ReportWire

Tag: Jobs and careers

  • Workers turn to ‘polyworking’ to combat frozen salaries and inflation

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    NEW YORK (AP) — As workers face frozen salaries, inflation and fear of layoffs, some have decided to branch out from their traditional careers. They’re taking on side jobs to bring in additional income and provide a backup plan should they find themselves out of work, or adding second, third and sometimes fourth jobs — what some call “polyworking” — to the mix.

    Take Katelyn Cusick, 29. She beautifies displays as a visual merchandiser for Patagonia at her full-time job. Then she works a side gig managing social media influencers for a German shoe brand for 10 to 15 hours per week. She also has an Etsy shop where she sells paintings. If that wasn’t enough, she ushers at concerts in the San Francisco Bay Area — a way to see live shows for free.

    “Every day is different and every day feels like a new day,” Cusick said. “That is ultimately why I started doing all these side hustles, just because I wanted to switch it up. I don’t want to just do the same thing every day.”

    The extra income also helps her pay her student loans and manage the high cost of living, a welcome assist since wages at her full-time job have stayed flat for several years, she said.

    Some are drawn to side jobs because of instability in their workplace, or the perception that they may lose their income. Still others, reluctant to trust one employer to provide a steady job that lasts, are supplementing their main roles with gig work on apps such as Uber and Grubhub.

    This article is part of AP’s Be Well coverage, focusing on wellness, fitness, diet and mental health. Read more Be Well.

    “We have seen stagnant salaries, we’ve seen inflation, we’ve seen the cost of living overall increasing, even beyond our inflation measures,” said Alexandrea Ravenelle, sociologist and gig economy researcher at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “So people are looking for ways to supplement and to build themselves a little bit of a safety net.”

    Some are creating “portfolio careers” where they work a variety of jobs, each building different valuable skills. In Cusick’s case, side work keeps her social media marketing skills current.

    “Rather than having one job that you can have for many, many years and thinking about your career progression as a linear pathway, some people are putting together multiple side hustles based on their skills and interests and making the money work by having multiple revenue streams,” said Elaine Chen, director of the Derby Entrepreneurship Center at Tufts University.

    Career experts and those with side jobs share tips on how to get started and what to avoid if you’re considering branching out from your 9-to-5.

    Follow a passion

    If you’re embarking on a side business on top of a full-time job, consider picking something you’re naturally interested in, since you’ll spend a lot of free time on the venture.

    “You have to love it,” Chen said. “Usually it is something that the person is really passionate about.”

    For Josie White, 31, that passion was mental health. After struggling with schizoaffective disorder and finding effective treatment, she wanted to help others who have mental health challenges feel less alone.

    While working full-time as a fundraiser for Shelter the Homeless, a nonprofit organization in Salt Lake City, White decided to pursue public speaking on the side and began looking for opportunities to address groups and conferences where she could share her own experiences with mental illness “to reassure people that there is hope and a light at the end of the tunnel.”

    Be realistic about money

    Launching a side hustle may require initial investment, and it can take a considerable amount of time before it generates income.

    When White started her side business, she began by offering her speaking services as an unpaid volunteer. She landed some gigs training nonprofit staff and speaking about fundraising, which wasn’t her original goal, but those opportunities helped her gain experience.

    Over the past year she’s booked 10 speaking engagements, and four of those will be paid, she said. She’s taken the money she earned so far and re-invested it into developing her public speaking skills.

    “The goal is ultimately to get paid, but right now I’m putting in the legwork to reach that,” White said. “It’s starting to snowball.”

    Know the risks of gig work

    Some side jobs, such as gig work delivering groceries or driving passengers, may generate income right away.

    Tom Ritter of Syracuse, New York, was supplementing his income as a workforce management specialist at a nonprofit by making deliveries for Instacart and Spark, Walmart’s delivery platform, on top of his full-time job. The side work helped him pay his bills, especially when he recently lost his day job.

    “For me, even that extra couple hundred dollars a month went a long way, and it still does,” Ritter, 39, said.

    Ravenelle cautioned against relying too heavily on gig work for income. It can be hard to transition back to full-time, permanent jobs, where workers typically wait two weeks or more for a first paycheck, and gig work carries a stigma among some employers, she said.

    Plus, if gig workers are earning good wages, the platforms will typically change the algorithms so they earn less money, Ravenelle said. “The house always wins when it comes to the gig platforms,” she said.

