Grads earn $56K not $80K; 42.5% of grads underemployed; remote work pulled up job ladder, AI chipping away at higher rungs; AI agents fail 19 of 20 tasks; FOMO begetting FOBO

Grads earn $56K not $80K; 42.5% of grads underemployed; remote work pulled up job ladder, AI chipping away at higher rungs; AI agents fail 19 of 20 tasks; FOMO begetting FOBO

Graduation season arrived this year with an unusual tradition. Commencement speakers who mention artificial intelligence keep getting booed. The students are not being dramatic. The unemployment rate for recent college graduates hit 5.6% in the first quarter of 2026 [https://www.cnbc.com/select/class-of-2026-hiring-stats-and-ai-trends/], the highest level in a decade outside the pandemic spike. The national unemployment rate is 4.3%. Recent graduates are now doing worse in the job market than the average American worker, which has not been the normal pattern for people with four-year degrees. The underemployment rate for new graduates reached 42.5%, the highest since 2020. Listen on Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-ai-labor-report/id1896663061] Graduates expect to earn $80,004 in their first year out of college. Actual starting salaries average $56,153 [https://www.cnbc.com/select/class-of-2026-hiring-stats-and-ai-trends/]. Applications per job posting jumped 26% while early-career postings fell 16%. The Class of 2026 is walking into a labor market that is hiring less, paying less, and competing more than the one their older siblings entered. Remote Work Created the Problem. AI Is About to Make It Worse. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York published a study on June 1 [https://fortune.com/2026/06/01/new-fed-study-remote-work-ai-driving-higher-unemployment/] attributing 64% of the rise in young graduate unemployment to remote work rather than AI. Companies are reluctant to hire inexperienced workers into roles where mentoring and on-the-job training are difficult to deliver remotely. Unemployment among graduates under 29 rose 20% after the pandemic. Unemployment among graduates over 29 in the same fields fell slightly over the same period. The Fed’s claim is that new workers need proximity to learn, and remote work removed that proximity. The New York Fed researchers noted their own finding may be temporary. Stanford researchers found that early-career workers aged 22 to 25 in the most AI-exposed jobs saw employment fall 16% since late 2022 even after stripping out remote-friendly roles. Nevertheless, the aphorism that arose during the peak-Covid remote work experience applies here to new job entrants: If you can do you can do your work remotely, so can a machine. Jobs Are Not Disappearing. They Are Shrinking. A May 2026 Gartner report covered by The Register [https://www.theregister.com/ai-and-ml/2026/05/06/ai-layoffs-backfire-as-cutting-staff-doesnt-cut-it-firms-warned/5230631] describes AI’s effect on employment as hollowing out rather than elimination. AI absorbs discrete tasks within existing roles, narrows the scope of work, and compresses wages without necessarily removing the job title from the org chart. Workers whose roles depend on judgment, context, and accountability may find AI a useful tool. Workers whose roles depend on processing, routing, summarizing, and formatting are finding themselves doing less of that work, earning wages that reflect the reduced scope, and uncertain about how the change happened. Imperial College London and Microsoft jointly found [https://www.theregister.com/ai-and-ml/2026/05/06/ai-layoffs-backfire-as-cutting-staff-doesnt-cut-it-firms-warned/5230631] that AI adoption paradoxically increases workplace burdens for workers who remain, as their jobs shift toward reviewing, verifying, and correcting the output of multiple AI agents. Gartner forecasts that new job categories will emerge from this transition by 2028 or 2029. That is a gap of two to three years during which the hollowing out continues without the offset. When Every Company Automates at Once, Everyone Loses A paper published June 3 by University of Pennsylvania researchers [https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.20617] took at at AI FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) by herds of corporate execs as potentially harmful to their own companies interests. Each individual company rationally reduces labor costs through AI adoption without waiting to see if the AI will actually do the jobs. When all companies do it simultaneously, consumer spending