David Ellison continues to put his stamp on Paramount after its acquisition by Skydance.

The CEO and chairman told employees Thursday that they will be expected to work in the office five days a week starting Jan. 5, 2026, according to a memo obtained by CNBC. Employees who do not wish to make the transition can seek a buyout starting Thursday and until Sept. 15.

“To achieve what we’ve set out to do — and to truly unlock Paramount’s full potential — we must make meaningful changes that position us for long-term success,” Ellison wrote to staffers. “These changes are about building a stronger, more connected, and agile organization that can deliver on our goals and compete at the highest level. We have a lot to accomplish and we’re moving fast. We need to all be rowing in the same direction. And especially when you’re dealing with a creative business like ours, that begins with being together in person.”

The move could help Paramount thin the herd ahead of looming staffing cuts.

Variety reported last month that the company is expected to lay off between 2,000 and 3,000 employees as part of its postmerger cost-cutting measures. These cuts are slated for early November, Variety reported.

Paramount is looking to take $2 billion in costs out of the conglomerate amid advertising losses and industrywide struggles with traditional cable networks.

Phase one of Ellison’s back-to-work plan will see employees in Los Angeles and New York returning to a full five-day workweek in the new year.

Phase two will focus on offices outside LA and New York, including international locations. A similar buyout program will be offered in 2026 for those who operate in these locations.

“We recognize this represents a significant change for many, and we’re committed to supporting you throughout this transition,” Ellison wrote. “We will work closely with managers to ensure you have the time and flexibility to make the necessary adjustments.”

Fast-food restaurants are losing breakfast customers to convenience stores.

Morning meal traffic to fast-food chains rose 1% in the three months ended in July, while visits to food-forward convenience stores climbed 9% in the same period, according to market research firm Circana.

“Over the long run, convenience stores have taken share, really at foodservice overall, but the morning meal has been their strong suit,” David Portalatin, Circana senior vice president and foodservice industry advisor, told CNBC, noting the trend has largely been driven by what the group calls “food-forward convenience stores.”

For decades, McDonald’s and its rivals have tried to lure consumers away from home to eat their early morning offerings, betting that convenience and unique items will win over diners.

While fast-food chains have made some inroads, 87% of what consumers eat and drink in the morning comes from their own refrigerators or pantries, according to Portalatin. That leaves plenty of opportunity for fast-food chains — and anyone else who wants a slice of the breakfast pie.

Before the pandemic, fast-food chains started seeing a new rival for their breakfast customers: convenience stores. Regional chains like Wawa in the Northeast and Casey’s General Store in the Midwest were expanding their reach and investing in their foodservice options, taking pages from the fast-food companies’ own playbooks.

For a time, lockdowns and the shift to hybrid work reversed those market share gains. But in the three months ended in July, food-forward convenience stores once again gained the upper hand in the battle to serve consumers breakfast, according to Portalatin.

Circana separates food-forward convenience stores like Buc-ee’s and Sheetz from the broader industry, although more chains may soon fit under that umbrella. 7-Eleven, the biggest convenience, or c-store, in the U.S., is planning to invest more in its prepared foods business, inspired by the success of its Japanese business. C-store chain RaceTrac on Wednesday announced that it’s buying Potbelly for about $566 million, although it’s unclear what its plans for the sandwich chain include beyond expanding its footprint.

In recent years, more diners have been watching their budgets, conscious of rising menu prices and a tight job market.

Year-over-year morning traffic to fast-food chains has fallen every quarter for the last three years, according to data from Revenue Management Solutions, which advises restaurants on how to increase sales and profits. In the second quarter, fast-food breakfast visits fell 8.7%.

To see the struggles, look no further than McDonald’s, which dominates the quick-service breakfast category.

″The breakfast daypart is the most economically sensitive daypart, because it’s the easiest daypart of a stressed consumer to either skip breakfast or choose to eat breakfast at home,” McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski said on the company’s earnings call in late July. “And we, as well as the rest of the industry, are seeing that the breakfast daypart is absolutely the weakest daypart in the day.”

McDonald’s morning visits accounted for 33.5% of its traffic in the first half of 2019 but fell to 29.9% in the first half of 2025, according to Placer.ai data. To try to drum up traffic, the chain has included breakfast items in its new Extra Value Meals, including a deal for a Sausage McMuffin with Egg with a hash brown and a small coffee for $5.

To reverse breakfast’s slide, fast-food chains are taking hints from their competition. After years of convenience stores looking to fast-food chains for ideas on how to grow prepared food sales, from installing ordering kiosks to new menu items, the dynamic has flipped.

″[Quick-service restaurants] are looking at late-night sales and early morning sales, and they are directly looking at convenience stores and saying, ‘What is working? How can we bring that to our stores?’” National Association of Convenience Stores spokesperson Jeff Lenard told CNBC.

