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WASHINGTON — U.S. job openings rose unexpectedly in November, showing companies are still looking for workers even as the labor market has cooled overall.
Openings rose to 8.1 million in November, the most since February and up from 7.8 million in October, the Labor Department reported Tuesday. They were down from 8.9 million a year earlier and a peak of 12.2 million in March 2022 as the economy was roaring back from COVID-19 lockdowns. But they still exceed pre-pandemic levels.
Economists had expected job openings to fall slightly in November.

Illinois is now experiencing high levels of respiratory illness, up from moderate levels the previous week, the state health department reported Tuesday.
The increase is not a surprise, given that this is the typical season for spikes in the flu, RSV and COVID-19, health officials and doctors say.

Affordability will be one of the largest challenges in 2025 for Detroit’s automakers after General Motors Co. and Ford Motor Co. posted their best sales year in the United States since 2019, and as Stellantis NV’s declines eased somewhat in the final months of the year.

The annual Consumer Electronics Show got underway in Las Vegas this week, but Winter Storm Blair unraveled my plan to be on the ground to check things out in person. That means I still haven't had an in-person look at the Sony Honda Mobility Afeela, a new electric sedan that goes on sale in California later this year.

Tesla is the target of yet another federal safety probe, the fourth currently open by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's Office of Defects Investigation. Today's trouble concerns the automaker's "Smart Summon" and "Actually Smart Summon" features, which allow Tesla drivers to remotely control their vehicles via a smartphone app.

The second season of The Last of Us will hit HBO and Max in April.

HBO released a new one-minute teas

On Monday, Nvidia announced Project DIGITS, a small desktop computer aimed at researchers, data scientists, and students who want to experiment with AI models—such as chatbots like ChatGPT and image generators—at home. The $3,000 device, which contains Nvidia's new GB10 Grace Blackwell Superchip, debuted at CES 2025 in Las Vegas. It will launch in May and can operate as a standalone PC or connect to a Windows or Mac machine.

The Pixel 4a, a well-regarded release in Google's line of budget-minded phones with nice cameras and decent stock software, was not supposed to get any more updates. This week, it will receive a rather uncommon one—one that intends to lower its reported battery life.

Here at Ars, we're judicious about which of the many, many Switch 2 rumors we decide to highlight on this page. For every report on hardware power or magnetic Joy-Cons that we share, there are probably five others we see and decide are too lightly sourced, too unlikely, or just too plain obscure to spread here.

Meta announced today that it's ending the third-party fact-checking program it introduced in 2016, and will rely instead on a Community Notes approach similar to what's used on Elon Musk's X platform.