Lutheran Church of Hope in West Des Moines, the largest church in Iowa, plans to expand its campus by 14,000 square feet, per a council meeting — including a gym, teen center and a larger food pantry.

Why it matters: The $20 million project, funded through donations, reflects the church's efforts to encourage more in-person interactions and accommodate a growing congregation, Pastor Jeremy Johnson tells Axios.

State of play: The first phase of the project is underway, including the opening of Café Hope — a coffee shop that serves breakfast and lunch, with all proceeds going to mission partners like Genesis Youth Foundation.

• Other completed renovations include a new food pantry that helps around 70 families every Friday, Johnson says. They also plan on opening a sensory room.

The next phase is to construct a two-story addition at the northeast corner of the building, which will include a larger pantry and outreach center, a youth center for teens, and a gym that will offer group fitness classes, pickleball and basketball.

What they're saying: "It's all about, 'How do we best provide spaces for people to come into?'" Johnson says. "People are looking, especially in an increasingly digital world ... for spaces to be able to meet, to have face-to-face interactions."

• "I think a lot of people experience a culture that seems to be more divided than ever," Johnson says. "People are saying, 'That's not the way it's supposed to be.'"

Between the lines: After paying off the building's mortgage in 2013, Johnson says Hope committed to not taking on debt again.

• If costs rise, construction won't continue until there is cash in hand, he says.

The big picture: Hope's expansion comes as a yearslong decline in U.S. church attendance shows signs of leveling off, per Pew Research Center.

• Following a prolonged period of decline, church attendance started holding steady around 2020, which Johnson attributes to a national post-pandemic loneliness and a sense of cultural division.
• The Christian share of the U.S. adult population has remained relatively stable, hovering between 60% and 64% since 2019, per Pew.

What's next: Construction for the shell of the addition is expected to start next spring, while the final phase of the capital improvements will involve filling in the building.

For only the third time ever, there are more women employed in the U.S. than men, according to federal data highlighted in a report from jobs site Indeed.

Why it matters: This isn't quite a women's empowerment story — what's happening in part is that traditional male-dominated occupations are shrinking, while female-led jobs are growing.

Between the lines: Overall, those jobs pay less than ones held by men.

• "If you're seeing a shift toward more female employment, all else equal, you would see a shift toward lower wages," Laura Ullrich, economic research director at Indeed, tells Axios.

Two dynamics are driving the shift:

1. The fastest-growing sector of the job market, particularly over the past year, is health care, where women dominate. Job growth in construction and manufacturing has been relatively flat or negative.

2. Men's participation in the job market has been declining. Male employment fell overall by 142,000 jobs from February 2025 to February 2026, Ullrich notes.

• That's also partly because the immigration crackdown pushed a lot more men out of the workforce and restricted their entry into it.

Friction point: It would seem like a no-brainer for more men to move into health care, but they so far have been reluctant to take jobs that can be perceived as "women's work."

• "There's no inherent reason that 95% of speech language pathologists are women," Ullrich says. "That's a good job. It pays six figures."

Zoom out: For a long time, there was a big push to get more women into STEM (science, technology, engineering and math).

• But there's been less of an effort to push more men into health care, or what Reeves calls HEAL professions: jobs in health and education that require literacy.
• Getting more men into jobs in health, social care and education matters for gender representation in those vital fields and would address labor shortages, he says.

Flashback: The first time women outnumbered men in the job market was in the wake of the recession after the financial crisis. Male-dominated positions in construction and manufacturing were hard hit.

• The second time, the economy was booming just before the pandemic. Women who had made gains in education — with a growing share of college degrees — seemed better positioned to take advantage of the changing economy, as the New York Times noted then.
• What's happening now is basically a return to that trend line.

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Linh here. One of my favorite places to visit is Austin, Texas, and particularly the iconic bluebonnets.

• I didn't get a chance to head south this year, but turns out I didn't need to, because this Siberian squill has completely taken over my backyard!