This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Donna Morris, the Chief People Officer at Walmart, based in Bentonville, Arkansas. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I'm the Chief People Officer at Walmart, and my work is one of my biggest passions.

Over time, I have become very intentional about how I structure my time. I've navigated busy days for years, so very little truly derails me.

If something unexpected comes up, I try to take a moment and move forward. There is truth to the analogy: "I would rather look like a swan on the surface, even if my feet are flapping under the water."

Here's a day in my life:

I wake up to U2's "Beautiful Day"

My alarm goes off at 6:05 a.m. every day to U2's "Beautiful Day." I like U2, and I like to start every day thinking it's going to be a great one. If I have a meeting, it's set even earlier.

My problem is, I hit the snooze button once or twice. It is not good if I hit it three times, which means I won't be up until around 6:30.

I'm online as soon as I get out of bed

The enemy might be that I have two phones. I have a personal device and a work device. By the time I've gotten up out of bed, I have already looked at both to see if anything was urgent from the night before.

It can become the enemy when I become distracted and lose focus. I try to be disciplined about setting both aside at times and frankly shutting down all screens, but I am a work in progress.

I plan my outfits in advance

I'm pretty organized. The night before work, sometimes even as early as Sunday night, I'll figure out what I'm going to wear during the week.

I know there are certain individuals who probably wear the exact same thing, but I'm not one of those people.

If I'm going out to a store or a club, I'm going to wear denim of some sort, probably a T-shirt and a jacket, and always my Walmart badge and running shoes or really comfortable sneakers. That's different from how I dress when I come into our office, where I'll probably be a bit more formal.

I listen to CNN's podcast and the 'Today' show while getting ready

Male leaders can probably get ready in 15 minutes. They can probably get up, wash their hair, and away they go. Female leaders take longer to get ready. So, rightly or wrongly, it takes me longer to get ready, and it depends on whether it's a wash-your-hair day or not.

I do my own hair every other day. I've never been the type to not do that. I budget about 45 minutes to an hour to get ready in the morning.

As I get ready, I listen to the "CNN 5 Things" podcast, and I always have the "Today" show on, because I also want to hear about what's happening there.

It takes me five minutes to get to the office

I'm not sure it even takes me five minutes to get to the office. That was very deliberate. I try to arrive at the office between 8:15 and 8:30 a.m., and then I start my day.

I have back-to-back meetings starting at 8:35 a.m.

My day is typically spent meeting great associates — whether they work for us or might be interested in working for us — as well as leaders.

During a typical day, I have a back-to-back schedule, and my meetings tend to start at five minutes past the half hour. My first meeting of the day is at 8:35 a.m., unless I'm meeting with some of my peers who start earlier.

I've never tried coffee or tea — but I drink Diet Coke every day

When I was five years old, I burned my mouth so badly that I was afraid to drink anything hot for years. I've just never been a hot drink type of girl, I guess.

I try to limit myself to two Diet Cokes a day, although every once in a while, I sneak in a third. I typically don't drink it before 10 a.m.

I don't have big meals during the day

I don't have big meals in the morning or at lunch, but I am a believer in having something in the morning.

I was on a routine of doing overnight oats in the morning, and then I'd have two hard-boiled eggs every lunch. But I recently received feedback that I should do my protein in the morning and overnight oats at noon.

I stay at the office until 6:30 p.m.

I tend to stay at the office and work until around 6 or 6:30 p.m., when there are fewer people around and I can have some quiet time.

Then I go home, and if I'm really fortunate, my husband is home. He's a fantastic cook, so I benefit when he's in Bentonville with me. When he's not with me, it means I need to be more organized, because I have to cook for myself.

I have fantastic cookbooks because buying cookbooks is something I'm passionate about. However, I'm not as good at cooking, so I end up on the same rinse-and-repeat meal plan.

My evening routine includes work, calling my father, and getting ready for the next day

I call my father almost every night. He lives in Canada.

During the evening, I also go down the social rabbit hole and spend a lot of time on LinkedIn, as well as other social channels.

I travel a lot

My schedule looks largely the same when I'm traveling. If I'm traveling domestically, it usually involves visiting Walmart stores or Sam's Clubs.

Sometimes we announce them, and sometimes we don't. Unannounced visits are sometimes the most valuable because you can really see in real time how the facility works and how people interact.

I check out the ability for our associates to learn. I see if there's a private room where moms can nurse. It really gives us a good sense of our work environment for our associates, and those days are great days.

Pauline Pusser was the wife of a sheriff, so her chores were a bit unusual. She cooked meals for prisoners and cleaned the jailhouse between raising her children and sending Christmas cards. But on the early morning of August 12, 1967, Pauline did something she'd never done before. She went on a police call with her husband.

Sheriff Buford Pusser was famous in Tennessee for busting the moonshine stills and prostitution rings forged by the "State Line Mob," a collection of gangsters who operated at the Mississippi border. The sheriff would later tell law enforcement that an anonymous person called his Adamsville home just before 5 a.m. and insisted he drive to the state line, about 25 minutes away. Buford said Pauline was suspicious about the call — with reason. Since cleaning up McNairy County, the sheriff had survived multiple gunshot and stab wounds. He said she thought it was best to go with him.

Just before dawn, they got in Buford's squad car and started down the quiet two-way street to State Line Road. Buford would later tell investigators that about 20 miles later, on New Hope Road, a car with no headlights sped up beside the Pussers and began shooting. Pauline was hit. He floored the accelerator, pulled off to one side, and frantically searched for where his wife had been shot.

The speeding driver reappeared, pulled up on the other side of the road, and fired again, he said — this time fatally shooting Pauline in the forehead. Buford, who ended up with a bullet wound on his left jaw, said the assailants peeled off.

Headlines chronicled the shocking incident: One blared, "MCNAIRY SHERIFF SHOT, WIFE SLAIN;" another "CRIME-BUSTING SHERIFF'S WIFE MURDERED," with a photo of Buford covered in blood on a stretcher. He survived and became an instant fascination: Books and songs were written about him, and the "Walking Tall" movie franchise gave him the Hollywood hero treatment. Today, he's immortalized in his hometown as a legend akin to Wyatt Earp or Davey Crockett.

And Pauline? She lies in a grave at Adamsville Cemetery, marked by a small tombstone that barely pokes out of the ground, engraved with the wrong birth date and her August 12 death date. No murder weapon was ever found, and no one was charged. She was 36.

For decades, rumors swirled that Buford, who died in 1974, was involved in the murder. It took more than half a century for law enforcement to investigate them: On February 8, 2024, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation visited Pauline's grave. Trying not to disturb Buford's towering tombstone beside her, they exhumed her body in the hopes of finally putting the rumors to rest.

For many, it was a seminal moment in a Southern tale that has been handed down through generations. Could it all have been a lie?

The answer to that question wouldn't come for another year and a half — and when it did, it would shatter a legend.

---

The first thing you see when driving into town is a massive sign: "Welcome to Adamsville: Home of Sheriff Buford Pusser."

I came to town in March, on the heels of buzz that the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation's findings would soon be revealed. The soil at Pauline's gravesite was still fresh.

There had been no autopsy performed in 1967, one reason some in McNairy County question whether that night went down exactly as Buford described. It's also why the TBI took another look at Pauline's cold case.

Still, some in town stand by the Buford legend.

"There's a lot of garbage out there written. It needs to be piled up and burned," Steve Sweat, 70, told me from his body shop just outside Adamsville.

Sweat has lived his entire life in McNairy County and considers himself a historian on all things Pusser. His shop is home to a collection of photographs and memorabilia that he has compiled over decades.

Ever since Buford busted Sweat's older brother's moonshine still in 1963, he's been fascinated by the man.

"I was 6 or 7 years old and would see this young chief of police, 6-foot-6 with a flattop haircut, all over town. There was a picture of him in the paper every week," Sweat said, pausing for a moment as he choked up. "He was bigger than life."