Prepared foods have offered a lifeline for convenience stores as demand for gasoline, tobacco and lottery tickets has fallen over time. The industry’s overall foodservice sales reached $121 billion in 2024, according to data from the NACS.

Most customers visit the gas pump during the morning and evening rush hours, on their way to and from work, presenting the perfect opportunity for c-stores to sell them breakfast or dinner. This year, 72% of consumers surveyed by InTouch Insight said they saw c-stores as a real alternative to fast-food chains, up from 56% a year ago and 45% two years ago.

Broadly, the c-stores that have focused on fresh food have been winning over more customers.

For example, Wawa has seen its customer base grow by 11.5% since 2022, while fast-food chains McDonald’s, Burger King and Wendy’s have seen their combined customer base shrink 3.5% in the same time, according to data from Indagari, a transaction data analytics firm.

The majority of 1,170 respondents to an InTouch Insight survey for CNBC said that they have purchased made-to-order breakfast from a c-store in the morning in the past three months. Forty-eight percent of respondents said that when they choose breakfast from a convenience store, they are replacing a visit that they might otherwise make to a fast-food restaurant like McDonald’s or Dunkin’.

Buying coffee and breakfast from a c-store likely won’t be cheaper than making it at home. But consumers perceive it as “good bang for their buck,” according to Sarah Beckett, vice president of sales and marketing for InTouch Insight.

Plus, c-store customers get a wider breadth of options. In addition to coffee, gas stations sell energy drinks, protein shakes and yogurt smoothies. And customers can pick up a granola bar or banana to accompany their breakfast sandwich. Fast-food chains lack that kind of variety.

But above all, what matters to consumers is the food itself.

“While [a] convenience store broadly does have some tailwind from being a lower price point, the ultimate differentiator, and what’s really going to set apart the winners from losers, is that quality aspect of it,” Circana’s Portalatin said.

Brady Caviness, a 33-year-old account executive at Bailiwick who lives in Minneapolis, told CNBC that he indulges in a breakfast pizza from Casey’s General Store when he’s traveling. If he’s back home, where there isn’t a Casey’s nearby, he’ll stop by McDonald’s, Dunkin’ or Starbucks if he’s in the mood to buy his breakfast.

The Iowa-based chain is the country’s third-largest c-store chain and claims to be the fifth-largest pizza concept based on its number of locations. Casey’s reported same-store sales growth of 5.6% for its prepared food and dispensed beverages for the three months ended July 31.

Like Taco Bell’s Mexican Pizza, Casey’s breakfast pizza, topped with cheese, scrambled eggs and a choice of bacon, sausage or vegetables, has grown a cult following since its launch in 2001.

“I think Casey’s is kind of a unique thing,” Caviness said. “My whole life, I’ve had the Egg McMuffins.”

The Labor Department has announced an inquiry into the Bureau of Labor Statistics over recent changes to its data practices.

In a letter published Wednesday, the office of the inspector general for the Labor Department cited the BLS’ recent decision to reduce data collection activities for two key inflation reports, as well as the large downward revision in employment estimates it announced Tuesday. It said it is reviewing the ‘challenges’ the agency has faced ‘in collecting and reporting closely watched economic data.’

The probe comes one month after President Donald Trump fired the head of the BLS as part of a broader pressure campaign that critics say has risked politicizing a part of the government that has long played a crucial role in the business world. The BLS, which is tasked with collecting data on economic indicators such as jobs and inflation, had generally been left alone by previous administrations.

But Trump began zeroing in on the BLS as his frustrations with the Federal Reserve mounted, coinciding with economic numbers that started to warn about a broader U.S. slowdown.

Since then, the labor market has slowed considerably. Just before the head of the BLS was fired, the department released a weaker-than-expected jobs report, citing claims of data manipulation that critics say are unfounded.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, another frequent target of Trump’s, has said Fed policymakers are ‘getting the data that we need to do our jobs’ and stressed the importance of the federal statistical agencies.

‘The government data is really the gold standard in data,’ he added. ‘We need it to be good and to be able to rely on it.’

Trump then nominated E.J. Antoni, an economist with the far-right Heritage Foundation, as the new head of the BLS, a move many economists have criticized.

Trump and other BLS critics have focused on the department’s revisions to its reports, a practice that dates back decades and has been generally seen as a necessary part of the challenge of collecting near-term economic data. It has also faced other challenges in data collection, including budget challenges and low response rates to its collection efforts.

The BLS previously said the decision to reduce inflation data surveys was necessary given existing budget constraints. Meanwhile, mainstream economists say the latest downward revisions — while large — are part of a routine annual process known as benchmarking.

