The broader labor market looks stable on the surface, but workers who lose a job are having a much harder time finding the next one. The share of unemployed workers out of work for 27 weeks or more hit 27.3 percent in June, up four percentage points from a year earlier and near the highest level since late 2021. Nearly two million Americans now fall into that group.
The pain isn't concentrated where you'd expect. Workers in their mid-20s to mid-30s make up the largest share of the long-term unemployed at 27 percent, and more than a third of unemployed professional services workers have been out of work for six months or more. Government, finance, and information technology are seeing similarly high rates.
The underlying issue is that hiring as a share of employment has barely moved in two years. Layoffs are low, but so is the pace of new hiring, which means anyone who does lose a job is competing in a market that isn't replacing openings quickly. Economists warn that the longer someone stays unemployed, the less transferable their existing skills become, often pushing them into lower-paying roles once they do land something.
Read more via The Wall Street Journal
JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon told investors on the bank's latest earnings call that AI-driven efficiency gains have already led to job cuts in certain areas, a notable reversal from his position as recently as February, when he said AI was saving employees time without changing overall headcount. Dimon confirmed the bank reduced staffing in some discrete areas by 30 to 40 percent, though most affected employees were offered roles elsewhere in the company.
The shift lines up with new research from Cisco, which surveyed 2,500 CEOs across 23 countries in January. Ninety-one percent said they're more optimistic about AI than a year ago, and 71 percent said it outperformed their expectations in 2025. But readiness hasn't caught up with enthusiasm: only 13 percent of companies said they're actually prepared to roll out AI safely and at scale.
That gap between ambition and readiness may explain why so many AI rollouts stall. Harvard Business School research found that at least 30 percent of generative AI projects get abandoned, often because employees who feel their role shrinking quietly work against the tool rather than refuse it outright. Researchers point to three specific threats: AI narrowing someone's work to less interesting tasks, reducing their say in decisions, or cutting their influence over people and budgets. The fix isn't more mandates, researchers argue, but redefining what makes a role valuable and building in ways for employees to override AI decisions.
Read more via Fast Company, Cisco, and Harvard Business School Working Knowledge
Smoke from more than 850 active Canadian wildfires blanketed the northeastern U.S. and Great Lakes region last week, triggering air quality alerts across nine states and raising a question a lot of employers haven't had to answer before: what do you owe outdoor workers when there's no specific wildfire smoke regulation on the books?
Only California, Oregon, and Washington have permanent rules requiring employers to monitor fine particle pollution and reduce outdoor worker exposure at set thresholds. None of the newly affected states have an equivalent, though federal OSHA's general duty clause still requires employers to protect workers from recognized hazards. Conditions aggravated by wildfire smoke, including asthma, COPD, or heart conditions, may also qualify as a disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act, which means employers may need to engage with affected employees on accommodations like remote work, longer breaks, or respirators.
The exposure isn't a one-week problem, either. Nearly 40,000 wildfires have burned more than 3.6 million acres in the U.S. so far in 2026, well above the 10-year average for mid-July, and federal officials say fire activity already resembles what's typically seen later in the season. Health officials recommend employers reschedule strenuous outdoor tasks, move work indoors where possible, and provide properly fitted N95 respirators for workers who have to stay outside during unhealthy conditions.
Read more via WLNS, Insurance Business Magazine, The National Law Review, and CBS News
More young workers are skipping the four-year degree in favor of trade school, betting that hands-on, skilled work will hold up better against AI than a typical office job. Enrollment at public two-year trade and vocational schools grew nearly 20 percent between 2020 and 2025, helped along by a policy change that now lets students in short-term vocational programs use Pell grants, making trade school meaningfully more affordable next to a four-year degree that can run close to $200,000 at private schools.
The stigma around trade work hasn't fully caught up to the shift. Seventy-one percent of Gen Z respondents said they think vocational school carries more stigma than college, even though only 7 percent of parents said they'd actually prefer their kid skip college for a trade. The nonprofit Bring Back the Trades projects 1.4 million trade jobs will go unfilled by 2030 due to retirements and rising infrastructure demand, a gap that employers building skilled talent pipelines now stand to benefit from later. Most high school graduates, more than 60 percent, still go straight to college, and workers with a bachelor's degree still out-earn those with only a high school diploma by a factor of 1.8.
Read more via The New York Times
Two separate data points this week point to the same underlying tension: workers and employers see pay very differently. A new Morgan McKinley survey found nearly 70 percent of workers say they didn't get a pay bump in the last six months, up from 65 percent a year ago, even though 48 percent of employers said they'd increased pay and nearly three-quarters said raises are planned for certain roles over the coming year. Sixty-seven percent of employers reported turnover in the past six months, and 19 percent said perceptions about pay played a role.
Separately, a MyPerfectResume analysis of government data estimates the total gender earnings gap topped $671 billion in 2025. Women's median weekly pay has more than doubled since 2000, but the dollar gap between men's and women's pay actually grew by more than 60 percent over that period, from about $7,696 a year in 2000 to $12,324 in 2025, as more women joined the full-time workforce.
Both data points point to the same lesson for employers heading into planning season: pay perception, not just pay itself, is shaping who stays and who starts looking.
Read more via HR Dive and MyPerfectResume
This week's complete Need to Know Briefing — including the fight over the $100,000 H-1B fee, a DOL overhaul of green card sponsorship, Hyundai's first-ever industry strike over humanoid robots, and this week's global roundup — is available in the full interactive edition.
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