RAISE US, a bipartisan nonprofit launched today, is bringing together more than two dozen major employers, philanthropies, and state governments to prepare U.S. workers for AI-driven disruption. The organization is led by former Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and former Indiana Governor Eric Holcomb and aims to raise $1 billion in multi-year commitments, with more than half already secured.
Anchor technology partners include Amazon, Anthropic, Microsoft, and the OpenAI Foundation; Bank of America is the primary sponsor of the coalition's advanced manufacturing apprenticeship initiative.
Additional founding members include ADP, AMD, Autodesk, Blackstone, Cisco, Cognizant, Deloitte, Eli Lilly, General Motors, IBM, Mastercard, The Rockefeller Foundation, UPS, and Workday, among others.
Initial state partnerships are in Arkansas, Connecticut, Maryland, and Utah, with pilots including an AI-powered career navigation platform in Arkansas and expanded service-year pathways into healthcare in Maryland.
The coalition's mandate goes beyond retraining programs to include redesigning policies such as unemployment insurance, testing corporate incentives to keep and retrain workers rather than lay them off, and exploring wage insurance for workers changing careers.
America has a technology strategy for leading the global AI competition. It does not yet have a people strategy — and we cannot lead without one."
Amazon has committed $2.5 billion through its Future Ready 2030 initiative and has helped more than 300,000 employees earn degrees or certificates through its Career Choice program over 14 years.
Read more via The Wall Street Journal, RAISE US, About Amazon
Demand for tech talent is growing, but it is moving out of Big Tech and into the broader economy. An iCIMS analysis of more than 3 million global platform users found U.S. job openings up 9% year-over-year in May, while hiring rose only 1% and application volume dropped 11%.
The fastest-growing tech roles by job opening growth are Computer Programmers (+35%), Software Developers (+28%), Database Administrators (+27%), Computer and Information Systems Managers (+22%), and Software QA Analysts and Testers (+20%).
Healthcare and manufacturing are leading the redistribution of tech talent, with tech hiring up 8% and 4% respectively since May 2025.
Candidates aged 18 to 34 represent four out of five tech applicants, with those 18 to 24 alone accounting for 54%.
Frontline job openings also grew 9% year-over-year in May, but application volume dropped 18%, a steeper decline than the overall market.
Read more via iCIMS
A growing share of Americans are pursuing passive income — money earned with minimal ongoing effort — driven by job dissatisfaction, AI-fueled fears about the future of work, and a widening sense that a conventional career won't be enough. In March, worker satisfaction with pay and promotion opportunities hit its lowest point since the New York Fed began tracking it in 2014.
More than half of Americans, including 60% of Gen Z adults, say a conventional full-time job won't allow them to hit their financial goals, according to a survey commissioned by investing platform dub.
About one in four Americans say they have a side hustle, per Bankrate; 44% of adults aged 18 to 28 had a source of income outside full- or part-time work, per a Cash App survey in March.
In 2022, about one in ten U.S. workers reported making money from "less labor-intensive" activities such as selling goods online, according to a Boston Fed working paper.
AI is accelerating the trend, with workers using chatbots to identify niche market gaps and content generators to rapidly produce sellable digital products — though AI has also proven an unreliable earnings coach, with some users reporting actual returns far below what chatbots projected.
The FTC has taken enforcement action against several passive-income operations it said bilked consumers out of millions of dollars.
Read more via The Wall Street Journal
Speaking at SHRM's annual conference in Orlando, SHRM president and CEO Johnny Taylor Jr. predicted the next two to three years will bring a significant shift in how employers approach diversity, equity, and inclusion, driven by the Trump administration's enforcement posture and a changing legal landscape. His forecast: the profession will move from focusing on historically underrepresented groups to a broader standard that treats all forms of discrimination equally.
EEOC Acting Chair Andrea Lucas has, in Taylor's view, made clear the agency's primary job is to find illegal discrimination, and Taylor noted it is now being consistently described as a law enforcement agency in a way it previously was not.
The EEOC recently filed a lawsuit against a Coca-Cola bottler alleging reverse discrimination against men, an example Taylor cited as a signal of where enforcement is heading.
