Free Republic

The “Life in Venice” housing development, a multibillion-dollar replica of the Italian city on the Chinese coast, stands silent. But in recent years the remote, partially abandoned complex has drawn unlikely new residents like Sasa Chen, a burned-out young Chinese woman who until recently worked a high-earning finance job in Shanghai, China’s bustling commerce hub. The appeal? Chen pays just 1200 RMB, or $168, a month for her apartment in faux Venice in the eastern Chinese province of Jiangsu. It’s so cheap that it's allowed Chen to retire at the tender age of 28. Experts say Chen is part of...

Industry boosters argue the U.S. is in a race with China for technological supremacy, and thus the sprint has existential stakes. But many Americans view AI through the lens of issues much closer to home: skyrocketing electricity bills, looming job displacement, teenage chatbot addiction. Last October, after 134,000 people signed a statement calling for a halt to the development of superintelligence, “I was thinking, why are we getting military people, faith leaders, and everyone signing?” says Max Tegmark, a physicist whose nonprofit organization, The Future of Life Institute, issued the statement. “And then it hit me: they’re all rooting for...

The Trump administration has successfully sealed the border from illegal entrants. Deportations are well underway. Now is the time for Congress to do its part by ending laws that help foreigners illegally present in the U.S. take away jobs, housing, and retirement benefits that should go to Americans. The lynchpin for these giveaways is the Individual Taxpayer Identification Number, or ITIN. This number is a little-discussed, quasi-Social Security number given only to foreigners. It exists ostensibly so that undocumented immigrants (and a few others) can pay taxes on wages from jobs they cannot legally hold in the U.S. And were...

After much talk of an economic slowdown, February brought reassuring headlines. The official unemployment rate had fallen as another 130,000 jobs were added to the US economy, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That is good news, but it is not the whole story. The official unemployment rate counts only people actively looking for work – it does not capture those who would like a job but have stopped searching. The official unemployment rate is so narrow that it hides long-term changes in the economy. In fact, things are far worse than the official figures suggest. This matters for...

The number of Americans filing new applications for unemployment benefits fell more than expected last week, consistent with a stabilizing labor market. Initial claims for state unemployment benefits dropped 23,000 to a seasonally adjusted 206,0000 for the week ended February 14, the Labor Department said on Thursday. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast 225,000 claims for the latest week. Last week's drop marked a signficant decline in claims since they jumped to 232,000 at the end of January. The number of people filing new claims fell to 206,000 in the most recent week. Minutes of the Federal Reserve's January 27-28...

If you’ve been curious how to become an AI Engineer, the first thing to know is the job has evolved rapidly since generative AI went mainstream. A few years ago, AI engineering looked a lot like traditional machine learning — building and training models from scratch. Today, companies are hiring AI Engineers who can integrate powerful pretrained models, deploy LLM‑powered applications, and ship real AI features that solve real business problems. The job description has changed and so have the skills employers expect. To keep up with this shift, we built a brand‑new AI Engineer career path at Codecademy. Our...

On Wednesday, aerospace giant Boeing announced it will return its Defense, Space & Security headquarters to St. Louis following almost a decade in Virginia. The move comes only weeks after radical Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D) took office. Steve Parker, Boeing Defense, Space & Security CEO, said in a statement, “It’s important for leaders to be side-by-side with our teammates, listening to their feedback and acting to remove obstacles as we continue to stabilize and strengthen our business.”

Elon Musk just identified which jobs go first, and it destroys every assumption about who’s safe. Musk: “AI is going to take over those jobs like lightning. Anything that is digital, which is like just someone at a computer doing something.” Not factory workers. Office workers. The people who spent decades assuming education and desk jobs meant security are actually first. Musk: “Anything that’s physically moving atoms… those jobs will exist for a much longer time.” Output is a file? Vulnerable. Output is physical? Protected. That’s the entire framework. Musk: “AI is really still digital.” AI doesn’t need a body....

An analysis released by Google this month showed that the U.S. defense industrial base—a network of public and private entities used to develop or maintain military weapons systems—has sustained cyberattacks from groups and criminal organizations from China, Russia, and North Korea in recent months.The report, released on Feb. 10 by Google Threat Intelligence, found that the Chinese regime and associated groups continue “to represent by volume the most active threat to entities in the defense industrial base,” which it said can pose “significant risk to the defense and aerospace sector.”Google’s report added that it “has observed more China-nexus cyber espionage...

Across the artificial intelligence (AI) supply chain, insiders describe a precarious, high-turnover workforce with limited support and stability.This “invisible” human labor that labels data, evaluates outputs, and filters harmful material has become a revolving door of talent that navigates high-pressure gigs and burnout. Moreover, workers and industry experts say this talent churn can degrade the very AI models workers are paid to improve.Across the board, workers who are hired to support, evaluate, or operationalize AI systems face similar challenges: high-stress environments that often involve complex tasks, unrealistic timelines, job instability, and low wages.It’s no secret that the tech industry has...

