia for eras gone by. But now, technology is evolving so dramatically that Gen Z’s pining for the past is being condensed into shorter and shorter time cycles.

While a 30-year interval for the vinyl revival makes sense from an “I was born in the wrong generation” standpoint, young people today are nostalgic for things that happened only a few years ago, having grown up in a culture where they’d only just gotten their first smartphones before it started being able to do their math homework for them.

Indeed, the use of AI on devices is one reason that many schools across America are banning cellphones in the classroom. One upshot of that, as reported by The New York Times last week, is that some students are working around that embargo by pulling out one of the youngest tricks in the book: using iPods instead.

Google searches for different iPod models — particularly the iPod Nano and the original iPod, which was launched almost a quarter-century ago — have spiked over the past month, despite Apple’s entire iPod product line being discontinued for more than three years. Searches for “ipod ebay” have also peaked recently as kids scramble for a secondhand gadget to listen to music on while they’re at school… or just to wear as an accessory.

A (short) trip down memory lane

Gen Z’s propensity for nostalgia isn’t limited to wanting just 1,000 songs in their pockets, rather than the hundreds of millions available on music streaming services. 

In the last few months alone, we’ve seen the resurrection of early 2010s fashion, apparel adorned with childhood characters, and collectible plushies — with Kodak even recently marrying the blind box trend with vintage cameras for the ultimate sentimental hit.

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Between 6/30/2020 and 6/30/2025, the monthly market cap of Bitcoin broadened 13x to $2.1 trillion. If you’re looking for indirect exposure to the coin’s movements, GlobalX’s Bitcoin Covered Call ETF could be the place to start.²

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Off the charts: The soundtrack to which Netflix film hit No.1 on the Billboard 200 albums chart for the first time this week? [Answer below].

Answer here.

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