When construction and trades professionals are asked which single trade the skills shortage will hit hardest, they don’t name electricians or plumbers first. They name the carpenters and woodworkers, and the consequence they point to most isn’t a blown budget or a slipped schedule. It’s a decline in the quality of the work itself.

For this article, Eagle Woodworking surveyed 500 U.S. construction and trades professionals, a mix of contractors, tradespeople, project managers, and builders, to understand where the skilled-labor shortage is landing hardest and what it’s doing to the work.

The results describe a shortage that has moved well past a hiring inconvenience. Respondents report turning down jobs they can’t staff, paying more and waiting longer for the work that does get done, and watching the most experienced hands in the trade age out faster than anyone is replacing them.

One finding cuts through the rest. The shortage isn’t mainly a story about too few workers. It’s a story about too few skilled ones, and in a trade built on craft, that’s where the real damage shows up.

Four patterns run through the data, and together they explain who the shortage hits, what it breaks first, and why it’s likely to get worse before it gets better.

Quick Summary: Four Insights From the Data

These four findings reframe the labor shortage from a scheduling headache into a threat to the quality of the build itself.

1. Woodworking Sits at the Center of the Shortage

Carpenters and woodworkers were named the most-exposed trade no matter how the researchers asked. They led the field of trades expected to feel the shortage (47%) and topped the list when respondents had to pick a single hardest-hit trade (19.6%). The view held across contractors, tradespeople, and project managers alike.

2. Craftsmanship Is the First Thing to Slip

Asked what the shortage hurts most, respondents didn’t lead with cost or schedule. They named quality of workmanship, the single biggest impact for 39.4%, nearly double the share that pointed to timelines. Because the scarcest workers are the most experienced ones, craft is what thins out first.

3. The Shortage Is Already Capping Output

Nearly three-quarters of respondents (72.8%) have turned down work because they couldn’t staff it. The jobs that do get done cost more and run longer for the overwhelming majority, and the people who plan and own projects are the ones walking away most often.

4. The Cause Is Demographic, but the Fix Everyone Names Is Pay

Respondents blame a thinning pipeline, fewer young people entering the trades and an aging workforce heading for the door, far more than low wages. Yet asked for the single best fix, they reach for pay first. And the closer a worker is to retirement, the more pessimistic they are about what comes next.

What This Means for Builders and Remodelers

The shortage is an experience problem before it’s a numbers problem, and craftsmanship is the variable most likely to give. For anyone building or remodeling, that turns a sourcing question into a quality question: where the finished woodwork comes from matter

Just in time for National Ice Cream Day on July 19, Instacart dug into a year of ice cream orders to find the flavors and brands filling America’s carts, along with the delightfully regional tastes that make every state unique.

Ice cream occupies a rare sweet spot in the grocery aisle: It’s nearly universal in appeal yet deeply individual in taste. Ask 10 people their favorite flavor, and you’ll get 10 different answers.

In order to map the country’s sweet tooth, Instacart purchase data from 2025 was used to see how Americans stocked their pints and tubs, tracking which classics held the line, which newer brands surged, and which scoop each state reaches for more than anyone else.

Key Takeaways

• Vanilla is untouchable. It’s America’s most-ordered flavor, accounting for about 21% of all ice cream orders, and the single most popular pick in every one of the 50 states and D.C.
• Häagen-Dazs tops the brands. At roughly 24% of orders, it edges out Ben & Jerry’s, with Breyers rounding out the top three.
• Every region has a signature scoop: rocky road out West, coffee across New England, and butter pecan in the South.
• Hometown dairies win locally. Tillamook is the brand the West favors most, Blue Bell rules the South, and Blue Bunny owns the Plains.
• Better-for-you is booming. The fastest-growing brands are premium, better-for-you pints, led by Alec’s Ice Cream, Rebel, and Van Leeuwen.

