"There are very real economic forces that are limiting the options for non-college-educated men in the United States. Some of what we're seeing is simply rational responses to a system that's pricing them out."
Hays has unveiled deep workforce cuts as it intensifies cost-saving efforts amid a prolonged downturn in the global jobs market, reducing consultancy headcount by 14%.
The World Bank's recent report argues that government intervention, when done right, can actually be an essential ingredient of economic success, reversing decades of opposition to industrial policy.
My husband has just been let go from his fourth job in five years. The first time it happened was during Covid when he was laid off, but it seemed to start a pattern.
Even though confidence is seeping out of the US economy, employers are taking a glass‑half‑full approach and have taken on more staff than expected. While there could be anomalies in this delayed data release, given the chaos of the partial government shutdown, it does indicate that the US economy is continuing to show resilience. This has helped propel the internationally focused FTSE 100 higher in afternoon trade, as prospects for the world's largest economy appear more upbeat.
Although De Noire is based in Europe, she believes that economic upheaval in the United States "triggers huge uncertainty" across the pond because of America's global influence. De Noire first noticed a decline in business right after Donald Trump was elected in November 2024, as Americans and the rest of the world anticipated upheaval. "I didn't even bother working South by Southwest because the first Friday night I attempted to work, I walked into a completely empty club and didn't make any money at all,"
On Wednesday, the government reported that U.S. employers added a surprisingly strong 130,000 jobs in January and the unemployment rate fell to a still-low 4.3% from 4.4%. However, government revisions cut 2024-2025 U.S. payrolls by hundreds of thousands. That reduced the number of jobs created last year to just 181,000, a third of the previously reported 584,000 and the weakest since the pandemic year of 2020.
In a note on Saturday, he recalled economist Robert Solow's quip from the 1980s as PCs were transforming the economy: "You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics." The same thing can be said today about AI, Slok wrote, noting that data on employment, productivity and inflation are still not showing signs of the new technology.
The workforce continues to change as more employees work from home or switch jobs to move beyond living paycheck to paycheck. However, some employees may also have changed jobs out of necessity as companies lay off workers in an attempt to trim costs. Millions have faced layoffs in the past year, and 2026 is off to a similar start, with tech companies starting to lay off significant portions of their workforce.