contracts, revenue bases erode, and the productivity gains from automation are collectively undermined. Each company individually believes it is making the rational balance-sheet decision to lay off staff. Bureau of Economic Analysis data cited in the paper [https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.20617] shows business investment overtook consumer spending as the primary driver of U.S. GDP growth in Q1 2026. The personal savings rate fell to 3.6% in March, its lowest since late 2022. Workers are spending down savings while companies invest upward. The productivity gains are flowing into capital formation. They are not reaching household income. The Agents Companies Are Replacing Workers With Cannot Do the Work A CBC News investigation published June 3 [https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/ai-agents-tech-company-layoffs-9.7221069] pulled together the controlled performance evidence on AI agents. Carnegie Mellon’s TheAgentCompany benchmark tested 10 leading AI agent models across 175 real-world office tasks. The best-performing model completed 30.3% of tasks successfully. Gartner found AI agents produce incorrect results on office tasks roughly 70% of the time. A major AI infrastructure company stated its agents fail to produce professionally acceptable work more than 19 times out of 20. Companies are replacing workers with these tools right now. Block’s stock jumped 20% when it announced AI-attributed layoffs. Future Forwarded is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. A University of Toronto researcher told CBC that the explanation is straightforward: “Investment in AI as an ideology has more value than keeping your workforce. That’s how capitalism works.” Workers who remain after AI-related cuts find their jobs have changed. Their new role is reviewing, correcting, and monitoring the agents that replaced their former colleagues. BUY NOW! [https://wimdodson.gumroad.com/l/gods_in_the_machine?_gl=1*19da5a0*_ga*MTEwMjE2MDkwMy4xNzc2OTY4MDQy*_ga_6LJN6D94N6*czE3NzY5NjgwNDEkbzEkZzEkdDE3NzY5NjgxNzIkajU5JGwwJGgw] Get the NEW Book that exposes the Narratives Tech uses to build its AI Empire. $4.95 flat fee for Kindle, Nook, Tablets, and Mobile. No subscription required.3.5-hr reading time. Get full access to The AI/Labor Report at ailabor.substack.com/subscribe [https://ailabor.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Record AI job cuts, record jobs report — same Friday; tech shed 38K jobs; 172K added elsewhe; white-collar cuts hidden; 40M gig workers unprotected; S Korea has a plan, the U.S. does not

The headline number from this morning’s government jobs report deserves a closer look before anyone feels too good about it. The economy added 172,000 jobs in May. Wall Street expected 80,000. The unemployment rate held at 4.3%. On paper, this is a strong labor market doing exactly what a strong labor market is supposed to do. On the same day that report landed, Challenger, Gray & Christmas published its May layoff data [https://www.hcamag.com/us/specialization/recruitment/ai-driven-tech-job-cuts-hit-two-year-high-leaving-hr-leaders-to-adapt/577778]. Employers across all industries announced 97,006 job cuts in May. AI was the stated reason for 38,579 of those cuts, the highest single-month AI-attributed total since Challenger began tracking the category. Listen on Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-ai-labor-report/id1896663061] That figure represents 40% of all announced cuts in May. In January, AI accounted for 7%. The acceleration over five months is not subtle. Andy Challenger, the firm’s chief revenue officer, stated the situation plainly: “AI is now the leading reason companies give for cutting jobs.” The Sectors Doing the Hiring Are Not the Sectors Doing the Cutting The BLS breakdown [https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm] shows May’s job gains concentrated in leisure and hospitality, local government, and health care. Finance shed jobs. The information sector, which covers technology and media, continued its contraction. The jobs being added and the jobs being eliminated belong to different industries and different workers. A hotel housekeeper in Orlando and a software engineer in Seattle both show up in the same nonfarm payroll count. Only one of them is having a good month. Filings for unemployment insurance have not risen meaningfully [https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2026/jun/04/us-tech-sector-announces-most-job-cuts-in-nearly-t/] despite the surge