Vanilla still rules

Some things never melt. Vanilla remains the country’s runaway favorite, representing over one-fifth of ice cream purchases, the dependable base for every sundae, float, and à la mode. Behind it, chocolate (7.9%) and cookie dough (6.9%) round out the podium — proof that when it comes to ice cream, comfort beats novelty almost every time.

The rest of the top 10 leans nostalgic and crowd-pleasing faves: cookies and cream (5.8%), chocolate fudge/brownie (5.1%), and peanut butter (4.7%) all earn their spots, while mint chocolate chip (4.7%) and coffee (4.5%) keep their loyal followings. The list rounds out with two fruity flavors, strawberry (3.7%) and cherry (3.1%), taking the #9 and #10 spots. Adventurous flavors exist, but Americans mostly want the hits.

A 2-pint race at the top

Within the freezer aisle, we have a duel. Häagen-Dazs takes the national crown, with Ben & Jerry’s close behind. Between them, they stake out the two great camps of American ice cream: the velvety-premium and the chunk-loaded-indulgent. Breyers holds a comfortable spot in third as the everyday fam

Solar energy just provided more electricity in the United States than coal for the first time on record — marking a milestone for the rise of renewables in America.

While gas and nuclear plants still lead the country’s energy mix, solar contributed 12.8% of the nation’s electricity in May, according to an analysis of government data by Ember, an energy think tank. Coal, meanwhile, provided just 12.2%. Just five years ago, solar was less than half of its current levels and coal was at 20%.

“Overtaking coal for the first month on record shows just how far solar has come, from a niche contributor to the third-largest and fastest-growing source of power in the U.S. electricity system,” said Nicolas Fulghum, senior data analyst at Ember, in a press release. “From Texas to California, markets across the U.S. are betting on solar to meet rising power needs.”

The turnaround comes even as political headwinds have shifted against renewable energy, Grist reports.

Last summer, Congress passed the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” which rolled back enormous swaths of former President Joe Biden’s landmark climate change legislation, the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. And President Donald Trump has actively sought to hinder renewable energy development, even offering to pay at least one oil company $1 billion to stop building its offshore wind projects.

The latest electricity data comes the same month that the Trump administration announced $700 million in funding for investments in the coal industry. It included money for what would be the country’s first new coal-fired power plants in 13 years — sourced from funds previously dedicated to reducing the country’s dependence on fossil fuels, not deepening it.

“Today we’re taking historic action to bring down the price of energy and the cost of living for all Americans with the power of clean, beautiful coal,” said Trump, who campaigned on the coal-friendly slogan “dig, baby, dig.”

Ember’s analysis found that coal generation in May was actually up slightly from April, when it hit an all-time low. Its share of the grid will also likely tick up in the summer, as cooling needs peak. But the steady downward trend over the last several years suggests that even all the president’s men might not be able to put the coal industry back together again.

“Spending $700 million to bail out the coal industry is like throwing a lifeline to a ship that has already sunk,” Lena Moffitt, executive director of the environmental group Evergreen Action, told the Associated Press. Rich Nolan, president and CEO of the National Mining Association disagreed, telling the AP that c

Buying a television used to be relatively straightforward: Pick a screen size that fits the room, compare picture quality in the store, and choose a model that matched your budget. That’s no longer the case. In this article, electronics and technology company TCL breaks down which TV features matter most for streaming sports at home.

For today’s consumers, buying a TV has shifted from a simple screen-size-versus- budget decision to choosing an entire home technology platform. Modern TVs are expected to do much more than display content — they stream live sports, connect to gaming consoles, anchor family movie nights, support smart home controls, and increasingly shape how people interact with entertainment every day. That shift has made TV shopping more complex, especially as buyers sort through competing claims around display technology, audio, software, and value.

With the return of American football in the fall, understanding what features and specifications will make for the best game-night viewing matters more than ever.

Is it time for a new TV?

