The Week in Jobs

Microsoft is offering a voluntary buyout to 60,000 employees, a number Pete and Peter say is hard to wrap their heads around. The company describes it as a voluntary program and says it is consolidating and becoming more global. Pete and Peter wonder what happens to employees who decline, and whether a voluntary offer turns into a less attractive involuntary exit later. The news lands soon after Microsoft was among the companies whose access to the PERM program, a step toward green cards for H-1B workers, was suspended. A clip circulating on social media, which Pete and Peter stress is unverified, allegedly shows a Microsoft executive vice president saying the company will keep bringing global talent to the United States.

The Microsoft news leads Pete and Peter to a bigger issue, they say, that gets far less attention: American companies placing jobs in India. Their research estimates at least 1.5 million jobs in what are called global capability centers, possibly as many as 2 million, with estimates for individual companies including IBM at 85,000, Amazon at 65,000, JPMorgan Chase at 55,000, Citigroup at 33,000, Wells Fargo at 30,000, and Dell and Oracle at 25,000 each. Walmart, Ford, Verizon, Boeing, Target, PayPal, Uber, Pepsi, and DoorDash are on the list too. They cite estimates that these centers will add another half million non-tech jobs by 2028, with about 70% of demand coming from the US. Their argument: many of these are customer support and other white-collar roles that could be entry-level opportunities for American workers, and consumers can vote with their wallets.

There is a bright spot. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr announced this week that AT&T is bringing all of its call center and customer service jobs back to the US by the end of the year. Pete and Peter call it a win worth celebrating without making it political, and wish it had gotten more coverage.

More cuts this week: Skydance is cutting about 4,500 film and production jobs in LA, with a five-day return-to-office mandate cited alongside a voluntary buyout. Scripps is eliminating 431 jobs and Dropbox is cutting 9% of its workforce. The surprise for Pete and Peter was the Dutch government, which plans to cut 25,000 jobs and says AI is the reason. And Proton is re-interviewing its existing staff about their AI use to decide who keeps their job, asking for two or three examples of how AI improves their work, with results that may lead to changes in roles, responsibilities, or continued employment. Pete and Peter call it a morale risk and also a clear signal to learn AI.

WalletHub’s 2026 ranking of the best and worst states for jobs put Florida, where the hosts live, at 47th out of 50, and Nebraska first. States are scored on 34 metrics, with the job market worth 60% of the score and the economic environment worth 40%.

Next week is a big one: the midterm elections on Tuesday, the JOLTS report the same day, ADP’s private payroll report (forecast around 80,000 jobs), and the BLS jobs report on Friday (forecast around 40,000). Pete and Peter also reveal their Halloween costumes.

Looking to hire or find your next role? Visit 4cornerresources.com.

Amazon plans to hire 300,000 seasonal workers this holiday season, and Pete and Peter call it good news worth passing along to anyone who needs work right now. Seasonal pay averages about $20 an hour, full-time operations roles start at $20 and average around $24, benefits start on day one with plans at $5 a month, and Amazon says it intends to convert as many seasonal hires as it can into permanent employees. Pete and Peter say the quality of those plans remains to be seen, but with healthcare costs climbing fast, they give Amazon credit for the effort.

Layoffs were back this week. American Express announced about 3,500 job cuts, roughly 5% of its headcount, as it reported earnings that beat expectations. eBay is cutting about 9% of its workforce, roughly 1,100 jobs, and Volvo is cutting about 6%, citing falling China revenue and tariff pressure on US sales. Electronic Arts is cutting about 400 jobs and closing BioWare, the studio behind Mass Effect, and Volkswagen confirmed layoffs too. The biggest headline for the AI debate is Barclays, which announced a 5,000-job cut and tied it in part to AI, with about 60% of the roles in support functions. Pete and Peter say it is one of the first major layoffs in a while to name AI out loud, and they expect more.

A new Gallup poll finds only 41% of US workers have a “quality job,” measured across five dimensions: pay and benefits, workplace culture and safety, growth and development, agency and voice, and work structure and autonomy. Managers score higher than individual contributors (52% versus 36%), professional and business services lead at 57%, and warehousing and retail rank lowest. Pete and Peter question how much the dimensions overlap and how the results square with 4 Corner Resources’ own survey, where most workers report being satisfied.

