The Brief

Normally, L.A.’s flower market is bustling with people speeding down sidewalks and indoor aisles with armfuls of flowers. But on Monday, there was plenty of elbow room.

The flower market is eerily empty

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Adolfo Guzman-Lopez

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LAist

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“It's Monday, today's the day where a lot of florists come to get their flowers and as you can tell, it's kind of dead,” said Evelin Esparza, standing in her shop on 8th and San Pedro streets, surrounded by sunflowers, pink roses and white gladioli.

She began running Armenta Bee Flowers with her husband three years ago.

Evelin Esparza runs Armenta Bee Flowers with her husband in L.A.'s wholesale flower district.

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Adolfo Guzman-Lopez/LAist

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The wholesale flower district is a multi-block zone where storefronts large and small face the streets and even more businesses operate in stalls inside malls inside.

Many of them are owned and run by Spanish speaking immigrants and many of their employees are also Latin American immigrants, some without proper documentation to remain in the U.S.

Vendors at L.A.'s wholesale flower district say the sidewalks would normally be bustling on a Monday.

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Adolfo Guzman-Lopez/LAist

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Esparza said when immigration agents suddenly arrived in the area last week, it caused chaos. The owner of her mall closed the street-facing steel curtain to keep agents from coming in.

“As soon as the first [immigration] raid hit… I'm in charge of our social media and my parents are immigrants, I had to tell my followers and my people who are my customers, that [immigration agents] were here and they were present,” Esparza said.

Vendors in L.A.'s wholesale flower district cater to a range of events.

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Adolfo Guzman-Lopez/LAist

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For many store owners like Esparza, it had been a busy May, with graduations, Mother’s Day and other events.

But since the raids, business has dropped by 60%, she said. One big reason: street corner flower sellers, mostly immigrants, who sell roses and bouquets at traffic stops are staying away.

“They appear small, but those buyers are a big part of this business,” said Silvia Lozano, manager at My Floral Factory.

One client, Lozano said, would stop by each week to buy 1,000 bunches of 25 roses each. The client would then employ about a dozen people to distribute and sell those flowers, including family members.

Lozano said only about 20% of those people are still showing up to buy flowers. But the raids have also deterred her other customers, U.S. citizens who run small and large flower-related businesses.

Fear, founded and unfounded

So far, no other immigration agents have turned up at the market. But the fear of their presence is having a powerful effect. Robert Rojas, owner of The Vinny’s Company, said his regular customers have been checking in.

“Sometimes they call and say, ‘Hey, how is it out there, is it still kind of rough up there?’ No, it's not [I say], but they’re scared,” Rojas said.

Robert Rojas said he's had to buy fewer flowers from South American purveyors since immigration raids caused business to decline.

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Adolfo Guzman-Lopez/LAist

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Some wonder if such pervasive fear is warranted.

“I think there's a lot of hype, so it's scaring people,” said Annette Yonemitsu, who was at the mall on Monday to buy flowers for her shop, Century City Flower Market.

She said amplification of the raids on social media is partly to blame for people staying away from the flower district.

“I was here when the helicopters were around — everybody's like, ‘They're coming in.’ Nobody came in,” she said.

How long can they hang on?

Vendors said they were already paying more for flowers after the Trump administration announced tariffs earlier this year. The vast majority of their flowers arrive by plane from Colombia and other South American countries a few days after being picked, and the announcement of tariffs had caused prices to rise.

The recent drop in business due to the raids is adding to that pain, with some wondering how long they can stay afloat.

One owner, who would not give his name, said his 10 foot by 30 foot stall costs $4,000 in monthly rent. He estimated that he can stay afloat for only two to three months at the current level of sales.

Others pay a lot more.

“ I can't wait. I got a lot of overhead. I gotta pay bills, rent,” Rojas said.

Rent for his shop and the adjacent store run by his brother is $14,000 a month, he said.

There’s also another aspect of the current atmosphere: people are having fewer get-togethers, which means lower demand for flowers for all occasions, from funerals wreaths to wedding arrangements.

“We are Latinos and we love to have parties, but people aren’t having as many parties as they used to,” Lozano said.

Topline:

Why it matters: Malibu schools advocates, including parents and politicians, have pushed to break up the school district for more than a decade and argued that local control would better serve students. Santa Monica community members previously have raised concerns the split would leave the community’s schools with fewer resources and a higher-need population of students.

What the agreements say: The three agreements outline how the two new districts would share property tax revenue, divide existing resources and create a group of stakeholders to oversee the transition. The Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District board unanimously approved the agreements Dec. 2.