Sweat used to lead tours of key Pusser sites around town. Every Memorial Day during the Buford Pusser Festival, he drives a replica of the patrol car Joe Don Baker drove when he portrayed the sheriff in the 1973 movie, "Walking Tall."

Tina Mullis, 60, called the TBI investigation "just silly."

"How are they going to prove something 57 years later?" she said in March.

Mullis, a distant relative of Pusser, is the curator of Adamsville's Buford Pusser Home & Museum. Tucked away in a quiet neighborhood next to a baseball field on Pusser Street, the modest ranch home is a destination for travel vloggers, true crime fans, and awe-struck law enforcement officials.

Mullis sits me down in Buford and Pauline's living room to play me a video titled "Liars & Legends," an eight-minute history of the sheriff and his battles with the State Line Mob. She walks me through the home, lined with memorabilia and newspaper clippings of Pusser's moonshine busts, and points out a carefully preserved bedroom she says Elvis stayed in on the day of Buford's funeral.

"In a time before the internet and cable TV, he was a world-class promoter. Whether his stories were true or not, people ran with them."McNairy County sheriff Guy Buck

Buford died seven years after Pauline in a fiery car wreck on Highway 64. Eyewitnesses told law enforcement at the time they saw him driving at a high speed before the crash; others said they smelled alcohol on his breath before he got behind the wheel. The charred remains of his 1974 Corvette sit on display in the museum's garage.

Walking through the museum is akin to visiting Graceland with a dash of Ripley's Believe It or Not! I'm filled with fascination, but also skeptical.

The current McNairy County sheriff, Guy Buck, 58, who has held the post for 15 years, described Pusser's appeal thusly: "In a time before the internet and cable TV, he was a world-class promoter. Whether his stories were true or not, people ran with them."

---

Pusser was a master of self-promotion. He got his start as a professional wrestler, "Buford the Bull," in the 1950s in Chicago, where he met Pauline, a divorcée with two kids. They married in 1959, had a child, and in 1962 moved back to Adamsville, where he succeeded his father as chief of police.

Pusser quickly began busting moonshine stills, and at 26, he was elected sheriff — a position he helped secure thanks to the media coverage of his exploits, which he had organized as press officer. Pusser broke up over 140 stills in his career, according to the museum.

After the 1967 shooting, Pusser's lore grew. In 1971, W.R. Morris wrote the book "The Twelfth of August," which introduced people outside the Southeast to him and his battles with the State Line Mob. Around the same time, Eddie Bond released the song "Legend of Buford Pusser," a twangy tune that played throughout the South.

That attention found its way to Hollywood and crooner Bing Crosby, whose production company bought Pusser's life rights for $10,000 and made "Walking Tall." The filmmakers ran with backwoods stories that Pusser once raided a moonshine still with just a fence pole. (Sheriff Buck debunks that myth: "That's the farthest thing from the truth.")

In the era of vigilante blockbusters like "Dirty Harry" and "Billy Jack," "Walking Tall" earned $40 million on a $500,000 budget. Variety reported that in some regions of the South, "Walking Tall" did better than "The Godfather."

After stepping down as sheriff in 1970, Pusser hobnobbed with the likes of Johnny Cash and Dolly Parton, made money off speaking tours, and entertained the idea of running for governor. In 1974, he attended the press conference where it was announced he would play himself in the "Walking Tall" sequel.

The next day, he died in a car wreck at 36.

The Pusser franchise lived on: Actor Bo Svenson took over the role, starring in "Walking Tall Part 2" (1975) and "Walking Tall: Final Chapter" (1977), as well as a short-lived "Walking Tall" TV series (1981).

In the decades that followed, Pusser's daughter, Dwana, built her father's myth into a business. She sold her parents' house to the state of Tennessee in 1987 for Adamsville to use as a for-profit museum and helped turn the jailhouse in nearby Selmer, where Pusser had his office, into a tourist attraction. When Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson starred in the 2004 remake of "Walking Tall," Dwana posed for press photos with him. (Dwana died in 2018.)

As the years passed, whispers about the 1967 shooting spread.

Svenson told me that in the 1970s, he was approached by people who told him that Buford's gunshot wound was self-inflicted.

"I even saw photos of Buford on the operating table, photos that showed powder burn on his face, which meant that whatever gun was used was held very close to his head" — which didn't align with the sheriff's story, the actor said.

While making the "Walking Tall" sequels, did Svenson think Pusser could have killed his wife?

"I felt sometimes public people have skeletons in their closets," Svenson said. "But what he represented I felt, at the time, was important."

---

Dennis Hathcock's family name has been intertwined with Pusser's mythology for most of his life.

His aunt, Louise Hathcock, ran the Shamrock Motel, a restaurant and motel known for bootlegging, gambling, and nightly fights. In February 1966, Sheriff Pusser arrived to question Louise about two patrons who accused her of stealing. The two were speaking in a back room when, according to Pusser, Louise pulled out a gun and shot at him. She missed, and Pusser said he shot and killed Louise in self-defense. A grand jury agreed.

The faceoff would cement the Pusser vs. State Line Mob lore that would be reported in newspapers and chronicled in Morris' book "The Twelfth of August." A character bearing a strong resemblance to Louise Hathcock was later made the main villain in the first "Walking Tall" movie: Callie Hacker, a madam who ran a moonshine, gambling, and prostitution operation out of her establishment.

Dennis Hathcock, 75, claims Pusser killed his aunt in cold blood.

"My family has borne the brunt of many lies," he told me.

He had his own run-ins with Pusser. Hathcock was 16 the night of August 11, 1967, when he and a friend were riding around on Hathcock's CB450 Honda motorcycle. After playing some pool in Selmer, they got bored and decided to do what they always did: tail Pusser while he patrolled the county.

Hathcock said he knew a girl Pusser was seeing on the side, Ann Henderson. They found him banging on the door of her friend's house, yelling for Henderson to come out. After he and Henderson were done talking, Hathcock heard Pusser yell out after her, "You'll be putting flowers on my grave tomorrow!" (Henderson confirmed this in her interview with the TBI.)

Hathcock said they stopped following Pusser around 2:30 a.m. on the 12th. When he heard about the shooting the next morning, Hathcock raced to New Hope Road, where a police officer told him to leave. Hathcock left and passed the second ambush site, which was littered with shell casings. He said he saw bloody remains of what looked like a scalp on the side of the road and went back to the officer to show him.

Later, when Hathcock read news reports where Buford described how Pauline was killed, he felt a pit in his stomach. Something wasn't right. He decided to go to the FBI.

"I was afraid to go to the TBI at the time," Hathcock said. "I knew they were overlooking things."

Hathcock said he didn't get a better reception at the FBI.

"They laughed me out of the office," Hathcock recalled. "They just made fun of me, that Pusser would be involved at all."

---

Mike Elam knows how hard it is to find the shooting site on New Hope Road, so he offered to drive me there — on the exact route Buford drove with Pauline.

I'm chatting with Elam's wife, Connie, who's sitting in the back seat, when Elam pulls over and begins digging under his seat. Suddenly, he pulls out a handgun and swiftly holsters it.

"I wasn't kidding when I told you he gets death threats," Connie said when she notices my shell-shocked expression.

Pusser became a hero to Elam, a 74-year-old former deputy sheriff in Benton County, Arkansas, after he read "The Twelfth of August" in the early 1970s. However, by the 2000s, Elam had begun to think differently about Pusser and started posting about it online. That's when he said the death threats started coming.

"I'm really cautious around people I don't know," he told me.

Elam began questioning the official accounts of the shooting after he got hold of Louise Hathcock's autopsy report. Pusser maintained that Louise was facing him when he shot her at the Shamrock, but the autopsy concluded that she was shot twice in the back and once in the back of the head. Elam tracked down the pathologist who performed the autopsy to make sure the report was accurate and discovered the autopsy was never presented to the grand jury that cleared Pusser.

"Buford had put up a smoke screen," Elam said.

He wondered: Was Pusser untruthful about anything else?

