The fallout from The New York Times’ allegations of sexual assault against Cesar Chavez was swift and wide-ranging. Now, some in the industry are hoping the revelations about the late farm labor leader open doors for systemic changes, including reforms aimed at advancing the rights of women farmworkers.

‘It creates an opportunity for those without scruples’

The sexual abuse claims, largely made by Chavez’s co-labor leader, Dolores Huerta, represent a massive fall from grace for a beloved figure in the Latino community, one so cherished that former President Joe Biden even placed a bronze bust of Chavez in the Oval Office in 2021. The allegations “raise a difficult question: How do you reckon with the man without losing the movement?” said KCRA-TV Stockton.

Some are concerned that the focus on Chavez could “leave today’s farmworkers more vulnerable,” farmworker advocate Luis Magaña said to KCRA, since people will be paying less attention to the bigger picture and more on the specifics of Chavez's allegations. The current system, which Magaña says can elicit violence against these workers, “creates an opportunity for those without scruples” to “freely commit some type of abuse, such as not paying them.” Magaña worked alongside Chavez in the early days of the movement but believes the cause must “continue beyond the man.” The time to have a conversation about this issue of sexual abuse among farmworkers documented in the Times exposé is “overdue.”

The farm labor movement itself was “always about the people — the thousands who marched, organized and fought for fair wages and dignity,” Magaña said to KCRA. Many are now trying to reconcile the revelations about Chavez with modern changes. Union organizers, for example, are “trying to push forward the farmworker movement and continue the work that many women, not just Chavez, spearheaded,” said The 19th. This includes “investing resources and support to improve the culture that has protected perpetrators in organizing spaces over victims.”

‘Engage and support our community’

Huerta, now 95, insists that her allegations against Chavez should not downplay the victories made by labor unions. Farmworker labor movements have “always been bigger and far more important than any one individual,” she said in a statement. Chavez’s actions “do not diminish the permanent improvements achieved for farmworkers with the help of thousands of people. We must continue to engage and support our community, which needs advocacy and activism now more than ever.”

And many say that the current advocacy for women’s rights in the fields, regardless of Chavez, doesn’t go far enough. Do women “feel safe at work? It’s not just the labor movement,” said Olga Miranda, the president of SEIU Local 87, a union for San Francisco service workers, to The San Francisco Standard. There are “assholes everywhere.” The floodgates will open because of the allegations, as there are women who will “stand up and speak out and say, ‘I’m not gonna take your shit.’ Watch out for that force.”

The discourse should shift from “one man to the conditions farmworkers still face today, including a reality many say has long gone unheard: sexual violence against women in the fields,” said KCRA. Many women in these environments, Magaña said to KCRA, “stay silent, not for a cause but out of the need to survive.”

Losing your job can bring up a lot of things. There is an emotional component as you leave behind your old position and team and there is also a logistical one, both in terms of what your next steps will be in your career, and how you will get by for a while without a steady paycheck.

For those with student loan debt, one of the big financial questions after a job loss is how they will continue to make monthly payments. While it may be tempting to table the issue for later, once you have worked through the initial fallout from losing your job, postponing the issue could end up making things more challenging down the road. Here are three steps you can take to manage your loans.

Inform your loan servicer

The first thing you should do student loan-wise after losing your job is to get in touch with your loan servicer. The “earlier you contact your loan servicer, the more options you’ll have,” said ELFI, a lender offering private student loans and refinancing. Be transparent about your situation, and find out what relief options are available to you. Your lender can walk you through the choices and help you figure out what might make the most sense.

Look into alternative repayment plans to reduce payments

Depending on the type of student loans you have and your specific lender, you may have access to different repayment plan options; these could allow you to lower the amount that is due each month. When you are working on a constrained budget after a job loss, this can make a major difference, allowing you to continue making progress on repayment without forking over more than you can reasonably afford

For instance, “federal student loan borrowers who are laid off from their jobs — or just not earning enough — are usually able to sign up for an income-driven repayment plan and get a lower payment, or even a $0 bill,” said CNBC. Those with private loans generally do not have this option, but their lender may instead offer loan restructuring, where you get an “extended loan term that makes your payments more affordable,” said ELFI.

Consider deferment or forbearance for a pause

If continuing to make payments does not seem tenable, you can consider exploring taking a pause entirely, either through deferment or forbearance. For federal loans, “borrowers can pause payments for up to three years with a student loan unemployment deferment,” said NerdWallet. Meanwhile, forbearance is “typically limited to a few months at a time,” said Bankrate. Some private lenders may offer these options, though not all do, and availability varies by lender and loan type. Before proceeding, just make sure to note the implications of a pause, namely whether interest will continue to accrue during it.

British businesses are to be offered a £3,000 state bonus for hiring a young person who has been out of work for six months as the number of economically inactive young people nears one million.

Work and Pensions Secretary Pat McFadden said it was part of the government’s plans to “back Britain’s young people” after youth unemployment hit its highest level in more than a decade.

How bad is it?

According to the Office for National Statistics’ latest labour market overview, 14% of Britons aged 18 to 24 were unemployed in the final quarter of 2025, compared with 12.7% in the same period in 2024.

This growth has largely been driven by young people who are “economically inactive”, meaning those who are out of work and not seeking it. The most recent data from the ONS says the number of young people not in employment, education or training (Neet) between October and December 2025 reached 957,000, up from around 800,000 in 2019.

Why is it so hard to find work?

For many of those not in employment or training, “the challenge is not so much a lack of skills or visibility as the dearth of openings in a stagnating labour market”, said the Financial Times. “Young people say they lack work experience and something to talk about to employers,” said Sareena Bains, chief executive of charity Movement to Work. “Those opportunities are becoming few and far between.”

The tough labour landscape has been made worse by the roll-out of AI, which threatens to erase many entry-level jobs.

Business groups have also criticised the government’s decision to raise employer’s national insurance contributions and the youth minimum wage, as well as changes to workers’ rights, all of which could make companies less inclined to take a risk on a newcomer to the workforce over an experienced worker. In February, Huw Pill, the Bank of England’s chief economist, told the Commons Treasury Committee that changes around tax and the national living wage have had a “particular effect on those aged 16 to 18, and 18 to 21”.

Having analysed the effects of setting minimum wage rates by age, Alan Manning from LSE concluded that the evidence is “too weak” to blame youth unemployment on the minimum wage.

What else is to blame?

The Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) has identified a “toxic cocktail” of “rising employment taxes, perverse incentives to claim benefits and a broken migration system”. The think tank’s Wasted Youth report found that businesses are turning to non-EU migrants while a growing number of young Britons are claiming benefits.

Health is another major factor. The share of Neet young people who report having a health condition that limits their ability to work rose from 26% in 2015 to 44% in 2025 – a 70% increase, according to The Health Foundation. This “mirrors trends among young people generally”, said the think tank. “Regardless of whether they are in work or education, 16–24-year-olds today are much more likely to report having a work-limiting health condition than they were in the past”. This increase is “driven primarily by mental health and neurodevelopmental conditions”.

What is being done?

As well as the £3,000 incentive for firms to hire young people out of work for six months, the government has also announced small and medium-sized businesses will get a £2,000 bonus if they take on a young apprentice, and jobs with training subsidised by the state are to be expanded to 22- to 24-year-olds.

Current policies to help Neet young people and expand apprenticeships were “not stacking up to the scale of the challenge”, Stephen Evans, chief executive of the Learning & Work Institute, told the FT.

A more radical proposal, backed by former home secretary David Blunkett and former chancellor Jeremy Hunt, is a Future Workforce Credit, a £670 million effective tax cut for employers hiring Neets that would cover 30% of their salary. CSJ modelling based on similar interventions suggests the approach would get 120,000 young people into jobs while saving £765 million in tax and welfare spending.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics released a “Schrödinger’s cat of employment snapshots” last week, said Alicia Wallace in CNN.com. It reported that the U.S. added 130,000 jobs in January, far more than economists forecast, suggesting a stabilizing employment market after months of deteriorating numbers. But the bureau also revised down its jobs numbers for last year to show 2025 to be “one of the worst years ever for job creation outside of a recession.” The annual recalibration meant that “a million U.S. jobs disappeared overnight,” said Larry Edelman in The Boston Globe. “Poof!” In fact, those roles didn’t vanish—they “never existed in the first place.” The revisions don’t mean the department is incompetent or “plays politics with the numbers to make a president look good or bad.” They just reflect updates as more data emerges. The main takeaway is that last year, “the economy added an average of 15,000 jobs a month, even fewer than the paltry 49,000 average previously estimated.”

The January report had one bright spot, said Vince Golle in Bloomberg. Factory jobs increased for the first time since late 2024, a sign that “American manufacturing may be starting to emerge from years of malaise.” Combine those gains “with a solid advance in the construction industry”—powered in part by data center build-outs—and we see a gain of 36,000 jobs “among goods producers, the most since mid-2023.” Still, the “lion’s share” of job growth came “from one specific task: caring for older Americans,” said Allie Canal in NBCNews.com. About 124,000 of last month’s 130,000 new jobs were in the health-care sector. We’re not talking about a boom in highly skilled and well-paid surgeons, but rather more home health and personal care aides. “Demand for long-term care is projected to keep rising” as the U.S. population ages. Most of the direct care workforce performs physically demanding work for a median wage of $16.82 an hour, barely enough to exceed the $32,150 federal poverty level for a family of four. And as immigration restrictions tighten, “the strain on this workforce is building at the very moment the country needs it most.”

The White House wants Americans to believe “that near-zero job growth is fine because immigration has plunged,” said Paul Krugman in his Substack newsletter. “All of the jobs that we were creating in the Biden years were going to illegals,” senior trade adviser Peter Navarro said last week. “Americans were going to the unemployment lines.” But the evidence shows that immigrants are “mainly complements, not substitutes, for native-born workers,” filling jobs others don’t want in agriculture, meatpacking, construction, and, yes, health care. Close to 40% of home health aides and 28% of personal care aides are immigrants, according to data from the Migration Policy Institute. One recent academic paper found that “the arrival of an extra 1,000 immigrants leads to employment of an additional 28 aides, 49 nurses, and 19 doctors.” And like the vast majority of immigrants, those workers pay taxes and boost economic growth. Waging war on them will “make native-born Americans poorer—and send thousands of us to an early grave.”

What happened

The U.S. gained 64,000 jobs in November but lost 105,000 in October, the Commerce Department reported Tuesday, and the unemployment rate climbed to 4.6%, the highest since 2021. Along with the net loss of 41,000 jobs, the department also revised August and September’s payroll numbers downward by 33,000 jobs. Wages grew an anemic 0.1% last month, the smallest gain since 2023. The October jobs report was delayed because of the government shutdown.

Who said what

“Taken together,” the data released Tuesday “point to one of the weakest American labor markets in years,” The Wall Street Journal said. Hiring has “clearly lost momentum,” The Associated Press said, “hobbled by uncertainty over President Donald Trump’s tariffs” and the “lingering effects” of inflation-fighting high interest rates.

The “economy is flashing new warning signs,” but October’s steep losses “reflected the exit of tens of thousands of federal workers who took a deferred resignation package earlier this year,” The Washington Post said. “All roads lead back to policy out of Washington, D.C.,” RSM chief economist Joseph Brusuelas told the Journal. “I’m not saying this is a harbinger of a recession, but we have some real challenges to the economy that we didn’t have one year ago.”

What next?

The delayed jobs numbers, and a separate Commerce Department report Tuesday that showed flat retail sales, “buttressed the Federal Reserve’s decision to cut interest rates last week,” the Post said. After that meeting, Fed Chair Jerome Powell “warned that official statistics could be overstating job creation by 60,000 jobs a month.”

The Gen Z workforce has long been called entitled or lazy, but the generation’s method of career movement may be a response to the unfavorable job market. Younger workers are embracing career minimalism, in which they move between job opportunities rather than strive for upward mobility. The method could provide more security, flexibility and fulfillment.

What is career minimalism?

We have “traded the rigid career ladder for the career lily pad,” said Morgan Sanner, a Gen Z career expert and the founder of Resume Official, at Glassdoor. Instead of climbing the rungs of a ladder, people are “moving toward opportunities that fit their needs in the moment rather than staying in one organization for decades,” said Forbes. This is especially the case among younger workers. Instead of having ambitions to move their way up in the workplace, 68% of Gen Z workers “wouldn’t pursue management if it weren’t for the paycheck or title,” said a survey by Glassdoor. With career minimalism, workers are “prioritizing security and expansion over elevation,” as a result of a “landscape of mass layoffs, AI disruption and widespread burnout.”

This flexibility is “more sustainable, more realistic and better suited to today’s workplace realities,” said Fortune. Career minimalism is also a “conscious shift away from overreliance on a single employer, toward firmer boundaries, alternative definitions of professional fulfillment and a portfolio of potential income streams for financial stability,” said Chris Martin, a lead researcher at Glassdoor, to Fast Company. “It’s not that Gen Z are rejecting work. They are rejecting an outdated version of work that has been sold to them.”

Several factors have encouraged the shift toward career minimalism, but the largest is the volatility of the job market. “The traditional career ladder promised workers pensions, stability and prestige markers as a reward for their long-term commitment,” said Martin. “The past few generations of workers have seen these promises broken or hollowed out, and Gen Z’s views have changed accordingly.” Increasing the breadth of work rather than focusing on moving up allows for “less dependence on geography,” plus it also “encourages diversification,” said Forbes. It additionally combats skill obsolescence, as industries are rapidly changing due to technological advances.

How is it changing the workplace?

Gen Z has also embraced the side hustle. Having a secondary job allows people to “diversify income streams without abandoning job security,” said Glassdoor. These gigs are no longer “viewed as distractions or fallback options,” and have become “central to Gen Z’s identity, offering creative, entrepreneurial or activist outlets that main jobs cannot supply,” said Fortune. Success “no longer demands that work eclipse every other aspect of life,” and many have “stable jobs for security, side hustles for passion and strict boundaries for sustainability.”

While Gen Z has become a kind of poster child for career minimalism, “millennials, Gen X and Baby Boomers are adopting it for their own reasons,” said Forbes. Many are “rethinking what motivates them,” as “titles and promotions have lost some of their power, especially when they bring longer hours and more stress.” However, that does not mean that Gen Z is not seeking management positions at all. The Glassdoor survey found that Gen Z managers “understand that work-life balance isn’t a perk, it’s a necessity for sustainable performance.” Many workers expect flexibility from Gen Z managers as well.

Career minimalism “addresses challenges that affect professionals in every generation,” including “broken advancement systems, burnout, shifting career paths and the desire for autonomy,” said Forbes. “The future of work is becoming less about relentless climbing and more about choosing roles that reflect a person’s values, energy and goals.”

Retirement, at least in some form, may be possible sooner than you expect and could happen many times during your professional career. As people live longer and spend more years working, many have opted to pursue “microretirement” or take extended breaks from work without pay. This gives people a chance to rest but can also hold them back from career advancement and future stability.