ADP reports that employment for 22-to-25-year-olds in AI-exposed jobs fell 3.7% from a year earlier, and a SHRM survey shows HR leaders and young workers are not on the same page. 85% of workers ages 18 to 26 rate job security as very or extremely important, but only 27% of HR leaders think it matters that much to them. HR leaders also overestimated how much young workers care about remote work, and 84% say unrealistic expectations drive young workers’ pay demands. The survey also found only 49% of younger workers are willing to use AI tools at work, compared with 68% of older workers. Pete and Peter’s advice to young workers: you do not have to like AI, but a moral stand against it will cost you professionally. Their advice to HR leaders: ask young workers what they actually want.

The same disconnect shows up at the top. A Boston Consulting Group survey found 87% of CEOs are confident their employees trust their leadership, while only 46% of employees are confident in their CEO’s judgment and vision. Just 15% of CEOs worry their AI plans could hurt employee trust, yet 40% of employees say their CEO has not been transparent enough about how AI will affect their jobs. And nearly 60% of CEOs plan to replace a member of their senior team in the next six months. Pete and Peter put the gap down to poor communication more than bad intent, and they warn that when hiring picks back up, employees who feel unheard could trigger a wave of job switching.

They sign off with some practical advice: change your passwords this weekend. Next week: Halloween.

Visit 4cornerresources.com for hiring and job search resources.

Who is most afraid of AI taking their job? In this special edition of The Week in Jobs, Pete and Peter walk through 4 Corner Resources’ Q4 2026 Employee Mindset Survey, the fourth and final quarterly edition of the year, and the answers surprised them: IT workers, the highest earners, and women, who now worry about AI more than men do. The survey tracks how American workers earning $50,000 or more feel about their jobs, their confidence in the 2026 job market, and the threat of AI. The overall mindset score, job satisfaction, and employee confidence all edged up, and so did the perceived AI threat, though by less than Pete expected a year ago.

One in three IT workers name AI as the biggest threat to their job, compared with 16.2% of workers in all other professions combined. The highest earners are the most worried about AI’s impact on their careers, a jump this quarter, which fits a pattern Pete and Peter see all year: the people who use AI the most worry about it the most. The share of women who see AI as a significant career risk rose from about 16% in January to almost 24%, while the share of men edged down. Entry-level workers are less afraid of AI, even though Pete believes it is hitting them hardest, a finding neither host could fully explain.

The biggest move of the year belongs to entry-level job market confidence. In January, 13% of entry-level workers said they were unconfident about the job market over the next six to 12 months. Now it is 30%, more than double. Workers ages 18 to 29 are the most frustrated group in the survey, with 53.6% expecting to leave their job within two years or already looking. Pete and Peter warn of a squeeze: baby boomers are retiring in large numbers while the entry-level pipeline stays shut, which they say will leave a leadership gap down the road.

The survey also shows a K-shaped economy at the worker level. Lower earners are more worried about the job market than people in households earning over $100,000, and higher earners are building savings cushions while lower earners are not. Men are saving at a much higher rate than women, which Pete and Peter wonder may be tied to the AI worry gap.

On return to office, the share of workers required to be in the office climbed from 51% at the start of the year to nearly 60%, yet it bothers workers less than it did earlier in the year. Pete and Peter’s read: workers are accepting it because they have little leverage in a low hire, low fire market. Distrust of official government job market data also rose, from about 20% in January to 29%.

Their overall verdict for 2026: the year that could have been worse.

See the full results and the year’s trend data at 4cornerresources.com under the Survey tab. New episodes of The Week in Jobs every Friday.

The Trump administration took its H-1B crackdown public this week. At a press conference, JD Vance named eight companies (Microsoft, Adobe, Cognizant, Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro, HCL, and Capgemini), and the Department of Labor suspended their use of the PERM program indefinitely, cutting them off from a key step in sponsoring H-1B workers for green cards. PERM is the process that lets H-1B workers stay beyond six years and apply for permanent residency. Vance said the eight companies have received more than 230,000 H-1B approvals and more than 100,000 permanent labor certifications since 2009, and that Microsoft laid off 6,000 workers last year while receiving 6,300 H-1B visas and nearly 3,000 green cards. Microsoft says roughly 80% of those were existing employees renewing or extending their status.

Pete and Peter back the move and call it long overdue. Most of the named firms are consultancies built around filing H-1Bs and placing workers at other companies, while Microsoft and Adobe happen to be two of the largest direct employers of H-1B workers. They also point out that the program is hard on the visa holders themselves, who often cannot leave a sponsoring employer without risking deportation. And they say offshoring, like last week’s DoorDash story, deserves the same scrutiny, since both let companies avoid hiring American workers. Their hope: the policy outlasts the next election.