    Be skeptical

    Once people are looking for side jobs, they should be cautious if an opportunity found online seems too good to be true. Some online influencers promote business ideas that are more akin to scams.

    In Ravanelle’s research she’s spoken with people who saw online videos about making money selling microgreens.

    “They thought they could make thousands of dollars a month, working from home, growing microgreens in their kitchen, and then selling them to high-end restaurants,” Ravenelle said. “No. The person who sells you the grow lights and gives you the classes is the person who’s making the money.”

    Finding the time

    Starting a second job or career can dig into personal time, reducing opportunities to exercise or be with family and friends.

    White works Monday through Thursday at Shelter the Homeless, clocking 40 to 45 hours per week. With Fridays off, she spends that day practicing speaking skills or generating new business.

    “I wouldn’t describe my life as balanced,” she said. “But am I enjoying it? Yes. And I think that matters.”

    ___

    Share your stories and questions about workplace wellness at [email protected]. Follow AP’s Be Well coverage, focusing on wellness, fitness, diet and mental health at https://apnews.com/hub/be-well

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  • Washington’s struggling economy takes another economic hit from the government shutdown

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    WASHINGTON — With the combination of the longest government shutdown, the mass firings of government workers and a fresh cut in federal food aid, the Capital Area Food Bank in Washington is bracing for the swell of people who will need its help before the holiday season.

    The food bank, which serves 400 pantries and aid organizations in the District of Columbia, northern Virginia and two Maryland counties, is providing 8 million more meals than it had prepared to this budget year — a nearly 20% increase.

    The city is being hit “especially hard,” said Radha Muthiah, the group’s CEO and president, “because of the sequence of events that has occurred over the course of this year.”

    The nation’s capital has been battered by a series of decisions by the Trump administration, from the layoffs of federal workers to the ongoing law enforcement intervention into the district. The added blow of the shutdown, which has furloughed workers and paused money for food assistance, is only deepening the economic toll.

    The latest figures from the D.C. Office of Revenue Analysis do not account for workforce changes since the shutdown that began Oct. 1. But even the September jobs report shows that the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate hovers at 6%, compared with the most recent national rate of 4.3%, and has been the highest in the nation for months.

    The economic woes appear to be reverberating politically. Democrat Abigail Spanberger won election Tuesday as Virginia’s governor after focusing her campaign message on the effects of President Donald Trump’s actions on the state’s economy.

    The shutdown’s long-term impact on the regional economy will be felt long after the government reopens, experts say.

    Washington has the country’s largest share of federal workers — about 20%, according to official figures — and roughly 150,000 federal employees call the area home. By Monday, hundreds of thousands of federal workers across the country will have missed at least two full paychecks because of the shutdown. Nationally, at least 670,000 federal employees are furloughed, while about 730,000 are working without pay, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center.

    During the shutdown, the number of federal employees on Washington’s transit system each weekday has dropped by about one-quarter compared with ridership in September. Eateries that the Restaurant Association of Greater Washington says were already dealing with thin margins from seasonal declines and the fallout from Trump’s deployment of armed National Guard members on city streets are facing more challenges at a time when owners had hoped for a rebound.

    Tracy Hadden Loh, a fellow at Brookings Metro, a think tank, said that going without paychecks is causing significant cash flow issues for federal workers, potentially leading to defaults on mortgages and student loans. For local businesses, especially those reliant on federal workers’ discretionary spending, it could exacerbate the impact during the high-sales October-December quarter.

    “A lot of businesses rely on higher spending in Q4 in order to have a revenue positive year,” Loh said.

    Small businesses are feeling the loss of that spending.

    The crowd watching Liverpool’s Premier League game last weekend would have been standing room only at The Queen Vic, a bar in Northeast Washington. But that was not the case, said Ryan Gordon, co-owner of the British pub.

    “We still had seats for people, which means the bars around us who get our overflow got nothing,” Gordon said.

    Business is down about 50% compared with what it was before the shutdown, he said. He considers himself lucky in the local restaurant scene because he owns the building and does not have to pay rent.

    “To the extent to which discretionary spending by D.C. area households is limited, that could push a lot of local businesses into the red,” Loh said. The culmination of the shutdown, cut in SNAP benefits and layoffs are weighing heavy on households that have never sought help before, she added.

    Thea Price was fired from her job at the U.S. Institute of Peace in March of this year, part of the wave of layoffs meant to shrink the size of the federal government. Her husband, a government contractor, also lost his job at a museum. Since then, they have lived on savings, Medicaid and SNAP.