What is microretirement?

Microretirement is a trend where people take regular breaks from work, usually lasting weeks or even months, with plans to return to their jobs after. This time can be used for relaxation, travel or some personal project or passion. These breaks are “not your standard PTO,” because “they’re intentional, unpaid time to rest and recharge,” said Fast Company. Microretirements can take many forms, including quitting a job and only finding a new one once you are ready to work again, “setting up a plan with your employer that allows you to take unpaid frequent work breaks” or “taking breaks from your business if you’re a business owner.” This is different from quiet vacationing, in which people still appear to be working while on a trip or out of the office.

The trend has grown popular across all age groups, and only 21% of employees worldwide describe themselves as engaged in their jobs in 2024, according to Gallup’s State of the Workplace Report. Gen Z has particularly taken to it, “using microretirement to avoid burnout, find greater fulfillment in their work and enhance their overall well-being,” said Fast Company. This is largely because of that generation’s emphasis on the work-life balance. It also makes “sense from a health perspective to do adventurous travel while you’re in peak health,” said The Independent. On the other hand, “taking a break in mid-life or later has some obvious perks, including the likelihood of better financial stability.”

Should you do it?

The concept of taking extended breaks from work is not new; professors and tech professionals have been known to take sabbaticals, for instance. Now, an “increased lifespan may be turning that luxury into a necessity for others who work much longer than previous generations,” said Forbes. “As we live and work longer, retirement can feel so far away,” said Michael Edwards, the managing director of Explore Worldwide, to The Independent. “There’s a sense of ‘why should I wait?’ None of us know what the future holds and for many, retirement might feel too late to do the sort of traveling we have our heart set on.”

There are some downsides to microretirement, especially concerning a person’s financial future. Taking time away from a job can “affect your earnings, investments and funding your retirement,” said Fast Company. It can additionally affect potential career growth. You “could also be seen as a job hopper to some decision-makers within the labor market,” said Kenyetta Nesbitt-Simmons, a senior partner at HR consultancy firm Simmons HR & Talent Advisory, to Fast Company. This may pose a particular problem in competitive fields where a microretirement could be seen as slacking off.

The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. That old saying has taken on a new label in 2025. America’s economy is increasingly “K-shaped.”

The term is used to describe when “wealthy consumers do well and spend freely” while folks in lower tax brackets “struggle and scrimp,” said Morning Brew. Evidence of a K-shaped economy is “popping up everywhere.” The richest Americans are now enjoying the fruits of a “booming stock market” and a steep rise in home values, while everybody else is increasingly challenged by a “shaky job market, high interest rates, and/or inflation.” That could cause “social and political instability,” said University of Michigan economist Betsey Stevenson.

What did the commentators say?

This phenomenon creates ripple effects throughout the economy. Everybody has to buy “deodorant and soap and toothpaste,” said Numerator’s Leo Feler to Marketplace, but middle-income Americans are pulling back on “things like toys, electronics, sporting goods, apparel.” There are signs the gap will only widen. A new report says the wealth of America’s 10 richest billionaires “ballooned by $698 billion” in the last year, said The Daily Beast. America’s economic policies are “driving inequality to new heights,” said Oxfam America.

“Consider the burrito,” David Goldman said at CNN. Chipotle last week cut its earnings forecast for the third consecutive quarter because the chain’s “core customers” of younger, lower-income consumers are “starting to skip the guac” and cutting back on their spending. Big companies are seeing the divide: Coca-Cola is seeing “growth in its high-end brands” like Topo Chico, Smartwater and Fairlife, but is “cutting sizes (and prices)” on lower-end brands to drive sales among struggling lower-income customers. The damage will be difficult to repair. America’s two-tier economy has been “increasingly bifurcated for quite some time.”

There is “room” for the argument that a K-shaped economy is “no bad thing,” said John Authers at Bloomberg. Poorer Americans would “benefit from lower interest rates from the Federal Reserve,” which would then strengthen the “wealth and spending of the affluent.” Certainly, the overall stock market has not been dragged down by the struggles of car loan companies and fast food chains like Krispy Kreme. From a macro-economic view, “bad times for the poor don’t matter so much if they’re outbalanced by gains for the wealthy.”

What next?

The American economy is at “risk of wobble” as lower-income consumers struggle, said Reuters. Corporate earnings will be tested as “rising healthcare costs, the potential loss of federal food benefits and a wobbly job market outlook” affect the earning power of “less affluent” American households. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell is taking notice of the K-shaped economy as he looks to the future, particularly as “rising auto loan defaults and intense bargain shopping” offer signs of distress.

A recent Moody’s report found that the top 20% of earners are responsible for America’s economic growth, said Fortune. Economists are worried. “We are losing the middle class,” said Ohio State University’s Lucia Dunn to the outlet.

With layoffs hitting global industries across their workforces, companies are claiming a new culprit: the rise of artificial intelligence. Numerous brands, including major tech corporations like Amazon, have pointed to AI as the reason for the most recent wave of job cuts. But some labor analysts claim that blaming AI is simply a way for these companies to avoid taking responsibility when they downsize.

What did the commentators say?

Even as companies have been “blaming the promise of productivity with artificial intelligence for their decisions,” there is “uneven evidence that the promised cost-savings from AI are actually worth what companies are putting into it,” said NBC News. This has left some people “questioning whether AI could be serving as a fig leaf for companies that are laying off employees for old-fashioned reasons,” such as a company’s poor financial performance.

It is “much easier for a company to say, ‘We are laying workers off because we’re realizing AI-related efficiencies’ than to say, ‘We’re laying people off because we’re not that profitable or bloated, or facing a slowing economic environment, etc,’” David Autor, an economics professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said to NBC. Even if AI wasn’t the reason for a particular layoff, companies would “be wise to attribute the credit/blame to AI.”

The most notable example of this is Amazon, which has announced a new wave of 14,000 job cuts. This “came just a few months after CEO Andrew Jassy said the rollout of AI technology was likely to spell job cuts,” said Al Jazeera. But while experts are skeptical, AI “may be” at fault for the Amazon cuts. This “latest move signals that Amazon is likely realizing enough AI-driven productivity gains within corporate teams to support a substantial reduction in force,” Sky Canaves, an eMarketer analyst, said to Reuters.

Despite these changes at Amazon, many people have “voiced skepticism that recent high-profile layoffs are a telling sign of the technology's effect on employment,” said BBC News. There is a “real tendency, because everyone is so freaked out about the possible impact of AI on the labor market moving forward, to overreact to individual company announcements,” Martha Gimbel, the executive director of the Budget Lab at Yale University, said to the BBC.

What next?

Whether AI is truly at fault or not, there’s no question that the technology is replacing certain jobs. In July 2025, Microsoft released a research paper outlining 40 occupations the company thinks could be outsourced to AI. At the top of the list were interpreters and translators, followed by historians, passenger attendants, sales representatives, writers and customer service representatives. The job that Microsoft felt was the safest from AI was a phlebotomist, followed by nursing assistants, waste removal workers, painters, embalmers and plant operators.

Understanding the “effects of AI on the economy” will become “one of society’s most important” efforts, the paper said. This has especially been true in the “last several years,” as “generative AI has come to the fore as the next candidate general purpose technology, capable of improving or speeding up tasks as varied as medical diagnosis and software development.” Its extensive reach has already been “reflected in the astounding rate of AI adoption.”

While most Americans may think of being a school crossing guard as a relatively safe profession, it appears that this is not the reality. A new investigation has shed light on just how deadly being a crossing guard can be, with hundreds of people injured and even killed on the job over the past decade. Experts also say there are gaps in how these statistics are gathered, meaning crossing guard injuries may be underreported.

How dangerous is it to be a crossing guard?

The investigation was helmed by The Associated Press alongside Cox Media Group television stations across the country. It found that during the last 10 years at least “230 school crossing guards across 37 states and Washington, D.C., were struck by vehicles,” said the AP. Nearly three dozen of these crossing guards were killed. The AP compiled this data from “incident and accident reports requested from nearly 200 police departments,” but it still represents “only a portion of guards injured and killed nationwide.”

Often, the drivers involved in these incidents received very little punishment: More than “70% of drivers who hit crossing guards received just traffic tickets or no charges at all,” said WSB-TV Atlanta, one of the stations that worked on the investigation. And the drivers regularly didn’t stop: As many as 40 of the 230 accidents were hit-and-runs, and “in at least six of those, law enforcement was never able to identify the driver who fled the scene.”

There are problems when it comes to tracking this data, and a “full accounting is impossible,” said the AP. There are no federal agencies that keep a comprehensive list of crossing guard accidents, and “only two states have made a serious effort to track crossing guard safety: New Jersey and Massachusetts.” Crossing guard protection “remains a patchwork of state and local policies.”

What can be done about this?

Certain states are looking at solutions through legislation. Some hope that “improved technology could eliminate the need for crossing guards to direct traffic,” said WSOC-TV Charlotte, which also worked on the investigation. There are also efforts being made to “give towns and school districts more authority to make safety changes, like lowering speed limits.”

In “2025, there are alternatives to having somebody standing out there holding up a sign and waving it,” South Carolina State Rep. David Martin (R) said to WSOC-TV. School districts “should have resources and the power to be able to do that instead of going through the government.”

Other communities are working on implementing additional safety measures. To assist with a lack of crossing guards in the Seattle School District, officials are using “community help, flashing crosswalk signs and trying to reroute traffic away from schools,” said KIRO-7 Seattle, another investigative partner.

But this still hasn’t made the job of a crossing guard any less deadly. Crossing guards and school flaggers “were in the top fifth of deadliest jobs” in 2023, said the AP, citing the most recent year with available data. This death rate is “on par with power line installers and air transportation workers.” A crossing guard is also the “only occupation in that top fifth that interacts with children daily.”

They call it the Great Freeze. That’s how some analysts describe the U.S. job market recently — a “low-hire, low-fire” environment where workers who have jobs are not losing them but finding a new job is difficult. But a thaw may be coming.

A “slew” of “large-scale layoffs” may be a sign that the labor market is “starting to tip over,” said Axios. Amazon announced it will slash 14,000 jobs, UPS said it was cutting 48,000 positions, and Paramount said it was laying off 1,000 workers. The unemployment rate had hovered around 4% for more than a year, but that “apparent stability” has concealed “change beneath the surface.” Now, companies appear ready to “take advantage of the potential of AI to transform work.” This could mean fewer jobs for humans.

The massive layoffs suggest the job market’s “current state of suspension has changed for the worse,” said MarketWatch. While companies are still comfortably profitable, they are waiting on the “dust to settle” from tariff negotiations, the government shutdown and the corporate adoption of AI. Amazon’s layoffs could be the tipping point. “We may see others join the fray,” said John Challenger, the CEO of career-services firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

What did the commentators say?

The job market “could get ugly,” Dan DeFrancesco said at Business Insider. “About 20 more Amazon-sized layoffs” would upend the labor market. That scenario is “not out of the realm of possibility” because “companies are known to follow the lead of their bigger peers.” Meta’s 2022 layoff of 11,000 workers led to a much larger wave of tech sector job cuts. American companies have recently been in a “holding pattern,” but if they start to let workers go without replacing them, the “somewhat resilient job market could start to show some real cracks.”

“The labor market is undeniably going through a transition,” Adam Hardy said at Money. Young workers are “canaries in the coal mine” since they are often the first to feel job market instability, and “young workers and recent college grads aren’t doing so well” at the moment. AI is often blamed, but there are other factors. Right now, there are “more graduates than there are jobs that require grads.” That’s a challenge that predates the rise of AI by “several years.”

What next?

The Federal Reserve cut interest rates by a quarter point this week to “shore up the softening job market,” said NPR. On top of private sector layoffs, the federal government has already cut about 100,000 jobs this year. American employment “may well be shrinking already,” Fed Governor Christopher Waller said earlier in October.

Bad news for the job market might be good news for graduate programs. “Applications are on the rise” at law schools and MBA programs, said Fortune, with law school applications up 3% over last year. Gen-Z job seekers are buying “more time to figure out what’s next” instead of “facing the bleak job market head-on.”

If you are like many Americans, the income from your 9-to-5 is no longer cutting it. Amid rising costs due to inflation, not to mention steepening student loan payments and tariff-driven price hikes, many people are finding their paychecks stretched thinner than ever. Enter: the side hustle.

To try and cover expenses, “almost two-thirds of currently employed Americans are looking to get a second job in the next year, according to a survey of 2,000 adults conducted by the American Staffing Association,” said Investopedia. A second job can certainly help when it comes to supplementing income or working toward financial goals like boosting savings or paying down debt. But before you take one on, it is worth assessing the full range of possibilities, so your side gig feels like less of a burden.

1. Online selling

Online selling is a flexible side hustle that can take a variety of forms and slot into the hours that work best for you. “Platforms like Poshmark, eBay and Depop make it simple to flip clothes, sneakers and vintage finds,” said Forbes. Or, if you are crafty and can, say, “knit, make jewelry or create art,” you might consider listing those handmade items on a site like Etsy.

Of course, whether or not you make money depends on whether you find buyers. You will have to carve out the time to set up your page and photograph your items, and then handle shipping whenever you make a sale.

2. Babysitting

“This might be the fastest way to pick up extra cash,” with some sites posting rates of “up to $23 per hour,” said Inc. Plus, the demand is almost guaranteed to be there, as “parents need sitters all the time for date nights or busy days,” said Ramsey Solutions, a personal finance site.

Try online websites like Care.com to view available gigs in your area. You might also have luck just from asking around.

3. Dog walking

Kids not your thing? Consider caring for dogs instead. “Apps like Wag and Rover offer on-demand dog walking, so you can pick up walks when your schedule allows,” and “there’s potential to earn an extra $300+ per month” once you have established a regular roster of clients, said NerdWallet. Just keep in mind that “success can depend heavily on location and market.”

4. Freelancing

“Freelance websites such as Upwork, Fiverr and Freelancer.com” post a “variety of freelance jobs, like writing, programming, design, marketing, data entry and being a virtual assistant,” said NerdWallet. This work allows you to earn money from the comfort of your home, and will maybe even add a line to your resume.

You may have to work a little bit more on other people’s schedules to meet deadlines, but you have the power to set your own rates and decide what jobs you take on.

5. Yard care

“Whether it’s mowing the lawn and weeding, raking fall leaves or cleaning out the gutters, there’s an incredible amount of demand for this side hustle,” said Inc. While demand is likely to be highest in warmer months, you could still keep this side gig going in the winter if you are willing to shovel snow.

As for how to land these types of gigs, “your neighborhood Facebook page is a good place to start advertising your services,” as is Nextdoor, said Inc.