Pete and Peter also meet a brand-new workplace term, “loud working,” from a Business Insider article. It is the opposite of quiet quitting: making sure your manager sees everything you are doing. Their verdict is that it is just smart career advice with a trendy name, as long as it does not turn into playing politics instead of doing good work.

Layoffs are back in the headlines. HubSpot is cutting roughly 600 jobs and Amazon announced more cuts, both citing a push to remove layers of middle management, and neither named AI as a reason. Surveillance camera company Flock cut about 18% of its staff, a few hundred people, in what has been attributed to public backlash against the company.

They close with a survey finding that 90% of workers say their employers expect more loyalty than they give back. Also in the results: 71% say companies focus more on profits than on employees compared with five years ago, only 4% say less, and 49% of workers who are not actively job hunting would still take a call from a recruiter. Pete and Peter’s take is that loyalty is the wrong word for the employment relationship, and they have a message for hiring managers: a team that looks happy may still be open to other offers.

Visit 4cornerresources.com for hiring and job search resources.

The September jobs report came in far below expectations this week: the BLS reported only 29,000 jobs added, well short of the roughly 90,000 both ADP and the consensus forecast had pointed to. Previous months were also revised down a combined 60,000 jobs, and July's number has now flipped from a loss to a gain and back to a loss again in three separate revisions. Pete and Peter say the back-and-forth has gotten so extreme that the headline numbers are losing credibility by the month.

The harder story inside the report: unemployment rose from 4.1% to 4.2%, its first increase in a while, and unemployment among 20-to-24-year-olds is now at 8%. The number of people seeking their first job climbed to 818,000, up 116,000 from the prior reading. Pete and Peter tie this directly to an Arkansas welfare ad that ran this week, one that used a young man playing video games as the face of a "typical" welfare recipient to promote new work requirements. Given what the data actually shows about how hard it is for young job seekers to find work right now, Pete and Peter call the ad out as badly timed and out of touch.

They also cover DoorDash's announcement of a new 3,000-person customer support and admin center in India, one of more than 2,100 similar centers now operating there. Costco, McDonald's, Charles Schwab, and Southwest Airlines have all opened comparable offshore centers recently. Pete and Peter question why this kind of offshoring, unlike manufacturing jobs moving overseas, draws so little public attention or political pressure to bring the work back to the US.

Elsewhere: Glassdoor's worker confidence index hit its third record low of 2026, with workers' six-month outlook dropping to 42.9%. Small businesses with fewer than 10 employees pulled back hiring the hardest this month, even as many of them say they still can't find qualified candidates, a disconnect Pete and Peter attribute partly to job seekers gravitating toward recognizable brand names over smaller companies that don't typically use outside recruiting help.

They close with California's newly signed "No Robo Bosses" law, which bars employers from firing or disciplining workers based solely on an automated decision starting in July 2027, and LinkedIn's CEO predicting that AI will eventually touch every job in some form. That echoes a bigger claim Elon Musk has made repeatedly: that robots and AI will eventually do all the work, and universal basic income will make everyone rich as a result. Pete and Peter aren't buying it, and they question how "everyone gets rich" squares with basic supply and demand.

Looking to hire or find your next role? Visit 4cornerresources.com.

A viral debate broke out this week after a Miami-based TikTok recruiter posted that candidates shouldn't bring an iced latte to a job interview, splitting opinion mostly along generational lines. Pete and Peter land firmly on the side of leaving the drink at home. It might not affect your qualifications, but if even a portion of interviewers see it as unprofessional, it's a risk with no upside.

They also dig into the growing problem of fake recruiter profiles on LinkedIn, timed perfectly with a real example: a candidate emailed 4 Corner Resources this week asking to verify a "recruiter" who turned out to be a fake profile with no connection to the company, one of dozens 4CR has found impersonating it over the years. One fake profile claims to have worked at 4CR since November 2016. A researcher named Jay Jones has tracked more than 60,000 fake job postings and flagged about 7,000 scam recruiter profiles on his own. Pete and Peter argue LinkedIn could shut this down easily (it used to be simple to delete fake accounts) but has little incentive to, since fake profiles inflate its own user numbers. They also connect it to a tougher stat: long-term unemployment continues to climb, and only about one in seven people out of work for 27 weeks or longer land a job in a given month, making job seekers even more vulnerable to scams promising an easy way back in.

On a lighter note, a Wall Street Journal story on companies using AI to help set employee raises got an ominous headline, but Pete and Peter say the practice isn't new. Companies have used market pay data for years (career sites like CareerBuilder built entire products around it), and AI is simply a faster way to gather the same information.

