The Week in Jobs

4 Corner Resources with Pete Newsome
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The Week in Jobs, presented by 4 Corner Resources, breaks down the biggest job market news every Friday: jobs reports, layoffs, hiring trends, and how AI is changing work. Hosted by Pete Newsome, founding president of 4 Corner Resources, and Peter Porebski, each episode explains what the headlines mean for employers, job seekers, and recruiters. Expect straight talk on BLS and ADP numbers, layoffs and hiring freezes, labor policy, AI and automation, remote work and return-to-office, and practical job search and hiring advice from people who work in the market every day. New episodes every Friday. Also available as a video on YouTube. Formerly known as Cornering the Job Market.

  1. 3d ago

    Microsoft Offers 60,000 Employees a Buyout & AT&T Brings Jobs Home

    Microsoft is offering a voluntary buyout to 60,000 employees, a number Pete and Peter say is hard to wrap their heads around. The company describes it as a voluntary program and says it is consolidating and becoming more global. Pete and Peter wonder what happens to employees who decline, and whether a voluntary offer turns into a less attractive involuntary exit later. The news lands soon after Microsoft was among the companies whose access to the PERM program, a step toward green cards for H-1B workers, was suspended. A clip circulating on social media, which Pete and Peter stress is unverified, allegedly shows a Microsoft executive vice president saying the company will keep bringing global talent to the United States. The Microsoft news leads Pete and Peter to a bigger issue, they say, that gets far less attention: American companies placing jobs in India. Their research estimates at least 1.5 million jobs in what are called global capability centers, possibly as many as 2 million, with estimates for individual companies including IBM at 85,000, Amazon at 65,000, JPMorgan Chase at 55,000, Citigroup at 33,000, Wells Fargo at 30,000, and Dell and Oracle at 25,000 each. Walmart, Ford, Verizon, Boeing, Target, PayPal, Uber, Pepsi, and DoorDash are on the list too. They cite estimates that these centers will add another half million non-tech jobs by 2028, with about 70% of demand coming from the US. Their argument: many of these are customer support and other white-collar roles that could be entry-level opportunities for American workers, and consumers can vote with their wallets. There is a bright spot. FCC Chairman Brendan Carr announced this week that AT&T is bringing all of its call center and customer service jobs back to the US by the end of the year. Pete and Peter call it a win worth celebrating without making it political, and wish it had gotten more coverage. More cuts this week: Skydance is cutting about 4,500 film and production jobs in LA, with a five-day return-to-office mandate cited alongside a voluntary buyout. Scripps is eliminating 431 jobs and Dropbox is cutting 9% of its workforce. The surprise for Pete and Peter was the Dutch government, which plans to cut 25,000 jobs and says AI is the reason. And Proton is re-interviewing its existing staff about their AI use to decide who keeps their job, asking for two or three examples of how AI improves their work, with results that may lead to changes in roles, responsibilities, or continued employment. Pete and Peter call it a morale risk and also a clear signal to learn AI. WalletHub’s 2026 ranking of the best and worst states for jobs put Florida, where the hosts live, at 47th out of 50, and Nebraska first. States are scored on 34 metrics, with the job market worth 60% of the score and the economic environment worth 40%. Next week is a big one: the midterm elections on Tuesday, the JOLTS report the same day, ADP’s private payroll report (forecast around 80,000 jobs), and the BLS jobs report on Friday (forecast around 40,000). Pete and Peter also reveal their Halloween costumes. Looking to hire or find your next role? Visit 4cornerresources.com.