In 2005, Elam launched a Yahoo page and began posting his discoveries. A decade later, he started the Facebook page, "Buford Pusser: The Other Story," which now has over 23,000 followers. His main questions: Why was Pauline never autopsied? Why didn't Buford take a polygraph? Why was there more blood outside Buford's car than inside, where he said Pauline was shot?

In March 2020, while recovering from colon cancer surgery, he began writing a book, "Buford Pusser: The Other Story," and self-published it later that year. His Facebook and YouTube pages exploded with reactions from Pusser loyalists appalled that Elam would tarnish his name.

At the same time, a relative of Pauline in North Carolina had also begun investigating her death.

Oakley Dean Baldwin is a 35-year veteran of law enforcement. After retiring, he began self-publishing books with colorful stories from his family tree. He wanted to write about Pauline, a distant cousin.

Baldwin, 67, and his side of the family had largely believed Pusser's story, but he began to see holes during his research. The more he and his son Roy, who is a crime scene investigator, read, the more flabbergasted they got at how the details, including the ballistics, didn't match up.

"We would say, 'That couldn't have happened, it's not possible.' And the more we dug, the worse it got," Baldwin said.

To Baldwin, Pauline seemed like an afterthought in Buford's narrative. No one noticed that the birth date on her gravestone and in the TBI report is incorrect.

"She was born February 27, 1931, and they have it as 1934," Baldwin said.

Baldwin put these revelations in his 2021 book, "Murder of Mrs. Buford Pusser," and started a YouTube page.

By 2022, both Elam and Baldwin had independently sent their findings to the TBI in hopes that the agency would reexamine the cold case. The TBI decided to take a closer look. This time, they listened to Dennis Hathcock's recollections, and they dug up Pauline.

---

On August 29, 2025, Sweat, Hathcock, and Elam joined local press and Tennessee Bureau of Investigation officials in a packed room at the University of Tennessee at Martin. The TBI was ready to reveal its findings.

Poster-size photos of Pauline sat on easels and flashed across the two flat-screen TVs. A piano rendition of the Mötley Crüe ballad "Home Sweet Home" played in the background, giving the press conference the feel of a wake.

"It's been said that the dead cannot cry out for justice; it's the duty of the living to do so," said McNairy County District Attorney Mark E. Davidson. "In this case, that duty's been carried out 58 years later."

Davidson explained that with the help of modern investigative techniques and forensic science, they could now confidently close Pauline's cold case with a 2,000-plus-page report.

The report, which Business Insider has read, highlights major inconsistencies in Buford's account. The biggest contradiction: Buford said he was looking at Pauline when she was shot in the forehead; the forensic report from her autopsy found she was shot in the back of the head.

Through ballistic tests and reenactments, the report concludes that Pauline was likely shot outside the car, then placed inside it. The report also suggests that Buford's facial wound was made at close range and likely self-inflicted. Davidson described the crime scene as "staged" and said Pauline's death was "not an accident."

The report also revealed that the couple's relationship was far from the happy marriage depicted in "Walking Tall." The autopsy showed that Pauline had a nasal fracture before her death, and the report concludes that Buford physically abused Pauline throughout their marriage. Pauline knew about Buford's infidelity and payoffs he was getting from bootleggers. She was taking steps toward a divorce and was going to alert the FBI, according to Buford's chief deputy Jim Moffett.

"Our office, after review of the case file, believes that the TBI has produced evidence sufficient to create probable cause that would allow us, if he were alive today, to present an indictment to the McNairy County grand jury for their consideration against Buford Pusser for the murder of his wife, Pauline," Davidson said.

The words reverberated back to Adamsville.

Tina Mullis closed the museum as news trucks began to surround the Pusser home. By the next day, all the historical landmark signs by the shooting site had mysteriously disappeared. Rumors percolated that Buford Pusser's name could be erased from everything from the Memorial Day parade to the town's water tower.

But not everyone was ready to turn on him.

Madison Garrison Bush, Dwana's only living daughter and Buford and Pauline's granddaughter, decried the report in a statement. "A dead man, who cannot defend himself, is being accused of an unspeakable crime. I don't understand what justice can be accomplished by pursuing this theory of my grandmother's death," she said.

Sweat, the self-described historian, was unmoved by the report. "At the end of the day, I felt like they more or less just gave an opinion," he told me after the press conference. "It didn't appear to me that they presented enough evidence to make you believe that, without a shadow of a doubt, that they have proven that Sheriff Pusser did this."

Sweat believes Pusser did a lot of good in McNairy County and that this news could be a blessing in disguise for Adamsville tourism.

"This all isn't going to kill the story; the story is only going to get bigger," Sweat said.

By September, the museum reopened. At a town hall meeting, the overwhelming consensus from residents was that nothing Pusser should be changed.

"We have been overwhelmed with the support that we've received from all over the world and here in our hometown, especially," Mullis said, adding that business at the museum has doubled since the August press conference. "That was nothing but free advertisement for us."

That's not to say the museum will ignore the TBI's findings. Mullis told me the town is condensing the report into one volume, which will be made available for visitors to view.

"We're just going to keep telling Buford's story here, and Pauline's," Mullis said. "We will continue to tell their story and let people come to their own conclusions."

Since the press conference, Baldwin has self-published an updated version of "Murder of Mrs. Buford Pusser." Elam, who feels vindicated after years of being harassed online for his views, is working on a follow-up to his book. He runs a Pusser-themed bus tour with Hathcock called "The Truth Has No Agenda Tour."

Though he hopes that his aunt Louise's death will be reexamined one day, Hathcock is happy Pauline can finally rest in peace.

"I have prayed for this day to come," Hathcock told me. "For the truth to be told about Buford Pusser — because I've known it since I was 16 years old — I couldn't be happier."

• Shaun Maguire, a prominent VC, said most people don't understand the chemicals industry.
• He said that specialty chemicals are especially important, since certain companies rely on them.
• The chemicals industry is in a downturn, but specialty chemicals might offer a bright spot.

Shaun Maguire, a partner at Sequoia Capital and early investor in several of Elon Musk's companies, says people aren't focusing on niche chemicals enough.

On an episode of the "Relentless" podcast that aired on November 17, Maguire said that he might invest in the chemicals industry if he had $10 billion to start a business.

"The chemicals industry is one of the most underrated industries in the world for many reasons," Maguire said. He added that most people don't think about the industry, which supports production for nearly all commercial and household goods, according to a 2022 report from the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

And those who do know about the industry don't fully understand it, thinking of it as strictly a commodity industry, Maguire said.

"But a large fraction of the industry, I'd say at least 25%, is hardcore specialty chemicals that are actually very rare. A lot of times, there's only one company in the world that will make some specialty chemical," he said. (Specialty chemicals accounted for about 23% of the industry, according to CISA's report).

Maguire said that those chemicals can be crucial for another company's production, as he said is true of one of Musk's businesses, and that losing access to a key chemical can severely delay or upend projects. Specialty chemicals include "adhesives, sealants, flavors and fragrances, food additives, and explosives," according to CISA.

The chemical industry is in a downcycle, and production volumes are expected to contract by 0.2% next year, according to Deloitte's 2026 Chemical Industry Outlook. Though the report predicts continued overcapacity in basic chemicals, it found that specialty chemicals are earning higher margins.

"Specialty chemicals tend to be less commoditized and avoid the hyper-competitiveness of the commodity chemicals markets," the report reads.

Although chemical demand in the construction, automotive, and consumer goods industries is likely to continue suffering, the semiconductor market may offer a bright spot, according to Deloitte's report. The boom in AI data centers is helping to fuel growth, per Deloitte.

So far in 2025, the chemical industry has badly lagged the overall market. The S&P 500 Chemical Industry index was down 5% for the year through Thursday, while the S&P 500 was up more than 11%.

• Uber and Lyft often charge different prices for the same ride-hailing trip, a new study says.
• Comparing both apps could collectively save riders millions of dollars, the study said.
• Even so, few people compare prices when ordering a ride.