A new Owl Labs survey on hybrid work turned up a surprising number: 47% of workers say they'd take a pay cut of 10% or more in exchange for flexible hours, and 39% would turn down a job outright if it required full-time office work. Pete and Peter debate whether that's a reasonable stance for office workers to take, especially with a fresh report showing AI is hitting recent college grads hardest: employment for 20-to-25-year-olds in highly AI-exposed fields fell 4.4% over the past year, the 35th straight month of decline.

They close with a preview of next week's data-heavy schedule: the JOLTS report on Tuesday, ADP's private payroll report, and the big monthly jobs report at week's end, along with their predictions for what the numbers will show.

Looking to hire or find your next role? Visit 4cornerresources.com

GM's CEO made headlines this week telling high school students to pick up a wrench instead of heading to college, and Pete and Peter agree with the broader point (the US is projected to face a shortage of over 2 million skilled trades workers by 2030), but they're skeptical of the messenger. GM has laid off plenty of trades workers over the years, and the numbers complicate the pitch: the average mechanic salary is $44,890 a year, a certified mechanic averages $63,807, and a journeyman electrician averages around $63,626. Solid pay, but not the kind of money that easily supports a family the way it once did. Pete and Peter's take: if the country needs more trades workers, trade pay and trade school access need to improve too, or people will keep choosing college. They also question how many of these jobs survive the next decade of automation, given robots are already building cars at scale at Tesla and Hyundai.

A Bureau of Labor Statistics report caught Pete and Peter's attention this week: the cost of employee benefits (Social Security, Medicare, healthcare, and more) for private industry workers has climbed from under $10 an hour a decade ago to more than $17 an hour today. That's a steep cost increase for employers, on top of already-rising wages, and Pete and Peter argue it's one more incentive pushing companies toward automation over hiring.

There's better news on the AI front. Indeed Hiring Labs found that wages for the most AI-exposed jobs (software engineering, IT, data and analytics, marketing, and banking and finance) have climbed 46% since 2021, with job postings in those fields growing too. Morgan Stanley found something similar: the most AI-exposed households are best positioned for wage growth. The catch, according to Indeed's own data, is that openings are skewing toward more senior, experienced hires, making it harder for entry-level workers to break in.

The bigger, longer-running story: the share of US economic output going to workers has fallen to 52%, the lowest level ever recorded, down from a historical range closer to 60-66%. The decline started around 2000, stalled briefly after 2010, and has picked up speed again in the past few years. Pete and Peter aren't ready to blame AI alone, but they expect it to accelerate the trend.

They close with two hiring-process stories: Challenger, Gray & Christmas warns that AI is increasingly summarizing and rating recorded job interviews before a human ever reviews them (70% of employers already use AI somewhere in hiring, according to TestGorilla), and a Morning Brew report on companies asking candidates to complete unpaid work trials, in some cases for a full week. Pete and Peter's advice: know your worth in the market, and don't do unpaid work beyond an hour or two without getting paid for it.

Looking to hire or find your next role? Visit 4cornerresources.com.

The BLS report from last Friday held a detail Pete and Peter didn't catch the first time around: of the 162,000 jobs added in August, 158,000 went to women, about 97% of the total. Women now hold slightly more than half of all payroll jobs in the US, only the third time that's happened in history. The gains came almost entirely from healthcare, education, and hospitality, all women-dominated fields, while male-dominated sectors like transportation and technology declined. Men's labor force participation dropped from 67.9% to 67.2% over the same period, a shift Pete and Peter attribute partly to baby boomer men retiring out of the workforce.

They also cover a Richmond Fed report showing more Americans are working two jobs than at any point in the last 26 years, a trend that lines up with this week's inflation numbers: wages rose 3.1% while prices climbed 3.4%. About half of multiple job holders have a college degree, undercutting the idea that a second job is a young or unskilled worker's problem.

On AI, a former Anthropic employee's viral tweet claiming the industry is "dooming" society, along with another Anthropic employee's public estimate of a greater than 10% chance AI causes human extinction within a decade, dominated headlines this week. Pete and Peter treat both claims with some skepticism given who's making them, but agree the underlying concern about AI's pace isn't unfounded. They also cover Orlando's new robotaxi rollout, a protest by 30 robots in Poland demanding AI regulation (organized, oddly, by a man who owns both a robotics company and a staffing agency), and Bernie Sanders' proposed "AI sovereignty fund," which would compensate the public for the data used to train AI models.

