June saw the biggest one-month drop in prime-age labor force participation outside of the Covid-19 pandemic since 1976, according to BLS data reported by CNBC. Roughly 720,000 people stopped working or looking for work between May and June.
More than 1.9 million Americans, about 1 in 4 unemployed people, had been jobless and searching for six months or longer in June.
Most of those leaving the workforce are between 25 and 34, according to Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union.
About half of job seekers say the search negatively affects their mental health, citing rejection, lack of responses, financial pressure, and fading motivation, per an April Resume Genius survey of 1,000 active job seekers.
The longer someone is out of work in a low-hire, low-fire market, the harder it gets to find a way back in.
Read more via CNBC
Worker confidence in their employers' six-month business outlook fell to a new record low in July, according to the Glassdoor Employee Confidence Index, topping the previous record set in May.
The share of employees reporting a positive six-month outlook fell to 43.5%, down from 44.4% in June.
Telecommunications saw the steepest year-over-year drop, falling 13.9 percentage points to 31.1%.
Hotels and travel accommodation dropped 12.3 percentage points over the past year; restaurants and food service sit at just 31.4%.
Entry-level workers remain the most pessimistic, down 2.9 percentage points year-over-year; senior-level confidence rose 3.1 points month-over-month.
Human resources and staffing was one of the few industries to post a year-over-year gain, up 1 percentage point to 54.8%.
Read more via Glassdoor
Workers from lower-income backgrounds are less likely to negotiate pay and are penalized more harshly when they do, according to new research from MIT, Stanford, and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Findings from five studies involving more than 11,000 participants:
Lower-class individuals were consistently less likely to negotiate starting salary, raises, promotions, job content, and benefits.
MBA graduates who didn't negotiate earned an average of $6,450 less in starting salary than those who did; researchers estimate that gap compounds to roughly $779,000 over a 40-year career.
An experiment with more than 1,100 HR professionals found that the same negotiation request prompted stronger social backlash when it came from a lower-class candidate.
The two drivers: a diminished sense of power and a higher fear of damaging relationships by asking.
A separate Glassdoor survey found that 57% of laid-off workers felt pressure to accept a lower salary to return to work; that figure rose to 63% among women.
Read more via Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, HR Dive
The Office of Personnel Management has eliminated the Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures (UGESP) from federal hiring regulations, effective immediately, following a June Department of Justice opinion declaring the framework unconstitutional.
UGESP, in place since 1978, set standards for identifying whether hiring assessments were creating disparate impact on protected classes based on race, gender, or other demographics. Disparate impact refers to policies that appear neutral but disproportionately affect certain groups.
DOJ argued the framework violates Title VII by focusing on disparate impact rather than employer intent, and pressures agencies toward "race-based decision-making."
OPM said agencies remain responsible for ensuring selection practices are merit-based, job-related, and free from prohibited discrimination.
The rule is effective immediately; OPM is accepting public comments for 60 days.
Jenny Mattingley of the Partnership for Public Service said the framework helped agencies build better, less biased assessments over time, and warned that removing it without resourcing agencies to fill the gap leaves them exposed.
My one hope would be, if they are removing some of these frameworks and guardrails, that they are equally focused on resourcing agencies to do assessments well."
Read more via Federal News Network
A Utah-based startup is using AI to speed up the record expungement process, helping tens of thousands of people clear barriers to employment, according to NPR.
More than 70 million U.S. adults have some kind of criminal record; an estimated 20 million are eligible to clear their records under existing law but haven't done so.
Rasa Legal's app can determine expungement eligibility in about three minutes; AI has cut the time lawyers spend filing a petition by more than half.
The company has helped clear records for 34,000 people in Utah, Arizona, and Pennsylvania since launching in 2022, at a flat fee of $500 per case covering all legal representation and filing fees.
Research shows wages rise an average of 22% within a year of expungement.
Founder Noella Sudbury says the one piece she has no plans to hand to AI is the human touchpoint: a staff member who has been through the system herself, talking with prospective clients one on one.
Read more via NPR