What's next: District and Malibu leaders have said splitting the district will require action from an outside body, for example through special state legislation or action from the state Board of Education. “It’s not going to happen next year or the year after this,” Malibu City Councilmember Bruce Silverstein said. “It’s going to be a while, but the sooner it can get done, the better, and we can start tonight.”

'Tis the season to be jolly. That is, unless you're a worker who was banking on getting a seasonal job and haven't been able to find one this season.

Every year, American retailers hire extra help as the holiday shopping season approaches. In recent years, these jobs have numbered roughly around half a million per season. These seasonal jobs run the gamut. Think temporary cashiers, gift wrappers, sales associates, greeters, merchandisers, warehouse unloaders, delivery drivers.

But the quintessential — and most iconic — seasonal worker has got to be… Santa Claus. In addition to sliding down chimneys to deliver presents on Christmas, Jolly Old Saint Nicholas takes gigs at places like malls, department stores, corporate events, and private parties in the weeks leading up to Dec. 25.

However, this year, Santa may be making fewer trips from the North Pole than in years past. As we report in this week's Planet Money newsletter, demand for professional Santas seems to have cooled. It's one small part of a broader decline in the demand for seasonal workers this holiday season. It got us wondering how the market for Santas fluctuates with the business cycle, which sectors of the Santa market are recession-proof, and whether a decline in Santa demand this season could be a sign that the U.S. economy is going down the chimney.

The Grinch that stole Santa visits

Mitch Allen is the founder and "Head Elf" at Hire Santa, an agency that provides Santas for holiday events around the nation and world (we talked to Allen in a past Planet Money newsletter). Allen estimates there are probably around nine or ten thousand professional or "near professional" Santa Clauses in the United States.

Sure, Allen says, his company may occasionally get requests for Santa at "Christmas in July"-style events, when Santa shows up in a Hawaiian shirt and flip flops. But, no surprise, prime time for his business is right now. He says demand for Santa typically begins in early November, picks up steam on weekends in December and explodes the week before Christmas, especially on Christmas Eve. "It really falls off after Christmas Eve, like midnight Christmas Eve," Allen says.

Allen says he's seeing less demand for Santa visits this season. His leading indicator for Santa demand is what he calls "leads," or inquiries to his business to book Santa at events. On that metric, he says, "we're down almost 27% year to date, compared with last year. And last year was down compared with the year before."

(

Shea Cannon Photography

/

Hire Santa

)

My family has experienced this decline in Santa appearances first hand. Last year, when our son was about 15 months old, we took him for his first time to sit on Santa's lap. A hotel in Lake Tahoe had a public event that served as a toy drive for Toys for Tots. There was festive music, ice skating, skiing, hot chocolate, sleigh rides, and, of course, Santa. To be honest, our son was too young to understand why we were putting him on an old, bearded man's lap, but the whole experience was fun for us parents and we got cute pictures. We wanted to go back this year, but the hotel decided not to host its community event this year. No Santa. Bah, humbug!

Candles in a blackout of official economic statistics

We're living through a weird economic moment right now, with mixed signals about how good or bad the economy is doing. And we just had the longest government shutdown in American history, which not only hurt the economy, but basically created a blackout for official economic statistics. Since the end of the shutdown, the Trump administration has delayed and even canceled some economic reports, and we're now all sort of in the dark, trying to figure out what the heck the economy really looks like right now.

But there are some candles illuminating what's going on — and this seeming decline of demand for Santa could be one small one suggesting that the overall economy is sleighing downward. It's part of a broader decline in the demand for seasonal workers this year, something a number of sources have reported in recent weeks. For instance, back in late September, Challenger, Gray, & Christmas, a human-resources firm, released their annual seasonal hiring report. They projected that hiring this holiday retail season would "fall to its lowest point since the recession-hit season of 2009."

Part of the story could be that holiday shopping is increasingly moving online, and brick-and-mortar retailers are struggling and maybe hiring less help. That's an ongoing, long-term structural change to the economy that doesn't say much about whether we're heading into recession. However, there are a number of signs that softened demand for seasonal workers is related more to a broader slowdown in the economy.

Andrew Challenger, a senior vice president at Challenger, Gray, & Christmas, told us we haven't seen a miraculous turnaround in the market for seasonal workers since they issued their projection back in late September. Even more, he says, the broader labor market seems to have only gotten worse since they made their projection. In November, his company, which also tracks layoffs, reported an alarming spike in companies announcing layoffs. That includes prominent online retailers like Amazon and delivery companies like UPS. "So we have two signals, and both are not good for the labor market or seasonal hiring," Challenger says.