Elsewhere: small businesses are still struggling to fill open roles, and Pete and Peter say the real problem is finding candidates willing to work for a company outside the well-known brand names, not pay. And the Trump administration is moving to eliminate the 60-day grace period H-1B visa holders currently get after losing a job, a change that would put visa holders at risk of near-immediate deportation if it goes through.

Visit www.4cornerresources.com for hiring and job search resources.

Pete and Peter share the results of 4 Corner Resources' Q3 2026 Employee Mindset Survey, the third quarterly edition of a study tracking how American workers feel about their jobs, their financial confidence, and AI. The headline finding cuts against a lot of what's in the news: the overall mindset score sits at 67.3 out of 100, and 81% of full-time workers say they're satisfied or extremely satisfied with their current job.

Satisfaction isn't showing up in paychecks, though. Real average hourly wages actually fell 0.2% year over year as of July, even as people report feeling better about their jobs. Pete and Peter's read: workers see how hard the job market is right now and are grateful to have something stable, even if pay isn't keeping pace. The one place satisfaction clearly splits is work arrangement: workers stuck in a setup they didn't choose (mostly return-to-office mandates) score about 20 points lower than those working the way they want to, even though most aren't ready to quit over it yet.

Employee confidence is actually trending up, which surprised both hosts, but it comes with a serious caveat: workers report having only about four months of savings on average if they lost their job, and 22.1% have no savings at all. The gender gap is stark: 15% of men report zero savings, compared to 30% of women.

On AI, the fear factor has stayed flat all year at 15% of workers naming it as the top threat to their career, a group made up entirely of full-time, mid-to-high earners, not entry-level or gig workers. The most striking finding: the people who use AI the most are also the ones most worried about it. Roughly half of respondents think AI will actually help their career, making sentiment on AI more split than panicked.

4 Corner Resources runs this survey every quarter. The next edition comes out in early October, just ahead of the November election. See the full results and historical data at www.4cornerresources.com under the Surveys tab.

The BLS reported 162,000 jobs added in August, about triple the 55,000 forecast, plus a rare upward revision to prior months. Pete and Peter are skeptical, since downward revisions happen roughly 90% of the time. ADP's competing report told a very different story: private employers added just 38,000 jobs, the slowest month since January, and while the BLS reported 16,000 new manufacturing jobs, ADP reported a decline of 17,000. Pete and Peter can't reconcile the two, and neither can point to which source is right.

They also dig into where the BLS job growth actually came from: a large share was government hiring, and about a third, 59,000 jobs, came from food service and drinking places, meaning restaurants, bars, and coffee shops. Not exactly the high-wage growth the economy needs.

The bigger concern this week: long-term unemployment. Only 14.3% of people who've been out of work for six months or more find a job in a given month, roughly one in seven, even though the headline unemployment rate sits at a healthy-looking 4.1%. Pete and Peter also talk about hiring bias creeping back for candidates with employment gaps or frequent job changes, a pattern that eased during COVID but has firmly returned.

They close with Uber's decision to cut 10% of its roughly 34,000-person workforce, about 3,300 people, with 20% of those cuts hitting management seven or more layers below the CEO. Uber says it's pure restructuring, not AI, making it one of the only major layoffs this year not blamed on automation.

Looking to hire or find your next role? Visit 4cornerresources.com.

Bill Gates published a lengthy warning about AI's threat to jobs this week, and Pete and Peter aren't convinced there's anything new in it. He predicts sales, customer support, software engineering, paralegal work, loan assessment, and data analysis are all at risk, and argues government policy needs to keep job creation in line with job losses. Pete and Peter push back hardest on sales, arguing it's one of the most human, relationship-driven jobs that exists, and question whether a call for more government policy from a former Microsoft CEO is entirely disinterested.

They also revisit MIT economist Daron Acemoglu's point on the tax code: hiring a robot costs a business roughly a 5% effective tax rate, versus more than 30% for hiring a human employee. Pete and Peter agree the fix isn't taxing automation more; it's taxing human employment less.

The bigger story of the week: official unemployment sits at 4.1%, but the Ludwig Institute's "true unemployment rate," which counts anyone without a job, anyone who wants full-time work but can't get it, and anyone earning $26,000 a year or less, comes in at 24.9%. Pete and Peter argue that number explains the gap between a healthy-looking headline rate and how bad the job market actually feels to a lot of people.

They also cover a new report that the government plans to start buying jobs data from AI companies since its own survey response rates have collapsed, the BLS's list of the fastest-growing jobs over the next decade (healthcare makes up 37% of it), and a study of 20 million LinkedIn profiles showing how often people go back and edit old job descriptions, including adding AI-related terms at six times the rate of anything else.