While response rates to the bureau’s surveys have been declining, researchers recently found that revisions and falling response rates did not reduce the reliability of the jobs and inflation reports.

Shares of Kenvue fell more than 10% on Friday after a report that Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will likely link autism to the use of the company’s pain medication Tylenol in pregnant women.

HHS will release the report that could draw that link this month, The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.

That report will also suggest a medicine derived from folate — a water-soluble vitamin — can be used to treat symptoms of the developmental disorder in some people, according to the Journal.

In a statement, an HHS spokesperson said, “We are using gold-standard science to get to the bottom of America’s unprecedented rise in autism rates.”

“Until we release the final report, any claims about its contents are nothing more than speculation,” they added.

Tylenol could be the latest widely used and accepted treatment that Kennedy has undermined at the helm of HHS, which oversees federal health agencies that regulate drugs and other therapies. Kennedy has also taken steps to change vaccine policy in the U.S., and has amplified false claims about safe and effective shots that use mRNA technology.

Kennedy has made the disorder a key focus of HHS, pledging in April that the agency will “know what has caused the autism epidemic” by September and eliminate exposures. He also said that month that the agency has launched a “massive testing and research effort” involving hundreds of scientists worldwide that will determine the cause.

In a statement, Kenvue said it has “continuously evaluated the science and [continues] to believe there is no causal link” between the use of acetaminophen, the generic name for Tylenol, during pregnancy and autism.

The company added that the Food and Drug Administration and leading medical organizations “agree on the safety” of the drug, its use during pregnancy and the information provided on the Tylenol label.

The FDA website says the agency has not found “clear evidence” that appropriate use of acetaminophen during pregnancy causes “adverse pregnancy, birth, neurobehavioral, or developmental outcomes.” But the FDA said it advises pregnant women to speak with their health-care providers before using over-the-counter drugs.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists maintains that acetaminophen is safe during pregnancy when taken as directed and after consulting a health-care provider.

Some previous studies have suggested the drug poses risks to fetal development, and some parents have brought lawsuits claiming that they gave birth to children with autism after using it.

But a federal judge in Manhattan ruled in 2023 that some of those lawsuits lacked scientific evidence and later ended the litigation in 2024. Some research has also found no association between acetaminophen use and autism.

In a note on Friday, BNP Paribas analyst Navann Ty said the firm believes the “hurdle to proving causation [between the drug and autism] is high, particularly given that the litigation previously concluded in Kenvue’s favor.”

The average rate on the 30-year fixed mortgage dropped 16 basis points to 6.29% Friday, according to Mortgage News Daily, following the release of a weaker-than-expected August employment report.

It’s the lowest rate since Oct. 3 and the biggest one-day drop since August 2024. Rates are finally breaking out of the high 6% range, where they’ve been stuck for months.

“This was a pretty straightforward reaction to a hotly anticipated jobs report,” said Mortgage News Daily Chief Operating Officer Matt Graham. “It’s a good reminder that the market gets to decide what matters in terms of economic data, and the bond market has a clear voting record that suggests the jobs report is always the biggest potential source of volatility for rates.”

Graham said in a post on X that many lenders are “priced better” than Oct. 3 and would be quoting in the high 5% range.

The drop is a major change from May, when the rate on the 30-year fixed peaked at 7.08%. It’s big for buyers out shopping for a home today, especially given high home prices.

Take, for example, someone purchasing a $450,000 home, which is just above August’s national median price, using a 30-year fixed mortgage with a 20% down payment. Not including taxes or insurance, the monthly payment at 7% would be $2,395. At 6.29%, that payment would be $2,226, a difference of $169 per month.

That might not sound like a lot to some, but it can mean the difference in not just affording a home, but qualifying for a mortgage.

Homebuilder stocks reacted favorably Friday, with names like Lennar, DR Horton and Pulte all up roughly 3% midday. Homebuilding ETF ITB has been running hot for the last month as rates slowly moved lower. It’s up close to 13% in the past month.

The big question is whether the drop in rates will be enough to get homebuyers back in the market.

Mortgage demand from homebuyers, an early indicator, have yet to respond to gradually improving rates. Applications for a mortgage to purchase a home last week were 6.6% lower from four weeks before, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.

“Homebuyers grapple with a lack of affordability, sellers contend with more competition, and builders deal with lower buyer demand,” Danielle Hale, chief economist at Realtor.com, said Friday in a statement after the release of the August employment report. “These conditions haven’t spelled catastrophe, but have created a cruel summer for the housing market.”

Some analysts have argued that buyers need to see mortgage rates in the 5% range before it really makes a difference. Home prices remain stubbornly high, and while the gains have definitely cooled, they are not yet coming down on a national level. In addition, uncertainty about the state of the economy and the job market has left many would-be buyers on the sidelines.