in layoff announcements. Bloomberg noted targeted white-collar positions specifically. White-collar workers who lose jobs tend to have savings that delay their need to file. Some are classified as contractors and cannot file at all. The aggregate unemployment data looks stable in part because the people being cut are the ones least visible in the headline figures. Technology’s Running Total U.S. tech companies have announced 123,653 job cuts [https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/artificial-intelligence/tech-sector-cut-us-jobs-by-38242-in-may] through the first five months of 2026, up 65% from the same period in 2025. May alone produced 38,242 tech-sector cuts, the industry’s worst month since August 2024. The companies leading that list are the same companies committing to the largest AI capital spending in corporate history. Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta plan a combined $725 billion in AI infrastructure spending in 2026. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told staff directly that the company’s 8,000 job cuts were a consequence of that spending commitment. The trade-off between AI investment and headcount is no longer implied. It is stated. Southeast Asia Builds the Infrastructure While Workers Go Unprotected The same infrastructure build plays out differently in Southeast Asia, where its human costs are distributed across a workforce with no safety net at all. A May report documented roughly 40 million gig economy workers across the region [https://apnews.com/article/artificial-intelligence-economy-jobs-southeast-asia-automation] facing AI-driven displacement with no pensions, no health insurance, and no protection against dismissal. Singapore just signed $234 million in contracts with Google and OpenAI. Malaysia’s semiconductor exports reached $117 billion. Standard Chartered plans to use AI to eliminate 7,000 jobs across India, Malaysia, and Poland by 2030. The data center construction that partly offsets AI displacement in U.S. labor statistics creates no equivalent offset in Kuala Lumpur. Korea Built a Policy Architecture. The U.S. Has Not. South Korea’s 2026 National AI Action Plan [https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2026/04/ai-labor-market-policy-east-asia] coordinates responses across multiple government ministries, according to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The Ministry of Employment and Labor in South Korea developed guidelines for analyzing AI’s industry-by-industry impact. The Ministry of Science and ICT is building regional AI competency hubs. The plan includes an Inclusive Labor Transition National Strategy with compensation provisions for AI-driven job loss. Concurrently, China’s Ministry of Human Resources announced a parallel lifelong vocational skills system [https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2026/04/ai-labor-market-policy-east-asia] designed for different career stages. Both governments treat AI as a managed industrial transformation. The United States has no federal equivalent to either program. The AI/Labor Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Japan’s Lag Creates Its Own Risk An OECD report on Japan’s labor market [https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/2025/11/ai-and-the-labour-market_bc53f7bb.html] found that only 40% of Japanese managers work at companies using any algorithmic management software. It’s the lowest rate among all OECD economies surveyed. Among Japanese small and medium enterprises, AI adoption sits at 23.5%. Japan’s severe labor shortage makes the case for automation obvious. Its low adoption rate means implies an accelerated adjustment period for workers. Staff will have had less time to prepare than workers in countries where adoption has been slower but steadier. This morning’s jobs report will generate confident commentary about the resilience of the American labor market. That commentary will be accurate about the aggregate numbers and mute about labor dynamics. The 172,000 jobs added in May and the 38,579 AI-attributed cuts announced in May are both real numbers. They describe different things happening to different people at the same time. BUY NOW! [https://wimdodson.gumroad.com/l/gods_in_the_machine?_gl=1*19da5a0*_ga*MTEwMjE2MDkwMy4xNzc2OTY4MDQy*_ga_6LJN6D94N6*czE3NzY5NjgwNDEkbzEkZzEkdDE3NzY5NjgxNzIkajU5JGwwJGgw] Get the NEW Book that exposes the Narratives Tech uses to build its AI Empire. $4.95 flat fee for Kindle, Nook, Tablets, and Mobile. No subscription required.3.5-hr reading time. Get full access to The AI/Labor Report at ailabor.substack.com/subscribe [https://ailabor.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