Taylor predicted employee resource groups and business development initiatives tied to DEI may face increased legal scrutiny in 2027 and 2028, and that charging parties may attempt to take cases to the Supreme Court to codify the current administration's approach before a potential change in administration.
SHRM is not abandoning diversity and inclusion, Taylor said, pointing to the launch of its revamped Center for Inclusion and Diversity; the reframe, he argued, is about compliance with Title VII as written, not a judgment on the value of equity.
It's going to sound odd for me to say this, but I think over the next three years, what they're going to have to do is reorient us as a profession — from focusing on groups that were just historically underrepresented and historically discriminated to broadly say any form of discrimination will not be tolerated."
Read more via HR Dive
A PwC analysis of more than one billion job postings across six continents finds AI is splitting the global labor market into two distinct paths. "Professionalised" roles, where AI amplifies human expertise, are growing faster than "democratised" roles, where AI makes the work itself easier for non-experts to perform.
Professionalised roles are seeing twice the job growth and 42% faster salary growth than democratised roles.
Companies most able to use AI saw headcount growth of 52% since 2018, compared to 36% for the least AI-exposed companies, and wage growth of 24% versus 17%.
The top 20% of the most AI-exposed companies achieved labor productivity growth of 163% since 2018, nearly five times higher than the most AI-exposed group overall.
The traditional relationship between experience and expertise is changing. AI is removing some of the routine work that once acted as an apprenticeship, while increasing demand for judgement, leadership and adaptability much earlier in careers."
Jobs requiring specific AI skills are growing roughly eight times faster than the overall jobs market, and the average wage premium for AI skills has risen to 62%, up from 57% last year.
AI-exposed entry-level roles in the U.S. are now seven times more likely to require traditionally senior-level skills like leadership and judgment; those roles grew 35% since 2019 while other entry-level roles declined 10%.
Read more via PwC
An ADP survey of more than 39,000 workers across 36 markets finds that despite historically low global unemployment, job security feels anything but settled. Only 22% of workers globally strongly agreed their job was safe from elimination.
No country surveyed had a majority of workers who felt confident their jobs were secure; Nigeria led at 38% and Japan was lowest at 5%.
In the U.S., 28% felt safe; in the U.K., 25%.
Sixty-two percent of workers worldwide said they work up to five unpaid hours per week; another 26% reported six to fifteen unpaid hours.
Half of upper managers and C-suite executives said they put in at least six unpaid hours a week, and those putting in the most unpaid hours were more likely to report feeling less productive and more likely to be looking for another job.
Daily AI users were four times more likely than non-users to say they felt less productive, but also showed higher engagement, less stress, and more positive attitudes toward their teammates.
Only 19% of workers worldwide were fully engaged in 2025; among workers whose employers were investing in their skills, 53% were fully engaged, compared to 12% where that support was absent.
Read more via CNBC
Consumer prices rose 4.2% annually in May, the highest rate since April 2023, driven largely by a surge in energy costs. The monthly gain of 0.5% met expectations, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Energy prices jumped 3.9% for the month, putting the twelve-month increase at 23.5%.
Core CPI, which strips out food and energy, rose 0.2% for the month and 2.9% year-over-year, both in line with or below forecasts.
Shelter costs, which make up more than one-third of the CPI weighting, rose 0.3% for the month and 3.4% annually.
Markets are pricing in the likelihood that the Fed's next move will be a rate hike in December rather than a cut.
Americans are getting squeezed financially by inflation that's back at a 3-year high. The frustration for many Americans is that so many of the basics are up in price right now — gas, food, electricity, and medical care are all clear pain points."
U.S. households are growing more anxious about their finances, with the share of those saying their situation is "much worse" than a year ago hitting its highest level since July 2022, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York's monthly Survey of Consumer Expectations.
The share seeing their current situation as "much worse" than a year ago rose to 13.3%, up 2.7 percentage points from April.
The total seeing their situation as either much or somewhat worse stood at 43.7%, the highest since January 2023.
Looking ahead, 36% expected conditions to be either much or somewhat worse over the coming year, while only 22.9% expected improvement.
One-year inflation expectations declined slightly to 3.5%; three- and five-year expectations held flat at 3.1% and 3%.