Key Insight: Inflation showed signs of cooling in January, with the annual inflation rate dropping to 2.4%. Supporting data: Prices excluding food and fuel rose 0.3% in January, while food increased 0.2% and energy prices ticked down by 1.5%, the report found. Forward look: The January inflation reading remains slightly above the Fed's longstanding 2% target and is likely to reinforce a cautious stance toward further rate cuts, though President Trump will likely continue to push the central bank to lower rates. In recent months, as consumers face an affordability crisis, the Trump administration has rolled back tariffs on dozens...

Brewing giant Heineken has announced plans to cut up to 6,000 jobs as part of a cost-cutting drive to compensate for a slump in beer sales. The company, which also brews Amstel and Birra Moretti, unveiled the proposal amid weaker beer demand and what it described as 'challenging market conditions'. Heineken said it plans to reduce its workforce by between 5,000 and 6,000 positions over the next two years, affecting up to 7 percent of its 87,000 global employees. 'We really do this to strengthen our operations and to be able to invest in growth,' finance chief Harold van den...

The economy added 130,000 jobs in January — far more than economists had anticipated — while the unemployment rate edged down slightly to 4.3%, Labor Department data released Wednesday showed. Still, according to updated 2025 numbers, the job market also added a paltry 181,000 jobs for the entirety of last year, revised down from the earlier-reported growth of 584,000 jobs — the slowest pace of job growth outside recession since 2003. The releases come after private data released last week indicated the labor market remained bruising in January for out-of-work Americans, with little in the way of new jobs. Economists...

Hiring increased sharply at the outset of 2026, the year's first jobs report said, blowing past economists' expectations and besting sluggish performance from the previous year. The U.S. added 130,000 jobs in January, according to the report, which marked a sharp increase from 50,000 jobs added in the previous month.

In 1643, Evangelista Torricelli used a tube of mercury to first measure pressure. In 1897, German mechanical engineer Rudolf Diesel invented the diesel engine with financial help from the Krupp family, financiers of the Third Reich. Four thousand years ago, the Egyptians invented the pump. Collectively, the above are the bedrock of fracking. In 1949, Haliburton performed the first frack job ever. In 1865, E.A. Roberts received a patent for loading a torpedo with nitroglycerin and dropping it into shallow Pennsylvania wells. Fracking is science, but not a dark one. To date, there have been about 2,000,000 frack jobs in...

"Amazon fired 16,000 employees last week. At first glance, the terminations appeared standard. Online retail demand fluctuates with the seasons, and orders always decrease following the holidays. Factor in a few extra weeks of busyness due to post-Christmas returns, and late January makes sense as a time for layoffs. The gift-giving rush is over, so warehouses no longer need as many people. That is not a defense of a multi-trillion-dollar company pulling the plug on $15-per-hour workers, but if you’re a shrewd capitalist, the justification checks out. But there’s more to the story. It turns out the 16,000 fired Amazonians,...

2026 is shaping up to be the year when artificial intelligence starts to feel like less of a novelty and more like a part of your day-to-day. For job seekers and professionals, the conversation around AI is moving away from “Will this change my job?” toward a more practical question: “How will I work alongside AI?” Here are some AI predictions for 2026 and what they could mean for job seekers and professionals. AI Becomes Embedded, Not OptionalIn 2026, AI won’t be something companies “try out.” It will be baked into everyday workflows, especially in white-collar industries. In consulting, AI...

Forrester principal analyst JP Gownder says jobs eaten by bots don't come backInterview Analyst firm Forrester’s vice president and principal analyst J. P. Gownder remains unconvinced that AI will revolutionize productivity. “Where we are today, we're not seeing it,” he told The Register in an interview this week. During our conversation, Gownder cited US Bureau of Labour Statistics that suggest the advent of the personal computer also did not improve productivity, which improved by 2.7 per cent annually from 1947 to 1973, but just 2.1 percent between 1990 and 2001. “So despite all those PCs, it [productivity growth] was a...

CHICAGO — The Obama Presidential Center has opened the application process to fill 150 full-time positions in anticipation of the campus opening later this year in the Jackson Park neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side. Available positions span multiple departments, including custodial, security officer, facility management, visitor engagement, visitor services, curatorial assistant, grounds keeping and others. The Obama Foundation offers competitive wages and benefits. The foundation is prioritizing the hiring of Chicago residents. To help identify and recruit local residents for the new roles, the foundation has launched a partnership with four community-based organizations, including Cara Collective, North Lawndale Employment Network,...

United Parcel Service has slashed 48,000 jobs and shuttered 93 facilities in the first nine months of 2025, marking what CEO Carol Tomé called the company's most significant strategic shift in its 118-year history. This overhaul ditches low-margin e-commerce volumes, especially from Amazon, in favor of higher-profit areas like healthcare and small business shipping, fueled by a $9 billion automation investment and a planned 50% cut in Amazon deliveries by mid-2026.