Half the office ignores AI; Gen Z sabotages the rollout; AI disintegrating India's $283B economic flywheel; Europe's 15% AI adoption gives regulation breathing space; new employment numbers on the way

Something interesting is happening in corporate America, and it is the kind of thing that does not show up in the quarterly earnings calls where executives explain, with considerable confidence, that AI is transforming their organizations. Workers are not using the AI tools their companies bought. Listen on Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-ai-labor-report/id1896663061] A Fortune report drawing on a 2025 Gallup survey [https://fortune.com/2026/04/09/ai-backlash-quiet-quitting-fobo-obsolete-white-collar-rebellion] found that 49% of American office workers use no AI tools at work whatsoever. Only 12% use them daily. This is, by any measure, a remarkable return on the billions of dollars companies have spent on enterprise AI licenses. A separate 2026 survey of 2,400 knowledge workers found that 29% of employees admit to actively sabotaging their company’s AI strategy. Among Gen Z employees, the generation that corporate strategists assumed would lead adoption, that figure rises to 44%. A February 2026 study found that mandated AI use is now driving resignations [https://finance.yahoo.com/sectors/technology/articles/white-collar-workers-quietly-rebelling-100000372.html]. Twenty-rwo percent of workers say they would consider leaving a job rather than use AI in ways they find objectionable. Workers have coined a term for the underlying anxiety: FOBO, or Fear of Becoming Obsolete. The anxiety is not difficult to follow. Companies announcing major AI investments have, with some regularity, announced layoffs in the same earnings calls. Employees have noticed this pattern. What the CEO Says vs. What the Data Shows Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman told the Financial Times in February 2026 [https://fortune.com/article/why-microsoft-ai-chief-mustafa-suleyman-predicts-ai-automation-18-months/] that AI would achieve human-level performance on most professional tasks within 12 to 18 months. BUY NOW! [https://wimdodson.gumroad.com/l/gods_in_the_machine?_gl=1*19da5a0*_ga*MTEwMjE2MDkwMy4xNzc2OTY4MDQy*_ga_6LJN6D94N6*czE3NzY5NjgwNDEkbzEkZzEkdDE3NzY5NjgxNzIkajU5JGwwJGgw] Get the NEW Book that exposes the Narratives Tech uses to build its AI Empire. $4.95 flat fee for Kindle, Nook, Tablets, and Mobile. No subscription required.3.5-hr reading time. He named lawyers, accountants, project managers, and marketing professionals specifically. He pointed to software engineering as evidence the transformation was already well under way. He noted that Microsoft engineers now use AI-assisted coding for the vast majority of their code production. It is therefore worth examining what the controlled research shows about software engineering in particular, since that is the field Suleyman cited as his proof of concept. A randomized controlled trial published by nonprofit research organization [https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.09089] tested 16 experienced software developers performing 246 real tasks with and without AI tools. These were not interns. Each had at least five years of experience on the specific projects they were working on. AI tools made them 19% slower. The developers themselves predicted AI would speed them up by 24%. After completing the study, having just experienced a measurable slowdown, they still believed AI had helped them, estimating a 20% improvement. A follow-up analysis by engineering research firm Faros [https://www.faros.ai/blog/lab-vs-reality-ai-productivity-study-findings] found the same pattern at the organizational level: developers complete more individual tasks with AI assistance, but the organizations they work for deliver no faster. Anecdotally, programmers who make extensive use of AI-coding tools are finding they do not understand the programming structures and lines of code AI develops. Programmers are finding after several weeks of use they have to rewrite much of the code themselves to, first, understand the code as they would have written it originally; and, two, to make modifications to the AI-code base. As long as the code does not have to be modified, AI-coding tools save development time; for add-ons, modifications, and