Stacy Eichel, an empty nester in Florida, spent years balancing two jobs. One was in healthcare; the other was her own venture: a small business making custom-branded merchandise for corporate clients, such as coffee mugs and T-shirts that companies hand out at conferences and holiday parties. For Eichel, the business was more than a paycheque.
It was a side hustle for a woman who couldn’t sit still, who was always hungry for the next opportunity. It was the kind of business that thrived when companies had a little extra to spend on small branded trinkets to make an otherwise mundane corporate conference something memorable. In September 2025, Eichel lost her job in marketing for a healthcare company after a merger.
Suddenly, the business she had run on the side had to shoulder more of the burden of supporting her. Yet just as she needed it to provide more, the market for her products was shrinking. Faced with uncertainty over trade policy and tariffs, alongside the growing use of artificial intelligence across the economy, companies have been tightening their spending.
Custom-branded merchandise was becoming one more expense they could do without. When they have extra money in the budget, that’s what they’ll use it for, but now their budgets are very tight,” Eichel, who has cut back on her expenses, told Al Jazeera. Eichel’s experience reflects a broader strain in the US labour market, where a paycheque does not necessarily translate into financial security.
The headline unemployment rate captures people actively looking for work, but it does not tell the whole story of people who are working fewer hours than they want or juggling jobs that do not provide enough income. The Department of Labor documents this through what is called the U-6 rate, a broader measure of unemployment and underemployment. It stands at an elevated 7.6 percent.
While that’s down from 8.1 percent a year ago, having a job does not necessarily mean Americans are getting ahead financially. The U-6 measure includes people who are working part-time because they cannot find full-time jobs, as well as those who want to work but have stopped looking for a job recently. Even people who are employed full-time are finding that their earnings do not stretch as far as they once did.
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