Many Americans may be entering a natural TV replacement cycle. According to a 2021 Consumer Technology Association report, 47.3 million TVs were sold in the U.S. in 2020. That marked a 15% increase from 2019, as households invested heavily in home entertainment during the pandemic. The average American replaces a TV every six to seven years, according to a 2023 refresh-cycle report from Circana. That means many TV sets bought during the COVID-19 pandemic buying surge are now reaching the age when consumers begin considering an upgrade.

Pandemic-era purchasers looking to upgrade have a lot of new options to accommodate everything we want our TVs to do these days. Bigger screens are now common: A 2025 report from Global Growth Insights says screens 55 inches and up now account for roughly 60% of all new U.S. TV purchases. Smart TV platforms play a larger role in the daily experience, and new screen technologies have added complexity to purchase decisions. A range of terms like organic light-emitting diode (OLED), mini-LED, and super quantum dot (SQD) make it harder to know which differences are meaningful and which are just marketing.

“A lot of consumers still think of TV shopping as a size-and-price decision, but it has become much more about total experience: picture, software, sound, and how the TV fits into daily life,” said Bruce Walker, lead retail trainer at TCL. “Most people don’t buy a TV because of an acronym. They buy it because they want brighter picture quality, more realistic color, better motion for sports, and an interface that feels easy to use.”

What TV tech matters most for sports fans today

For consumers trying to narrow the field of TV options to get the best view of the field on their screens, a few practical questions can go a long way:

• How bright is the room when and where the TV is used most often?
• Read more

To our human eyes, a mouse’s furred face doesn’t betray much emotion. But if you watch the body language of a mouse who’s reunited with one of her sisters after five days in a cage alone, you might suspect you know what she’s feeling.

The formerly isolated mouse chatters in squeaks too high for a human to hear. She follows her sister, crawling beneath the other mouse’s body as if trying to get a hug. She looks like she’s feeling what you or I feel when meeting a long-lost friend or a family member — maybe with more sniffing.

She looks like she’s been lonely.

Loneliness isn’t just for humans, and neither are its harms. Knowable Magazine explored how over the past decade or so, some researchers have come to believe that an animal’s craving for the company of others isn’t just a preference, but a basic, deeply held need. When we don’t socialize enough, we feel the lack like hunger or thirst, they say. When we’ve had our fill of togetherness, we feel satisfied or quenched.

The amount of socializing a creature needs may be particular to that species, and even to that individual. Scientists have found within-species social differences in birds, monkeys, fish and even cockroaches.

Among humans, “you can feel lonely at a party, or you can feel fine alone in your office,” said Kay Tye, a neuroscientist at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in California. Whatever the ideal degree of togetherness, Tye and others think that an animal’s need to balance time alone and time with others represents a kind of homeostasis: an equilibrium that’s critical for survival. Today, they are on a hunt to find where, in the brain, this equilibrium is controlled — and hoping their work will hold dividends for lonely humans.

A range of socializing

Beavers live with their immediate families. Starlings flock in huge murmurations. Adult male orangutans roam solo until it’s time to find a mate. What determines an animal’s ideal amount of socializing?

Tim Clutton-Brock, an evolutionary biologist retired from the University of Cambridge, says several factors can push species to become more or less social as they evolve. One is the need to keep warm. Another is foraging: Does searching for food in a group make it easier for that animal to eat, or harder? What about predation — is there safety in numbers, or is it better to be alone and inconspicuous? Do females need help from others to raise their young?

“Dealing with the neighbors” is also important, Clutton-Brock said. For example, the meerkats he studies in the Kalahari Desert live in territorial groups, and constant conflict means it’s better to live in packs. A wild meerkat who’s separated from the group is visibly distressed and looks around constantly. “They very clearly get extremely worried,” he said.

Within each species, Clutton-Brock says evolution has probably allowed for a range of personality types around a certain species average. “There are costs to too much anxiety” about being alone, he said, “and costs to too little anxiety.” A species may do best with a mix of social styles.

Whatever an animal’s right amount of social activity, research suggests there can be dire consequences to mental and physical health when it’s not met. People who a