Next time you need a ride, checking both Uber and Lyft might save you money.

On average, there is a 14% difference in price for the same ride between the two ride-hailing apps, according to a study conducted for the National Bureau of Economic Research and published this month. The study compared fares on Uber and Lyft in New York City in February of this year.

The difference might be just a dollar or two on each ride, but it can add up: The researchers behind the paper estimated that the gap, called "price dispersion" in economics, means that ride-hailing customers in New York City pay an extra $300 million annually by not comparing prices.

Yet few Lyft or Uber passengers check more than one app when they need a ride, the researchers found. Using separate data from Comscore, the study said that about 16% of ride-hailing customers across the US check both apps.

"Competition should be a click away, but people are acting like it isn't," Michael Luca, a professor at Johns Hopkins University's Carey Business School and one of the paper's authors, told Business Insider.

Harry Hartfield, head of product policy at Uber, said the study does not consider all the factors that can influence Uber's pricing, including the supply of drivers, customer demand, or the distance between the driver and the hailer. "The idea that two companies would display different prices isn't surprising — that's how a competitive marketplace works," Harfield said.

Sid Patil, Lyft's executive vice president of marketplace, said that Lyft also uses factors such as driver availability to determine prices. "Riders have a lot to gain, and little to lose by checking Lyft," he said.

"Price differences reflect real marketplace dynamics," Patil said, adding

The research found that "neither rideshare app is consistently more expensive than the other." Rather, it varied from fare to fare.

In theory, opening another rideshare app to get a second price quote should take less than a minute, Luca said.

In reality, the ride-hailing apps you use might be like your most-used search engine: While some people go out of their way to use a specific one, many others simply use whatever the default on their device or web browser is, Luca added

The design and terms of the apps themselves may also make it harder for customers to compare prices, according to the study. Uber doesn't allow third parties to use its API to offer price comparisons, for instance — a barrier that some apps that analyze ride-hailing driver pay have also run into because Uber says it violates the app's terms of service.

According to Luca, barriers to price comparison have helped, not hurt, these companies.

Last year, for the first time, Uber reported an annual profit. And Lyft has turned around its financial results over the last few years.

"Together, these findings show that small barriers to comparison can weaken effective competition and shift surplus toward platforms," the paper concludes.

Do you have a story to share about Uber, Lyft, or another company in the gig work space? Contact this reporter at abitter@businessinsider.com.

On September 11, a Marilyn Monroe impersonator sang a sultry rendition of "Happy Birthday" to an executive at the Virginia headquarters of the Society for Human Resource Management.

The brief performance, which took place in a conference room with about 75 employees, came after remarks honoring the 24th anniversary of the 2001 terror attacks.

Two former staffers who were present at the gathering, recordings of which were reviewed by Business Insider, said it was uncomfortable to see — and not just because it was sexually suggestive. They found it inappropriate because their former employer, also known as SHRM, is the world's largest HR trade group.

SHRM has been embroiled in controversy in recent years. Some of these challenges have gripped workplaces across the country, including regular layoffs and restructurings and debates over DEI.

Other elements, however, set SHRM apart. They include a new attendance policy that penalizes workers who arrive even a minute after 9 a.m.; a memo about a "conservative" dress code that referenced "enclothed cognition" and bans sequins; an employment discrimination lawsuit set to go to trial in December; and a company-wide meeting in which CEO Johnny C. Taylor Jr. said some staffers were "entitled," "complacent," and "sloppy."

The issues raise questions about SHRM's role as an arbiter of human resources best practices. Thousands of HR professionals rely on SHRM's educational materials and credentialing programs to get ahead in their careers. It shapes not only HR departments across the country, but also national policy, briefing judges and lawmakers on workforce practices.

Now, some professionals are deciding not to renew their memberships, and former employees are speaking out about their experiences on social media.

"If your business is about teaching others what to do in the people space, then it's incredibly important that you model that yourself," said Ashley Herd, a former head of HR for North America at McKinsey, co-host of the podcast "HR Besties," and founder of Manager Method, a management-training company.

"No organization is expected to be perfect, but SHRM puts out articles and charges a lot of money to teach about best practices," added Herd. "When they don't follow those practices themselves, that really does speak volumes."

SHRM said that Taylor, a lawyer and executive who was named CEO in late 2017, deserved credit for turning the organization around. "Change is not a sign of instability — it's a sign of leadership," spokesperson Eddie Burke wrote in an email to Business Insider.

In a statement, Taylor said he believes SHRM is fulfilling its mission of partnering "with HR professionals and the CEO community."

"We're doing it better than ever," he told Business Insider.

Revenue grew from $131 million in 2017 to $233 million last year, according to public tax filings. It has 413 employees today, up from 387 in December 2017.

This article is based on conversations with more than two dozen current and former SHRM employees and nearly a dozen current and former members, as well as legal and tax filings and government records.

'Entitled,' 'complacent,' and 'sloppy'

SHRM was founded in 1948 and today describes itself as "the foremost expert, researcher, advocate, and thought leader on issues and innovations impacting today's evolving workplaces."

Former staffers characterized it as a punitive workplace.

Under a policy instituted earlier this year, those who arrived even one minute past 9 a.m. were told to go to security and have someone on the executive team escort them to their desks, former employees said. Two former staffers said that they saw a pregnant colleague cry because she fell and hurt herself running to the entrance to make it in on time.

A memo sent to SHRM's brand and marketing staff in January laid out a dress code that included a lengthy introduction about "enclothed cognition," a term that refers to the notion that the clothing workers wear impacts their performance. The code required staff to dress in "conservative" business attire and prohibited items such as sneakers, denim, skorts, sequins, hats, and clothing that doesn't cover the area between the shoulders and knees.

Burke said "SHRM offers employees the flexibility to arrive between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m." and noted that the workplace is remote Mondays and Fridays. He said the trade group at large has a business-casual dress code, and said "enclothed cognition" was not a company policy.

Nearly all former SHRM employees who spoke to Business Insider said there was confusion and fear of retaliation in the workplace.

In an all-hands meeting last month, a recording of which was obtained by Business Insider, Taylor called many of the organization's employees "entitled," "complacent," and "sloppy."

The comments were part of a broader announcement about forthcoming layoffs. Taylor said that he hadn't yet consulted with anyone about his plans, according to the recording.

"Literally, I've not told anyone, because I've been trying to figure out where I was going to land, and I've landed on a decision," Taylor said. "I am going to reorganize the business of SHRM. There will be a total reorg … And this is not a decision that I've made again with anyone, no one."

His comments came several weeks after another call with a smaller group of staffers in which he said no layoffs were planned. Snippets of both meetings were compiled by Benjamin Schmidt, a former employee, and posted publicly to TikTok.

SHRM cut staff earlier this month. In an internal video message viewed by Business Insider announcing the reductions, Taylor said SHRM treated people with dignity during layoffs, describing SHRM's approach as "red carpet in, red carpet out."

In his statement, Taylor said November's "organizational redesign is about shifting for the future, not reacting to the past," adding that the cuts were not due to financial strain and that the organization has an "enviable balance sheet."

Former employees said layoffs occurred annually in recent years. They said Taylor frequently reorganized the business, resulting in job cuts and reassignments for those who remained. In some cases, full teams were let go.

"It was made very clear to all that if you were not 100% aligned with whatever the latest messaging was from SHRM leadership, you were encouraged to find another job," said one former staffer.

In his statement, Taylor said, "Over the last several years, which were characterized by ultra-low unemployment rates and a war for talent, we hired individuals who were not aligned with SHRM's mission, values, or culture."

"That's on us — and we've corrected it. We are transparent internally about what doesn't work here, and when it's not a fit, people should move on."

'Setting the standard'

Over the past several years, layoffs have become commonplace in industries like tech and media. Companies such as Google and Microsoft have regularly trimmed their ranks, and the trend doesn't show any signs of slowing down: During its latest round of cuts, Amazon said it expected to uncover "additional places we can remove layers" and "realize efficiency gains" in 2026.