‘The fight for the future of women’s basketball’

Louisa Thomas at The New Yorker

WNBA player Napheesa Collier “spoke bravely while pointing out the obvious,” says Louisa Thomas. Collier “recounted a conversation with Cathy Engelbert, the commissioner,” and stated the “way many people in leadership positions in sports — and especially in the NBA, which owns a substantial portion of the WNBA — talk about women’s professional leagues for years, justifying low salaries and poor playing conditions.” As the “league’s profile has grown, though, so has the gap between the players driving that value.”

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‘Blue states should come together to declare an emergency. Here’s how.’

Thomas Geoghegan at The Guardian

Donald Trump is “all about political theater, or circus, and it often seems that even in resisting him, as decent citizens must do, we become part of the circus too,” says Thomas Geoghegan. Why “not put on our own show, our own form of political theater, that leaves Trump out?” We “should create a limited, invitation-only body — an embryonic constitutional convention — that the anti-Trump blue states exclusively set up for themselves, limit to themselves and control.”

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‘The rise of America’s hard left’

Rana Foroohar at the Financial Times

We “all know about the rise of the authoritarian right in America, and the risks that it poses to both the economy and society,” but “what about the hard left?” says Rana Foroohar. This “political tail risk is now being taken more seriously by many in the business community who worry that the center-left is disappearing, just as traditional conservatism has given way to MAGA.” Populism is “clearly what’s driving the move among Democratic incumbents.”

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‘Gen X may be the first to need a universal basic income after late-career job loss’

Annette Nierobisz and Dana Sawchuk at The Hill

Estimates “suggest that half of all white-collar jobs will disappear as artificial intelligence advances. How will older white-collar workers displaced in the AI revolution fare?” say Annette Nierobisz and Dana Sawchuk. A “larger proportion of Gen X are susceptible to hard falls than their predecessors.” It’s “impossible to prepare for a bout of unemployment extended indefinitely by age discrimination in the hiring process.” This “demands a structural solution and a universal basic income might be the answer.”

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‘Congress should help air innovation take flight’

Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) and Sen. Ted Budd (R-N.C.) at Newsweek

It’s “time for Congress to build on a proud American legacy by spearheading the newest revolution in flight: Advanced Air Mobility, or AAM,” say Peter Welch and Ted Budd. This “isn’t a single technology — it’s a collection of technologies that will allow innovative aircraft, including electric, to integrate into our airspace system.” It’s a “new way to think about air transportation, from private and recreational aircraft to public services to large cargo delivery.”

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‘The meaning of the Comey indictment’

Elie Honig at Intelligencer

The “Trump administration has crossed a line,” says Elie Honig. The “wall of independence between the Justice Department and the White House, which has long stood to protect DOJ’s fearsome power to deprive individuals of their liberty, has been reduced to rubble.” Former FBI Director James Comey’s “prosecution marks a dark turn.” Nobody “can afford to be nonchalant about a federal indictment filed by prosecutors representing the United States of America.” This is “not about achieving just results. It’s about payback.”

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‘Sports are more than entertainment’

Danette Leighton at Time

Sports “build not only champions on the field, but leaders in business, government, and society,” says Danette Leighton. Decades of “evidence and lived experience make clear that when girls and women have access to sport, they gain invaluable skills and opportunities that ripple across all sectors.” The U.N. “should prioritize harnessing sport for equality worldwide.” That “means adopting policies that ensure equal access to sport, elevate women in leadership roles, and fund inclusive programs.”

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‘My sons have autism, and the stigma of blame must end’

Maura Sullivan at The Boston Globe

Parents “often search for clear, black-and-white answers on how to raise their children,” but “life, especially life with autism, is mostly lived in a gray area,” says Maura Sullivan. The “gray area of raising children with autism is not a place of division but of shared purpose.” Society can “acknowledge the experiences and fears of families by continuing to keep a wide lens on research,” but must “ensure that crucial federal funding for research and services continues.”

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‘Gen Z men are facing a surprise workforce crisis’

Sara Estep at MSNBC

Since the “early 2000s, the participation of young men (ages 16-24) in the American workforce has dropped precipitously,” says Sara Estep. There is “not a one-size-fits-all answer for every nonparticipant, but two main factors stand out: education and disability.” The workforce gender gap has “all but disappeared among young men and women.” But “being ‘out of the labor force’ doesn’t mean Generation Z men are all sitting on their parents’ couch playing video games.”

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‘Immigration crackdowns could cripple America’s small businesses’

Javier Palomarez at Newsweek

Immigration has “always powered America's economy,” says Javier Palomarez. But “recent crackdowns are weakening the industries we all depend on for growth and stability.” Immigrants “fill critical roles in construction, agriculture, manufacturing, technology, and hospitality.” When immigration “enforcement rips through their communities, small businesses, with their limited margins and flexibility, are first to feel the pain.” This “fallout is ethnicity-agnostic. When economic activity dries up, it affects all businesses, not only those owned by immigrants.”

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‘Africa’s future runs on water. So treat it as essential infrastructure.’

Sareen Malik at Al Jazeera

African crises “rarely begin with politics alone. They often start with water — too little, too dirty, or unfairly shared,” says Sareen Malik. When “water fails, economies and social contracts fail, too.” Africa’s “water security is under mounting pressure from multiple directions.” Water is “not only a human right; it is the foundational infrastructure of development, influencing what is grown on the farm, what is made in the factory and what is taught in the classroom.”

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‘The 25 greatest picture books of the last 25 years’

Dan Kois and Rebecca Onion at Slate

Picture books have “undergone a revolution in the past 25 years,” say Dan Kois and Rebecca Onion. The “art form is now remarkably different from what it was when we were little.” A “turn-of-the-millennium boom in animation, led by Pixar, gave rise to more illustrators making a living as storytellers — and being frustrated by the machinations of Hollywood studios forcing them to tell their own stories in a simpler, more personal form.”

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What happened

The Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee yesterday trimmed its benchmark interest rate by a quarter percentage point, its first cut since President Donald Trump took office. It was the Fed’s first meeting since Trump tried to fire one of its governors, Lisa Cook, as part of his campaign to assert control over the traditionally independent central bank.

Who said what

The Fed judged that “labor-market softness outweighed recent setbacks on inflation,” said The Wall Street Journal. A “narrow majority” of the board also “penciled in at least two additional cuts this year,” suggesting a “broader shift toward concern about cracks forming in the job market.”

All but one of the Fed officials voted for the quarter-point cut. “Lone dissenter” Stephen Miran pushed for cutting a half-point, CNN said, which is “hardly a surprise” since he is on unpaid leave from Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers and the president “fervently” wants sharply lower borrowing costs. Miran is “Trump’s wholly owned subsidiary,” the Journal’s editorial board said, and the president also “owns” this rate cut, “having staked so much on his political assault on the Fed.” Maybe “everything works out fine,” but the rate cut can’t “offset” either of the economic “negatives” the Fed identified yesterday: Trump’s tariffs and immigration crackdown.

What next?

The “well-telegraphed” rate cut, to between 4% and 4.25%, is “unlikely to bring much relief to borrowers,” The Washington Post said. And given the economy’s “stagflation-lite” signals, “what comes next” isn’t clear.

Amid a difficult job market, many have resorted to “job hugging,” or “holding onto their jobs for dear life” even if they aren’t progressing in their careers or lack motivation, said consulting firm Korn Ferry. The lack of higher career aspirations is a result of the poor job market that has made people uncertain about their employment futures.

Background

It is no secret that the job market has not been promising recently. The revised data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that the U.S. job market was “much weaker in 2024 and early this year than originally reported, adding to concerns about the health of the nation’s economy,” said The Associated Press. “Employers added 911,000 fewer jobs than originally reported in the year that ended in March 2025.”

Overall, the “economy has been in a low-hire, low-fire equilibrium,” said The Atlantic. This has extended to almost all sectors aside from health care. The “amount of time a worker has spent looking for a job has climbed to an average of 10 weeks, meaning that Americans are spending two weeks longer on the job market than they were a few years ago.” Many are unable to find jobs altogether.

The latest

In a job market without many new jobs or potential for upward mobility, job hugging naturally occurs. Given the “activity that happened post-Covid and then some of these constant layoffs, people are waiting and sitting in seats and hoping that they have more stability,” said Stacy DeCesaro, a managing consultant at Korn Ferry, to Fortune. A July 2025 report found that a majority of employees plan to remain in their current jobs for at least the next six months. This trend aligns with quiet quitting and quiet vacationing, as many are not necessarily engaged in their jobs and are more concerned about not having one. “They don’t seem happy, they don’t give 100% — and they don’t quit,” said The Wall Street Journal.

However, job hugging does not just apply to those who are only trying to keep a job. “The phrase ‘job hugging’ just kind of coined itself, because of the reluctance of especially top performers to leave where they’re currently at,” DeCesaro said to Insider. In many cases, workers who have outgrown their current roles are “sitting in the wrong seat at this time in their careers and clinging to it because of market fear,” said Forbes.

The reaction

“The process of getting a job has become a late-capitalist nightmare,” said The Atlantic. This has led many people to feel that they must remain in their current jobs and not seek out new opportunities. “When people were moving during the Great Resignation, that allowed others to get promoted, perhaps ahead of schedule and have a stretch job,” said Alan Guarino, the vice chairman of Korn Ferry, to the Journal. “Now people can’t move up and they potentially get demotivated because of the lack of opportunity.”

This can be bad for both employers and employees as “go-getters hankering for promotions might lose out if mediocre co-workers refuse to vacate the next rung on the corporate ladder,” said the Journal. There is also less room for new grads to be hired. However, it could also be an opportunity. “Great teammates are not leaving for external jobs every couple years," said Korn Ferry, “which means firms can develop those talents and create more internal career paths.”

'When adults can't make ends meet, kids pay the price'

Matt Helmer at The Hill

As "kids pack their backpacks for the school year, too many will carry more than school supplies — they'll carry the weight of the economic stress of their parents and the adults around them," says Matt Helmer. We "cannot ignore the economic pressures facing the adults whom children depend on." Jobs that "offer stability, fair pay and dignity are not just important for workers — they are essential for children's success and for building a future where all kids can thrive."

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'Is it OK to be happy when the world is falling apart?'

Avram Alpert at The Guardian

Is it "cruel to be happy when there is so much destruction? Or is it simply foolish to tie one's mental health to this unpredictable and often violent world?" says Avram Alpert. The "idea that we should feel the pain of others is deeply etched." It is "reasonable and moral to think that when others are being injured, you, too, should feel that injury." To "say this is not to cave into normalization and acceptance of our current political situation."

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'Why Trump's death penalty threat is dangerous to all of us'

Anita Chabria at the Los Angeles Times

President Donald Trump said "federal prosecutors in Washington, D.C., should seek the death penalty for murders committed in the capital," but his "pronouncement is about much more than deterring killings," says Anita Chabria. Trump "seems intent on creating a new federal arrest and detention system outside of existing norms, aimed at everyday citizens and controlled by his whims." The "death penalty is part of it, but stomping on civil rights is at the heart of it."

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'Great Lakes ghost ships emerge, courtesy of the quagga mussel'

Patti Waldmeir at the Financial Times

North America's "Great Lakes are the largest surface body of freshwater on earth, and they are also among the world's most dangerous waters," says Patti Waldmeir. At "least 6,000 wrecks lurk in their deep cold waters, haunting underwater museums of America's industrial past and of the ship-borne immigrants who settled the Midwest." But "technology and lake bed shifts driven by climate change are aiding discoveries by local boaters, fishermen, sport divers and underwater archaeologists."

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Schools and companies are teaching Gen Z how to talk on the phone because young people lack the confidence to make professional calls.

"Telephobia", or an anxiety around making and receiving phone calls, is a growing issue, with a study by comparison site Uswitch concluding that a quarter of people aged 18 to 34 never actually answer when they're called.

'Literally screaming'

School coaching was offered ahead of A-level results last month, when students who didn't meet their predicted grades would be "forced" to speak to university admissions officers, said The Independent.

But that isn't the first time youngsters have been offered phone coaching. The Daily Mail reported in March that Gen Z staff at a leading UK finance firm were being "trained to speak over the phone" because "young workers are too scared to talk on their devices".

Posting on TikTok, Gen Zers have shared their absolute terror over phone calls, saying they "literally scream" when their phone rings and that unexpected phone calls are an "invasion" of their "personal space".

It stems from a fear of the unknown, said Liz Baxter, a careers advisor at Nottingham College, on CNBC. When their phone rings, young people think: "I don’t know who's on the end of it. I don't know how to deal with it". Gen Z are also "concerned with how they sound on calls" because, unlike video meetings, they've "no visual feedback to confirm how they're doing".

In a viral tweet last month, a recruiter said that when she calls Gen Z applicants at an agreed time, they often wait for her to speak first, instead of saying "hello". Replies to her tweet suggested that many shared this "alarming etiquette", said Business Insider.

This is sometimes because they guard against spam callers, who don't start until they hear someone say "hello", but also, some young people believe that if you're the one who's calling, you should initiate the conversation.

'Personal space'

But, it's not just the younger generation dodging calls who have "killed the phone call", said The Independent. A 47-year-old woman said she "would never call a person randomly out of the blue, just like I wouldn't knock on their front door unannounced – it's just not respectful of their personal space or time".

Up to 63% of UK adults have experienced phone fear, according to a study in 2020, by cloud-based contact agency Natterbox, and 26% said they would only ever make a call in the case of an emergency. In May, a survey by the Buffalo Trace Distillery found that a third of British adults "panic" when their phone rings unexpectedly.

So phone training could be a "sensible way" to deal with this "growing trend", said Huffington Post and "honestly", most of us could do with a "refresher on how to talk to one another a little better".

'Private equity ripped the heart out of skateboarding'

David Dayen at The American Prospect

Skateboarding has been "torched by private equity buyouts that destroyed both leading brands and the relationships that kept the scene thriving, cool, and local," says David Dayen. The "very structures that built skateboarding into a multibillion-dollar industry are withering in a sea of financially engineered acid." This "raises the question of how skateboarding can go forward if every brand that gets a little success becomes a sitting duck for a financial vulture."

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'The GOP losing Hispanic support is a massive self-own'

Patricia Lopez at Bloomberg

Donald Trump's "support among Hispanics was always more fragile than he thought," says Patricia Lopez. Now "his immigration and economic policies have all but obliterated the gains Republicans made with this group — gains they had started to count on for the midterms and beyond." Should it "continue, this could become one of the biggest self-owns in political history." Hispanics "saw in Trump a strong leader," but "reality hit like a slap in the face."

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'There are no entry-level jobs anymore. What now?'

Dana Stephenson at The Hill

For "decades, the entry-level job has been a crucial proving ground — a place to build skills, make connections and begin a career," says Dana Stephenson. But in the "age of artificial intelligence and automation, many of these critical early roles are disappearing." Today's "graduates face a steeper climb into meaningful, sustainable careers." It is "no longer enough to be merely hireable. Students can't even start on the ground floor — they're expected to skip a level."

