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Monster says fewer than 3% of seasonal openings advertise themselves that way and September is when hiring starts taking off

• Holiday hiring starts earlier than many job seekers think: Monster found seasonal posting activity jumped 44% from August to September last year.

• Searching only for "seasonal jobs" could cause you to miss openings: Fewer than 3% of seasonal postings identified by Monster used words such as "seasonal," "holiday," or "temporary" in the job title.

• Don't wait until November: Seasonal posting activity peaked in October in both 2024 and 2025 before falling about 24% the following month.

If you're hoping to earn some extra money during the holidays, searching for "seasonal jobs" might be one of the worst ways to find one.

And waiting until November could be another mistake.

Monster's new Seasonal Hiring Index analyzed seasonal job-posting activity from August through December in 2024 and 2025 and found employers start ramping up much earlier than many job seekers might expect.

In 2025, seasonal posting activity jumped 44% from August to September. Even after removing delivery and driving jobs, which can significantly influence holiday hiring numbers, postings increased 31%.

October was the busiest month in both years analyzed.

Then opportunities started disappearing. Monster found seasonal posting activity fell 24.3% from October to November 2024 and 24% during the same period in 2025.

For anyone hoping to land a holiday job this year, the message is pretty clear: September isn't too early to start looking.

Surprisingly, don't search for 'seasonal jobs'

Perhaps the most useful finding from Monster's research has nothing to do with when you search, but what you actually type into the search box.

Fewer than 3% of postings Monster identified as seasonal in any month during 2025 actually included words such as "seasonal," "holiday," "temporary," "summer," "winter," or "Christmas" in the job title.

In other words, if you search exclusively for "seasonal jobs," it could cause you to overlook a lot of them. Instead, Monster recommends searching for specific positions that interest you.

Among the job titles that showed seasonal hiring patterns were:

• Delivery driver

• Retail sales associate

• Cashier

• Package handler

• Retail stocker

• Store associate

• Stock associate

• Beauty advisor

• Tax associate and tax expert

• Intern and sales intern

The nice takeaway here is that it also means holiday opportunities aren't limited to working a cash register at your local shopping mall. Monster found seasonal patterns across transportation and logistics, retail, tax and accounting, internships, and other fields.

Search earlier (like right now) and search wider

Its also smart for job seekers to use the data to change how they hunt for seasonal work right now.

Start by searching for the actual job you want rather than the word "seasonal." If you want warehouse work, for example, try searches for "package handler," "warehouse associate," or "stocker."

Then broaden the search beyond just retailers.Delivery companies, warehouses, restaurants, hotels, and customer-service operations can all need additional workers as the holidays approach. Tax-related employers can also begin staffing ahead of the upcoming filing season.

And definitely don't assume you should wait until stores put up their Christmas decorations to start applying. In both years Monster studied, nearly half of seasonal posting activity occurring from August through December happened during September and October.

There's one caveat to the numbers: Monster's data measures job-posting activity, not the number of people actually hired or necessarily the number of unique open positions.

But for job seekers, the timing still provides a useful clue. If you're hoping for a seasonal paycheck this year, start searching now and definitely leave the word "seasonal" out of the search box.

New research finds signs of future disease in children as young as 8

• Researchers identified blood-protein patterns linked to cardiovascular, kidney, and metabolic disease risk in children.

• The study found similar protein patterns in adults with higher risks of these diseases.

• The findings could eventually help doctors identify risk earlier, when prevention may have more time to work.

Heart disease, diabetes, kidney disease, and obesity are often thought of as adult health concerns. But new research suggests some of the biological changes linked to these conditions may begin much earlier potentially during childhood.

In a study published in Nature Metabolism, researchers from UTHealth Houston and other institutions looked for biological clues that could signal cardiovascular-kidney-metabolic disease (CKMD) risk in children. CKMD refers to a group of conditions involving the heart, kidneys, and metabolism.

The researchers found that certain patterns in children's blood proteins were associated with traits linked to CKMD. Importantly, the findings don't mean that children with these protein patterns will definitely develop disease. Instead, they may provide clues about who could face greater risk later in life.

Understanding the development of cardiovascular-kidney-metabolic disease across the lifecourse is critical, researcher Heather Highland, Ph.D., said in a news release.

Proteins circulating in the blood can serve as markers of nascent pathologies across the body. These early markers can help identify people at greater risk for increased monitoring and potentially early intervention.

How researchers studied the children

The study included 273 Hispanic or Latino children and adolescents from the Border Health Research Cohort in Cameron County, Texas. Their average age was about 13, with participants ranging from childhood through adolescence.

Researchers examined 5,000 proteins circulating in the children's blood and compared those protein levels with 25 different CKMD-related traits. These included measures involving body composition, liver health, kidney function, cholesterol, and blood-sugar regulation.

Using this information, the researchers identified six groups, or "signatures," of proteins associated with multiple CKMD-related traits.

They then looked to see whether the same patterns appeared in adults. The researchers found similar relationships in adults from the same community and in 28,256 adults participating in the U.K. Biobank.

What the findings could mean for families

The results suggest that some biological signs associated with cardiometabolic disease may be detectable years before someone develops obvious disease. That's potentially important because identifying risk earlier could give doctors more time to monitor and address it.

The researchers also compared their findings with data from a clinical trial involving the GLP-1 drug semaglutide. Many of the proteins associated with higher CKMD risk changed in adults taking GLP-1 medication, suggesting these biological markers may be modifiable rather than permanent.

This association is really one of the most exciting messages, because those proteins that predict the risk of cardiometabolic diseases all moved in a healthy direction after these adults took GLP-1. This makes this a modifiable risk state rather than a fixed marker of fate, said corresponding author Kari North, PhD. Childhood is the time that we really need to start intervening because its reversible.

