The Week in Jobs

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 ye...

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...

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...

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, ...

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 lik...

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.

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. Pet...

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, relation...

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 prof...

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 o...

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 ...

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 ZipRecruit...

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...

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 candi...

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...

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, predicti...

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...

CEO confidence dropped in the latest survey data, and that kind of news travels fast. We break down what the numbers actually show, how "wait and see" behavior spreads from leadership to budgets to open reqs, and why geopolitical uncertainty is doing most of the driving right now.

Then we get into AI, specifically the shifting public statements from major industry leaders. We ask what's behind the messaging and what the real job mar...

AI job cuts aren't a future threat. They're this week's news, and the layoffs are starting to blend into the background. That might be the most dangerous part.

This episode covers California Governor Gavin Newsom's executive order on AI displacement, including proposed subsidies, risk analysis, and retraining plans for white-collar workers being pushed out. Then we contrast that with the federal pullback on AI oversight, driven by c...