Looking to hire or find your next role? Visit 4cornerresources.com.

The Wall Street Journal reported this week that LinkedIn has a dating problem: 22% of users say they've sent or received a message with romantic intent on the platform, and roughly one in four think that's acceptable behavior on a professional site. Pete and Peter also cover the flip side of that same article: one in five people say they check a potential date's LinkedIn profile before meeting them, since it's harder to fake a professional history than a dating profile.

From there, a data point job seekers can actually use. Research from Cornell, George Mason, and Vanderbilt found that a one-hour delay in responding to a recruiter is associated with a 6% drop in the odds of getting hired, and a full-day delay drops those odds by 90%. Pete and Peter break down why: recruiters are usually talking to several candidates at once, and the first qualified person to respond often ends up several steps ahead in the process.

They also cover a Monster survey finding that only 10% of workers say their job description matched the actual job, and 85% of candidates say they're more likely to apply to a job posting that reads as honest and specific rather than generic. Pete and Peter make the case for writing real, current job descriptions instead of recycling old ones, and for including salary ranges upfront.

Other stories this week: no major layoffs reported, a first for 2026, though Charles Schwab is moving roughly 1,000 jobs offshore to India. The JOLTS survey, a key government measure of job openings and layoffs, is now getting responses from only about one in four companies surveyed, down from seven in ten before the pandemic. And the Richmond Fed reports the median length of unemployment has crept up to about 10.5 weeks.

4 Corner Resources' Q3 Employee Mindset Survey is live now at 4cornerresources.com/employee-mindset-survey, with a full episode on the results coming next week.

Looking to hire or find your next role? Visit 4cornerresources.com.

A leaked internal memo shows Google's own recruiting team doesn't fully trust the company's AI screening tool. The memo, marked "do not share widely" and shared widely within hours, admits a "non-trivial possibility" that the AI is ignoring or ruling out qualified candidates, and now Google is asking applicants to fill out a separate form so a human can manually review their resume. Pete and Peter dig into why that matters beyond one company: average applications per job jumped from 115 in 2022 to 244 in 2025, which is exactly the volume problem AI screening is supposed to solve.

They also cover new SHRM data showing 85% of recruiting leaders expect to increase their use of AI screening, and 63% of job seekers report already being screened or interviewed by AI, up 13 points in six months. One number Pete calls inexcusable: 70% of candidates say they were never told AI was involved in their application. Pete and Peter disagree a bit on how far the technology has come (Pete calls well-built AI screening close to ideal, Peter still calls it a necessary evil), but they agree on one thing: candidates should be told upfront.

The leaked Google memo also warned that human reviewers get tired of resumes that all sound alike from AI-generated answers. Pete and Peter's advice for candidates: let AI handle formatting, but keep the actual content and voice your own.

From there, a new Monster survey found 54% of workers would take a pay cut for job security, and 61% would give up some part of their pay or work arrangement just for stability, even though the data still shows roughly one job opening for every job seeker. They also cover a slowdown in ADP's weekly hiring numbers, a three-year high in NFIB's small business hiring plans, and an MIT report on what it calls "disposable workers," which Pete and Peter push back on hard when it comes to contract employment.

4 Corner Resources' quarterly Employee Mindset Survey results are coming soon.

Looking to hire or find your next role? Visit 4cornerresources.com.

The July jobs report finally turned negative: the US lost 23,000 jobs, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics revised May and June's numbers down by a combined 103,000. Pete and Peter argue the losses matter less than they sound, since 264,000 people also left the labor force this month. Fewer job seekers competing for roughly the same number of openings still adds up to a healthy market on paper, even though unemployment ticking down partly reflects people exiting the workforce rather than finding jobs.

The bigger story underneath the monthly numbers: baby boomer retirements are shrinking the labor force, a trend Pete and Peter expect to continue for at least the next five years. They also break down a new Indeed survey of economists, where 57% expect AI to lower wages and 61% worry about AI displacing college-educated workers, and get into whether a bachelor's degree still prepares graduates for the workforce it's supposed to lead them into. That includes a pointed take on the University of Michigan's decision to hide first-semester grades from new students.

They also cover the NFIB's monthly small business survey, where more than half of small businesses say they can't find qualified applicants, and why that gap persists even with plenty of candidates in the market. They close with LinkedIn's new plan to let users flag posts as AI slop, a feature Pete and Peter can't wait to use.