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'Americans are changing their views of Israel. That's a problem.'

Daniel W. Drezner at Politico

"Strategically and militarily, Israel is more powerful in the Middle East now than at any time in this century," says Daniel W. Drezner. The "price Israel has paid for these military successes, however, is considerable." The "erosion of public support could have long-lasting effects on Israel and its relationship with vital allies." Israel "has always received a disproportionate measure of criticism from certain quarters of the globe." In "2025, however, the political tide has turned against Israel."

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'The two-word phrase unleashing chaos at the NIH'

Katherine J. Wu at The Atlantic

The "phrase scientifically justified appeared several times in a statement by NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya," and "NIH-backed studies should be justified in scientific terms," says Katherine J. Wu. But the "demand that Bhattacharya lays out has no formal criteria attached to it." Scientific justifiability is "imprecise at best and, at worst, a subjective appraisal of research that invites political meddling." The "insistence that 'scientifically justifiable' research will be allowed to continue feels especially unconvincing in 2025."

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'How Meta became uniquely toxic for top AI talent'

John Herrman at Intelligencer

While the "market for star AI engineers is extremely hot, the truly exceptional offers are only coming from one company: Meta," says John Herrman. Other "firms are fighting to retain their AI talent, of course, but none are matching Mark Zuckerberg’s nine-figure bids." Meta is a "strange reputational outlier: a company with high ambitions and near-infinite resources that apparently needs to outbid its competition by multiples." And "most of all, its models aren't competitive."

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'Free cash to poor families isn't helping the kids'

Naomi Schaefer Riley at The Boston Globe

Does "having more money make it easier to raise children? Intuitively, the answer would seem to be yes," says Naomi Schaefer Riley. But a "study found that unconditional cash transfers of $333 to low-income mothers beginning shortly after their child's birth did not affect the child's development by age 4," and "this data comports with other evidence on the effect of money on parenting." Having "more money doesn't reduce the stress of parenting, because parenting is inherently stressful."

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'Miami gives the GOP a chance to prove conservatism protects the American Dream'

Mary Anna Mancuso at the Miami Herald

Miami residents are facing the "erosion of property rights, individual liberty and the American dream itself," says Mary Anna Mancuso. Trump "voters are watching their property investments — their slice of the American dream — slip away." Politicians "who are serious about representing the working class should be alarmed. I'm looking at you, GOP." If the "GOP wants to remain the working-class party, it must deliver on issues voters care about — affordability and opportunity."

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Employees have been taking more "quiet vacations" over the past year. And this trend, when someone goes on a trip but concurrently presents the illusion of being online and working, is likely an indicator of a larger problem with workplace culture in which employees are afraid of slacking off or being seen as lazy.

What's the data?

Approximately 41% of employees have taken a quiet vacation in 2025, according to a survey conducted by Resume Builder. Of those who have quiet vacationed, "3% have taken just one quiet vacation, 48% two to three and 28% four to five." Also, "about 11% have taken six to seven secret vacation days and 4% have taken 10 days or more."

The trend began last summer, with many taking summer vacations on the sly. "Employees utilize various methods like scheduling emails in advance or setting auto-responders to create the illusion of being present while they're actually on vacation," Tawny Lott Rodriguez, the director of human resources at the private school Rowland Hall in Salt Lake City, said to U.S. News & World Report. The concept has similarities to the "quiet quitting" trend, where employees check out of their jobs but refuse to quit.

Quiet vacationing arose because the "boundaries between work and personal time have blurred with the rise of remote work, which has given more people the flexibility to do their jobs from far-flung locales," said The Wall Street Journal. However, the approach is "often counterproductive," as "you're neither getting a truly restorative break from work, nor being that productive." There is also, of course, the risk of getting caught.

Why are people quiet vacationing?

The rise of quiet vacationing is a canary in the coal mine for corporate work culture. "This isn't just people being sneaky," said Marais Bester, a senior consultant at SHL, to Forbes. It's instead an indication that "many don't feel safe or supported enough to take a proper break." So they find "workarounds, jiggling their mouse to stay 'active,' turning video off on calls, answering just enough emails to look busy." The problem is the missed-deadline potential and boundless "tasks to complete upon return" along with "facing repercussions if discovered," said U.S. News & World Report. These are ways that "taking a quiet vacation can backfire."

Many employees also have limited amounts of paid time off, so they are reluctant to use it. The blurred lines between leisure time and work time have put pressure on employees in general. "All of this comes from a fear of looking like they're slacking off," said Fortune.

Employers should be more intentional about setting boundaries between work and free time. If employers want people to "show up fully engaged, creative and resilient," they need to stop "rewarding burnout" and start "valuing recovery," said Bester. "Rested people do better work. It really is that simple."

What happened

E.J. Antoni, the conservative economist President Donald Trump named Monday as his pick to lead the nonpartisan Bureau of Labor Statistics, suggested scrapping the BLS's closely watched monthly jobs report in an Aug. 4 interview with Fox News Digital published Tuesday.

Who said what

Until its "fundamentally flawed" data collection methodologies are "corrected, the BLS should suspend issuing the monthly job reports but keep publishing the more accurate, though less timely, quarterly data," Antoni told Fox News Digital. Halting the monthly report would deprive "businesses and policymakers" of the "data they've used for decades to gauge the state of the labor market and broader economy," The Washington Post said.

Many economists "share, to some degree, Antoni's concerns" about the government's jobs data, due largely to "trends such as declining response rates to its surveys," The Associated Press said. But economists "from across the political spectrum" said an inexperienced "conservative ideologue" was the wrong person to tackle the issue. Antoni has "nothing in his writing or his résumé to suggest that he's qualified for the position, besides that he is always manipulating the data to favor Trump in some way," said Brian Albrecht, the chief economist at the International Center for Law and Economics.

What next?

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt Tuesday called Antoni an "economic expert" who had earned Trump's trust, but said she believed "the plan" and "the hope" was for the BLS to continue releasing the monthly jobs numbers.

'This billion-dollar sports behemoth should not be a nonprofit'

Scott Hodge at The Washington Post

Despite its "nonprofit status, the National Collegiate Athletic Association is big business," says Scott Hodge. The NCAA is "lobbying Congress for antitrust and labor protections," but "any deal should require the NCAA to shed its tax-exempt status and reincorporate as the for-profit sports and entertainment behemoth it has become." It's "time for the NCAA to go pro." In "form and function, these organizations are no different than the major professional sports leagues."

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'Wildfires are inevitable, but we can learn to control them'

Zhimin Wu at Al Jazeera

There is "no doubt that the costs of wildfires for people and the planet are immense," says Zhimin Wu. But "fires have been part of the Earth's ecosystem for hundreds of millions of years." Conducting "controlled fires — often during cooler months — is a vital way for people to prevent destructive wildfires." Some "fires are simply inevitable, however, and having better monitoring mechanisms to detect fires and an appropriate fire extinguishing capacity at the ready is necessary."

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'Trump wants a bureau of MAGA statistics'

Dominic Pino at the National Review

President Donald Trump was "shooting the messenger of bad economic news based on bias against Republicans that does not exist," says Dominic Pino. Revisions "to the jobs numbers" have "gone both ways under presidents of both parties and demonstrate exactly the pattern one would expect." If it were "really true that Trump wanted to modernize and improve the BLS, he would have nominated someone with deep experience in economic data collection." Trump "wants a lackey instead."

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'The CDC shooting is a dark sign for science and America'

Krutika Kuppalli at Time

The CDC shooting "targeted institutions whose mission is to prevent illness, save lives, and advance knowledge," says Krutika Kuppalli. It "should shake every one of us that such places were attacked at all." During the "Covid-19 pandemic, the politicization of science reached unprecedented levels — permeating the highest echelons of government." Framing a "respect or disdain for science as a political view doesn't just undermine scientists and public health leaders; it sows fear and doubt."

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What happened

President Trump doubled down on his use of tariffs as an economic and foreign policy tool this week, even as a slew of new data indicated that his global trade war is taking a toll on U.S. businesses and households. A day after Trump signed an executive order last week imposing import taxes of up to 41% on dozens of trade partners, the Bureau of Labor Statistics issued a sobering jobs report that showed the country added 73,000 jobs in July, far short of the 104,000 economists expected. Initial jobs estimates for May and June were also revised sharply downward, leaving total hiring for the second quarter at 106,000—the worst non-pandemic quarter for job growth since 2010. Trump responded by firing BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer, claiming without evidence that the career bureaucrat had "manipulated" the numbers for "political purposes."

The new tariffs, set to take effect Aug. 7, hiked import duties to their highest levels in more than a century. Trump kept a baseline rate of 10% on countries where the U.S. has a trade surplus, but set higher numbers for the European Union (15%) and at least 67 other countries. Rates were hiked to 35% for Canada, 39% for Switzerland, and about 20% for Taiwan, the Philippines, and Vietnam. After imposing 25% tariffs on India, Trump announced this week that he'd add an extra 25% on Aug. 27, as punishment for the country's purchases of Russian oil. "They don't care how many people in Ukraine are being killed by the Russian war machine," he said. Trump also previewed tariffs on semiconductors and pharmaceuticals; the latter, he said, would eventually "go to 250%."

As job growth lagged, the Commerce Department released figures showing inflation heating up. Consumer prices were 2.6% higher in June than a year earlier, a steeper climb than economists anticipated. Companies including Adidas, Procter & Gamble, and AutoZone said they'd raise prices to offset tariff costs. Ford CEO Jim Farley said the automaker lost $36 million in the second quarter, partly because of tariffs, compared with a $1.8 billion profit a year earlier. He said import taxes on parts and materials would cost Ford $2 billion this year.

What the editorials said

"The triumphalism is palpable in MAGA land" over Trump's new trade regime, said The Wall Street Journal. But they should "hold the euphoria." The data shows employers "have all but stopped new hiring," and without the health-care sector, which is shielded from economic headwinds, we'd have lost 100,000 jobs. And while Trump hypes the "rebirth of U.S. manufacturing," the sector has lost jobs for three straight months. Exactly how tariffs have affected the jobs market isn't clear; the same can be said for the impact of Trump's crackdown on migrant workers. But the whipsawing uncertainty generated by both "has surely affected business hiring and investment."

These are "tangible indicators" that the economy is responding to Trump's policies "as so many have warned," said the San Antonio Express-News. Yet when confronted with evidence that his trade wars are not a work of "expert-defying genius," Trump "fired the messenger," making the laughable claim that McEntarfer—a respected, veteran public servant—is out to undermine him. The reality is that BLS numbers, produced by hundreds of nonpartisan staffers, are virtually impossible to fudge. But they've become "a target in an intensifying assault on the truth."

What the columnists said

The "folly" of Trump's trade war is "now undeniable," said Robert Burgess in Bloomberg. The second-quarter job figures are a steep drop from the 611,000 jobs created from January to April, drawing "a clear line" to Trump's April 2 tariff rollout. And consumer spending fell in the first half of 2025, according to federal data. If all this "sounds like stagflation"—stagnating growth paired with rising prices and elevated unemployment—"you'd be correct." Economists surveyed by Bloomberg now expect GDP to expand only 1.5% this year, down from 2.8% in 2024.

The auto market illustrates how little Trump's team "actually understands what it's doing," said Dace Potas in USA Today. It claims tariffs will boost U.S. manufacturing, but domestic carmakers are being whacked with tariffs of 25% on imported parts and 50% on imported aluminum and steel. Meanwhile, Japan-made cars face only a 15% import duty. Japanese companies such as Toyota had announced plans to expand U.S. manufacturing, but it now seems "continuing production in Japan will be better."

"We're seeing only the tip of a spear that's pointed right at our wallets," said Jared Bernstein in MSNBC.com. Until now, two "buffers" have dulled the effects of tariffs. Importers stocked up on inventory ahead of tariffs, and sellers swallowed costs to avoid "antagonizing inflation-weary consumers." But firms are now raising prices, and for working Americans "there's a lot of pain to come." This year the average household will take a $2,400 hit from tariffs, according to Yale researchers.

Trump's trade war "is a case study of incoherence," said Fred Kaplan in Slate. He's set "inviolable" deadlines only to break them and has touted supposed deals whose benefits are largely illusory. And much of his agenda is driven by "personal spite" and "shameless extortion." Take his threat of 50% tariffs on Brazil unless it drops criminal charges against the country's former President Jair Bolsonaro, a MAGA ally. Countries are submitting to Trump "in the short run." But they're plotting "paths of revenge and resistance": boycotts of U.S. goods, supply chains that cut us out, increased reliance on suppliers such as China. "Trump is reshaping the world, but not in the way that he imagines."

What next?

As Trump attempts to "unilaterally remake global trade," lawsuits are moving through the courts that "could grind his tariff regime to a halt," said Grayson Logue in The Dispatch. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit last week heard oral arguments in a case challenging Trump's legal standing to impose tariffs, a power the Constitution grants to Congress. Brought by five small businesses and a dozen Democratic-led states, the suit argues that Trump exceeded his constitutional power in issuing tariffs under a 1977 act that empowers the president to use economic sanctions "to deal with foreign threats and emergencies." Many of the panel's 11 judges "appeared skeptical" of Trump's argument, said Elisabeth Buchwald in CNN.com. Several questioned the administration's claim that trade deficits constitute an emergency—we've "had trade deficits for decades," noted one judge. The 1977 act "doesn't even mention" tariffs, noted another. It may take weeks "or even months" for a verdict. "After that, it could still be challenged before the Supreme Court."

Jobseekers who manage to land interviews are increasingly facing a new hurdle: being interviewed not by an HR manager but a robot.

You might worry that artificial intelligence is "coming for your job", but it might also be "coming for your job interviewer", said The New York Times.

'Paradoxically humanising'

Although some aspects of job searches, such as screening CVs and scheduling meetings, have become "increasingly automated over time", the interview had "long seemed to be the part of the process that most needed a human touch", said The New York Times. But now AI is "encroaching upon even that domain".

AI interviewers can be a "godsend" for middle managers, said Fortune. The tech can help save time in first-round calls, allowing human interviewers more time to have "more meaningful conversations" with applicants in the next round.

Like it or not, this is a "new reality" that jobseekers "will have to put up with no matter what", said Futurism, because the industry sees it as a "way to free up time for overworked hiring managers", particularly for "high-volume hiring" in areas such as customer service.

This might seem like a dehumanising development, but supporters insist that the opposite is true. "It's really paradoxical" but "in a lot of ways", this offers a "much more humanising experience", Arsham Ghahramani, co-founder of Ribbon, a company that produced an AI interviewer, told The New York Times. AI can screen the avalanche of applications and then "ask questions that are really tailored to you".

'Added indignity'

Yet many jobseekers view AI interviewers as "another hurdle in the intense hunt" for work, said Fortune. Some told the outlet that they're "confused, intrigued, or straight-up dejected" when "robotic, faceless bots" join interview calls. This is an "added indignity" and a "red flag for company culture", they said.