Repeated layoffs can be a sign of poor leadership, said Herd, the former head of HR for North America at McKinsey.

"They're literally describing themselves as experts in all things work and selling best practices in talent planning. To then turn around and do layoffs themselves, it stings for the workers who you thought were a fit for all these years. It rings hollow to put the blame ostensibly on the people you chose to hire."

"Whether they like it or not, they are held to a higher standard because they've put themselves out there as the preeminent expert on work."

"It shows there are gaps in their talent planning," she said.

Some former employees said colleagues who openly questioned leadership's decisions or cited concerns about SHRM's workplace culture were gone soon after.

Burke, the SHRM spokesperson, said the suggestion that employees were terminated for having differing views "does not reflect how SHRM operates."

"This is not about silencing dissent — it is about ensuring that our teams remain aligned, effective, and able to execute with excellence," he said.

Daniel Burchfield, who joined SHRM's affiliated charitable foundation in 2024, said performance issues were cited in his February termination. But he said he hadn't been reprimanded or put on a performance improvement plan. "Nothing negative was indicated to me," he said.

Two weeks before his termination, Burchfield said he told his manager he was worried about layoffs. He said the manager replied that SHRM likes to maintain an atmosphere of fear to drive performance. Burchfield said he told his manager that logic was "unhealthy."

SHRM itself has said as much. "It's important for leaders to recognize that fear at work can cause a host of ill effects that undermine the quality of people's output as well as overall team performance," reads a 2023 article on its website titled "How to Remove Fear from Your Work Culture."

"SHRM is meant to be setting the standard for how to run a workplace," Alexandria Kinsey, a former employee who was fired in April, told Business Insider. "They do the opposite of what they preach."

Kinsey was let go in part because she had become "disruptive," the organization said. She said her behavior was a response to SHRM's "broken and toxic system."

'Far from best practices'

In 2022, Rehab Mohamed, an Egyptian woman who worked at SHRM as an instructional designer, filed a lawsuit against the organization in Colorado federal court.

Mohamed, who was at SHRM from 2016 to 2020, said in her suit that she was racially discriminated against by a white supervisor and faced retaliation for complaining to management. She said she raised concerns about racial discrimination and retaliation with leadership, including Taylor and SHRM's human-resources head, throughout the summer of 2020.

Last year, a judge called the case "messy" and said the evidence showed that the same HR person tasked with investigating Mohamed's complaints was also ghostwriting emails for Mohamed's boss and drafting Mohamed's termination paperwork around the same time.

SHRM's guide on "How to Conduct a Workplace Investigation," dated about two weeks after that decision, said investigators "should focus on being impartial to gather and consider relevant facts and should not push the investigation in any particular direction."

SHRM has consistently denied Mohamed's claims. In his statement, Taylor said that "SHRM doesn't comment on pending cases, but we will say this: we do not settle meritless cases. We know the facts, and we trust the process."

Lawyers for Mohamed didn't reply to calls or emails.

The case, which is scheduled to begin jury selection on December 1, is unusual, Evan Fray-Witzer, an employment lawyer in Boston, told Business Insider. Workplace-discrimination lawsuits rarely get this far, he said. Further, SHRM didn't bring an independent investigator to oversee its internal probe into the matter, the court found.

This is "far from best practices," Fray-Witzer said.

In response to questions from Mohamed's lawyers, SHRM revealed the existence of two other discrimination complaints from employees. One case, filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in 2018, was settled. The other, filed with a California regulator in 2021, is pending.

Removing 'equity'

Following the murder of George Floyd in 2020, SHRM made DEI a focus of its educational materials. In 2021, a Harvard Business Review Analytic Services report sponsored by SHRM concluded that company leaders should make DEI a strategic priority. It said that DEI is not only "the right thing to do," but research shows DEI leaders outperform their competitors financially.

In July 2024, SHRM jettisoned the term "equity" from what it now calls "inclusion and diversity," or I&D, prompting social-media backlash from many members and others in the HR community.

SHRM cited Taylor's reasoning for the move in a LinkedIn post that drew nearly 1,000 comments, writing that he has said that "by emphasizing Inclusion-first, we aim to address the current shortcomings of DE&I programs."

In his statement, Taylor said the removal of "equity" from SHRM's messaging was driven by data indicating that the word is confusing and polarizing.

"While we fully respect some employees and some SHRM members didn't agree with that decision, we are very clear all workplace I&D strategy should be legally compliant, workplace unifying, and business accretive," Taylor said.

In recent years, many employers have pulled back or ended DEI programs, concluding the programs were misguided or facing pressure from conservative activists and the second Trump administration.

Because SHRM spent years producing DEI materials for HR leaders, its shift was conspicuous, said Don A. Moore, a leadership and communication professor at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley.

For some staffers, concerns about SHRM's shift away from DEI were exacerbated by Taylor's connection to the Trump administration. Bloomberg Law reported that Taylor was among those being discussed as a potential labor secretary in Trump's second term, while he chaired an advisory board focused on HBCUs and served on the White House Workforce Policy Advisory Board in the first administration.

Taylor has personally supported both Republicans and Democrats over the years. SHRM spent $1 million to $2 million annually on lobbying in recent years, US Senate filings show.

Paul Lalonde, who has worked in HR for more than a decade and lives in the Chicago area, said Taylor and SHRM are "kowtowing" to the Trump administration. Lalonde said he declined to renew his SHRM membership in response.

SHRM's shift away from DEI has impacted its business relationships. In 2024, the American Heart Association pulled out of a partnership with SHRM's affiliated charitable foundation, partially in connection with the group's move away from a focus on equity, according to three people with knowledge of the relationship. The groups had collaborated on a report on racial gaps in healthcare access and outcomes that led to the SHRM Foundation being paid at least six figures, according to two people.

Representatives for SHRM and AHA characterized the amounts paid as "modest" or "routine." Greg Donaldson, an AHA spokesman, said its contract with SHRM's foundation expired and was not renewed because of a change in "strategic direction" and said it would be "inaccurate" to say the collaboration ended over the word "equity."

Burke, the SHRM spokesperson, said the American Heart Association was "a valued member" and said SHRM looks "forward to continuing to explore ways of working with them in the future."

SHRM hit a nerve with some in the HR community again with the choice of anti-DEI activist Starbuck as a conference speaker last month, alongside Van Jones, a CNN host and entrepreneur, and Taylor, who moderated the conversation.

Starbuck has repeatedly called DEI "poison." At the event, he said he believes "equity" is a "Marxist concept."

"Diversity is one of the most pressing and polarizing issues for our workforces," Taylor said in a LinkedIn video announcing the event. "To move our organizations forward, we must leave behind the echo chambers and lean into difficult conversations." SHRM also changed the event's name to Blueprint from its previous moniker, Inclusion.

Shari Dunn, a DEI consultant and author in Portland, Oregon, who is Black, said she found Starbuck's speaking invitation offensive. She canceled her membership over the organization's retreat from DEI principles.

"They claim this is a free exchange of ideas and they're just trying to bring different opinions," she said. "My humanity and intelligence can't be a 'different opinion.'"

Not all SHRM members opposed Starbuck's participation. Dave Greenlaw, an HR executive in Washington D.C., previously told Business Insider that he planned to attend even though he disagreed with Starbuck. He said he believed HR leaders need to understand the full corporate landscape, even when it might be uncomfortable.

In a statement to Business Insider, Starbuck said he spent two hours taking photos with conference attendees after he finished speaking.

"So clearly, not every HR professional felt distressed to have my voice included," he said. "It was nice to have a productive conversation with Johnny and Van about making workplaces less divisive."

Some of SHRM's members have said publicly they would cancel their membership, which gives them access to templates, legal information, and other resources. Membership revenue increased in 2024, from $69 million to $75.6 million, according to its tax filings. Figures for 2025 aren't yet available. SHRM said its overall membership number has grown about 16% over the course of Taylor's tenure.