streamlining processes, humans must be in the loop. Suleyman’s 18-month timeline may yet prove correct. The current controlled evidence is running in the opposite direction, which is the kind of detail that tends to get left out of Financial Times interviews. Europe Adopts AI More Slowly Than the Coverage Suggests Eurostat data covered by Euronews in March 2026 [https://www.euronews.com/tag/work] found that while one-third of EU citizens used generative AI tools in 2025, fewer than half used them for work purposes. Actual workplace AI adoption across the EU sits at 15%. The firms facing the EU AI Act’s August 2 compliance deadline are, for the most part, running operations where the majority of employees do not use these tools in their daily work. The regulation is arriving ahead of the behavior it is designed to govern. The AI/Labor Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. India’s Tech Sector and the Knock-On Effects The numbers coming out of India’s IT sector are striking enough on their own. India’s IT and business process management industry generates $283 billion annually and accounts for more than 7% of GDP. Niti Aayog, India’s national planning commission, projects [https://startuptalky.com/ai-in-hr-india-future-of-jobs-reskilling-gap-78-million-jobs/]that tech headcount may fall from between 7.5 and 8 million workers today to 6 million by 2031. But there may be a knock-on effect beyond the technology industry in the form of a “flywheel effect.” High-wage IT jobs generate spending across real estate, education, restaurants, retail, and consumer services in the cities where those workers live. CNBC’s Inside India newsletter documented [https://www.cnbc.com/2026/04/30/ai-threat-indias-growth-story-jobs.html] how as those service jobs dissolve, the IT sector that focuses on the domestic market will shrink as well. Shrinkage further impacts the number of workers in the sectors dependent on IT-worker spend. A Counterpoint Worth Taking Seriously The European Central Bank surveyed 5,000 European firms in March 2026 [https://www.ecb.europa.eu/press/blog/date/2026/html/ecb.blog20260304~d9e34fc95f.en.html] and found that companies adopting AI in Europe are currently more likely to increase hiring than reduce it. This stands in direct contrast to U.S. and UK data. The ECB researchers noted the result is provisional. European labor market institutions make aggressive restructuring harder. European AI adoption lags the U.S. by an estimated 18 to 24 months, so hiring numbers may be different within two years. New Payroll Numbers ADP released its May employment report this morning [https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/03/adp-jobs-report-may-2026-payrolls-increase-by-122000.html]. It showed 122,000 private-sector jobs added, the best month since January 2025. Eight of ten sectors gained. The information sector lost 9,000 jobs, a figure CNBC described directly as a possible AI impact. Pay for job-stayers rose 4.4% year-over-year. The official BLS nonfarm payrolls report for May publishes tomorrow at 8:30 a.m. Wall Street’s consensus is 80,000 jobs added. Capital Economics forecasts as few as 65,000. Federal Reserve officials will use the result in their June 16-17 policy meeting [https://www.kiplinger.com/investing/economy/this-weeks-economic-calendar]. The information sector’s continued contraction will be the figure worth watching, whatever the headline number turns out to be. BUY NOW [https://wimdodson.gumroad.com/l/invasion_ai?_gl=1*g1iey2*_ga*OTc1NjU2NTcyLjE3NzQwMzA3NjM.*_ga_6LJN6D94N6*czE3NzQwMzMyMjUkbzIkZzEkdDE3NzQwMzQ2ODgkajYwJGwwJGgw]! Get the book that examines how the AI invasion already happened. You just weren’t invited. $9.95 flat fee for Kindle, Nook, Tablets, and Mobile. No subscription required. 2-hr reading time. Get full access to The AI/Labor Report at ailabor.substack.com/subscribe [https://ailabor.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

More U.S. jobs posted, still nobody hired; India's IT adds 17 workers in 9 months; Downhill: Japan shows where wages go; workers in 12 countries afraid; Philippines loses English outsourcing advantage