Many said they're "swearing off" interviews conducted in this way, because AI interviewers make them feel so "unappreciated" they'd prefer to miss potential job opportunities, and they reason that the company's culture "can't be great" if human bosses won't interview them.

However, "not all AI interviewers are created equal", said Fortune: there are "monotonous, robotic-voiced bots with pictures of strange feminised avatars", but some produce a "faceless bot" with a "more natural-sounding voice". And, unlike humans, AI interviewers can focus on "relevant signals" while "ignoring irrelevant signals" including those "linked to social class, demographic status, and any information likely to decrease fairness", said Forbes.

Google has set out its next steps in developing artificial intelligence which could eventually be able to complete real-world tasks at the same level as humans.

The tech giant's DeepMind AI division is working towards artificial general intelligence (AGI), a theoretical level of AI that can carry out tasks autonomously. To do this, DeepMind is using a new "world model", Genie 3, a simulated environment that can help train AI agents like robots with realistic replicas of situations and environments.

The company said it expected Genie 3 to play a "critical role as we push toward AGI" and the prospect of AI taking on more real-world jobs. AGI is often "viewed through the prism of potentially eliminating white-collar jobs", said The Guardian, and changing the workforce as we know it.

How far away is AGI?

The AI market is increasingly competitive, with tech companies in a race to achieve AGI. OpenAI and Meta are among the biggest companies openly pushing the development of AGI, the latter assembling a taskforce for what it is calling "personal superintelligence", which CEO Mark Zuckerberg said was "now in sight".

When AGI will actually be achieved is unclear, however. Google has suggested it could arrive at the start of the 2030s, while other experts predict it will be the second half of this century.

The differing predictions are because there is "no universally accepted definition of AGI", and tech firms are using "different benchmarks to measure whether they’ve achieved their own definition of AGI", said BuiltIn.

There is agreement, though, that it will eventually happen and have a significant impact on jobs, with companies like Amazon already suggesting it will cut its workforce as AI provides more and more "efficiency gains".

What kind of jobs are most at risk?

A report from Microsoft shed some light on the kind of jobs that may disappear as AGI develops, suggesting that "knowledge work" – jobs in "computer and mathematical, and office and administrative support" – will be the main ones under threat. It also said that sales work where the main part of the role is "providing and communicating information" could be replaced by AI.

The report listed 40 roles that are most likely to be affected by AI, with five including interpreters and translators, historians, passenger attendants, sales representatives, and writers and authors. Jobs least at risk were also outlined, which include largely manual occupations such as dredge operators, bridge and lock tenders, water treatment plant and system operators, and foundry mould and coremakers.

The rise of AI will also create other jobs to assist it, like engineers who manage the AI and the data it uses to function.

Is it already happening?

Some data suggests that AI has already been responsible for job losses, mostly in the technology industry. According to a report by US outplacement company Challenger, Gray & Christmas, since 2023 there have been 27,000 job cuts in the US directly linked to AI.

But other data suggests that AI has yet to begin taking over "entry-level jobs in knowledge-intensive industries", said The Economist. Unemployment among US graduates who take these kinds of jobs remains low, while the "share of employment in white-collar work has risen very slightly", despite these being the kind of jobs touted to be taken over by AI.

Relatively stable low unemployment and steady wage growth data also suggest AI is yet to seriously bite in the jobs market. This could be because companies are yet to adopt AI for "serious work", and if they do use AI, they do not necessarily cut jobs, instead "AI may simply help a worker do their job faster, rather than making them redundant."

What happened

The White House Sunday defended President Donald Trump from criticism over his decision Friday to fire Bureau of Labor Statistics chief Erika McEntarfer following a jobs report that showed lower-than-expected hiring in July. But Trump's economic advisers repeatedly declined to offer evidence to support his claim that the numbers were "rigged" to make him look bad.

Who said what

Trump sacked McEntarfer, a veteran labor economist confirmed by the Senate 86-8 last year, after the BLS reported job gains of only 73,000 last month and revised the May and June numbers downward by 258,000 jobs. Employment numbers are often revised as more data comes in, and these changes, "while large, were not unheard of," The Washington Post said. But they "hit at an especially sensitive point" for Trump, suggesting his tariffs and other policies have "started to seriously slow the economy."

White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett told NBC's "Meet the Press" that Trump was "absolutely not" shooting the messenger by firing McEntarfer but "wants his own people there, so that when we see the jobs numbers, they are more transparent and more reliable." Hassett told "Fox News Sunday" there were "partisan patterns" in the jobless data and "we need to understand why" the "BLS numbers" are so anemic.

This is "definitely a case of shooting the messenger," Dean Smith, the chief strategist at FolioBeyond, said to Reuters, and "it's going to undermine confidence in the data going forward." There is "no way for a commissioner to rig the jobs numbers," William Beach, a former BLS commissioner appointed by Trump in 2017, told CNN's "State of the Union." It's a "preposterous charge," former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers said on ABC's "This Week." And firing an agency head over numbers you don't like is "way beyond anything that Richard Nixon ever did."

What next?

Trump Sunday night called McEntarfer's report a "scam" filled with "ridiculous" numbers and said he would announce her replacement "over the next three, four days."

The government has announced plans for a "nationwide blitz" on those working illegally in the UK.

With the number of people arriving in small boats from France up by more than 50% on the same period last year, the issue is "seen by ministers as an area of political vulnerability, one being exploited by Reform UK and the Conservatives", said The Guardian.

How many people are we talking about?

Accurately calculating the number of people living and working illegally in the UK is, not surprisingly, challenging.

The Home Office does not publish official estimates but residual modelling by the Pew Research Center puts the number of people living in the UK illegally between 800,000 and 1.2 million. That is "one in 100 of the population", Conservative peer Baroness McIntosh told a migration debate in the House of Lords last year – "more than in any other European country".

In the last year, 7,130 people were arrested on suspicion of working illegally, according to the Home Office, an increase of 50% on the previous year.

Based on these figures, the best guess is that the UK's illicit workforce numbers in the hundreds of thousands at any one time.

How do they get work?

"On the face of it, Britain's rules appear as strict as those on the continent," said The Times. Migrants awaiting asylum cannot work for a year and even then only in a few specific sectors experiencing staffing shortages. All employers have to check their worker's documents and can be fined up to £60,000 if found to have employed someone illegally.

But Britain also has a much larger informal labour market than many other European countries. Rights to work checks only apply to employees, not for the self-employed or agency workers in the gig economy, which has experienced rapid growth in recent years.

There are reports that asylum seekers "can rent legitimate delivery-driver accounts within hours of arriving in the country – skipping employment legality checks", said Sky News. Such loopholes create an "incentive for those wanting to risk their lives coming to the UK illegally".

Sectors that rely on subcontracting and agency workers, like construction, care work and hospitality, are also believed to employ a large number of illegal workers.

What's being done?

The Home Office has said its crackdown will be a "major operation", based around "strategic, intel-driven" enforcement teams and focused on the gig economy, particularly on delivery riders.

At the same time, Uber Eats, Deliveroo and Just Eat have said they will increase the use of facial verification checks for riders after the shadow home secretary, Chris Philp, posted a widely shared video of delivery bikes packed together outside an asylum hotel near Heathrow.

The government could also adopt a stricter enforcement approach as seen on the continent. While raids on employers in the UK are mainly done in response to tip-offs, in France, for example, authorities conduct random inspections and stop people on the street or at train stations to request their papers.

Labour is also exploring the idea of introducing digital ID cards in the UK as a means of cracking down on illegal immigration. Britain and Ireland are the only European countries without an ID card system, and "critics argue" that that "has made it attractive to migrants as it is easier to live and work illegally", said The Times.

A study has found that it takes between 100 and 200 applications to receive a job offer these days. So why would anyone apply for a role, get through the interviews, land the post, but then… never turn up?

The trend, known as "career catfishing", is a curious new office shift that sheds light on how younger people feel about the treatment they go through during the recruitment process.

Professional ghosting

Catfishing, where someone pretends to be someone else online, is a "well-known" practice in the dating world, said Forbes, and one sometimes used by financial con artists, too.

Now, the "same concept" has "quietly slipped" into the jobs market, said RTE, and it's pretty simple: "you apply for a job, you land a job, accept the offer" and then disappear before your first day.

A survey found that 34% of Gen Z jobseekers have indulged in this form of professional ghosting, but they're not the only ones: 24% of millennials, 11% of Gen X and 7% of boomers have also done it.

"What’s happening with Gen Z and their approach to work is pure chaos", Yakov Filippenko, CEO and founder of recruitment website Intch told Personnel Today. And because "work itself" has "turned into a meme", Gen Z "treats it that way".

The prominence of Gen Z among career catfishing statistics may offer a "negative view" of younger jobseekers, making people think they "lack professionalism" and "dismiss conventional employment norms", said RTE. But they also offer a "snapshot" of the "frustration" young people face in finding jobs.

Long and dispiriting 

Recruitment has become a "labyrinthine, opaque and time-consuming" process, said The Guardian. In the course of a "long and dispiriting" recruitment format, applicants may have "got a better offer" or "simply changed their minds".

They don't feel they "owe prospective employers anything" because they feel they've been "treated very badly by them".

The complexity of finding a job is partly because a significant number of positions being advertised don't exist – they're "ghost jobs", or openings posted by companies to make it appear they're recruiting and "therefore growing". Or they're sometimes posted to "keep their present employees on their toes".

In a mirror of career catfishing by job applicants, there's a swing known as "professional ghosting", when companies put hopefuls through "multiple interviews", sometimes even making job offers, before "abruptly ending all communication".

If these trends collide, it sounds like the future might see "ghost employees for ghost jobs".

Researchers have claimed that Gen Z drink less, don't have much sex but are particularly interested in astrology. Now these teens and 20-somethings face a new accusation – that they don't know how to behave in the workplace.

Bosses in San Francisco are hiring etiquette coaches to teach young workers about everything from eye contact to personal hygiene.

Sweaty and skimpy

Employers complain that Gen Z workers "want to be promoted after only a few months, treat the office like their bedroom, show up in sweats or skimpy office-siren fits, FaceTime friends from their desks, and ghost their managers", said The San Francisco Standard.

Some Gen Z workers leave food packaging on staff room tables, expecting cleaners to throw them away, and don't shower or change their clothes very often, said one boss. Other young staff didn't know how to ask their manager questions politely or how to make eye contact.

Often, the problems begin before the worker is even hired. In a survey of 1,000 employers last year, one in eight said a Gen Z candidate had brought their mum or dad to a job interview. And a study by Resume Builder last year found companies complaining that Gen Z candidates at interviews didn't dress appropriately (58%), made unreasonable salary demands (42%), and didn’t seem very interested or engaged (33%).

Once they're hired, the researchers found that Gen Z workers behave in an entitled way (60%) and are "too difficult to manage" (26%).

Soft skills

Some firms in San Francisco have come up with a novel solution to the Gen Z problem: appointing etiquette experts to coach young employees in basic workplace manners.

One etiquette coach, Rosalinda Randall, said enquiries have risen by 50% over the last two months. Bosses "didn't want to deal with it, so they hired me", she said. Randall has given workshops on everything from how to make eye contact to where to stick your name tag and "how to ask for – not demand, things from your boss".

Another coach, Melissa Franks, has been "flooded" with requests for help, particularly from employers who feel like they're being "challenged by their young colleagues". She said she encouraged bosses to think of such "pushback" as "youthful curiosity" rather than "insubordination".

Jenny Simmons, global head of onboarding and employee learning at Salesforce, has "revamped the company's processes for new workers to beef up the training of soft skills". There are now classes on "presentation, emotional intelligence and Slack etiquette".

But all this is just a "new thing" for companies to "waste money on", said Gizmodo. It's hard to believe that Gen Z is "any better or any worse than any other generation of American worker".

As for Gen Z workers themselves, they "see things differently" to their bosses, said The San Francisco Standard. From their perspective, millennial and Gen X managers have "no work-life balance" and don't offer it to their staff. They're "still waiting for that work-life balance they promised us", said one on X.

The real-world effects that AI will have on the white-collar workforce are starting to come into focus, said Chip Cutter and Lauren Weber in The Wall Street Journal. Last week, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy jolted employees with a note that AI "will eliminate the need for certain jobs" in the next few years. And he wasn't talking about the warehouse workers or drivers typically seen as the most susceptible to automation. "Revenue per employee" is being carefully scrutinized as bosses reconsider what computers can do faster and more cheaply than humans. Procter & Gamble said this month that it was eliminating 7,000 corporate jobs "to create broader and smaller teams," while Estée Lauder and Match Group have recently "jettisoned around 20% of their managers." All told, "about 1 in 5 S&P 500 companies have fewer employees today in both offices and the field than a decade ago."

This is the tip of the iceberg, said Kevin Roose in The New York Times. Firms are making "rapid progress toward automating entry-level work," to the point where one tech executive said his company had completely stopped hiring any engineers below a mid-level position "because lower-level tasks could now be done by AI." It's not long before these techniques will be used to automate work in dozens of other occupations too. The evidence is showing up first in the dried-up job market for new college grads, said Claire Ballentine in Bloomberg Businessweek. "The unemployment rate for degree holders ages 22 to 27 hit 5.8% this spring," the highest level in about four years. The struggle is especially pronounced for recent computer engineering majors, where the unemployment rate is now 7.5%. But the hiring pullback goes beyond tech. In fact, it's harder "to land an entry-level role at one of the big banks than it is to get into Harvard University."

"Is it a bad thing if graduates lose their privileges?" asked The Economist. Ethically, perhaps not. But historically, it's an ominous sign when the highly educated are left idling. The "over-production" of disaffected graduates has signaled social upheaval all the way back to the 19th century. Both in the U.S. and in Europe, what had been safe fields like banking and the law need fewer new recruits. If kids need a job, the skies are hiring, said Leslie Josephs in CNBC.com. The aviation industry is desperate for young workers. "The average age of a certified aircraft mechanic in the U.S. is 54, and 40% of them are over 60." It's going to leave the U.S. aircraft industry short 25,000 technicians by 2028. Median pay for an aircraft technician was $79,140 a year in 2024, and it's rising quickly "with skilled workers in short supply." And AI hasn't learned how to handle a drill—yet.

'"Alligator Alcatraz" is a new low for Florida — and fearmongering at its worst'

Miami Herald editorial board

As a "scare tactic, construction of 'Alligator Alcatraz'" as an Everglades detention center "will probably work," says the Miami Herald editorial board. The "nickname is clearly a marketing ploy," as Alcatraz "conjures up images of notorious criminals and a place that's impossible to escape." But this has "real world consequences: It's inhumane to ship people" to a "tent city nowhere near services in the sweltering summer." Floridians have "every reason to be appalled and horrified."