Likewise, Indeed Hiring Lab, which leverages the job site Indeed's large amount of data to provide insights about the labor market, recently reported they're also seeing bad news in the job market this season.

"What we're seeing right now in seasonal hiring is kind of a microcosm of what we're seeing in the broader labor market, which is that things are cooling down, things are slowing down," says Cory Stahle, a senior economist at Indeed Hiring Lab.

Is Santa recession-proof?

The National Bureau of Economic Research, the official body that calls recessions, defines a recession as "a significant decline in economic activity that is spread across the economy and lasts more than a few months" (listen to our Planet Money episode, "Recession Referees," for more about this). The lack of official economic statistics for the last few months makes it hard to say whether we're on our way to a recession — or whether we're already in one.

But, while reporting this story, we've found ourselves wondering: could declining demand for Santa visits during the holidays potentially be a recession indicator? Like, can it be a sign we're in a ho-ho-horrible economy? Do paid Santa appearances boom in good economic times and go bust during recessions? Or is demand for Santa fairly recession-proof?

Hire Santa didn't officially launch until 2012 — after the Great Recession — and Head Elf Allen couldn't tell us much about the hard data on how Santa demand fluctuates over the business cycle. Moreover, his business doesn't capture the full market for Santa, including DIY Santas where people buy or rent Santa costumes and do events themselves. But Allen did offer us a theory of how he thinks demand for professional Santas is affected by recessions.

For one, he says, there will always be parts of the economy where demand for Santa is fairly recession-proof. He says that many businesses use Santa appearances to "help drive traffic and associate their brand with Christmas." In this way, a store or mall paying for Santa to sit in a chair and converse with children could be seen as a kind of loss leader, a product or service that costs a company money as a way to attract more customers, nudge them to shop, and help their business make more money. Think like free or cheap alcohol at a casino. Allen says that, even in recessions, certain types of businesses and organizations will always want to hire Santa.

"But I don't think that translates to a company party or a home visit," Allen says. "That's not something that you have to have. You can go to the mall and see Santa. You can go to outdoor stores and see Santa. You can see Santa if you want to. You don't have to have 'em come to your home or office."

Indeed, that's a pattern that Allen believes he's seeing with a cursory look at his company's data. He believes the primary driver of the decline of demand for paid Santa visits is from private holiday parties and events.

"Consumers are not reaching out to have Santa or Mrs. Claus or other holiday entertainers come to their home or office for a Christmas party," Allen says. "And so I view that as like people scaling back their own Christmas plans. They may still be having parties but they're not having sort of blowout parties with Santa and other holiday characters there." Allen pointed to recent reports that companies are laying off workers and that consumer credit card debt is at an all time high. It makes sense why people might be scaling back.

So, yeah, maybe a big decline in Santa appearances could be a recession indicator.

The good news, Allen says, is that, while overall demand is down, he's still seeing plenty of requests for Santa.

In other words, don't worry, Santa is coming to town. There just might be fewer places or times to see him this year.

Copyright 2025 NPR

Five California correctional officers who were accused of sexually assaulting incarcerated people over the last dozen years remain employed by the state, according to a new audit from the state prisons’ inspector general.

The audit, released last week, is a twice-a-year summary of how the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation addresses complaints about its staff members. Overall, the inspector general found fault with the internal affairs department’s investigations into prison guard misconduct.

The audit labeled 86% of the prison system’s internal affairs disciplinary and criminal caseload as “inadequate” or “needs improvement” — only 14% of the cases handled by the internal affairs department were rated “adequate.” Inadequate means there were significant problems with the investigation that affected its final outcome. The less-serious label, “needs improvement,” meant that the process had problems, but none so serious that they compromised the investigation.

It comes as the department faces what the report called “a wave” of lawsuits from incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women who allege they were sexually abused by prison staff. The audit said at least 279 women have sued the department, and they have accused at least 83 prison employees of sexual misconduct.

The inspector general report does not include the names of the officers or even identify the prisons where they work, which is in keeping with its past disciplinary audits. The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation did not immediately return calls and emails seeking comment for this story.

California has two prisons that primarily house women. At the larger prison, the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla, former guard Gregory Rodriguez was found guilty of 64 counts of sexual abuse in January, The Fresno Bee reported, and later sentenced to 224 years in prison.

Thirteen incarcerated or formerly incarcerated women testified against him. A 2023 investigation by The Guardian found that women had made reports about Rodriguez as early as 2014. He worked at the prison until 2022.

As Rodriguez’s case unfolded, the inspector general’s office learned of other sex assault lawsuits. The inspector general’s office in the new report said it looked at 68 cases and it faulted prison lawyers for being too slow in referring names to internal investigators who could have developed disciplinary cases against officers.