Food price expectations rose 0.6 percentage point to 5.8%; rent expectations rose 1.4 percentage points to 7.4%.
Pharmaceutical manufacturing jobs pay a median annual wage of $69,900, about 32% more than the average U.S. manufacturing role, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. The sector is also among the faster-growing areas of U.S. manufacturing through 2034.
The average U.S. manufacturing wage was $51,670 in 2024; the average across all U.S. workers was $49,500.
BLS projects pharma manufacturing will add 19,000 jobs over the decade ending in 2034, making it the eighth fastest-growing manufacturing sector by both percentage and number of jobs.
Among twelve manufacturing sectors projected to add jobs, pharma ranks fourth in wages, behind aerospace, semiconductors, and motor vehicle manufacturing.
Despite significant reshoring commitments from drugmakers following Trump administration tariff and incentive efforts, BLS projections show little sign of accelerated job growth in the sector overall.
Read more via BioSpace
The U.S. labor market looks stable on the surface — layoffs are low, unemployment is near historic lows — but a Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis analysis argues it is quietly becoming hostile to new entrants. In a low-hire, low-fire environment, firms hold onto existing workers and slow expansion, leaving young adults and first-time job seekers with fewer openings to step into.
Since April 2023, the employment-to-population ratio for young adult workers has fallen substantially, while the same measure for prime-age workers has shown little change.
The employment-to-population ratio for recent college graduates has fallen 3.2 percentage points nationally and 7.7 percentage points in Eighth Federal Reserve District states since April 2023.
Unemployment rates for new-entrant college graduates have risen and labor force participation has edged lower, signaling longer job searches rather than mass withdrawal from the workforce.
Job openings and hiring rates have declined across nearly all Eighth District states since April 2023, while layoffs have remained historically low.
The St. Louis Fed notes that young workers often act as a leading indicator: when hiring slows, they feel it first, and their deteriorating outcomes may signal broader softening ahead.
Read more via Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has opened an investigation into the National Education Association, the nation's largest teachers union, over allegations that it created a hostile environment for Jewish members. The probe follows a complaint filed by the Louis D. Brandeis Center's Coalition to Combat Anti-Semitism.
The Brandeis Center's complaint alleges NEA's member handbook failed to identify Jews as the primary victims of the Holocaust, instead referencing more than 12 million victims across multiple groups.
In October 2025, NEA sent a mass email to its nearly 3 million members that included a map of Israel's boundaries labeled as Palestine as part of a resource on "indigenous lands."
Jewish delegates at NEA's 2025 Representative Assembly were physically surrounded and shouted at by anti-Israel protesters, according to the complaint.
NEA removed the map resource after the email drew attention and said it "does not tolerate antisemitism in any form."
The EEOC declined to confirm or deny the investigation, citing confidentiality requirements; the Brandeis Center said the probe is open in the agency's Washington, D.C., field office.
Canada: Half of employers in Canada do not consistently promote or provide disability accommodations to workers who need them, according to a white paper from the Canadian Council on Rehabilitation and Work. Sixty-four percent of surveyed employers said their workplace has no formal process for removing accessibility barriers, and 70% have not reviewed accessibility across the employment lifecycle. Just 62% of disabled people in Canada are employed, compared to 78% of non-disabled residents, and nearly seven in ten disabled candidates said they have encountered an accessibility barrier in the hiring process. (Canadian Council on Rehabilitation and Work)
Mexico: Workers at Audi Mexico's Puebla assembly plant approved a new one-year contract with a 4.6% wage increase, averting a strike that had been threatened since mid-June. The deal represents a 19.5% total compensation increase including benefits. The union had originally sought a 15% wage rise; the plant employs roughly 4,000 unionized workers. (Reuters)
Switzerland: Entry-level job postings in Switzerland dropped 32% in 2025 compared to the pre-AI period of 2019 to 2022, according to a study of more than 7.3 million job ads by Swiss job portal jobs.ch. Marketing, administration, finance, and IT were hit hardest, while senior postings in AI-exposed roles rose 26% over the same period. Demand for junior positions remained strong in healthcare, construction, and trades. Forty-one percent of workers under 25 said they worry about becoming less valuable in the workplace because of AI. (Reuters)