The government published two labor market readings this week, and they tell the same contradictory story they have been telling all year. The BLS JOLTS report released Tuesday [https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.nr0.htm] showed 7.6 million job openings in April, a jump of 730,000 from March. Hiring fell to 5.1 million, and the hiring rate dropped to 3.2%. Companies are posting positions they are filling more slowly, more selectively, or in some cases simply not filling at all. Analysts described the pattern as a continuation of what has defined 2026: low-hire, low-fire. Job openings at their lowest since 2020. Actual hiring well below that floor. The headline number looks healthy. The behavior behind it does not. Listen on Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-ai-labor-report/id1896663061] The Construction Offset Is Temporary Goldman Sachs released its latest AI Adoption Tracker on June 1 [https://fortune.com/2026/06/01/how-many-jobs-is-ai-destroying-goldman-sachs-11000-per-month-gen-z-economy/], and it produced a number that sounds like good news: the net monthly job loss attributed to AI fell from 16,000 to 11,000. The reason is AI-adjacent infrastructure. Data center construction added roughly 9,000 jobs per month and 212,000 positions since 2022. Strip out those construction jobs, and the picture in marketing, customer service, graphic design, software development, and document processing looks worse than the headline implies. April set a single-month record: 21,900 corporate layoffs explicitly attributed to AI, the highest Goldman has recorded since it began tracking in 2023. Total AI-attributed layoffs over three years now stand at 136,000. One in four Russell 3000 companies mentioned AI and labor together on Q1 2026 earnings calls. Construction jobs building data centers are real jobs. They also belong to a different workforce than the office workers those data centers are replacing, and the construction phase will end. BUY NOW [https://wimdodson.gumroad.com/l/invasion_ai?_gl=1*g1iey2*_ga*OTc1NjU2NTcyLjE3NzQwMzA3NjM.*_ga_6LJN6D94N6*czE3NzQwMzMyMjUkbzIkZzEkdDE3NzQwMzQ2ODgkajYwJGwwJGgw]! Get the book that examines how the AI invasion already happened. You just weren’t invited. $9.95 flat fee for Kindle, Nook, Tablets, and Mobile. No subscription required. 2-hr reading time. India and the Philippines Are Running the Same Labor Experiment India’s top five IT firms added just [https://www.computerworld.com/article/4119064/ai-boom-hiring-bust-indian-it-firms-add-just-17-net-employees-in-nine-months.html]17 [https://www.computerworld.com/article/4119064/ai-boom-hiring-bust-indian-it-firms-add-just-17-net-employees-in-nine-months.html] net employees [https://www.computerworld.com/article/4119064/ai-boom-hiring-bust-indian-it-firms-add-just-17-net-employees-in-nine-months.html] in the first nine months of fiscal 2026. TCS cut 12,000 workers in its largest reduction ever. Oracle cut 12,000 India-based positions in April alone. Bernstein sent an open letter to Prime Minister Modi [https://www.cnbc.com/2026/04/30/ai-threat-indias-growth-story-jobs.html] warning that AI threatens the high-wage IT jobs that underpin India’s real estate, education, and services economy. A junior coder in Bengaluru named Ravi, who had been named “star performer of the year,” received his layoff notice by email. The email cited AI directly. The Philippines’ 2-million-worker BPO sector generates $40 billion annually and employs a workforce whose primary competitive advantage is English fluency. AI-powered voice and translation tools now erode that advantage directly [https://news.outsourceaccelerator.com/ai-threatens-bpo-india-philippines/]. India and the Philippines together represent the largest offshore delivery infrastructure on earth. The displacement happening there is the same displacement hitting American white-collar workers, running two time zones ahead. BUY NOW! [https://wimdodson.gumroad.com/l/gods_in_the_machine?_gl=1*19da5a0*_ga*MTEwMjE2MDkwMy4xNzc2OTY4MDQy*_ga_6LJN6D94N6*czE3NzY5NjgwNDEkbzEkZzEkdDE3NzY5NjgxNzIkajU5JGwwJGgw] Get the NEW Book that exposes the Narratives Tech uses to build its AI Empire. $4.95 flat fee for Kindle, Nook, Tablets, and Mobile. No subscription required.3.5-hr reading time. IBM Pledged 5 Million Retraining Slots. The Gap Is 1.4 Billion. IBM announced a commitment to train 5 million Indian workers on AI skills [https://news.outsourceaccelerator.com/india-must-reskill-millions/], co-signed with the Indian government following the India AI Impact Summit. India’s national planning commission published a scenario showing that without corrective action, India’s tech headcount drops from 7.5 to 8 million workers today to 6 million by 2031. With aggressive reskilling, it could reach 10 million. IBM’s program is the largest private-sector reskilling commitment in India tied to an active government