  2. Oct 23

    Amazon Hires 300,000 While Amex, eBay, Barclays, & Volvo Announce Layoffs

    Amazon plans to hire 300,000 seasonal workers this holiday season, and Pete and Peter call it good news worth passing along to anyone who needs work right now. Seasonal pay averages about $20 an hour, full-time operations roles start at $20 and average around $24, benefits start on day one with plans at $5 a month, and Amazon says it intends to convert as many seasonal hires as it can into permanent employees. Pete and Peter say the quality of those plans remains to be seen, but with healthcare costs climbing fast, they give Amazon credit for the effort. Layoffs were back this week. American Express announced about 3,500 job cuts, roughly 5% of its headcount, as it reported earnings that beat expectations. eBay is cutting about 9% of its workforce, roughly 1,100 jobs, and Volvo is cutting about 6%, citing falling China revenue and tariff pressure on US sales. Electronic Arts is cutting about 400 jobs and closing BioWare, the studio behind Mass Effect, and Volkswagen confirmed layoffs too. The biggest headline for the AI debate is Barclays, which announced a 5,000-job cut and tied it in part to AI, with about 60% of the roles in support functions. Pete and Peter say it is one of the first major layoffs in a while to name AI out loud, and they expect more. A new Gallup poll finds only 41% of US workers have a “quality job,” measured across five dimensions: pay and benefits, workplace culture and safety, growth and development, agency and voice, and work structure and autonomy. Managers score higher than individual contributors (52% versus 36%), professional and business services lead at 57%, and warehousing and retail rank lowest. Pete and Peter question how much the dimensions overlap and how the results square with 4 Corner Resources’ own survey, where most workers report being satisfied. ADP reports that employment for 22-to-25-year-olds in AI-exposed jobs fell 3.7% from a year earlier, and a SHRM survey shows HR leaders and young workers are not on the same page. 85% of workers ages 18 to 26 rate job security as very or extremely important, but only 27% of HR leaders think it matters that much to them. HR leaders also overestimated how much young workers care about remote work, and 84% say unrealistic expectations drive young workers’ pay demands. The survey also found only 49% of younger workers are willing to use AI tools at work, compared with 68% of older workers. Pete and Peter’s advice to young workers: you do not have to like AI, but a moral stand against it will cost you professionally. Their advice to HR leaders: ask young workers what they actually want. The same disconnect shows up at the top. A Boston Consulting Group survey found 87% of CEOs are confident their employees trust their leadership, while only 46% of employees are confident in their CEO’s judgment and vision. Just 15% of CEOs worry their AI plans could hurt employee trust, yet 40% of employees say their CEO has not been transparent enough about how AI will affect their jobs. And nearly 60% of CEOs plan to replace a member of their senior team in the next six months. Pete and Peter put the gap down to poor communication more than bad intent, and they warn that when hiring picks back up, employees who feel unheard could trigger a wave of job switching. They sign off with some practical advice: change your passwords this weekend. Next week: Halloween. Visit 4cornerresources.com for hiring and job search resources.

  3. Oct 15

    Who Is Most Afraid of AI Taking Their Job? High Earners, IT Workers, & Women | Q4 2026 Survey

    Who is most afraid of AI taking their job? In this special edition of The Week in Jobs, Pete and Peter walk through 4 Corner Resources’ Q4 2026 Employee Mindset Survey, the fourth and final quarterly edition of the year, and the answers surprised them: IT workers, the highest earners, and women, who now worry about AI more than men do. The survey tracks how American workers earning $50,000 or more feel about their jobs, their confidence in the 2026 job market, and the threat of AI. The overall mindset score, job satisfaction, and employee confidence all edged up, and so did the perceived AI threat, though by less than Pete expected a year ago. One in three IT workers name AI as the biggest threat to their job, compared with 16.2% of workers in all other professions combined. The highest earners are the most worried about AI’s impact on their careers, a jump this quarter, which fits a pattern Pete and Peter see all year: the people who use AI the most worry about it the most. The share of women who see AI as a significant career risk rose from about 16% in January to almost 24%, while the share of men edged down. Entry-level workers are less afraid of AI, even though Pete believes it is hitting them hardest, a finding neither host could fully explain. The biggest move of the year belongs to entry-level job market confidence. In January, 13% of entry-level workers said they were unconfident about the job market over the next six to 12 months. Now it is 30%, more than double. Workers ages 18 to 29 are the most frustrated group in the survey, with 53.6% expecting to leave their job within two years or already looking. Pete and Peter warn of a squeeze: baby boomers are retiring in large numbers while the entry-level pipeline stays shut, which they say will leave a leadership gap down the road. The survey also shows a K-shaped economy at the worker level. Lower earners are more worried about the job market than people in households earning over $100,000, and higher earners are building savings cushions while lower earners are not. Men are saving at a much higher rate than women, which Pete and Peter wonder may be tied to the AI worry gap. On return to office, the share of workers required to be in the office climbed from 51% at the start of the year to nearly 60%, yet it bothers workers less than it did earlier in the year. Pete and Peter’s read: workers are accepting it because they have little leverage in a low hire, low fire market. Distrust of official government job market data also rose, from about 20% in January to 29%. Their overall verdict for 2026: the year that could have been worse. See the full results and the year’s trend data at 4cornerresources.com under the Survey tab. New episodes of The Week in Jobs every Friday.

  4. Oct 9

    The Week in Jobs: JD Vance Just Cut Off Microsoft and 7 Others From the H-1B Green Card Pipeline