At least part of last year's revenue increase may have been due to an 8% price hike for the annual membership that took place in February 2024. The cost of an annual membership rose by another 13% earlier this year, to $299.

Taylor's total compensation has also grown. He received $4 million last year, more than five times what he made in 2018 and a 48% increase from what he was paid in 2022.

'Policy, not politics'

Taylor started his career as a law-firm associate, and then went on to serve in legal and HR roles at companies including Paramount Pictures, Alamo Rent a Car, and Blockbuster, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Before joining SHRM, Taylor led the Thurgood Marshall College Fund, a nonprofit that supports historically and predominantly Black schools, from 2010 to 2017. Business Insider identified two appearance-related complaints during his tenure.

The organization settled a discrimination lawsuit filed by an employee, Tara Smith, who said she was fired for refusing to wear pantyhose to business meetings. The fund said Smith had been insubordinate.

In his statement, Burke said that Taylor "refused to settle this lawsuit because he believed it was meritless, and even when the organization settled it after his departure, he refused to participate in the settlement."

A student also launched a Change.org petition signed by more than 6,800 people in opposition to the organization's ban on dreadlocks for male participants in its Leadership Institute. The student wrote that his acceptance was rescinded because of his hairstyle and called the policy "discriminatory, sexist, and contrary to TMCF's mission of supporting" students from historically Black colleges and universities.

TMCF did not respond to a request for comment.

At SHRM, meanwhile, Taylor has said the organization talks "policy, not politics."

Roger King, a longtime employment lawyer with the CHRO Association, an HR policy organization, said Taylor deserves credit for growing SHRM's membership and talking openly about the group's decision-making on diversity topics.

"Many in the business community have gone silent, or certainly have reduced their rhetoric, on this whole issue," he told Business Insider.

On TikTok, Kinsey and Schmidt, who both worked on SHRM's social media team, have posted roughly a dozen videos about their experiences at the organization. The videos have been collectively viewed more than 1 million times.

Kinsey said the group's treatment of its workers shows "hypocrisy," while Schmidt compared his work at SHRM to "the marketing department for the Death Star."

"I highly encourage you to never give a dollar to this organization," Schmidt said in one video. It was filmed in SHRM's offices.

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• Devang Sharma returned to Meta for an AI engineering role after being laid off in 2023.
• He chose Meta over other AI companies due to opportunities to build foundational AI models.
• Sharma advises boomerang employees to approach returning with a fresh, curious mindset.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Devang Sharma, a 27-year-old senior software engineer at Meta, based in Menlo Park, CA. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

The first time I joined Meta was in 2022. I uprooted my life in London and moved to Toronto to work there. I stayed for around four and a half months before being laid off.

Meta is an amazing organization, one I saw myself retiring at, but there was nothing I could do to keep my job.

Three years later, a recruiter from Meta reached out to me, and I had the chance to rejoin the company in a much more senior role. I had offers from other AI companies, but returning to Meta felt like a homecoming.

With the direction of the industry, there's always a chance of layoffs; however, I saw coming back as a trade-off.

Getting laid off was challenging, but I found another job quickly

I was working at a startup as an engineer before I applied for the Meta software engineering position in Toronto. When I was impacted by company layoffs, it was really challenging to deal with, especially as an immigrant.

It was the middle of winter, and I had just left everything I knew behind in London. But I was still grateful for the first experience I had working at such a large scale.

I was not dependent on Meta for my immigration status because I got my permanent residency, so I was free to switch jobs. Within a month, I secured several offers and landed a new role.

I kept in contact with former colleagues after getting laid off

There are LinkedIn groups, WhatsApp groups, Telegram channels, and email newsletters for former Meta employees. I was always in touch with the former and current employees I worked with, as well as those I had not worked with directly.

The conversations were mostly regarding what's happening across the industry and also within Meta. With the recent movements and investments in AI, a lot has changed over the past two and a half to three years.

A Meta recruiter reached out to me, but I had other offers

Meta has an internal system that tracks and enables them to reach out to current and former employees. A Meta recruiter emailed me about a specific role and team, and when I got more details about the position, I realized it was exactly what I was looking for.

The interviews were similar to my first time interviewing with them in terms of coding standards and system design, but more complex in terms of tangible design problems.

I was in the interview process with other organizations and considering their offers. This made me sort of unsure whether to proceed with Meta.

Meta's AI work made me come back

Before rejoining Meta, I was working at Amazon. Although I had the opportunity to work with some great AI models, I was not directly contributing to the foundational models or writing the models myself. My role was primarily focused on implementing and fine-tuning.

When I discovered that I could contribute to the domain of artificial intelligence firsthand by building and writing models, not just on the implementation side, which perfectly aligned with what I was looking for, I was thrilled.

I'm in my 20s and I don't have a family. I'm pretty flexible in terms of my responsibilities. I couldn't sit back and be fearful about what would happen if there were more layoffs. There will probably be some, but I can't control it.

I would've regretted not taking a chance to work on something amazing, simply because I chose a safe route.

Returning to Meta was a mix of emotions, and the company has changed a lot

I had such a mixture of emotions going into my new hire orientation, this time at Meta headquarters in Menlo Park. It brought back all the memories of my first time joining the company back in Toronto.

I knew that employees who worked at headquarters got to meet people like Chris Cox, the chief product officer of Meta, and other C-suite executives. Back in 2022, at the Toronto office, we were just watching them on video. In 2025, I was sitting in the front row while Chris Cox gave an amazing speech.

Things have changed since I last worked here. Priorities differ, and the company is leaner, so things move more quickly. The company's evolution in terms of shipping features is happening at a very fast pace; it's no longer a traditional software engineering role. It's more about how integrated we are with AI.

Advice for other boomerang employees

Whenever you're returning to a previous organization that you have worked with, it feels like a homecoming because there's naturally some attachment there. My piece of advice would be to try to come in with the mindset of a newbie.

I'm using my previous experience to help me, but I'm also thinking of this new experience as if I were joining Meta for the first time.

This approach has helped me overcome my prejudices. It's given me a chance to be a curious learner, and that's one of the most important things that you can do as a professional.

Do you have a story to share about being a boomerang employee? Contact this reporter, Agnes Applegate, at aapplegate@businessinsider.com.

• Chips Ahoy is reinventing its classic cookies to stay relevant with Gen Z.
• In its latest cross-brand collaboration, Chips Ahoy created a "Stranger Things" themed cookie.
• The legacy brand aims to innovate more quickly and capture new flavor trends as snack tastes change.

One of America's favorite cookies has gotten a makeover — and it's aimed squarely at Gen Z.

Chips Ahoy has released one of its largest cross-brand collaborations in partnership with Netflix's "Stranger Things," which returns for its final season on November 26.

The inky black soft chew cookies evoke the show's dark aesthetic, with an '80s-themed package that would fit perfectly in Winona Ryder's kitchen.

"Stranger Things," a cultural touchstone since its 2016 debut, has been a particular hit with Gen Z viewers, despite many of them having been born long after the era of hair metal and satanic panic.

Chris Park, Mondelez International's Director of Savory Revenue Growth Management, was the project lead on the "Stranger Things" collaboration in his former role as Director of Chips Ahoy Innovation.

"From our brand point of view, we really want new ways to connect with our consumers, especially that Gen Z audience, and what better way to do that than with "Stranger Things"?" Park told Business Insider. "Partnerships, I think, are one of the biggest things that we can do to be part of the cultural conversation."

A snack industry re-shaped for Gen Z's tastes

Branding experts told Business Insider in September that good cross-brand partnerships can be hard to pull off — especially when targeting Gen Z customers, because of their demand for well-integrated authenticity from marketing campaigns — but, when done well, can offer both brands a chance at viral sales, to shape the social conversation around their products, and potentially expand their audience.

