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While investors focus on artificial intelligence, data centers, and advanced manufacturing, a growing crisis is emerging behind the scenes. The U.S. is running short of the skilled workers needed to keep those industries operating. Major employers including Ford Motor Company, along with organizations backed by Bloomberg Philanthropies, BlackRock, and Lowe’s, are now committing hundreds of millions of dollars to train the next generation of mechanics, electricians, and trade professionals.The spending surge highlights a growing reality: the future of America’s economy may depend as much on skilled tradespeople as it does on software engineers.Ford Says Technician Shortage Is Hurting CustomersEvery morning,...

The US economy added 172,000 jobs in May, blowing past expectations, according to the government's closely watched jobs report. The unemployment rate remained flat at 4.3%. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg had anticipated payroll growth of 88,000 for the month. April's jobs report — which itself was a massive beat — was also revised to show an even better 179,000 jobs gained, compared to the 115,000 reported earlier. March's payroll growth was similarly updated to show 214,000, bringing the first monthly gain above 200,000 since early 2024. Payroll gains were seen across several sectors — notably not relying just on the...

The U.S. economy added more jobs than expected in May, posting strong payroll gains for the third month in a row, a sign the U.S. labor market is steadily recovering from a weak patch last fall and winter. The U.S. added 172,000 jobs in May, the Labor Department said Friday, beating expectations.

According to payroll processor ADP, private employers added 122,000 jobs during May, exceeding economist expectations of 110,000 and accelerating from April’s revised total of 105,000. The report arrives at a critical moment for investors. Wall Street is trying to determine whether the economy is heading toward a soft landing, a renewed growth cycle, or a more pronounced slowdown. At the same time, Federal Reserve officials are searching for evidence that inflation pressures are cooling enough to justify future interest rate cuts.For now, the labor market appears to be sending a clear message: employers are still hiring.A Stronger Labor Market Than...

ROSELAND, N.J., June 3, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Private sector employment increased by 122,000 jobs in May and pay was up 4.4 percent year-over-year according to the May ADP National Employment Report® produced by ADP Research in collaboration with the Stanford Digital Economy Lab ("Stanford Lab"). The ADP National Employment Report is an independent measure of the labor market based on the anonymized weekly payroll data of more than 26 million private-sector employees in the United States. ADP's Pay Insights captures over 15 million individual pay change observations each month. Together, the jobs report and pay insights use ADP's fine-grained data...

The number of American men in the workforce are at its lowest level in two decades — with about one in three American men having stopped working as of 2026, new labor statistics show. Just 66% of men were employed or actively seeking a job as of April, a nearly 20-year low from 73% in 2006, according to data the US Bureau of Labor Statistics released earlier this month. The current number — covering men aged 20 and over — is almost exactly as low as it was after the 2008 recession, when rates first plummeted by seven points in...

Gloom and doom is everywhere these days—-except in the economic data or in business planning meetings. Surveys of consumers suggest that these are the worst of times. The University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment index keeps hitting all-time lows. The Economist/YouGov poll shows 63 percent of Americans say the economy is getting worse, including a third of Trump voters. Eighty-four percent of Democrats say we are either already in a recession or likely to be in one in the next 12 months. Businesses aren’t seeing it. The Atlanta-Fed released its latest Survey of Business Uncertainty on Tuesday, and the results are...

Two billboards went up in New York City recently. This is a city of advertising, where images appear when someone wants the whole world to see them. One billboard is selling artificial intelligence, and the other is warning about it. The juxtaposition between these two advertisers, who most likely wouldn’t have seen the other’s message in advance, captures the conflict of our times and cements the uncertainty about the future within an artificial intelligence world.The selling billboard is dark, purple, and almost cinematic.An AI-generated face with artificial perfection stares out. Three words above her say: “Stop Hiring Humans.” The Era...

CNBC compiled a list of 23 S&P 500 firms across multiple sectors and industries to see how their stocks fared following layoffs linked to AI. As of May 15, 13 of those companies, or 56%, have traded in the red from the time of their layoff announcements. Of the companies whose shares fell after their AI-linked layoffs, the average decline was about 25%. Some of the companies that have seen their shares sink after slashing head count to embrace AI include Nike, Salesforce and Fiverr. Artificial intelligence has ushered in a bull run in stocks that has taken the broader...

Sleep is critical to being in good health, regulating how people think and informing everything from mood to physical health. But the country’s lack of sleep is a problem for everyone, even for those lucky Americans who are able to get enough shut-eye. In addition to individual health, insufficient sleep creates a drag on medical spending, workplace productivity, and long-term health outcomes. America’s chronic inability to get enough sleep comes with a real cost attached, one that researchers have put in the hundreds of billions of dollars in annual economic losses. The other culprit is the thing that makes the...