On average, the audit said it took nine months for the corrections department’s legal staff to send cases to internal investigators. “Delayed investigation of sexual assault significantly impairs the integrity and effectiveness of the investigative process,” the audit said.

The audit then described three cases involving six officers, five of whom continue to work for state prisons.

In a separate case not connected to the “wave” of lawsuits, internal investigators took so long to review allegations of sexual assault that a lieutenant accused by a dozen women was able to retire before facing discipline, the audit said.

The inspector general’s office wrote that the officer allegedly traded chewing gum, a radio and marijuana for sexual favors between 2021 and 2023, and then lied to the prison system’s internal affairs unit when asked about it.

The internal affairs unit “unnecessarily delayed the completion of the investigation, which prevented the department from imposing discipline for some allegations,” the audit found.

Other violations ranged from minor administrative chicanery, like two guards who allegedly faked the numbers in a prisoner count so they could use the time to eat Thanksgiving dinner instead, to allegations that a prison guard loudly, publicly and untruthfully indicated to other inmates that a prisoner was acting as an informant.

The audit reflects a chaotic process for even routine investigations. In a January 2024 case, one of eight prison guards who had broken up a fight struck an incarcerated person with a baton, even though the incarcerated person had already “disengaged.”

The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation was aware of the case in January 2024, according to the lawsuit, but didn’t refer it to internal affairs until June 2024, according to the audit. An investigator didn’t start conducting interviews until August 2024. Then the case was reassigned to a second investigator, who didn’t start interviews until November 2024, and tried to close the case without interviewing the incarcerated person, the guard who allegedly struck him or any witnesses.

Then, the second investigator went on extended leave, handing the case off to a third investigator who had weeks to wrap up an investigation that is supposed to take months to complete. Ultimately, the prison system was handed a case four days before the deadline for disciplinary action with “a wholly deficient investigative report.”

This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

'Tis the season to be jolly. That is, unless you're a worker who was banking on getting a seasonal job and haven't been able to find one this season.

Every year, American retailers hire extra help as the holiday shopping season approaches. In recent years, these jobs have numbered roughly around half a million per season. These seasonal jobs run the gamut. Think temporary cashiers, gift wrappers, sales associates, greeters, merchandisers, warehouse unloaders, delivery drivers.

But the quintessential — and most iconic — seasonal worker has got to be… Santa Claus. In addition to sliding down chimneys to deliver presents on Christmas, Jolly Old Saint Nicholas takes gigs at places like malls, department stores, corporate events, and private parties in the weeks leading up to Dec. 25.

However, this year, Santa may be making fewer trips from the North Pole than in years past. As we report in this week's Planet Money newsletter, demand for professional Santas seems to have cooled. It's one small part of a broader decline in the demand for seasonal workers this holiday season. It got us wondering how the market for Santas fluctuates with the business cycle, which sectors of the Santa market are recession-proof, and whether a decline in Santa demand this season could be a sign that the U.S. economy is going down the chimney.

The Grinch that stole Santa visits

Mitch Allen is the founder and "Head Elf" at Hire Santa, an agency that provides Santas for holiday events around the nation and world (we talked to Allen in a past Planet Money newsletter). Allen estimates there are probably around nine or ten thousand professional or "near professional" Santa Clauses in the United States.

Sure, Allen says, his company may occasionally get requests for Santa at "Christmas in July"-style events, when Santa shows up in a Hawaiian shirt and flip flops. But, no surprise, prime time for his business is right now. He says demand for Santa typically begins in early November, picks up steam on weekends in December and explodes the week before Christmas, especially on Christmas Eve. "It really falls off after Christmas Eve, like midnight Christmas Eve," Allen says.

Allen says he's seeing less demand for Santa visits this season. His leading indicator for Santa demand is what he calls "leads," or inquiries to his business to book Santa at events. On that metric, he says, "we're down almost 27% year to date, compared with last year. And last year was down compared with the year before."

(

Shea Cannon Photography

/

Hire Santa

)

My family has experienced this decline in Santa appearances first hand. Last year, when our son was about 15 months old, we took him for his first time to sit on Santa's lap. A hotel in Lake Tahoe had a public event that served as a toy drive for Toys for Tots. There was festive music, ice skating, skiing, hot chocolate, sleigh rides, and, of course, Santa. To be honest, our son was too young to understand why we were putting him on an old, bearded man's lap, but the whole experience was fun for us parents and we got cute pictures. We wanted to go back this year, but the hotel decided not to host its community event this year. No Santa. Bah, humbug!