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'The US labor force isn't ready for a manufacturing boom'

Erin Gajdalo at Newsweek

Labor is the "primary reason manufacturers left the U.S., and it's also a big barrier to their return," says Erin Gajdalo. American factories "will have to be much smarter if manufacturers hope to produce goods at prices palatable to American consumers and businesses." Newcomers "will have to double their efforts to offset a sharp rise in labor costs." If "our goal is to reshore manufacturing, we need a vastly more technically proficient workforce."

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'Mamdani wins NYC mayoral primary as Cuomo concedes. Will Democrats listen now?'

Sara Pequeño at USA Today

People are "excited about the prospect of a true progressive running New York City — and it seems there's a lot the Democratic Party could learn from that," says Sara Pequeño. But instead of "taking notes on what policies of Mamdani's seem the most popular, establishment Democrats seem to be terrified." This "fear is because of how the right will respond to someone with Mamdani's politics." Democrats "must not understand that they're going to be called socialists regardless."

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'This heat wave is just a taste of what's to come'

Mark Gongloff at Bloomberg

Weather "isn't climate, and a heat wave isn't proof of human-induced global warming any more than a snowball disproves it," says Mark Gongloff. But "nothing quite focuses the mind on the causes and effects of a hotter planet than Mother Nature covering half of the United States with a giant pot lid." An "increasingly chaotic climate makes heat waves more likely and intense." Temperatures that "stay so high for so long impose heavy costs on human health and prosperity."

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It used to be called a "second job." Now? It's called a "side hustle." And Americans nervous about paying the bills are increasingly turning to side hustles in the face of economic uncertainty.

Americans are "side hustling like we're in a recession," said The Wall Street Journal. Research shows that nearly four in 10 Gen Z and millennial workers hold down multiple jobs, suggesting that "holding one job at a time is on the way to becoming antiquated" for a generational cohort that has been "scarred by two recessions." They are working harder than ever, "padding their finances while they can" ahead of what they expect will be an economic downturn. Such uncertainty means it is "time to diversify," said Marie Incontrera, who runs a small public relations agency and a cleaning business.

Why are workers nervous?

A "distressing number" of American workers are "worried about their jobs," said USA Today. In May, just 44% of workers had a "positive outlook" for their companies over the next six months, the "lowest level recorded" in the survey's history, according to researchers. Workers say they are carrying heavier loads thanks to layoffs, which is "creating anxiety about when the next round will come or leaving teams understaffed and overworked," said Daniel Zhao, the lead economist for Glassdoor's online work community.

Nearly two-thirds of workers report they "plan to get a second job or start a side hustle," said HR Dive. Just 19% of workers have enough cash on hand to pay a month's worth of expenses, according to a report from the American Staffing Association. And 95% say "wages haven't kept up with the rising cost of living." A side hustle "means having enough money to make ends meet," said Richard Wahlquist, ASA's CEO.

What do employers think?

Employers are finding they "need help managing workers who are taking second jobs," said Inc. Workers are "worried about the economy, unsure about their career future and searching for employers they can trust," according to a study by the software company Remote. That means companies might want to think about how to "address the sources of that unhappiness to avoid losing employees" who are stretching themselves thin with outside work.

Why not just call it a 'second job?'

"Side hustle" isn't the only term for the folks "juggling more than one job," said The New York Times. There is also "polyworking." The new word offers an "upbeat spin" on the trend. But "polyworking" can also gloss over the "hardship and economic need" that prompts workers to "cobble together a variety of subpar jobs," said Erin Hatton, a sociology professor at State University of New York at Buffalo.

What next?

Side hustling has usually been seen as a "countercyclical economic indicator," said Marketplace. In the past, when workers "patched together part-time work to make ends meet" it was a sign that economic growth had slowed. The rise of gig apps like Uber and Taskrabbit has made the relationship between the economy and second jobs "a bit murkier." With economic uncertainty rising, though, it "makes sense that some people are exploring backup options."

The arrival of summer always brings an influx of freshly minted college graduates into the job market. This year is different: Artificial intelligence is unsettling the career paths of young grads looking for their first professional work.

AI could "upend entry-level work" for new college grads by automating jobs "previously performed by low-level employees" like legal assistants or early career computer programmers, said ABC News. Some of those jobs will simply disappear, while others will change in significant ways. But it does suggest the "career ladder is being broken," said University of Pennsylvania professor Lynn Wu. It's already a rough time for young professionals: The jobless rate for recent grads is 5.8%, the highest since 2021.

How bad is it for college grads?

Not good. It's not just the unemployment rate, but also the "underemployment" rate — 41.2% of new grads are working jobs that don't require their degrees, said NBC News. That's up nearly a full percentage point from a year ago. Internship postings are down 11% from last year. The job market for young professionals is "pretty frozen," said Allison Shrivastava, an economist at Indeed Hiring Lab. Some of that is due to President Donald Trump's trade wars. Businesses and workers are "both kind of deer-in-headlights, not sure what to do."

And it may get worse. AI could "wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs" in the next few years, said Axios. The warning of a "white-collar bloodbath" came from Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, "one of the world's most powerful creators of artificial intelligence." Most Americans are "unaware that this is about to happen," said Amodei. Trump adviser Steve Bannon said the issue will be a major issue in the 2028 presidential election. Entry-level jobs are "going to be eviscerated," he said.

What happened to 'learn to code?'

Until recently, that was the conventional advice to young people wanting to ensure their long-term viability in the marketplace. No more. AI is "prompting technology companies to hire fewer recent college graduates," said USA Today. Overall, tech companies are "hiring about half the software developers they used to" because AI is "handling basic software development tasks." Microsoft, which just underwent a round of layoffs, says 30% of its code is written by artificial intelligence.

Is there any reason for optimism?

Optimists say the job market will be reshaped but not destroyed, per CNBC. When an industrial revolution comes along, there are "more jobs created than lost," said Carol Stubbings, an executive with PwC professional services firm. The types of jobs and skills needed to do them will change, however, which means "workers need to be prepared to take them."

That may not help recent grads. The problem for companies is that replacing entry-level workers with AI could lead them to "underinvest in job training, mentorship and other programs" that help new professionals, said Kevin Roose at The New York Times. Businesses will be hurt when the workers they do hire are "unprepared for more senior roles later on."

A "white-collar bloodbath" could be imminent, said Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen in Axios.com. Dario Amodei, "one of the world's most powerful creators of artificial intelligence," warned last week that this rapidly advancing technology could wipe out half of all entry-level jobs and send unemployment soaring to 20% within five years. Most workers and lawmakers "just don't believe it" and aren't preparing for the coming transformation of workplaces, said the CEO of the AI firm Anthropic. But as AI rapidly approaches "superhuman intelligence," Amodei believes employers will start replacing tens of millions of workers in "as little as a couple of years." In software engineering, it's already begun, said Kevin Roose in The New York Times. Amodei recently unveiled a tireless AI coding program that can replace engineers earning six figures. Mark Zuckerberg plans to replace Meta's mid-level coders with AI, and LinkedIn and other firms have introduced "AI-first" policies, requiring managers to determine whether AI can perform a task before hiring a human. "Among people who pay close attention to what's happening in AI, alarms are starting to go off."

So far, at least, there's little evidence of an "AI jobs-pocalypse," said The Economist. Some firms that have tried to outsource work to AI have discovered the tech doesn't yet meet their needs, forcing them to slow their plans or hire back some human workers. Even if AI does disrupt the job market, "we've been here before," said Rich Lowry in National Review. In the late 20th century, personal computers drove down demand for typists, secretaries, and clerks, and factory automation threw manual laborers out of work. In a free market system, workers have to adapt to change, and once-comfortable jobs such as programming, consulting, and paralegals "shouldn't be immune from the effects of automation any more than factory work."

Still, change this dizzying requires some oversight, said Steven Levy in Wired. Not only does AI development threaten the job market, developers warn that it could become so superintelligent it will escape human control and make "catastrophic" decisions about our fate. Some AI systems have already tried to deceive their creators. But regulation of AI has "fallen out of favor" in the second Trump administration, and most tech leaders are urging us not to let China get ahead on AI. The U.S. appears to be racing "full-speed toward a future that it can't contain."

In another blow to federal programming, the Department of Labor has decided to temporarily shut down hundreds of Job Corps centers serving teens and young adults nationwide. An alternative route for teens in need of help, and in many cases, a home, the program has been a lifesaver for young people for decades. The decision to shut program centers down has drawn criticism from both sides of the political divide.

What is the Job Corps?

Job Corps is the "largest nationwide residential career training program" in the United States and has been in operation for over 50 years, the U.S. Department of Labor said. Since 1964, the program has trained and educated more than two million individuals, helping eligible young people aged 16 through 24 complete high school, prepare them for careers and assist them in gaining employment. Through the program, students are provided room and board, while they "learn skills in specific training areas for up to three years." Job Corps also provides transitional support, such as "help finding employment, housing, child care and transportation." Graduates either "enter the workforce or an apprenticeship, go on to higher education or join the military."

Why is it being shut down?

The Department of Labor announced it will begin a "phased pause in operations" at contractor-operated Job Corps centers nationwide, which will be completed by June 30. The department promised to collaborate with state and local workforce partners to "assist current students in advancing their training and connecting them with education and employment opportunities." The department's decision to shut down the Job Corps centers "aligns with the president's FY 2026 budget proposal" and reflects the "administration's commitment to ensure federal workforce investments deliver meaningful results for both students and taxpayers."

Job Corps was created to "help young adults build a pathway to a better life through education, training and community," said Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer. However, a "startling number of serious incident reports" and an "in-depth fiscal analysis reveal the program is no longer achieving the intended outcomes that students deserve." The press release cited "significant financial challenges" as the reason for the shutdown, with an alleged $140 million deficit in 2024 and a projected deficit of $213 million for the 2025 program year.

Why is the shutdown drawing pushback?

One of the main concerns for critics of the shutdown is the risk of displacement for many students. Over 4,500 Job Corps students were homeless before joining the program and "potentially face a perilous future," said the Washington, D.C.-based National Job Corps Association in a news release. That number "amounts to 20% of current students but is as high as 50% at some campuses." The association published its "transparency report context" to counter the government's report, which it described as an "unsound analysis of the program based on incorrect and misleading information." This decision, "based on a deeply flawed report," will "needlessly endanger the futures and the lives of thousands and potentially millions more young Americans," said Donna Hay, the president and CEO of the National Job Corps Association.

The Department of Labor's decision has "already gotten pushback from both sides of the aisle on Capitol Hill," said The Hill. The program has become "important pillars of support for some of our most disadvantaged young adults," said Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Susan Collins (R-Maine) in a statement. At an Appropriations hearing, she urged Secretary Chavez-DeRemer to "resume enrollment at Maine's two Job Corps centers and to reverse the department's proposed elimination of the Job Corps program."

Sen. Tammy Baldwin (Wisc.), the top Democrat on the Appropriations subcommittee that oversees annual Department of Labor funding, also said the decision was in the "wrong direction, exacerbating our state's workforce shortage, locking students out of good-paying jobs," while hurting the economy and "businesses who rely on skilled workers to compete and grow." Congress appropriated funding for Job Corps, and the Trump administration "can't just decide to not spend it because they want to make room for tax cuts for billionaires."

'The radical development of an entirely new painkiller'

Rivka Galchen at The New Yorker

Specific "pain can correlate with the underlying causes of it — and different causes point to different approaches to relief," says Rivka Galchen. But "we have tended to get in trouble when we mismatch pains and painkillers." The "risks of addiction and overdose make prescribing opioids not unlike sending someone home with a gun." Opioids are "miserable in other ways: they leave users sleepy, confused, and constipated. But what else is there to give?"

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'Trump's "Golden Dome" system is an expensive way to make America less safe'

Kelsey D. Atherton at MSNBC

President Donald Trump's "Golden Dome" is "impossible to deliver, expensive to pursue, and one whose very development guides other nations into deadlier countermeasures that make America and the world less safe," says Kelsey D. Atherton. A "system built to stop ICBMs is likely to struggle with nuclear-armed cruise missiles, which fly at different speeds and trajectories than either submarine or land-based ballistic missiles." Defense "on the scale of Golden Dome is especially confounded by the danger of a thermonuclear warhead."

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'America has a billionaire problem — we need a wealth tax to fix it'

Alan S. Davis at The Hill

An excessive "concentration of wealth is the biggest threat facing our nation," says Alan S. Davis. It "bestows a dangerous degree of economic and political power on a select few and arms them with the ability to distort our democracy and our economy for personal gain." Lawmakers "must consider sweeping tax reforms to counter this threat." One "mechanism for achieving this goal is a wealth tax on the ultra-wealthy," which "could transform American society for the better."

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'We need a farm system for American jobs — before it's too late'

John Hope Bryant at Time

America needs a "farm club system for American jobs of the future," says John Hope Bryant, a "national pipeline — backed by private enterprise and public policy — that starts in K-12 and follows a young person all the way into a career with dignity, purpose, and a paycheck." The "threat to American economic dominance is internal. It's our failure to prepare the next generation for the economy that's coming." We've "disconnected our education system from our economic engine."

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New college grads are struggling to find jobs, said Derek Thompson in The Atlantic. The U.S. economy added 177,000 positions in April, another stronger-than-expected report for the overall labor market. But one group is getting left behind. The "labor conditions for recent college graduates have 'deteriorated noticeably' in the past few months," according to the New York Federal Reserve. Their unemployment rate now stands at 5.8 percent—a full 1.6 percentage points above that of the overall population. It's hard to pinpoint what's going on. But we must take seriously the possibility that "artificial intelligence is starting to transform the economy." Entry-level jobs are the easiest to replace with machines. We're seeing that happen to paralegal work, consulting, and computer programming.

Gen Zers, the cohort born starting in 1997, are "already deeply uncertain about the value of a college degree," said Amanda Hoover in Business Insider, and half of them already say it's "a waste of money." The hiring drought for new grads is making them even more pessimistic. The ease of implementing automation is forming cracks "in some white-collar industry pipelines" that college graduates rely on. The tech industry, for instance, which "has long been accused of favoring young talent to move fast and break things," is now hiring AI for the same purpose. Tech job postings have fallen from 625,000 in January 2023 to 467,000 in March 2025, and the share of jobs that are entry level has dropped from 24 percent to 21 percent.

It's tempting to blame the machines, said Justin Fox in Bloomberg, but things have been "somewhat off" for recent grads since the pandemic. The increase in "the percentage of Americans in their 20s, especially their late 20s," who are not in education, working, or training "is pretty striking," and it may be linked to "how the pandemic disrupted the lives" of young adults. One scary sign: 14 percent of job seekers ages 18 to 24 feel like their mental health is keeping them from joining the workforce. That "feels new and alarming."

Even graduates of the most prestigious programs are in trouble, said Dennis McCarthy in National Review. "There was a time when a degree from Harvard Business School was a golden ticket." But as of February, "nearly a quarter of last year's HBS grads were still looking for a job." That mirrors the problem across education. The default response from both undergraduate and graduate programs "is to offer increasingly specialized programs in narrow, siloed majors." That is "a fool's errand." The marketplace is shifting rapidly. We need to equip students to learn "the skills for any job they seek."

