Why AI interviews are losing 1 in 3 candidates

Both employers and job seekers are increasingly tapping AI to guide the job interview process, but their strategies are still very much a work in progress.

New research finds real hesitation among job candidates about interviewing for a job with no human present, with concern spiking when transparency isn’t centered in the interview process. At the same time, they are increasingly leveraging AI for real-time assistance during live interviews, highlighting the complexities facing today’s HR and recruiting professionals in an AI-influenced job market. READ MORE

Economy adds 115,000 jobs, far better than expected

US job growth continued to strengthen in April as the unemployment rate remained flat, offering another sign that the labor market might be stabilizing.

Payrolls rose by 115,000 last month and the unemployment rate stayed at 4.3%, the Labor Department said Friday. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg had estimated a median gain of 65,000 jobs following March’s blockbuster increase of 178,000 roles, which was revised upward to 185,000. February’s jobs report was revised lower to a loss of 156,000 positions. READ MORE

Ghost Jobs: What They Actually Reveal About How Senior Hiring Works

Between 18% and 27% of online job postings are ghost jobs. Postings for roles that companies have no current intention of filling, kept live for pipeline building, perception management, or simple administrative inertia. That figure comes from multiple independent analyses, including Greenhouse's platform data and a 2025 ResumeUp.AI study of LinkedIn listings, and it's consistent with BLS JOLTS data showing a persistent monthly gap of over 2.1 million between reported openings and actual hires.

For any job seeker, that's a significant waste of time. For senior professionals specifically, it's a navigational problem, because of how senior candidates are advised to search. READ MORE

U.S. Productivity Growth Slowed in Q1 2026

Nonfarm business productivity (output per hour) slowed more than expected in Q1 to 0.8% q/q saar from a downwardly revised 1.6% in last year’s fourth quarter (previously 1.8%). The Action Economics Forecast Survey expected a 1.6% quarterly increase in productivity. Compared to a year ago, productivity rose 2.9% y/y in Q1, up from 2.5% in Q4. Since productivity growth began to accelerate at the beginning of 2023, it has grown at a well above trend 2.6% annual rate, likely a reflection of AI and other technology advances. Strong productivity is a key factor for boosting real incomes and restraining inflation pressures.

Nonfarm business output (not quite the same as real GDP) increased 1.5% q/q saar in Q1 versus a downwardly revised 1.3% in Q4 (previously 1.5%). By contrast, real GDP grew 2.0% q/q in Q1. Hours worked rebounded in Q1, rising 0.7% after falling an unrevised 0.2% in Q4. Compensation growth slowed to 3.1% in Q1 from an unrevised 6.3% in Q4. Compared to a year ago, compensation growth slowed to 4.2% y/y from 5.0%. On a quarterly basis, compensation growth slowed much more than did productivity growth. Consequently, growth of unit labor costs slowed markedly to 2.3% q/q in Q1 from 4.6% in Q4. The y/y rate of advance for unit labor costs also slowed, to 1.2% y/y, its slowest annual pace since Q3 2023, from 2.4% in Q4. READ MORE

Why are there so many layoffs? Don’t buy the claims

In the back of our minds, we have an image of the decision to lay off employees and why it happens: The business must be in trouble.

Of course, employers can shed workers in other ways. Employees could be fired because of poor performance, and especially, voluntary turnover would shrink headcount just by freezing replacements. Average voluntary turnover in the U.S. is about 33% per year—in a big company, maybe 10%. A year-long hiring freeze would cut a lot of people and jobs. READ MORE

Congress Is Doing Little to Prepare for Potential A.I. Job Losses

Economists aren’t sure if or when artificial intelligence will cause widespread job losses. But they do agree on one thing: The federal safety net isn’t ready for such a shock.

The nearly century-old unemployment system, which provides out-of-work Americans with up to 26 weeks of benefits in most states, is unlikely to cover many of the workers who are most at risk of being displaced by A.I., labor experts warn. READ MORE

‘New Einstein’ vows to find ‘source code of universe’ and change everything

A woman who built her own plane at 12 threatens to de-throne Albert Einstein as the greatest mind of all time - and she doesn’t “want to make billionaires richer.”