partnership anywhere in the world right now. Its scale also illustrates the scope of the problem it addresses. Only 58 million Indian workers completed any AI training in 2025 [https://startuptalky.com/ai-in-hr-india-future-of-jobs-reskilling-gap-78-million-jobs/], against an estimated 1.4 billion who need it by 2028. IBM’s 5 million slots represent 0.35% of that gap. The AI/Labor Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Japan’s Numbers Explain the Future Japan maintained 2.5% unemployment through 2025 while recording six consecutive months of real wage declines. It seems productivity gains from AI are flowing to employers, not workers. Meanwhile, South Korea’s workers aged 25 to 29 fell by 98,000 in a single quarter [https://www.weforum.org/stories/2025/04/ai-jobs-international-workers-day/], the steepest youth employment drop in 12 years.Recall the United States is also seeing a rapidly rising unemployment rate for young, college-educated job seekers. The Anxiety Is Measurable Now Mercer’s Global Talent Trends 2026 report [https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/20/ai-impacting-labor-market-like-a-tsunami-as-layoff-fears-mount.html] surveyed 12,000 workers worldwide. The survey found that the share worried about AI-related job loss jumped from 28% in 2024 to 40% in 2026. Sixty-two percent said their leaders underestimate AI’s emotional and psychological impact. The anxiety is accurate. It also goes unaddressed in most corporate communications about AI strategy. And finally, Colorado’s AI Act takes effect June 30 [https://www.techtimes.com/articles/317392/20260529/tech-layoffs-reach-142000-2026-profitable-companies-cut-jobs-fund-700b-ai-infrastructure.htm]. The policy requires bias controls for AI used in employment decisions. Also, Connecticut’s notification law for employers laying off workers for AI-related reasons takes effect in October. California is 180 days into its executive order for a review of AI’s impact on the workplace and worker protections. Three state deadlines are converging in the next five months. The Feds are still asleep at the wheel. Get full access to The AI/Labor Report at ailabor.substack.com/subscribe [https://ailabor.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

UK firms cut 8% labor after AI adoption; 35% of Americans are "disposable"; Connecticut mandates AI disclosure; China bans AI firings, Canada thinking about it; H-1B visa workers face 60-day clock

A translator in Brighton, England has watched her corporate press release work disappear. A London cinematographer is retraining as an outdoor instructor for minimum wage. These are not Americans, but the pattern behind their situations is the same one reshaping the U.S. labor market. A Morgan Stanley report published in late May [https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20260527-my-job-is-going-uk-workers-squeezed-out-by-ai] found that British companies that adopted AI cut their workforces by 8% in the year ending October 2025. That rate exceeded comparable figures for Germany, Japan, and Australia. Listen on Apple Podcasts [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-ai-labor-report/id1896663061] The IMF estimates that more than two-thirds of British workers perform tasks AI can potentially carry out. Services make up 80% of the UK economy. That combination makes the UK the most AI-exposed major economy outside the United States. The workers disappearing from its labor market are the same kinds of workers disappearing in America. AI Is a Cover Story. An MIT Professor Put a Number on It. A Fortune piece published May 31 [https://fortune.com/2026/05/31/tech-companies-ai-washing-layoffs-wix-block-snap-atlassian-disposable-workers/] quotes Paul Osterman, a professor of human resources management at MIT Sloan and the author of a book literally titled Disposable Workers. Osterman’s argument is that companies have used technology as a cover story for workforce reduction for 20 years. AI is simply the most convenient version of that cover story available right now. Disposable Workers are people whose employment relationship gives them no meaningful protection against restructuring decisions. When Cisco announced 4,000 cuts last month, its stock jumped 13%. The market rewarded the announcement, which tells you what the market thinks the layoffs are actually about. Osterman estimates that 35% of the American workforce now qualifies as “disposable workers.” That 35% figure is not a projection. It describes the current state of employment for roughly 58 million Americans. BUY NOW! [https://wimdodson.gumroad.com/l/gods_in_the_machine?