That's what Chips Ahoy, and its parent company Mondelēz, are after, as the snack giant aims to capture consumers' attention at a time when they're snacking less, cutting down on processed foods, and have more options than ever.

The "Stranger Things" cookie features a strawberry center in a nod to the color scheme in the "upside down" parallel dimension, where much of the show takes place. It's also the first time Chips Ahoy has experimented with a fruit flavor — itself an intentional nod toward Gen Z.

"Some of the trends that we see are that, especially with Gen Z, they love to try snacks with new flavors, whether that's something trending or that they've tried at restaurants," Park said. "Certain combinations are a very appealing flavor package to them. The cinnamon bun cookie we launched this year is a good example of that strategy — so is the strawberry and chocolate."

New flavors for new generations

Chips Ahoy debuted in 1963 under the Nabisco brand, which was acquired by Mondelēz in 2000. In the years since, the company has experimented with flavors like red velvet, s'mores, and confetti cake. Going forward, Park said they aim to be bolder with their flavor combinations, hoping to capitalize on viral trends like Dubai chocolate, or black sesame and matcha, which Yelp on November 18 identified as increasingly popular in its 2026 trend forecast.

And Chips Ahoy isn't the only snack brand leaning hard into Gen Z's tastes. Oreo, which is also owned by Mondelēz, launched its Reese's-Oreo product line in September, targeting the younger demographic after the flavor combination gained popularity on TikTok, according to Michelle Deignan, the brand's VP of Marketing, who spoke to Business Insider at the time.

However, expanding the variety of flavors available comes with operational challenges for a company the size of Chips Ahoy, as it needs to scale up the millions, or even billions, of cookies for any given flavor launch. As a result, Park said the company is actively working to streamline its innovation process for future product line-ups, even if that means limited-time runs or regional drops.

"As a company, we want to look at ways to be faster and to really meet those trends quickly, whether and even if it's more on a smaller scale that gives consumers and our fans a chance to experience our product with those fast-moving trends," Park said. "That's something we're really, really looking at."

Park said Chips Ahoy has to balance staying true to its iconic legacy while modernizing its offerings to keep up with changing tastes in the snack industry. It could be an uphill battle — Business Insider reported in July that Mondelēz's sales volume in the US fell during the company's second quarter due to changes in consumer snacking behavior — but Park said it's one the brand is going all-in on.

"Whether it's new flavors, other innovations that will come next year, new partners, new limited editions that will eventually make their way into the market — we as a brand are really diving into becoming even more relevant with our audience," Park said.

• The Trump administration has floated options to make mortgages cheaper.
• These alternatives could put buyers at risk and raise home prices.
• We examined the pros and cons of creative financing, ranging from 50-year mortgages to seller financing.

As mortgage rates stay stubbornly high, President Donald Trump and his administration have floated a few ideas to help buyers afford a mortgage.

Most notably, the president said he's considering 50-year mortgages. Bill Pulte, head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, said his team is also exploring ways buyers can lock in low interest rates from older mortgages.

There are a slew of creative financing options out there that could make buying a home cheaper. But they can be risky. Some could backfire and lead to higher prices amid an ongoing housing shortage.

All of the discussion about more affordable mortgages is a function of politicians attempting to come up with short-term solutions to a complicated problem that can't be fixed overnight because "they're under pressure from their constituents who can't afford to buy," said Lance Lambert, co-founder of real estate media and research group ResiClub.

The cost of the typical mortgage more than doubled between December 2019 and December 2024 because of skyrocketing home prices and elevated mortgage interest rates.

Here are four alternative financing approaches, along with their strengths and weaknesses.

50-year mortgages

Trump and Pulte made headlines when they proposed their unusual plan for half-century-long home loans. The idea of stretching debt would be to make monthly payments more affordable for borrowers and put homeownership within reach for more Americans.

However, the idea has been widely criticized by housing economists, who argue that a 50-year loan would significantly increase a buyer's debt burden, resulting in a higher total interest payment over the life of the loan.

For example, the monthly payment on a 30-year fixed mortgage with a 6% interest rate for a typical home would be about $2,000, Business Insider previously reported. The same terms for a 50-year loan would shrink that monthly payment to around $1,800. But over the life of the half-century loan, the borrower would pay about $750,000 in interest, rather than about $400,000 in interest for the three-decade loan.

In addition to the increased interest paid over the lifetime of the mortgage, lenders typically view longer-term loans as riskier, so they'll likely charge higher rates on a 50-year mortgage.

It would also take much longer for the borrower to build equity in their home, which is key to building wealth. If the federal government were to back these longer loans, it could also backfire by boosting demand for homes, as more buyers qualify, and thus driving up prices.

Crucially, cheaper mortgages don't address the fundamental reason Americans are struggling to buy homes: a shortage of between one and almost five million homes. "Financing is not the solution," said Kara Ng, a senior economist at Zillow. "We're in this affordability crisis because there's a housing shortage, so changing the loan terms, having different financing products — it doesn't change the fact there aren't enough homes to go around."

Assumable and portable mortgages

Amid the backlash to the 50-year mortgage idea, Pulte posted on X that Fannie and Freddie were "evaluating how to do assumable or portable mortgages, in a safe and sound manner." A few days later, he again posted that the administration is "actively evaluating" portable mortgages.

Portable and assumable mortgages are different things. Both involve locking in older mortgages with below-market rates. Portable mortgages enable homeowners to take their mortgage interest rate with them to a new property, and assumable mortgages allow buyers to take over the seller's mortgage, including its below-market rate.

The US already has many assumable mortgages, though sellers and buyers alike may not know they have that option. Home loans backed by the Federal Housing Administration, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Department of Agriculture are all automatically assumable. Almost a quarter of existing mortgages can be passed from seller to buyer, and a bit less than half of those loans have an interest rate of 4% or below, Business Insider reporter James Rodriguez reported earlier this year.

Have you used creative financing to buy a home? Share your story with this reporter at erelman@businessinsider.com or fill out this form.

If you can obtain one, assumable mortgages can be a great option for buyers. They not only save on interest, they also save on closing costs, as they're exempted from paying for an appraisal or for title insurance, and they aren't on the hook for a mortgage origination fee.

"The best way to help people move regardless of the macro environment is give them access to those low rates," said Raunaq Singh, founder and CEO of Roam, a company that facilitates sales with assumable mortgages.

But there are drawbacks to assumables. The buyer has to qualify for the loan and pay the loan servicer the difference between the home sale price and the remaining mortgage. If the down payment is more than the buyer can afford, they may need a second mortgage, which can be challenging to obtain and would likely come with a higher interest rate.

Portable mortgages, on the other hand, do not yet exist in the US. Housing economists warn that legalizing portable loans could give homeowners who are lucky enough to have an existing mortgage with a low rate an even bigger advantage over first-time homebuyers and others. The dynamic could also drive home prices up further by empowering repeat buyers to spend more.

"That could juice up demand and create more turnover in the market at a time when we're trying to recalibrate," Lambert said.

Builder rate buy-downs

Aside from the options Pulte says he's exploring, there are other ways buyers are finding deals on mortgages.

It's increasingly common to find a below-market interest rate on a newly built home. Over the past few years, homebuilders have increasingly offered incentives to buyers, including mortgage rate buydowns and adjustable-rate mortgages. This reduces monthly payments for buyers while allowing builders to avoid lowering their home prices.

But these rate buydowns could be inflating home prices, a recent Wall Street Journal report found, since they provide a way for builders to offer incentives to buyers while protecting the sticker price on a new home. Large builders, which use rate buydowns more often, saw prices on the first sale of their newly-built homes rise 6% more than existing homes and those built by smaller companies between 2019 and 2024, the American Enterprise Institute recently found.

Seller financing

Another creative financing option — seller financing — involves cutting the bank out of the transaction entirely. In these cases, the seller holds onto the home's deed as the buyer pays them for the property in multiyear installments, in addition to agreed-upon interest. The option appeals to buyers who want a below-market interest rate or who don't qualify for a traditional mortgage, and sellers who are willing to be paid back over time in exchange for also earning interest.