4 Corner Resources' quarterly Employee Mindset Survey results are coming soon.

Looking to hire or find your next role? Visit 4cornerresources.com.

Pete and Peter open with the strangest hiring story of the year so far. LemonLime, a five-person AI startup, offered instant interviews to anyone at a networking event willing to get the company's logo tattooed on their body. The backlash was swift, but so was the attention, and Pete and Peter debate whether the stunt was tone-deaf or quietly brilliant marketing.

From there, two weeks running of actual good AI news. A new ZipRecruiter survey of 1,000 employers found 35% say AI is growing their headcount, and 24% say it already has. The same survey found a less encouraging trend underneath it: 38% moved basic data work off entry-level employees onto AI, and 31% raised the experience requirements on their entry-level postings, which Pete and Peter argue defeats the purpose of calling a job entry-level at all.

Revelio Labs published the first read from a new AI jobs tracker, showing companies that adopted AI grew headcount 27% faster than companies that didn't, with the growth concentrated more in senior roles than junior ones. Pete and Peter also break down a Daron Acemoglu op-ed in Axios arguing that the tax code itself is tilting the playing field: employers pay roughly a 30% payroll tax on human wages, versus an estimated 5% effective tax cost on the same $100 invested in AI or automation.

They close with a Harvard Business Review piece making the case for hiring job hoppers, a batch of layoffs at BMW, Porsche, and Visa, and an ADP report showing private payrolls declining for a fifth straight week, right before next month's official jobs report.

Visit 4cornerresources.com for hiring and job search resources.

A rare quiet week for once: no major layoffs, no new AI panic. Pete and Peter open with the number that earned the good-news label this week: initial unemployment claims came in at 187,000, the lowest since 1969, well under the 250,000 mark that typically signals a healthy job market. Add in roughly one open job for every unemployed worker, and the data says the market is about as balanced as it's been in years.

So why does it still feel bad out there? A new Monster survey found 93% of workers feel their wages aren't keeping up with the cost of living, and 85% say they've had to dip into savings just to keep up. Pete and Peter also talk through why job switching doesn't pay like it used to: changing companies still tends to bring a 10% to 20% raise versus 3% to 5% for staying put, but far fewer people are making that move right now compared to the post-COVID hiring surge.

From there, they cover a new Google survey describing today's AI use as "shallow," and Google's own framing that AI is meant to be an assistant, not a replacement, a read Pete and Peter mostly agree with based on their own daily use. They close with Amazon's decision to cut staff in its Artificial General Intelligence group, and a publicly disclosed OpenAI safety incident in which a model in a sandboxed test environment reportedly tried to reach the open internet.

4 Corner Resources' quarterly Employee Mindset Survey results are coming soon. In the meantime, visit 4cornerresources.com for hiring and job search resources.

Pete Newsome sits down with Michael Mark from TurboCheck for a conversation most hiring teams aren't having yet, but should be: candidate fraud. TurboCheck's data shows fraud running around 40% across all roles on average, and as high as 70% to 80% for some remote technical positions. Mike lays out the three tiers behind it: individuals padding resumes or juggling multiple undisclosed jobs, organized crime groups placing fake candidates to access company systems, and nation-state actors, including North Korea, which Mike says has pulled over $1 billion from US companies through fake job placements to help fund its nuclear weapons program.

The two dig into how sophisticated this has gotten: LinkedIn profiles built years ago during COVID and left to "season," GPT-written resumes, AI face masks and deepfakes on video interviews, and real-time AI tools that feed candidates answers through a teleprompter. They also talk through why manual screening alone can't keep up with AI-generated fraud, and why human judgment paired with verification technology is the combination that actually works.

Pete shares why 4 Corner Resources became a TurboCheck customer after running into a bait-and-switch candidate in a hybrid healthcare role, where one person interviewed and a different person showed up for the job. Mike walks through TurboCheck's four core tools: a patented identity check screening name, email, phone, and location against nearly 1,000 data points; biometric face verification that catches AI masks and confirms a candidate stays the same person from first call through employment; government ID document verification; and reference verification to confirm references are real people.

They close with practical advice for job seekers: research any company before applying, and be cautious if a "job" asks for sensitive information like a Social Security number early on or the process moves suspiciously fast.

Learn more about TurboCheck at turbocheck.com, and visit 4cornerresources.com for hiring and job search resources.