32-year-old Sabrina Gonzalez Pasterski, built a plane when she was 12, was rejected from MIT, persuaded MIT to take her anyway, graduated top of her class in physics, and went on to study at Harvard. READ MORE

How Infrastructure Brought $3.5 Billion to One South Carolina County

In regions across the country, infrastructure investment is catalyzing economic growth. Few places are doing it like Spartanburg, South Carolina. Leveraging its strategic location, Spartanburg has emerged as a strong example of how modern infrastructure can be a magnet for business – drawing in new investment while giving homegrown companies the opportunity to continue to grow and thrive.

At the Chamber’s Keep America Moving Summit, business and economic development leaders from the Spartanburg community shared how its infrastructure is helping to fuel the local economy. In fact, last year alone, Spartanburg County attracted $3.5 billion in capital investment and created over 1,000 new jobs. READ MORE

Elon Musk Admits He Lied to Tesla Customers’ Faces for Years About Self-Driving

After over a decade of promising that fully autonomous driving is right around the corner, Tesla CEO Elon Musk has yet to bring his ambitious vision to fruition.

In early 2019, Tesla started installing a system called Hardware 3 (HW3) in its cars, which according to Musk would enable what the company continues to misleadingly refer to as “Full Self-Driving” (FSD). (As it currently exists, the feature still requires owners to be ready to take over the wheel at any point.) READ MORE

As AI layoff regret surges, will boomerang employees make a comeback?

After Oracle laid off thousands of workers via an early-morning email, it stoked widespread discussions, particularly across the HR profession and in tech sectors, on how organizations treat employees on the way out—from how they set the bar for severance packages to the ways in which they manage the social media fallout.

Those steps could become increasingly thorny for HR, who may want to eventually take advantage of the “boomerang” employee trend—or those who return to an organization after a separation. New research finds that many employees are willing to count themselves among that population and HR professionals are increasingly looking to re-engage them. READ MORE

Zoom, Deloitte cut paid leave amid labor market shifts

Zoom and Deloitte are scaling back parental leave and other benefits — a potential harbinger of a broader benefits rollback amid a tight labor market. With job growth stagnant and workers less likely to quit, employers have more room to pare down perks that were once considered safe. More than three-quarters of workers call paid leave a "must-have," according to a 2026 MetLife survey — but with limited leverage, employees may have little recourse. "They don't have the leverage they did a few years ago," one executive says. READ MORE

"How the Working Families Tax Cut Act is Affecting America’s Small Businesses"

Chairman, Ranking Member, and Members of the Committee:

Thank you for the opportunity to testify today. My name is Traci Tapani. I am the Co-President and owner of Wyoming Machine, Inc. a manufacturing company in Stacy, Minnesota. My family-owned company specializes in sheet metal fabrication. We offer a variety of services to clients, from laser cutting to welding.

I also serve on the Board of Directors for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and I am the incoming Chair of the Chamber's Small Business Council. The U.S. Chamber serves and supports more than 5 million small businesses through membership, our nationwide federation, and digital platforms—giving small businesses representation, resources, and a powerful voice at national scale. READ MORE

Oracle’s layoff package puts severance benchmarking under the microscope

Thousands of Oracle employees were let go recently in a workforce reduction that analysts have estimated could affect up to 30,000 workers. Reporting has linked the cuts to funding the company’s AI data-center expansion. The scale alone makes it a significant workforce event. But it’s the terms Oracle offered, and how it chose to deliver the news, that are drawing the sharpest scrutiny from HR leaders.

Affected employees received an email signed by “Oracle Leadership” and were immediately locked out of internal systems when the notices went out at 6 a.m. ET, according to HR Executive reporting. The message cited “Oracle’s current business needs” and “broader organizational change” without elaboration. READ MORE

Is AI really killing entry-level jobs?

A prevailing narrative at the moment is that AI is reshaping entry-level roles so rapidly that it is significantly altering annual hiring numbers for early-career talent. In short: the end of entry-level roles is nigh.

There’s no denying that AI is automating routine, repeatable tasks that have historically formed foundational skills for many early career roles (e.g., junior analysts, paralegals, basic coding roles, customer service representatives, etc.). But is the perception of radically reduced opportunity for early career talent, in fact, reality? READ MORE