But the practice can be risky. Seller financing often operates as a short-term bridge loan to the buyer. So, if interest rates don't fall during the life of the loan, the buyer could face a significantly higher payment if they opt for a traditional mortgage after a few years of making payments to the seller.

The practice was long more common in poor neighborhoods and has been criticized by federal regulators for exploiting low-income buyers with high interest rates on low-quality homes.

While seller financing has grown in popularity because of high rates in recent years, it's still a niche practice. Just about 1% of home listings mention private financing, according to Realtor.com. But in recent years, the practice has become more popular in higher-end home sales.

"This used to be kind of a sketchy thing that happened with really cheap properties and really under-qualified buyers, and now the median price is on par with what's on the market as a whole," said Joel Berner, a senior economist at Realtor.com. "So it's moving upmarket, becoming more widespread, happening on higher dollar properties."

Ryan Leahy and Eric Bennett founded a company based in Austin, Texas, called MORE, that specializes in facilitating seller financing. They deal with higher-end homes — typically valued between $800,000 and $3 million, they said. Their sellers normally have a fair amount of cash and equity in their property, while their buyers are often self-employed with income that's more difficult to account for, making it harder to qualify for a mortgage.

"There's so many people out there self-employed or have income that doesn't qualify for a traditional mortgage, meaning you have influencer income, crypto income, side hustle income," Leahy said.

Mel Dorman bought her first home — an investment property — with seller financing. Since then, she's built a real estate portfolio in Portland, Oregon, and become an advocate for the practice, advising others on how to buy and sell without a bank. Dorman argues that the practice can help keep wealth within a community, rather than having it extracted by a bank.

"When somebody does a seller finance transaction, their payment is literally going to a person who lives nearby, who's probably local, and it's funding their ability to downsize, to retire, to sell their rental property, to stop being a landlord, whatever is their need for selling," she said. "Likewise, it creates a pathway to ownership to Americans who are increasingly locked out because of bank criteria and the cost of capital, interest rates, and prices."

When describing the health of the US economy, there is a temptation among economists, market analysts, and politicians to argue that the only true picture of our current situation is a sweeping portrait — only by looking at the broadest of aggregate statistics can you determine the state of play, they argue. But the wide view can ignore important developments unfolding under the surface. Sometimes, even the healthiest-looking person might have high cholesterol.

Right now, the economy seems OK on the surface. GDP growth has been running north of 3% for the last two quarters. In the labor market, the boilerplate appears to be that conditions are gradually cooling, but nothing more, nothing less. For example, despite the slowdown in new hiring, the unemployment rate of 4.4% is still low by historical standards. But there are serious dangers lurking beneath the surface of our economy, and it is better to clearly identify them than to ignore them in favor of broad aggregate measures.

Major employers in industries like homebuilding and restaurants are looking shaky, and they offer ominous signs about the direction of the overall economy. By getting a sense of what sectors and industries are struggling, you can get a forward-looking sense of the economy's trajectory and a clearer-eyed view of the possibility of recession.

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The problem with relying on broad bundles of data is that things typically appear placid on an aggregate level right up until things go wrong. Take the turning of the job market tide. In a genuine downturn, the consensus typically assumes a gradual, linear increase in unemployment, similar to the slow, steady grind we are currently experiencing. In reality, however, the risk is nonlinear. When things truly turn south, it usually comes as an abrupt shift that results in a negative self-reinforcing feedback loop. Instead of a slow increase in the unemployment rate of 0.1 percentage points a month, you begin to see a jump of 0.2 points one month and another 0.3 points the next. The ranks of the jobless swell at an ever-increasing pace. There is no real way of knowing when labor market conditions will transition from linear to nonlinear. Historically, the consensus never sees the shift until well after it has arrived. That things seem to be evolving in a stable fashion now doesn't negate the possibility of an unstable move later.

This is why, when making predictions about the future path of the economy, it is essential to get under the hood. And right now, the closer you look, the more worrying things become. Don't just take my word for it, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent recently acknowledged that sectors of the economy are already in serious downturn territory.

"I think we are in good shape, but I think that there are sectors of the economy that are in recession," Bessent told CNN in an early November interview.

While Bessent didn't go into much detail about the parts of the American economy that concern him, a close read reveals the most worrying signals are coming from four major sources of employment:

• Residential housing: There are several signs that employment in home construction is about to hit the skids. The elevated stock of unsold homes means homebuilders will need to throttle back on breaking new ground and focus on selling the inventory they have on hand. Building permits also indicate a potential weakness in future construction activity. Add this up, and it's clear that the industry is likely holding onto too many workers relative to its current activity levels.

  

• Commercial real estate: Investment in structures for business has been declining for the last six quarters, per the latest GDP data, even accounting for the massive buildout of AI data centers. Architectural billings, an index that tracks nonresidential construction, released by the American Institute of Architects, remain sluggish. Given that a building first has to be drawn up before it can be built, weakness at this planning stage suggests there is no coming boom in commercial real estate construction. Based on the latest release, it appears that soft conditions are likely to persist next year.

• Restaurants: We've seen major casual dining establishments, such as Chipotle and Sweetgreen, post weaker sales growth in recent quarters, largely due to weakness in certain consumer cohorts, including 25-34 year olds. Despite this, many chains have said they plan to absorb higher food input prices caused by supply shocks, thereby squeezing their margins. Slower sales and slimmer profits are not a recipe for more hiring. In fact, declining measures of productivity per worker in food services & drinking places suggest that many of these restaurants are overstaffed and may be a signal that layoffs are on the horizon.

  

• Government: Until now, most of the pressure on public sector employment has been at the federal government level. However, state and local governments are facing pressures as they exhaust COVID-era funding. Given these tough decisions, job losses in state and local governments are a reasonable baseline.

Beyond these big four, there are industries with a smaller employment footprint that also appear to be softening:

• Freight: There are not as many goods moving around the country. Ship counts from Asia to the US are down roughly 30% from last year. Railcar loadings are down roughly 6% against last year. The trucking industry also continues to see shrinking capacity. If there are fewer things to move around the country, then the industry will likewise need fewer drivers, loaders, and various workers. Idle trains and empty containers don't need a lot of people to mind them.
• Mining: Crude oil prices are somewhat below the level needed to profitably invest in new drilling wells, so energy companies are unlikely to hire new staff in this area. The same is true for wood products. Lumber prices are below the levels at which most sawmills can turn a profit. Mining and logging are a relatively small part of private employment, but they're decreasing, not increasing.

• Higher education: Declining enrollment, budget cuts, and reduced federal research funding are taxing the higher education sector. Not surprisingly, more colleges and universities are turning to staffing cuts. Employment across colleges and universities has remained flat so far in 2025 compared to last year, but given the budget shrinkage, it's hard to see how this resilience persists.

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It's taken a while to unfold, but the labor slowdown has played out in a standard way: job openings have declined, hiring rates have cooled as companies have slowed their pace of recruiting, and we're now beginning to see an increase in layoffs from historically low levels. The workers at the margins — like younger people and Black Americans — have felt it more than those in more secure positions, which is also not unusual.

Recession-like dynamics across several different industries increase the risk of additional layoffs in those same key sectors in the quarters ahead. Because the hiring rate is low, a small increase in layoffs may have a disproportionately large effect on unemployment. Just because conditions seem to be gradually cooling today does not close the door on a more abrupt shift in labor market conditions later.

The labor market remains a source of downside risk for the broader economy. Because consumption has been a source of support for the economy, a deeper slowdown in the jobs market would create a nasty downward spiral: People cut back on their spending as they lose their jobs, which dries up sources of revenue for businesses that then lay off more workers in response, which further shrinks the amount of household spending, and so on.

Where all this ends up is still up for debate. But while America's economic ocean appears placid at 30,000 feet, beneath the surface, several riptides are brewing.

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Neil Dutta is head of economics at Renaissance Macro Research.