_gl=1*19da5a0*_ga*MTEwMjE2MDkwMy4xNzc2OTY4MDQy*_ga_6LJN6D94N6*czE3NzY5NjgwNDEkbzEkZzEkdDE3NzY5NjgxNzIkajU5JGwwJGgw] Get the NEW Book that exposes the Narratives Tech uses to build its AI Empire. $4.95 flat fee for Kindle, Nook, Tablets, and Mobile. No subscription required.3.5-hr reading time. Two States Just Put Employers on Notice Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont signed SB 5 on May 30 [https://news.bloomberglaw.com/daily-labor-report/connecticuts-lamont-signs-ai-law-with-employer-notice-mandate], making Connecticut one of the first states in the country to require employers to disclose in their WARN Act filings whether a mass layoff is related to AI or other automation. The requirement takes effect October 1, 2026. Starting in October 2027, employers must give workers written notice before using AI tools that play a “substantial role” in hiring, promotion, or termination decisions. Violations are enforceable by the state attorney general. Harvard’s OnLabor noted on June 1 [https://onlabor.org/june-1-2026/] that the law puts Connecticut alongside California, Colorado, and Illinois as the only states with meaningful AI employment protections on the books. No federal equivalent exists. Instead, the Trump administration has attempted to block similar state laws through threatened loss of federal funding and litigation. The four-state patchwork is the full extent of American worker protection against AI-driven employment decisions. The EU’s equivalent rules take effect August 2. American workers employed by multinationals operating in Europe may soon have more legal protection at their European offices than at their U.S. desks. China Made It Illegal. Canada Like the Idea. Courts in Hangzhou and Beijing ruled in late April [https://www.caixinglobal.com/2026-04-30/chinese-courts-rule-companies-cannot-fire-workers-simply-to-replace-them-with-ai-102439602.html] that companies cannot terminate employees simply because AI can perform the same job at lower cost. The anchor case involved a quality assurance supervisor whose employer tried to cut his monthly pay from 25,000 to 15,000 yuan after AI automated his role. When he refused, the company fired him. The court ruled the termination illegal. The reasoning matters: AI adoption is a strategic business choice, not an unforeseeable event. Chinese labor law allows contract changes for unforeseeable disruptions. A planned technology decision does not qualify. Canadian legal analysts and the Global News outlet noted [https://globalnews.ca/news/11840683/ai-china-layoffs-court-ruling-canada/] that the Chinese ruling reignited debate about in Canada about whether Western governments are failing workers in this area. The honest answer for Canada and the U.S. is yes. The Chinese motivation may be social stability as much as worker welfare. Nevertheless, the ruling’s effect on workers is real either way. The H-1B Clock Is Running The displacement wave at Oracle, Cognizant, and Amazon hits Indian tech workers in the United States with a second consequence that American outlets are mostly missing. The AI/Labor Report is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Oracle’s restructuring cut an estimated 12,000 roles [https://www.storyboard18.com/photos/brand-marketing/ai-layoffs-2026-amazon-meta-oracle-cisco-among-tech-firms-cutting-jobs-98910.htm] from teams based in India or staffed by Indian nationals in the U.S. Cognizant cut between 12,000 and 15,000 positions to shift toward automated delivery models. For workers on H-1B visas, a layoff triggers a 60-day window to find a new employer willing to sponsor them. Miss the window, and the visa expires. These workers face AI displacement and immigration jeopardy simultaneously. They fall outside most U.S. labor displacement data. Their situation is the clearest current example of a workforce segment absorbing the full cost of the AI transition with no policy buffer in place. BUY NOW [https://wimdodson.gumroad.com/l/invasion_ai?_gl=1*g1iey2*_ga*OTc1NjU2NTcyLjE3NzQwMzA3NjM.*_ga_6LJN6D94N6*czE3NzQwMzMyMjUkbzIkZzEkdDE3NzQwMzQ2ODgkajYwJGwwJGgw]! Get the book that examines how the AI invasion already happened. You just weren’t invited. $9.95 flat fee for Kindle, Nook, Tablets, and Mobile. No subscription required. 2-hr reading time. Get full access to The AI/Labor Report at ailabor.substack.com/subscribe [https://ailabor.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]