Candles in a blackout of official economic statistics

We're living through a weird economic moment right now, with mixed signals about how good or bad the economy is doing. And we just had the longest government shutdown in American history, which not only hurt the economy, but basically created a blackout for official economic statistics. Since the end of the shutdown, the Trump administration has delayed and even canceled some economic reports, and we're now all sort of in the dark, trying to figure out what the heck the economy really looks like right now.

But there are some candles illuminating what's going on — and this seeming decline of demand for Santa could be one small one suggesting that the overall economy is sleighing downward. It's part of a broader decline in the demand for seasonal workers this year, something a number of sources have reported in recent weeks. For instance, back in late September, Challenger, Gray, & Christmas, a human-resources firm, released their annual seasonal hiring report. They projected that hiring this holiday retail season would "fall to its lowest point since the recession-hit season of 2009."

Part of the story could be that holiday shopping is increasingly moving online, and brick-and-mortar retailers are struggling and maybe hiring less help. That's an ongoing, long-term structural change to the economy that doesn't say much about whether we're heading into recession. However, there are a number of signs that softened demand for seasonal workers is related more to a broader slowdown in the economy.

Andrew Challenger, a senior vice president at Challenger, Gray, & Christmas, told us we haven't seen a miraculous turnaround in the market for seasonal workers since they issued their projection back in late September. Even more, he says, the broader labor market seems to have only gotten worse since they made their projection. In November, his company, which also tracks layoffs, reported an alarming spike in companies announcing layoffs. That includes prominent online retailers like Amazon and delivery companies like UPS. "So we have two signals, and both are not good for the labor market or seasonal hiring," Challenger says.

Likewise, Indeed Hiring Lab, which leverages the job site Indeed's large amount of data to provide insights about the labor market, recently reported they're also seeing bad news in the job market this season.

"What we're seeing right now in seasonal hiring is kind of a microcosm of what we're seeing in the broader labor market, which is that things are cooling down, things are slowing down," says Cory Stahle, a senior economist at Indeed Hiring Lab.

Is Santa recession-proof?

The National Bureau of Economic Research, the official body that calls recessions, defines a recession as "a significant decline in economic activity that is spread across the economy and lasts more than a few months" (listen to our Planet Money episode, "Recession Referees," for more about this). The lack of official economic statistics for the last few months makes it hard to say whether we're on our way to a recession — or whether we're already in one.

But, while reporting this story, we've found ourselves wondering: could declining demand for Santa visits during the holidays potentially be a recession indicator? Like, can it be a sign we're in a ho-ho-horrible economy? Do paid Santa appearances boom in good economic times and go bust during recessions? Or is demand for Santa fairly recession-proof?

Hire Santa didn't officially launch until 2012 — after the Great Recession — and Head Elf Allen couldn't tell us much about the hard data on how Santa demand fluctuates over the business cycle. Moreover, his business doesn't capture the full market for Santa, including DIY Santas where people buy or rent Santa costumes and do events themselves. But Allen did offer us a theory of how he thinks demand for professional Santas is affected by recessions.

For one, he says, there will always be parts of the economy where demand for Santa is fairly recession-proof. He says that many businesses use Santa appearances to "help drive traffic and associate their brand with Christmas." In this way, a store or mall paying for Santa to sit in a chair and converse with children could be seen as a kind of loss leader, a product or service that costs a company money as a way to attract more customers, nudge them to shop, and help their business make more money. Think like free or cheap alcohol at a casino. Allen says that, even in recessions, certain types of businesses and organizations will always want to hire Santa.

"But I don't think that translates to a company party or a home visit," Allen says. "That's not something that you have to have. You can go to the mall and see Santa. You can go to outdoor stores and see Santa. You can see Santa if you want to. You don't have to have 'em come to your home or office."

Indeed, that's a pattern that Allen believes he's seeing with a cursory look at his company's data. He believes the primary driver of the decline of demand for paid Santa visits is from private holiday parties and events.

"Consumers are not reaching out to have Santa or Mrs. Claus or other holiday entertainers come to their home or office for a Christmas party," Allen says. "And so I view that as like people scaling back their own Christmas plans. They may still be having parties but they're not having sort of blowout parties with Santa and other holiday characters there." Allen pointed to recent reports that companies are laying off workers and that consumer credit card debt is at an all time high. It makes sense why people might be scaling back.

So, yeah, maybe a big decline in Santa appearances could be a recession indicator.

The good news, Allen says, is that, while overall demand is down, he's still seeing plenty of requests for Santa.

In other words, don't worry, Santa is coming to town. There just might be fewer places or times to see him this year.
Copyright 2025 NPR