    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 years and apply for permanent residency. Vance said the eight companies have received more than 230,000 H-1B approvals and more than 100,000 permanent labor certifications since 2009, and that Microsoft laid off 6,000 workers last year while receiving 6,300 H-1B visas and nearly 3,000 green cards. Microsoft says roughly 80% of those were existing employees renewing or extending their status. Pete and Peter back the move and call it long overdue. Most of the named firms are consultancies built around filing H-1Bs and placing workers at other companies, while Microsoft and Adobe happen to be two of the largest direct employers of H-1B workers. They also point out that the program is hard on the visa holders themselves, who often cannot leave a sponsoring employer without risking deportation. And they say offshoring, like last week’s DoorDash story, deserves the same scrutiny, since both let companies avoid hiring American workers. Their hope: the policy outlasts the next election. Pete and Peter also meet a brand-new workplace term, “loud working,” from a Business Insider article. It is the opposite of quiet quitting: making sure your manager sees everything you are doing. Their verdict is that it is just smart career advice with a trendy name, as long as it does not turn into playing politics instead of doing good work. Layoffs are back in the headlines. HubSpot is cutting roughly 600 jobs and Amazon announced more cuts, both citing a push to remove layers of middle management, and neither named AI as a reason. Surveillance camera company Flock cut about 18% of its staff, a few hundred people, in what has been attributed to public backlash against the company. They close with a survey finding that 90% of workers say their employers expect more loyalty than they give back. Also in the results: 71% say companies focus more on profits than on employees compared with five years ago, only 4% say less, and 49% of workers who are not actively job hunting would still take a call from a recruiter. Pete and Peter’s take is that loyalty is the wrong word for the employment relationship, and they have a message for hiring managers: a team that looks happy may still be open to other offers. Visit 4cornerresources.com for hiring and job search resources.

  5. Oct 2

    The Week in Jobs: Elon Musk Says Robots Will Make Us All Rich & the Jobs Report Was Brutal

    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 headline numbers are losing credibility by the month. The harder story inside the report: unemployment rose from 4.1% to 4.2%, its first increase in a while, and unemployment among 20-to-24-year-olds is now at 8%. The number of people seeking their first job climbed to 818,000, up 116,000 from the prior reading. Pete and Peter tie this directly to an Arkansas welfare ad that ran this week, one that used a young man playing video games as the face of a "typical" welfare recipient to promote new work requirements. Given what the data actually shows about how hard it is for young job seekers to find work right now, Pete and Peter call the ad out as badly timed and out of touch. They also cover DoorDash's announcement of a new 3,000-person customer support and admin center in India, one of more than 2,100 similar centers now operating there. Costco, McDonald's, Charles Schwab, and Southwest Airlines have all opened comparable offshore centers recently. Pete and Peter question why this kind of offshoring, unlike manufacturing jobs moving overseas, draws so little public attention or political pressure to bring the work back to the US. Elsewhere: Glassdoor's worker confidence index hit its third record low of 2026, with workers' six-month outlook dropping to 42.9%. Small businesses with fewer than 10 employees pulled back hiring the hardest this month, even as many of them say they still can't find qualified candidates, a disconnect Pete and Peter attribute partly to job seekers gravitating toward recognizable brand names over smaller companies that don't typically use outside recruiting help. They close with California's newly signed "No Robo Bosses" law, which bars employers from firing or disciplining workers based solely on an automated decision starting in July 2027, and LinkedIn's CEO predicting that AI will eventually touch every job in some form. That echoes a bigger claim Elon Musk has made repeatedly: that robots and AI will eventually do all the work, and universal basic income will make everyone rich as a result. Pete and Peter aren't buying it, and they question how "everyone gets rich" squares with basic supply and demand. Looking to hire or find your next role? Visit 4cornerresources.com.

  6. Sep 25

    The Week in Jobs: 7,000 Fake Recruiters Caught on LinkedIn, Plus the Iced Latte Debate

    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 problem of fake recruiter profiles on LinkedIn, timed perfectly with a real example: a candidate emailed 4 Corner Resources this week asking to verify a "recruiter" who turned out to be a fake profile with no connection to the company, one of dozens 4CR has found impersonating it over the years. One fake profile claims to have worked at 4CR since November 2016. A researcher named Jay Jones has tracked more than 60,000 fake job postings and flagged about 7,000 scam recruiter profiles on his own. Pete and Peter argue LinkedIn could shut this down easily (it used to be simple to delete fake accounts) but has little incentive to, since fake profiles inflate its own user numbers. They also connect it to a tougher stat: long-term unemployment continues to climb, and only about one in seven people out of work for 27 weeks or longer land a job in a given month, making job seekers even more vulnerable to scams promising an easy way back in. On a lighter note, a Wall Street Journal story on companies using AI to help set employee raises got an ominous headline, but Pete and Peter say the practice isn't new. Companies have used market pay data for years (career sites like CareerBuilder built entire products around it), and AI is simply a faster way to gather the same information. A new Owl Labs survey on hybrid work turned up a surprising number: 47% of workers say they'd take a pay cut of 10% or more in exchange for flexible hours, and 39% would turn down a job outright if it required full-time office work. Pete and Peter debate whether that's a reasonable stance for office workers to take, especially with a fresh report showing AI is hitting recent college grads hardest: employment for 20-to-25-year-olds in highly AI-exposed fields fell 4.4% over the past year, the 35th straight month of decline. They close with a preview of next week's data-heavy schedule: the JOLTS report on Tuesday, ADP's private payroll report, and the big monthly jobs report at week's end, along with their predictions for what the numbers will show. Looking to hire or find your next role? Visit 4cornerresources.com