The launch of ChatGPT in 2022 ignited the artificial-intelligence boom—and elicited a chorus of warnings from AI bosses of an impending jobs apocalypse. Never mind that they have reason to talk up the disruptiveness of their products, or that rich-world employment is near all-time highs—the dark message has landed. Seven in ten Americans think AI will make it harder for people to find work; nearly a third fear for their own jobs. A dearth of openings for college graduates—especially computer programmers—amplifies the dread. The past offers some solace for the anxious. Labour markets constantly change. Today’s offices would be unrecognisable...

Job creation topped muted expectations in though the plodding U.S. labor market sent up several flags for a potential slowdown this year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday. Nonfarm payrolls rose by a seasonally adjusted 115,000 for the month, down from the 185,000 created in an unusually strong March, but better than the 55,000 forecast in the Dow Jones consensus estimate. The unemployment rate held at 4.3%, further proof that the labor market has reached a point where only modest job creation is needed to keep the jobless level steady, given little growth in the labor force. Average hourly...

US employers added 115,000 jobs in April and the unemployment rate remained steady at 4.3%, a surprisingly robust gain to the labor market as the US-Israel war with Iran continued to drive up economic uncertainty. Economists projected about 55,000 new jobs and a 4.3% unemployment rate. A day earlier, the labor department announced 200,000 people filed for weekly unemployment benefits, a slight increase from the week before. Jobs gains were concentrated in healthcare, transportation and warehousing, retail and social assistance. Altogether, 106,000 new jobs were added to those four industries. Meanwhile, job losses were seen in federal government employment –...

The number of Americans filing claims for unemployment benefits increased less than expected last week amid low layoffs that are helping to anchor the labor market. Initial claims for ‌state unemployment benefits rose 10,000 to a seasonally adjusted 200,000 for the week ended May 2. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast 205,000 claims for the latest week. Government data on Tuesday showed there were 0.95 job openings for every unemployed person in March versus 0.91 in February, consistent with a stable labor market. Despite a raft of layoff announcements by big technology firms related to the adoption of artificial intelligence...

* OpenAI investor Vinod Khosla predicts 80% of jobs will be done by AI by the early 2030s. * The AI investor joins a list of high-earning executives who have warned about the future of jobs. * He frames the battle between the US and China for AI dominance as a "techno-economic war."Billionaire venture capitalist Vinod Khosla says most of today's children won't need jobs when they grow up.In a recent interview with Fortune Magazine, the Sun Microsystems cofounder and tech investor predicted that artificial intelligence will be able to do up to 80% of jobs by the early 2030s....

Plenty of people are concerned about the rise of artificial intelligence, or AI. Two of our four kids are freelance graphic artists, and they are (legitimately) worried about their incomes being yanked as more people use AI for simple graphics chores like designing logos, and increasingly for more complicated work, like graphics for television programming and websites. It's a fair thing to be worried about, but as I have advised them both, that genie ain't going back in the bottle, so they'd best figure out how to work with it - or find another line of work. These kinds of...

Over the past 45 years, wage growth for most Americans has been halting at best, often failing to keep up with the country’s overall economic gains. The issue underpinning America’s cost-of-living crisis isn’t just rising prices. The real culprit behind America’s affordability crisis is that employers have had too much power and too little motivation to share gains. The consequences of this imbalance are clear. The economy’s productivity grew by around 73% between 1979 and 2019, but wages in the middle rose only about 23%. Here is what this means in concrete terms. A retail worker in 1979 earned about...

Dive Brief:* Artificial intelligence was the leading cause of U.S. layoffs announced in March, accounting for roughly a quarter of the total, outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas said in a report Thursday. * Overall, U.S. employers announced 60,620 job cuts last month, a 25% increase compared with February, the report found. The month’s total included 15,341 layoffs attributed to AI. * “Companies are shifting budgets toward AI investments at the expense of jobs,” Andy Challenger, chief revenue officer at the Chicago-based firm, said in the report. “The actual replacing of roles can be seen in technology companies, where AI...

The March report on employment from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics shows non-farm payrolls increasing by 178,000 jobs. This exceeded expert predictions of a 60,000 increase. Since Trump's inauguration in January of 2025 the US private sector has added 609,000 jobs. Average hourly wages are 3.5% higher than a year ago. During the Biden Administration annual blue-collar wages declined by $1,703. In the past year these wages have risen by $1,186. The annual inflation rate that peaked at over 6% during the middle years of Biden's term have fallen to 2.5% in the first year of Trump's current term....

The so-called experts didn’t just miss the mark on March jobs numbers; they got steamrolled by reality. Economists predicted a weak 59,000 jobs. The actual number came in at a stunning 178,000. Talk about getting it completely wrong. And it’s the latest reminder that the same crowd that spent months warning about economic doom under President Donald Trump still doesn’t understand what’s actually happening on the ground. Even CNN couldn’t deny that this was huge. Unemployment dipped again, falling from 4.4% to 4.3%. Even more telling, the rate dropped across multiple groups, including women, black Americans, Asians, Hispanics, and veterans....