The introduction of generative artificial intelligence has complicated the job-seeking and hiring process, causing confusion as the line between human beings and AI gets thinner. In the hands of bad actors, generative AI enables an emerging security threat for companies seeking employees amid a flood of fake job seekers.

Fake job applicants 'ramped up massively'

Companies have long had to defend themselves from hackers "hoping to exploit vulnerabilities in their software, employees or vendors," but now "another threat has emerged," said CNBC. Hiring employers are being inundated by applicants "who aren't who they say they are," who are "wielding AI tools to fabricate photo IDs, generate employment histories and provide answers during interviews." The spike in fake AI-generated applicants means that by 2028, 1 in 4 job candidates globally will be bogus, according to research and advisory firm Gartner.

Gen AI has "blurred the line between what it is to be human and what it means to be machine," said the CEO and co-founder of voice authentication startup Pindrop, Vijay Balasubramaniyan, to CNBC. As a result, "individuals are using these fake identities and fake faces and fake voices to secure employment," sometimes going so far as "doing a face swap with another individual who shows up for the job." Hiring a fake job seeker can put the company at risk for malware ransom attacks and theft of trade secrets or funds.

Industry experts said that cybersecurity and cryptocurrency firms have recently seen a surge in fake job seekers. Since the companies often hire remote roles, they are particularly alluring targets for bad actors. News of the issue surfaced a year ago, but the number of fraudulent job candidates has "ramped up massively" this year, said Ben Sesser, the CEO of BrightHire, to CNBC. Humans are "generally the weak link in cybersecurity," and since hiring is an "inherently human process," it has become a "weak point that folks are trying to expose.”

The fake applicants phenomenon "isn't limited to cybersecurity jobs," said Inc. Last year, the Justice Department alleged that "over 300 U.S. companies had accidentally hired impostors to work remote IT-related jobs." The employees were actually tied to North Korea, sending millions in wages home, which the DOJ alleged "would be used to help fund the authoritarian nation's weapons program."

Hiring managers in the dark

The fake employee industry has expanded to include criminal groups in Russia, China, Malaysia and South Korea, said Roger Grimes, a computer security consultant, to CNBC. Sometimes they will "do the role poorly," and then sometimes "they perform it so well that I've actually had a few people tell me they were sorry they had to let them go."

Despite the DOJ case and a few other publicized incidents, hiring managers at most companies are generally unaware of the risks of fake job candidates, according to BrightHire's Sesser. They are responsible for talent strategy, but "being on the front lines of security has historically not been one of them,” he said. “Folks think they're not experiencing it," but it is more likely that they are "just not realizing that it's going on.”

Dawid Moczadlo, cofounder of cybersecurity startup Vidoc Security Lab, recently posted a video on LinkedIn of an interview with a deepfake AI job candidate, "which serves as a master class in potential red flags," Fortune said. The audio and video of the Zoom call didn't quite sync up, and the video quality also seemed off. When the person was moving and speaking, there was "different shading on his skin," and it "looked very glitchy, very strange," Moczadlo said to Fortune. "Before this happened, we just gave people the benefit of the doubt, that maybe their camera is broken," he said. But after the incident, "if they don't have their real camera on, we will just completely stop" the interview.

As tempting as it may feel at times, quitting your job is something that is better to avoid doing on a whim. With a well-considered plan in place, however, you can not only strategically free yourself up to pursue new opportunities — you can also make sure the financial transition between positions goes smoothly.

Whether you have been at your place of business for just a few months or are a long-tenured employee, your job likely comes with a number of financial strings attached. There is your regular paycheck, of course, but there may also be benefits, health insurance coverage and a retirement account you are leaving behind. Here is how to navigate all of these things amid your departure.

Make sure your savings is well-stocked

Before you say goodbye to the place you get your regular paycheck, make sure you have some backup funds in place. Even if you have another job lined up, there may be a little bit of a gap between receiving paychecks. Savings also opens up the option of taking some downtime between workplaces.

As for how much to stash away, "'if you can go from one position to another, six months to a year is a safe bet,'" said Sally Brandon, the vice president of client services at a retirement and investment management firm, to Discover. Keep those funds "stashed in a high-yield savings account so you can earn higher amounts of interest on your balance," said CNBC Select.

Use up any remaining benefits

Prior to making your escape, try to take advantage of any benefits you can't take with you. For instance, "are there opportunities for you to save on commuting expenses, family care, pet insurance or fitness memberships? Are there discounts on financial services?" said Morgan Stanley.

You might also investigate whether your employer pays out unused PTO — "if you have unused days that won't pay out when you quit, now is the time to use them," said NerdWallet. Same goes for any leftover FSA funds, which "won't follow you to the next job."

Figure out a plan for health insurance coverage

It is also key to have a plan in place so you have uninterrupted health insurance coverage. "Figure out when your employer-paid insurance is going to end, and who will insure you after it does," whether that is by "temporarily extending your coverage through COBRA" or starting your new role a little sooner to avoid a gap, said NerdWallet.

Also remember that "switching to a new insurer will reset your deductible, so if you have met or are close to meeting your current deductible, now may be a good time to get any health care you've been putting off," said NerdWallet.

Consider how to handle your retirement account

"It is estimated that so-called 'orphaned' retirement accounts [which are left behind when an employee changes jobs and neglects their funds] total a staggering $1 trillion," said Discover — so make sure yours does not join the ranks.

You have a few options for what to do with the funds, including "leaving your assets in your former employer’s plan, if permitted," or rolling over your funds to your new employer's plan or an IRA, said Morgan Stanley. You can also "cash out and take a lump sum distribution," though "this would be subject to mandatory 20% federal tax withholding as well as potential income taxes and a 10% penalty tax."

"It used to pay to switch jobs," said Katherine Bindley and Lynn Cook in The Wall Street Journal. Now in some cases, it hurts. Two years ago, workers who switched jobs could command a nearly 8 percent salary bump, on average, fueling what became known as the Great Resignation—a wave of employees quitting for greener pastures. That wave has officially crashed. "The salary difference between those who stay in their roles (4.6 percent) and those who change jobs (4.8 percent)" is down to its lowest level in 10 years. Workers tempted to check job listings today are encountering salary deflation. "No one is paying what they used to," said Josh Vogel, who recently took a job paying $50,000 less for the same role he'd had previously. Senior and midlevel managers in tech sectors are facing "pay drops of $10,000 to $40,000 a year" if they want to switch jobs now.

Fear of missing out is being replaced by fear of getting laid off, said Claire Ballentine and Charlie Wells in Bloomberg. A couple of years ago, workers like Jacob Harris, a 36-year-old web developer, seemed foolish not to follow his peers by "switching jobs and notching big pay raises during the red-hot job market in 2022." Now more than 70 percent of Americans "think it's difficult to find a better job than their current one," making those like Harris "glad he stayed put" after seeing "a couple of those peers get laid off." Some career coaches say the previous job market gave young people an unrealistic "expectation of what normal career promotion looks like." Some of the decline in job-hopping may also be intentional, said Oli Mould in The Guardian. More young employees are ditching "hustle culture" in search of an "employer for life." They have been disillusioned by "the constant message from potential employers to be competitive, entrepreneurial, and flexible," which has "failed spectacularly" to deliver "career fulfillment, riches, or a healthy work-life balance." Instead of "chasing the highest salary at the expense of well-being," Gen Z is "choosing stability over chaos, community over churn."

"Stuck" workers are a troubling sign for the economy, said Rogé Karma in The Atlantic. "Switching from one job to another is the main way in which American workers increase their earnings, advance in their careers, and find jobs that make them happy." But according to recent polls, more than two-thirds of American workers feel "stuck" in their current role, and their confidence in finding another job has plummeted. A rise in job stickiness has historically heralded declines in innovation and productivity. "Living standards stagnate, inequality rises, and social mobility craters." A frozen job market can be one of the first signals of a broader economic Ice Age.

Some of the UK's leading companies are still using personality tests when they recruit staff, despite government advice that they make finding jobs harder for neurodivergent people.

These tests are "locking autistic people out of jobs", said the Big Issue, and charities believe they are discriminatory.

Significant barriers

Personality tests, sometimes known as psychometric tests, aim to "determine if a worker will fit into a company's culture", said Huck, as well as "how they will respond to their employer's directions".

The tests are used by some of Britain's leading retailers, including Morrisons and John Lewis, but they make job applications "near impossible" for people with autism, said the Big Issue.

A government review has found that only three in 10 working-age autistic people are in work, compared with around five in 10 for all disabled people and eight in 10 for non-disabled people.

A study in Sage Journals found that one reason for the higher unemployment rate among autistic people may be that hiring processes are "inaccessible" for them, and a study on PubMed found that pre-employment personality tests "prey on several features of autism in an unfair way".

The London Autism Group Charity told the Big Issue that the tests "present significant barriers for autistic applicants" while Ambitious about Autism said "many highly qualified autistic people" have been "unable to find work" because of the "prevalence" of the tests.

Although it's illegal to discriminate against people with disabilities, personality tests can be used "to sidestep the law", said Accessibility.com. The tests "often screen for so many autism characteristics" that they "come just short of outright asking a person if they're autistic".

Personality tests are a "recipe for discrimination" against people with disabilities, wrote Henry Claypool for NBC News, and it's "junk science" to assume that people's "self-reported moods or confidence accurately correlate to their future job performance".

Human complexities 

Companies in the UK are legally required to offer "reasonable adjustments" for people with additional needs during the hiring process, said Huck, and they may be offered "extra time, screen-reading software, or other provisions".

John Lewis said it made interview questions publicly available online to help applicants prepare, while Morrisons is introducing a new online assessment which it says "will have far greater functionality" to support all applicants, "including those that are neurodivergent”.

But completely "opting out of a personality test" is "rarely permitted", said Huck, and the tests have "great potential for harm" when used to decide the fate of a worker who is looking for employment and an income, because "people are far more complex than a quiz", and "it's about time that modern recruitment processes reflect that".

Five Thai nationals held by Hamas were released last week, meaning nearly all the Thai hostages seized during the attack on 7 October have now been freed.

These hostages were part of a community of tens of thousands of Thai agricultural labourers working in Israel, where they can earn up to five times more than they can at home – but not without running a number of risks.

Strategic recruitment of workers

Thai workers started arriving in Israel during the late 1980s. Previously, Israel had "relied heavily" on labour from Palestinian workers but it started "bringing in large numbers of migrant workers" after the start of the Palestinian uprising known as the first Intifada, said AP.

In the face of the Palestinian violence, it was a "strategic decision" to replace Palestinian workers with migrant ones, so Israel "wouldn't have this dependence", research anthropologist Matan Kaminer told Nikkei Asia.

By 1992, there were thousands of Thai agricultural "trainees" and "volunteers" in Israel, according to Kaminer. They are almost all male, and generally come from poorer areas of Thailand, especially the northeast.

The main driver for these men to seek work in Israel is that they can earn significantly more than they can in Thailand. Working on Israeli farms, Thais can pocket around $1,000 USD (£800) per month, compared to less than $200 (£160) at home. But wages are still low by Israeli standards, and the workers face other serious issues.

Unsafe working conditions

In 2020, a report from the workers' rights NGO Kav LaOved found that 83% of Thais in Israel were paid below the legal minimum wage, that many did not receive legally assured entitlements, and that they faced unsafe working conditions and lack of access to medical care.

"Similar issues" were reported by Human Rights Watch in 2015 and, in 2022 , a US State Department Trafficking in Persons Report described "the treatment of some Thai workers in Israel's agricultural sector as forced labour", said the Financial Times.

Things got much more serious on and after 7 October, when 40 Thai nationals were killed by Hamas, and 54 were taken hostage – "almost a quarter of the total of 220 captives". Most of the hostages were released in November 2024. After the release of five more last week and the reported death of two, it's thought only one remains captive.

In the aftermath of 7 October, some 7,000 Thais returned home, "primarily on Thai government evacuation flights", said AP. In the face of this new labour shortage, Israel's agriculture ministry announced new incentives, including extended work visas and pay bonuses of about $500 (£400) a month.

The perks promise is working: during 2024, Thailand's Labour Ministry granted 3,966 Thais permission to work in Israel. And last week, the Thai ambassador to Israel announced that there are now more than 38,000 Thai workers in the country, said AP.

India's notoriously intense workplace culture is under renewed scrutiny after the death of a young woman at a leading accounting firm.

Anna Sebastian Perayil, a 26-year-old accountant, died four months after joining the India offices of Ernst & Young (EY). Her mother wrote to the EY India chairman blaming her daughter's death on the "overwhelming work pressure", in a letter that went viral.

Relentless demands

Anita Augustine alleged that her daughter had experienced "anxiety and sleeplessness" soon after joining EY, struggling with the "workload, new environment and long hours".

"She was trying to prove herself in a new environment, and in doing so, she pushed herself beyond her limits," the email said. Augustine added that her daughter's experience "sheds light on a work culture" that "seems to glorify overwork while neglecting the very human beings behind the roles".

The "relentless demands and the pressure to meet unrealistic expectations" are "not sustainable, and they cost us the life of a young woman with so much potential", added Augustine.

The official cause of Perayil's death is still unclear. But Perayil's father believes his daughter died of a combination of conditions including work stress and insomnia.

"Anna was unable to sleep on most days and couldn't eat on time," he told The News Minute. "After a whole night of work, she would have to wake up at 7.30 the next morning and repeat the same cycle."

EY told Business Insider that it was "taking the family's correspondence with utmost seriousness and humility", and called Perayil's death an "irreparable loss".

High pressure

Fourteen-hour work days, meetings during holidays, and no overtime. To some, this may sound like a job from hell. But for many employees in India, it's standard office life.

India has one of the toughest work cultures in the world. In 2022, according to the most recently available data from the International Labour Organization, the average employee in India worked 46.7 hours a week, compared to about 36 in the UK.

Not only are employees in India working long hours, but many are also doing it under intense pressure. "The pressure is very, very high," Jennifer Hephzibah, a senior HR professional in India, told Business Insider, because "if you don't deliver", you "either lose your bonus, or you lose your job" and "it doesn't matter what you're going through otherwise".

A Boston Consulting Group survey of 11,000 workers in eight countries in October 2023 found that 58% of Indian respondents reported feeling burned out – the highest share of any of the countries, including the US (50%), the UK (47%), and Japan (37%).

Last autumn the co-founder of Infosys, Narayana Murthy, suggested that young Indians should work 70-hour weeks to boost the economy, telling The Record that India's work productivity is "one of the lowest in the world".

But Chandrasekhar Sripada, a professor at the Indian School of Business, said that things should move in the other direction, telling the BBC that Scandinavian countries "have already created much gentler working environments, so there are models for India to follow" and "all it needs is willpower".