  7. Sep 18

    The Week in Jobs: GM's CEO Says Pick Up a Wrench & Worker Pay Hits a Record Low

    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, a certified mechanic averages $63,807, and a journeyman electrician averages around $63,626. Solid pay, but not the kind of money that easily supports a family the way it once did. Pete and Peter's take: if the country needs more trades workers, trade pay and trade school access need to improve too, or people will keep choosing college. They also question how many of these jobs survive the next decade of automation, given robots are already building cars at scale at Tesla and Hyundai. A Bureau of Labor Statistics report caught Pete and Peter's attention this week: the cost of employee benefits (Social Security, Medicare, healthcare, and more) for private industry workers has climbed from under $10 an hour a decade ago to more than $17 an hour today. That's a steep cost increase for employers, on top of already-rising wages, and Pete and Peter argue it's one more incentive pushing companies toward automation over hiring. There's better news on the AI front. Indeed Hiring Labs found that wages for the most AI-exposed jobs (software engineering, IT, data and analytics, marketing, and banking and finance) have climbed 46% since 2021, with job postings in those fields growing too. Morgan Stanley found something similar: the most AI-exposed households are best positioned for wage growth. The catch, according to Indeed's own data, is that openings are skewing toward more senior, experienced hires, making it harder for entry-level workers to break in. The bigger, longer-running story: the share of US economic output going to workers has fallen to 52%, the lowest level ever recorded, down from a historical range closer to 60-66%. The decline started around 2000, stalled briefly after 2010, and has picked up speed again in the past few years. Pete and Peter aren't ready to blame AI alone, but they expect it to accelerate the trend. They close with two hiring-process stories: Challenger, Gray & Christmas warns that AI is increasingly summarizing and rating recorded job interviews before a human ever reviews them (70% of employers already use AI somewhere in hiring, according to TestGorilla), and a Morning Brew report on companies asking candidates to complete unpaid work trials, in some cases for a full week. Pete and Peter's advice: know your worth in the market, and don't do unpaid work beyond an hour or two without getting paid for it. Looking to hire or find your next role? Visit 4cornerresources.com.

  8. Sep 11

    The Week in Jobs: AI Insider Puts 10% Odds on Human Extinction & Women Took 97% of New Jobs

    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 like transportation and technology declined. Men's labor force participation dropped from 67.9% to 67.2% over the same period, a shift Pete and Peter attribute partly to baby boomer men retiring out of the workforce. They also cover a Richmond Fed report showing more Americans are working two jobs than at any point in the last 26 years, a trend that lines up with this week's inflation numbers: wages rose 3.1% while prices climbed 3.4%. About half of multiple job holders have a college degree, undercutting the idea that a second job is a young or unskilled worker's problem. On AI, a former Anthropic employee's viral tweet claiming the industry is "dooming" society, along with another Anthropic employee's public estimate of a greater than 10% chance AI causes human extinction within a decade, dominated headlines this week. Pete and Peter treat both claims with some skepticism given who's making them, but agree the underlying concern about AI's pace isn't unfounded. They also cover Orlando's new robotaxi rollout, a protest by 30 robots in Poland demanding AI regulation (organized, oddly, by a man who owns both a robotics company and a staffing agency), and Bernie Sanders' proposed "AI sovereignty fund," which would compensate the public for the data used to train AI models. Elsewhere: small businesses are still struggling to fill open roles, and Pete and Peter say the real problem is finding candidates willing to work for a company outside the well-known brand names, not pay. And the Trump administration is moving to eliminate the 60-day grace period H-1B visa holders currently get after losing a job, a change that would put visa holders at risk of near-immediate deportation if it goes through.  Visit www.4cornerresources.com for hiring and job search resources.

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4.7
out of 5
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About

The Week in Jobs, presented by 4 Corner Resources, breaks down the biggest job market news every Friday: jobs reports, layoffs, hiring trends, and how AI is changing work. Hosted by Pete Newsome, founding president of 4 Corner Resources, and Peter Porebski, each episode explains what the headlines mean for employers, job seekers, and recruiters. Expect straight talk on BLS and ADP numbers, layoffs and hiring freezes, labor policy, AI and automation, remote work and return-to-office, and practical job search and hiring advice from people who work in the market every day. New episodes every Friday. Also available as a video on YouTube. Formerly known as Cornering the Job Market.

Information

  • Creator
    4 Corner Resources with Pete Newsome
  • Years Active
    2020 - 2026
  • Episodes
    250
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 © 2026 4 Corner Resources
  • Show Website
    The Week in Jobs

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