For workers who have already navigated desktop publishing, the internet and smartphones, AI is proving to be one disruption too many. The share of Americans over 55 in the workforce has slipped to 37.2%, its lowest level in more than 20 years, and for some older professionals, AI adoption is accelerating the exit.
About 30% of workers ages 30 to 49 use ChatGPT on the job, nearly double the share of those 50 and older, according to a 2025 Pew Research Center survey. Baby boomers and Gen X workers showed the sharpest declines in confidence using AI, per a ManpowerGroup survey of nearly 14,000 workers across 19 countries.
The issue isn't just learning new tools. Older workers describe AI as disrupting their sense of professional autonomy and identity in ways that feel different from past technology waves. "Your battery doesn't hold a charge as long as it used to," said one content strategist who took early retirement rather than adapt.
Employers who are already under pressure to reduce headcount may not be fighting these departures very hard. "The more people retire, the fewer they have to let go," said one labor market economist.
ManpowerGroup's chief strategy officer said employers are partly to blame: "We as employers aren't doing a good enough job saying to older workers, we value the skills you already have, so much so that we want to invest in you to help you do your job better."
Read more via The Wall Street Journal
If you've ever dreaded a corporate retreat, consider what happened when streaming company Plex took its 120 fully remote employees to Honduras in 2017 for a "Survivor"-themed bonding week. The CEO got E. coli from a salad before the first bus arrived. A former Navy SEAL ran military drills in 100-degree heat until people started passing out. A software engineer found a porcupine in his shower. Two planes got stranded on a small island after dark. One employee got an antihistamine shot in the backside after landing on a fire ant hill. The whole thing cost about $500,000. Nearly a decade later, the employees still work together and describe it as one of the most fun trips they've ever taken.
Read the full story via The Wall Street Journal
With hiring budgets tight and every role under scrutiny, a growing number of companies are upgrading their workforces by swapping out lower performers for stronger ones rather than adding new positions.
Recruiters are calling it "bullseye hiring," and say 2025 was the biggest year for the trend in recent memory.
The logic is simple: a company with 10 underperforming sales reps can often get better results by replacing the weakest ones with stronger hires, even at slightly higher pay, than by expanding the team.
The trend runs from entry-level to the C-suite. Roughly 11% of CEOs at the 1,500 largest public companies were replaced last year, the highest turnover rate since 2010, with boards showing less patience for leaders slow to adapt to an AI-driven future.
For senior roles, companies often conduct confidential searches through headhunters to avoid alerting the employee being considered for replacement. Some companies are effectively "always hiring," not to grow but to continuously upgrade.
Early-career workers face a particular risk, competing not just against each other but against annual cohorts of new graduates entering the same roles.
Recruiters say there is "just no appetite for mediocrity anymore."
Read more via Business Insider
Job fraud cost Americans at least $220 million in just the first half of 2024, according to the FTC, which notes that most fraud goes unreported, making the true figure likely far higher. AI is making the scams harder to detect and easier to scale, with fraudsters using deepfakes, fake voices and microtargeting to impersonate real employers and recruiters.
Job scammers typically pose as employers, promise flexibility and high pay via unsolicited texts or emails, and ask targets to pay upfront for equipment that never arrives or hand over personal information.
The proliferation of remote work has made job seekers less likely to question red flags like the absence of an in-person interview, increasing exposure.
Investment scams powered by AI cost consumers more than $5 billion, according to the FTC's latest data. Job scams accounted for roughly $750 million of total fraud losses.
According to experts, the "high number of job scams right now" may be the result of the "soft labor market."
Scammers may be "trying to take advantage of vulnerable job seekers."
Read more via ZDNet, WSLS
While large majorities across corporate, manager and hourly roles describe themselves as engaged, 40% to 46% say they're likely to look for a new job within the year, according to a new Firstup survey of more than 3,000 U.S. and Canadian workers.
The disconnect suggests engagement scores alone are no longer a reliable predictor of retention.
61% to 67% of workers across all roles say they've missed an important policy or procedural update in the past year, and half of managers and hourly workers say their employer doesn't have an effective way to share information with them.
Managers are the most trusted source of information across the board, but 70% report challenges communicating with hourly teams, and only 29% feel confident their communication keeps workers compliant.
Hourly workers are significantly more likely than corporate employees to believe AI could improve communication (42% vs. 30%), but 60% have never used AI at work.
43% of corporate employees and 37% of managers spend three or more hours a week searching for basic information they need to do their jobs.
Read more via Firstup
A new Centegix survey of more than 600 patient-facing healthcare workers finds that 28% worry about their safety at least once a week and another 15% at least once a month. Most say their organizations aren't treating worker safety as a high priority.
68% said they had experienced at least one violent or threatening incident in the past year, including physical abuse, threats and intimidating behavior.
48% said safety concerns are affecting their ability to deliver patient care, rising to 63% among hospital workers specifically.
61% said their organization's security efforts don't demonstrate a high priority for worker well-being.
When asked what would help most, 55% said additional security personnel and 42% identified duress alert buttons as their top technology choice, though most said they didn't want buttons used to track their location beyond emergency situations.
Read more via Chief Healthcare Executive
Global employee engagement fell to 20% in 2025, down from a peak of 23% in 2022, driven almost entirely by a nine-point drop in manager engagement over that period, according to Gallup's latest State of the Global Workplace report.
Employees whose managers actively support AI are 8.7 times more likely to say AI has transformed how much work gets done. "Even the most sophisticated neural network cannot overcome an indifferent team leader," Gallup's CEO wrote.
A separate AMA survey found a striking perception gap: 59% of managers believe their own engagement increased over the past year, while 80% of employees said it stagnated or declined.
Recent middle management layoffs are making things worse, leaving remaining managers stretched thin at exactly the moment when employees need more guidance.
Read more via HR Dive
A new McLean & Co. report finds that employees who clearly understand their job expectations are 8.6 times more likely to be engaged at work, yet many organizations still rely on performance criteria that are overly generic, complex or disconnected from how work actually gets done.
Organizations that didn't provide positive employee experiences saw voluntary turnover rates 40% higher than those that did, and employees at those organizations were 1.27 times more likely to report higher stress levels.
HR departments that rated themselves highly effective at performance management were 4.7 times more likely to also report having an effective employee engagement strategy.
When performance criteria are unclear, the damage goes beyond confusion: it erodes trust, makes evaluations feel unfair, and creates a culture where employees can't see how their work connects to broader organizational goals.
More than half of adults believe men have more opportunities for competitive wages than women, according to a new AP-NORC poll.
Highlights from the survey of 1,156 adults:
54% of respondents believe men have more opportunities for competitive wages than women and 51% say men have more opportunities for job advancement.
About 3 in 5 employed women say men have more opportunities for competitive wages and advancement, compared to roughly 40% of employed men who agree.
30% of employed women say they have personally experienced wage discrimination because of their gender, compared to 10% of employed men. Women are also more likely to say they've missed out on a promotion or recognition at work (24% vs. 16%).
Employed women are significantly more likely than men to report financial stress across the board, including pay, housing, groceries, healthcare and utility costs.
The uncontrolled gender pay gap widened slightly in 2026, with women now earning $0.82 per dollar earned by men, down from $0.83 last year, according to Payscale. In hospitality and food service, the gap is even larger at roughly $0.70 on the dollar.
The gap tends to widen over time. According to Glassdoor, women's earnings typically plateau in their late 30s while men's continue growing through their 40s.
Read more via HR Dive, AP-NORC