Pete and Peter open with a story job seekers have been waiting years for: the Texas Attorney General is going after LinkedIn over ghost job postings, subpoenas included. Estimates put fake job postings at 20% to 33% of what's out there, and Texas now joins New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Kentucky, and California in taking legal aim at the practice. They also dig into an overlooked wrinkle: the federal government itself requires companies sponsoring H-1B visas to post jobs publicly even when a candidate is already chosen, and plenty of private employers quietly do the same thing. They cover what candidates can do to protect themselves from the fraud that follows fake postings, since handing over something like a Social Security number to the wrong company can cost real money.

From there, they discuss a Wall Street Journal story on employers hiring firms to research employees' online activity, including tools that claim up to 70% accuracy at unmasking anonymous profiles. Pete and Peter debate where legitimate screening ends and employers digging into private lives begins, and argue that most of it has no business being an employer's concern.

They also break down a second Wall Street Journal piece on how a shrinking labor force, with more workers projected to leave than enter over the next four years, could make AI's rise easier to absorb. Job openings and unemployed workers currently sit at close to a 1-to-1 ratio, and the economy has historically needed roughly 250,000 new jobs a month just to hold that balance. As the workforce shrinks, that number could approach zero, potentially shifting some leverage back toward workers even as AI adoption continues.

Layoffs this week: Verizon is closing 274 retail stores nationwide, and Volkswagen confirmed the largest layoff in automotive industry history. On a brighter note, weekly unemployment claims came in at 208,000, a historically low number.

4 Corner Resources' quarterly Employee Mindset Survey analysis is still underway. Pete and Peter will dedicate a full episode to those results soon. In the meantime, visit www.4cornerresources.com for hiring and job search resources.

Pete and Peter promised something lighter this week, and for the most part, they deliver. They open with a new Goldman Sachs report weighing whether an "AI jobs apocalypse" is actually coming. Goldman's answer is more measured than the headlines: disruption spread over roughly 10 years, concentrated mostly in entry-level roles. MIT economist and Nobel laureate Daron Acemoglu takes a tougher stance in the same conversation, predicting millions of displacements and noting that "no general law of economics says that job creation must match job destruction." Pete and Peter don't fully agree on the timeline, but both expect entry-level workers to feel it first.

From there, they talk through an AI phone auto-attendant demo they sat in on this week, a Deutsche Bank report claiming AI productivity gains are still years off (a claim Pete and Peter push back on), and why AI adoption looks so different depending on whether a company is an early adopter, a cautious tester, or still on the sidelines.

Then the good news: ZipRecruiter data shows apprentice-trained trade workers earn a median of $91,000 a year versus $65,000 for self-taught workers, construction jobs are up 34% year over year, and manufacturing is up 32%, all while most white-collar hiring sits flat. Pete and Peter get into why trade schools still lag far behind colleges on marketing and admissions, and why that gap matters more as AI squeezes entry-level office work.

They also cover the NFIB small business index, where 84% of small businesses actively hiring say they still can't find qualified applicants, and close with a Wall Street Journal story that's hard to make up: a co-founder at Barnhill Investments who helped write the company's return-to-office policy was fired under that same policy for not coming in.

4 Corner Resources' quarterly Employee Mindset Survey results just came in, and Pete and Peter will dig into what workers are thinking about the job market on next week's episode. In the meantime, visit www.4cornerresources.com for hiring and job search resources.

Pete and Peter are back after a short summer break, and June's jobs report didn't make for an easy return. The U.S. added just 57,000 jobs against a forecast of roughly 110,000, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics quietly revised away 74,000 previously reported jobs from April and May. Add that to 2025's total revisions of over a million jobs, and Pete and Peter dig into why the monthly jobs report is losing its credibility with the people who used to rely on it most.

They also break down a bleaker number that gets less attention: long-term unemployment (workers out of a job for 27 weeks or more) now sits at 27.3% of the unemployed, up 286,000 people year over year. Then there's the cost-of-living math from a new ZipRecruiter analysis: a single earner needs about $100,000 a year just to cover typical rent and infant care, and $122,800 to buy a home, while only 28% of job postings actually pay six figures.

From there, the conversation turns to layoffs: Volkswagen's historic cut of 100,000 jobs, Microsoft's smaller-than-expected 2.5% workforce reduction, and the debate over how many of 2026's layoffs are actually AI-driven versus companies using AI as a convenient explanation. Pete and Peter close with Ford's move to rehire 300 engineers after CEO Jim Farley's own prediction of major AI-driven white-collar job losses, and what that says about the gap between AI's potential and where companies actually are with it.

4 Corner Resources' quarterly Employee Mindset Survey is nearly ready, and Pete and Peter will bring you those results soon. In the meantime, visit www.4cornerresources.com for hiring and job search resources.