Record numbers of people are leaving New Zealand as the cost of living crisis is being compounded by limited job opportunities.

In a "significant exodus", the year to April 2024 saw a net migration loss of 56,500 citizens, up 12,000 from the previous record, said Firstpost. With fewer people arriving in New Zealand, there are fears of a brain drain and skills shortage.

'Grim picture'

Many young New Zealanders opt to go travelling overseas and the recent surge in the number of people leaving the country can partly be explained by a backlog caused by people delaying their plans due to the Covid pandemic.

But although this sort of travelling is considered a "rite of passage", much of the "record flow" is due to the "growing attraction" of working in Australia, said The Guardian. And experts worry that a "grim economic picture" means "departing Kiwis" may never come back.

With New Zealand experiencing a second recession in less than two years, employers in neighbouring Australia are trying to lure New Zealanders with offers of higher pay and better working conditions.

Half of the New Zealanders who left recently have moved to Australia. Brad Olsen, principal economist at Infometrics, said this "suggests a greater number of people and families are looking for opportunities and making a more permanent move".

'Goodbye dinners'

Kirsty Frame said she left New Zealand in 2023 aged 24 after it "just felt like bad news after bad news" in the country. She had already noticed the growth in departures, remembering that "it was goodbye dinner after goodbye dinner, leaving drinks after leaving drinks".

After arriving in Melbourne she found a higher-paying job and a flat with lower rent. She "could be happy here for a long time", she told The Guardian, and she thinks she will be there "for the long run".

Maia Vieregg, a 26-year-old geologist, has found the transition harder. She left New Zealand after becoming "cynical and hopeless" about its future as she struggled to find work and the progressive government lost power.

She found a well-paying job a couple of hours north of Sydney but she's finding Australia difficult to adjust to, as she finds it more materialistic than New Zealand, which is "a quite down-to-earth place". She plans to return home at some stage.

But as New Zealand languishes in recession, the exodus could continue. Tehseen Islam, Stats NZ's population indicators manager, said that "changes in migration are typically due to a combination of factors" including the "relative economic and labour market conditions between New Zealand and the rest of the world".

Meanwhile, there are fewer people arriving. Although the net migration gain in New Zealand remains "historically high", it "shows a declining trend", said Firstpost. In the year to April 2024, New Zealand gained 98,500 migrants, down from 106,000 in the year to March.

More people leaving and fewer arriving: these twin trends could worsen New Zealand's skill shortage, David Cooper, director of immigration firm Malcolm Pacific, told The Guardian.

The record numbers of Kiwis leaving "are not the desperate and dateless". They're "young, skilled people" and "it's hard to attract the highly skilled people we need to replace the ones leaving".

Becoming an astronaut is a dream for people young and old, with recent polling suggesting that two-thirds of British children want to work in space.

That dream is becoming a reality for Belfast-born Rosemary Coogan, who finally got her "astronaut wings" last month, said the Daily Mail. The 33-year-old astrophysicist is the UK's third-ever astronaut, following in the footsteps of Helen Sharman and Tim Peake.

Some astronauts have a much longer wait before blasting into space than Coogan is likely to face. Last weekend, Ed Dwight finally fulfilled that ambition at the age of 90, more than 60 years after he was chosen by then US president John F. Kennedy to become the country's first Black astronaut. Nasa ultimately did not select Dwight for a mission, but he is now the oldest person to go to space, following a 10-minute flight on Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin capsule.

Although few have to wait as long as Dwight, the path to becoming a professional astronaut is always long.

'Tremendous responsibility' 

By the time professional astronauts reach space, they generally have at least a decade of professional and educational experience in technical fields. It then takes about two years to qualify for space and several more years of mission training.

Candidates need to be between 27 and 37 years old and fluent in English. Russian is spoken with English on the International Space Station, so a basic grasp of that language is also a definite plus.

Hopefuls need a degree and a postgraduate qualification in a relevant subject such as science, engineering or aeronautics, and "you'll have an advantage if you're a pilot with at least 1,000 hours of flying experience in a high-performance aircraft like a fighter jet", said the National Careers Service.

A strong character is important too, because astronauts have to "bear tremendous responsibility while in orbit", said the European Space Agency, and because it is "a challenge to live in a confined space for long periods with other people".

Other helpful characteristics are "an ability to adapt quickly to changing situations" and "mature judgement", as well, of course, as a willingness "to spend long periods away from home".

'Pressure chambers'

Most agencies require a newly selected individual to pass a series of basic tests across two to three years of training before qualifying as an astronaut.

Coogan was trained in technical skills including spacecraft systems, flight engineering, robotics and life-support systems. She took part in winter survival training in the "snowy mountains of the Spanish Pyrenees" and "experienced the effects of hypoxia first-hand in a pressure chamber", said gov.uk, enabling her to "recognise symptoms and respond accordingly" in low-oxygen environments in case of an air leak or reduced pressure in a spacecraft.

Graduating from astronaut basic training was "an incredibly moving moment for me", said Coogan. "From dreaming about space to now being one step closer to reaching it", she said she felt "filled with gratitude and determination to make the most of this extraordinary opportunity". 

Coogan visited Nasa's facilities in the US, where she took part in scuba diving for spacewalk training underwater in a 12-metre-deep Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory and spent time in a replica of the International Space Station, where astronauts can perform underwater simulations of spacewalks.

"Even after that", said Space, astronauts "may spend years or decades on the ground", waiting for a slot to open on a rocket mission. They are kept busy, however, with "supporting other space missions, working on spacecraft development" and other agency tasks.

Since the Second World War, they have been "serving as the largely unmentioned glue holding middle-class families together", but now the au pair industry has "collapsed", according to a report.

A double blow of Brexit and a minimum wage ruling have "ruined the tradition of exchanging bed and board for help with the kids", said The Sunday Times, and a leading trade body has waved the white flag and shut its doors.

'Fatal setback'

The "mutually beneficial arrangement" has "existed in Europe since the end of the Second World War", said the paper, recalling when domestic servants had "all but disappeared" and a "newly liberated cohort of young women, keen to expand their cultural boundaries, rose to meet the demand".

Au pairs would work short stays of between three and 12 months, often attending a language school, with their board and lodgings covered by the host family, said the BBC. There were between 60,000 and 90,000 au pairs in Britain before it left the European Union, but that number had halved by 2022, said The Telegraph.

The arrangement was "dealt a crushing blow by Brexit and the barriers that came with it", said The Sunday Times. With the end of free movement of labour from the European Union, the UK government did not provide an entry route specifically for au pairs.

Then, earlier this month, there was another, "possibly fatal", setback, when the government announced that even live-in workers would "henceforth" be entitled to earn the minimum wage, it added.

Previously, the guidance from the Home Office suggested that au pairs should earn "pocket money" of about £90 a week in exchange for being treated as a member of the family and helping out around the house.

But now, anyone employing an au pair under 21 for the basic 25 weekly hours, even with a live-in allowance applied, will have to pay £145.07 a week, rising to £330.47 for an au pair aged over 21 working 35 hours a week.

The consequences could be wide ranging, because rising costs are "driving intelligent women out of the workplace and back into their homes", Jo Twumasi-Ankra, a fundraiser at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and mother to three girls, who has used au pairs, told the paper.

'New slavery'

In the wake of these developments, the British Au Pair Agencies Association (BAPAA) announced its closure on Facebook and there are fears that the longstanding arrangement has had its day.

Back in 2020, chairwoman Jamie Shackell told the BBC that "families have said they might have to give up work and claim benefits because they cannot afford to have a nanny". She said the group was "flummoxed by it all" because au pairs are "not a financial strain on the UK state".

A petition calling for a "new youth visa" has gathered 60,000 signatures and it's possible that the Treasury will look into a "fix" for au pairs, because the situation is "so dire", with Britain's childcare costs among the highest in the world, said The Sunday Times.

But not everyone sees such a halo above the head of the au pair arrangement. In 2002, it was described by The Guardian as the "dirty secret of Britain's middle classes".

Asking if au pairing was "the new slavery", it said "horror stories" are commonplace. Maggie Dyer, director of the London Au Pair and Nanny Agency, said au pairs are "so vulnerable" as "if they lose their job they have nowhere to live, so they often will be far too frightened to complain if they are being maltreated".

Jokes about husbands having affairs with au pairs and nannies have been around almost as long as au pairs themselves, and one scorned wife told the Daily Mail about the "heart shredding betrayal" of the experience.

Calls for a three-day weekend have grown after studies found that workers were less stressed and just as productive during a four-day working week.

For many Britons, Friday has become a "skive day" as workers continue a habit from the pandemic by "slacking" on the fifth day of the week, said The Times. 

But how likely is an official three-day weekend, and how was the two-day weekend won in the first place?

How did the weekend begin?

In 19th-century Britain, few were expected to work on Sundays, but many skilled, essentially self-employed workers who had produced their quota of goods would take Monday off "to recover from Saturday night and the previous day's excesses," said Brad Beaven, professor of Social and Cultural History at the University of Portsmouth, writing for The Conversation.

By the middle of the century, taking a "Saint Monday" was a popular practice in Britain, named to mimic the religious saint's day holidays – although it was in fact "an entirely secular practice, instigated by workers to provide an extended break in the working week". But this trend dented productivity, so many factory owners decided to make Saturday a half-day.

Religious leaders also supported the drift towards a weekend. Writing in the Coventry Herald newspaper in 1862, Reverend George Heaviside argued that a weekend would allow for a refreshed workforce and greater attendance at church on Sundays. Religious bodies argued that a break on Saturday would improve working-class "mental and moral culture", said The Conversation.

Trade unions also wanted to secure a formalised break in the working week that did not rely on the unofficial customs such as "Saint Mondays". Their push for the creation of the weekend is "still cited as a proud achievement in trade union history", said Beaven. Campaign groups such as the Early Closing Association lobbied the government to keep Saturday afternoons free for leisure time for workers in return for a full day's work on Monday.

But the full two-day weekend "only arrived in 1933", and "largely by accident", said The Times, when John Boot, grandson of the founder of the Boots chemist chain, opened a new factory which became so productive that it produced a "huge surplus" of stock.

Rather than "lay workers off during the Great Depression", Boot decided to grant them Saturdays off instead, with no deduction in pay. His experiment went well and workers "reported themselves happier and healthier".

On Monday mornings Boot had a workforce which was invigorated, and ready to work, after having more time for leisure and family activities. He kept the arrangement going and the weekend soon spread and became the "industry standard".

Across the Atlantic, by the mid-19th century, it was common for workers to "log 70-hour, six-day workweeks" in "newly mechanised factories", said Morning Brew. American workers "began to protest long work hours and poor working conditions that infringed upon their rights". 

But change was also slow to come in the US. Henry Ford became one of the first employers to adopt a five-day, 40-hour week at his Ford Motor Company plants in 1926. It was only then that the weekend arrived in the US.

Will there be a three-day weekend?

Since the 1960s, "there has been talk of the weekend being extended to make it almost as long as the working week", said the BBC. Three- or four-day weeks "have been a dream for many" who believe advances in technology make it possible for people to complete their work in less time.

The Covid pandemic also increased calls for the weekend to be extended as so many of us worked from home. For many, Friday was a day to relax during the pandemic  and bosses are now "struggling to change that habit", said The Times.

Studies back this pattern up. A management consultancy that records tap-ins and tap-outs at 150 offices across the country found that occupancy is now around 50% on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, with Mondays at 30% and Fridays at just 20%. "Welcome to TGIF Britain," said the paper. 

Between June and December 2022 Will Stronge, co-founder of the consultancy Autonomy, helped to run a four-day week pilot involving 61 companies and 2,900 workers. It found that 56 of the companies are continuing the experiment, because their employees reported less stress, anxiety and burnout, and were just as productive.  

There was a "small uptick in intensity on their working days", Stronge told The Times, but knowing they had the extra day off meant they did more with less. 

There has also been political support for a shorter working week: during the 2019 general election campaign, Jeremy Corbyn's Labour said it would aim to introduce a 32-hour full-time working week, with no loss of pay, within 10 years.

In an essay published in 1930, the influential economist John Maynard Keynes predicted that within 100 years, most people would be working no more than 15 hours a week. With six years of that century left, further significant shifts in working patterns seem inevitable.

Jeremy Hunt has vowed to "make work pay" by boosting the minimum wage and cracking down on benefit claimants who refuse to look for a job.

Setting out a series of changes to the welfare system, the chancellor will use his speech at the Conservative Party conference in Manchester today to announce that the National Living Wage will rise to "at least" £11 an hour from next April, providing a pay rise to two million people. Hunt will also argue that the welfare safety net is "a social contract that depends on fairness to those in work alongside compassion to those who are not".

The government will review the way benefits sanctions work. "It is a fundamental matter of fairness," he is expected to say. "Those who won't even look for work do not deserve the same benefits as people trying hard to do the right thing."

'More radical approach'

Hunt will use his keynote speech to "declare war on 100,000 work-shy benefit claimants", the Daily Mail reported. The full details of how the benefits regime will be made tougher are still being hammered out and will be unveiled in the chancellor's autumn statement next month. 

According to the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), there are currently around 5.2 million Britons on out-of-work benefits – a figure that soared during the pandemic and has not yet returned to pre-2020 levels.

Few Conservatives will argue against tougher sanctions for benefits claimants but Hunt "could and should go far further", said Ross Clark in The Spectator. 

Clark suggested a "more radical approach" would be to abolish unemployment benefits altogether and instead offer anyone who wants it three days a week guaranteed work at the National Living Wage. The government's opponents would deride it as "US-style workfare", Clark argued, but "forcing people to turn up and do some work in return for their keep would ensure that they remain in the practice of employment".

Fair, financially responsible or politically motivated?

The measures are driven by spending pressures on the welfare budget, one Whitehall source suggested to The Guardian, and presented as reforms to get benefit claimants back into work. 

Indeed, some leading Tories are "keen to bring down the benefits bill, partly with a major drive to reduce the numbers of economically inactive, and also by encouraging more over 50s back into the workplace", added Politico's London Playbook.

Work and Pensions Secretary Mel Stride will also use his speech to conference today to unveil plans for a crackdown on "deadbeat dads" who refuse to make maintenance payments for their children.

The Conservatives are also trying to "create a dividing line with Labour" ahead of the general election, said The Times.

The focus on benefits has "echoes of the policy promoted by David Cameron and George Osborne", said The Telegraph. "Their framing of the Tories as being on the side of 'workers not shirkers' helped win the 2015 general election," said the paper.

Amid the clamour for tax cuts – not least from the former PM Liz Truss – the development minister, Andrew Mitchell, warned that this should not be done "on the backs of the poorest", said The Guardian.

"We need to be very clear that we have very properly protected throughout the last 13 years of Conservative government the most vulnerable by maintaining and in some cases increasing the value of their benefits" he said. "That's the right thing for any government to do in any civilised society."