Still, this doesn't mean parents should expect this type of protein testing during a child's routine checkup. Many of the tests used in the study aren't part of standard pediatric visits. More research is needed to determine how these findings could eventually be used in everyday medical care.

For now, the study offers a closer look at how the roots of conditions affecting adult health may begin much earlier than previously recognized.

The dysregulation of the proteins that influence risk of heart attack later in life, if we can reverse them in childhood, then we can really make a huge dent in the cardiovascular disease burden that we see in adult populations around the world today, Dr. North said. "We need to do better screening in children, and if we see children who are at an elevated risk, the time to act is now.

New research finds that changes in breast fat cells may affect how the body fights cancer

• Researchers identified a fatty acid that may help the body destroy damaged or cancerous breast cells.

• Fat cells in lean breast tissue produced more of this fatty acid than fat cells in obese tissue.

• The discovery could eventually lead to new approaches for restoring this natural protection, but more research is needed.

Obesity has been linked with breast cancer risk, but researchers are still working to understand exactly why.

Now, scientists at Huntsman Cancer Institute at the University of Utah have identified a potential piece of the puzzle: Obesity may cause the body to lose some of the natural protection that helps eliminate cancerous cells.

The researchers focused on fat cells in breast tissue, which are also known as adipocytes. According to the researchers, these cells can behave differently depending on whether they come from lean or obese tissue.

Their findings suggest that fat cells in lean breast tissue produce higher amounts of a fatty acid called 9S-HODE. This substance appears to help trigger a type of cell death called ferroptosis, which can eliminate damaged or potentially cancerous cells.

We uncovered the role of a molecule that normally appears in lean tissue that restrains breast cancer growth but is less present with obesity, researcher Keren Hilgendorf, Ph.D., Huntsman Cancer Institute investigator, assistant professor of biochemistry at the U, and senior author of the study, said in a news release.

We know obesity is often a driver of breast cancer, and researchers in our field usually consider how obesity is promoting the disease. But we hadnt really considered that obesity could also be the loss of something that naturally protects us.

How the study worked

The researchers used preclinical models to investigate the differences between lean and obese breast tissue. Their work included studying breast tissue from donors as well as mouse models. They compared fat cells from lean and obese tissue and looked at the substances those cells produced.

One important difference was the amount of 9S-HODE produced by the fat cells. The researchers found that lean fat cells produced much more of the fatty acid than obese fat cells.

They then increased the amount of 9S-HODE in obese fat cells in mouse models to see what effect it had on breast cancer growth.

What the results could mean for consumers

The researchers found that increasing 9S-HODE in obese fat cells suppressed breast cancer tumor growth in their mouse models. The findings suggest that when obesity changes breast fat cells, those cells may produce less of a substance that helps cancerous cells die.

That doesn't mean obesity is the only factor involved in breast cancer, or that everyone with obesity will develop the disease. The researchers specifically note that breast cancer can develop for many reasons.

Still, the discovery could point toward a new treatment strategy. Because 9S-HODE is naturally produced by the body, researchers are interested in whether restoring or increasing it could eventually help restore some of the body's natural protection against breast cancer.

For now, however, this remains an early research finding. The researchers describe it as one discovery that could open the door to further studies rather than an available treatment.

We believe this shift in the understanding of the roles of lean and obese adipocytes is the start of something. This is just one discovery, and its not the end of the road, first author Meghan Curtin, doctoral candidate in molecular biology at the U, said in the release.

This opened our eyes to new ways to think about science, and hopefully we can harness what our bodies are already doing to make progress against this disease.

Working from home added sleep time, but it also meant more sitting and less physical activity

• People slept about 14 minutes longer on remote workdays than office days.

• Remote workdays included about 44 more minutes of sedentary time.

• Some of the movement people got from commuting was replaced by sitting, lying down, and sleeping.

Working from home can make the workday look very different from a day spent in the office. A new study from researchers at the University of Turku in Finland looked at how those different work settings affected sleep, sitting, and physical activity among people who split their time between home and the office.

The researchers found that remote workdays came with a small increase in time spent in bed. But that extra time came alongside a much larger increase in sedentary behavior, meaning time spent sitting or lying down. People also spent less time being physically active on days they worked remotely.

The increase in sedentary behaviour during remote workdays was mostly caused by spending less time standing, researcher Dr. Kristin Suorsa said in a news release. One possible explanation is that, unlike in offices generally, standing workstations are not always available in a home setting.

How researchers studied remote and office days

The study included 97 university employees who worked in a hybrid arrangement. About 84% were women, and participants had an average age of 42.

For seven consecutive days, participants wore a sensor on their thigh that tracked their body position and movement. The seven-day period included at least one day working in the office and at least one day working remotely. On average, participants had 2.4 office days and 2.6 remote days during the measurement period.

The researchers used the sensor data to determine how much time participants spent sleeping or in bed, sitting or lying down, doing light physical activity, and doing moderate-to-vigorous physical activity. They then compared those behaviors within the same people on remote versus office workdays.

What the findings could mean for remote workers

On remote workdays, participants spent about 14 additional minutes in bed and 44 additional minutes being sedentary compared with office days. At the same time, they spent about 37 fewer minutes doing light physical activity and 21 fewer minutes doing moderate-to-vigorous physical activity.

The researchers found that standing and cycling were among the activities most often replaced by sitting, lying down, and time in bed. They suggest that commuting may account for some of the difference, since walking and cycling associated with getting to and from the office were reduced on remote days.

The researchers say remote workers may benefit from intentionally breaking up periods of sitting. Their suggestions include changing working positions, taking active breaks, and adding physical activity during leisure time on remote workdays.