    Price, 37, recently went to a food pantry in Arlington, Virginia, for the first time recently. The shutdown halted funding for SNAP, after it took her months to get it, and the $500 payments she receives each month were set to stop. Virginia sent a partial payment but it was not enough, Price said. With her options to sustain herself and her family running out, Price is moving back to her hometown in the Seattle area.

    “We can’t afford to stay in the area any longer and hope that something might pan out,” she said. “We’re just in a much different place than when these things started in March.”

    At the Capital Area Food Bank in Northeast Washington, forklifts sped around in a controlled chaos, unloading trucks, moving food and preparing for a distribution set up for federal employees and contractors, and preparations are intensifying with the holiday season in mind. The organization is expecting to provide 1 million more meals this month than it had anticipated before the shutdown.

    “We’re very focused obviously on the immediacy of all of these impacts today and getting food to those who need it,” said Muthiah, the group’s director. But she cautioned there were long-term implications to the unfolding crisis, with people tapping their savings and retirement funds to get by.

    “People are borrowing against their futures to be able to pay for basic necessities today,” she said.

    ___

    Associated Press video journalist Nathan Ellgren contributed to this report.

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  • ‘No hire’ job market leaves unemployed in limbo as threats to economy multiply

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    WASHINGTON — When Carly Kaprive left a job in Kansas City and moved to Chicago a year ago, she figured it would take three to six months to find a new position. After all, the 32-year old project manager had never been unemployed for longer than three months.

    Instead, after 700 applications, she’s still looking, wrapped up in a frustrating and extended job hunt that is much more difficult than when she last looked for work just a couple of years ago. With uncertainty over interest rates, tariffs, immigration, and artificial intelligence roiling much of the economy, some companies she’s interviewed with have abruptly decided not to fill the job at all.

    “I have definitely had mid-interview roles be eliminated entirely, that they are not going to move forward with even hiring anybody,” she said.

    Kaprive is caught in a historical anomaly: The unemployment rate is low and the economy is still growing, but those out of work face the slowest pace of hiring in more than a decade. Diane Swonk, chief economist at KPMG, calls it a “jobless boom.”

    While big corporate layoff announcements typically grab the most attention, it has been the unwillingness of many companies to add workers that has created a more painful job market than the low 4.3% unemployment rate would suggest. It is also more bifurcated: The “low hire, low fire” economy has meant fewer layoffs for those with jobs, while the unemployed struggle to find work.

    “It’s like an insider-outsider thing,” Guy Berger, head of research at the Burning Glass Institute said, “where outsiders that need jobs are struggling to get their foot in, even as insiders are insulated by what up until now is a low-layoff environment.”

    Several large companies have recently announced tens of thousands of job cuts in the past few weeks, including UPS, Target, and IBM, though Berger said it is too soon to tell whether they signal a turn for the worse in the economy. But a rise in job cuts would be particularly challenging with hiring already so low.

    For now, it’s harder than ever to get a clear read on the job market because the government shutdown has cut off the U.S. Department of Labor’s monthly employment reports. The October jobs report was scheduled for release Friday but has been delayed, like the September figures before it. The October report may be less comprehensive when it is released because not all the data may be collected.

    Before the shutdown, the Labor Department reported that the hiring rate — the number of people hired in a given month, as a percentage of those employed — fell to 3.2% in August, matching the lowest figure outside the pandemic since March 2013.

    Back then, the unemployment rate was a painful 7.5%, as the economy slowly recovered from the job losses from the 2008-2009 Great Recession. That is much higher than August’s 4.3%.

    Many of those out of work are skeptical of the current low rate. Brad Mislow, 54, has been mostly unemployed for the past three years after losing a job as an advertising executive in New York City. Now he is substitute teaching to make ends meet.

    “It is frustrating to hear that the unemployment rate is low, the economy is great,” he said. “I think there are people in this economy who are basically fighting every day and holding on to pieces of flotsam in the shark-filled waters or, they have no idea what it’s like.”

    With the government closed, financial markets are paying closer attention to private-sector data, but that is also mixed. On Thursday, the outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas unnerved investors with a report that announced job cuts surged 175% in October from a year ago.

    Yet on Wednesday, payroll processor ADP said that net hiring picked up in October as businesses added 42,000 jobs, after two months of declines. Still, the gain was modest. ADP’s figures are based on anonymous data from the 26 million workers at its client companies.

    Separately, Revelio Labs, a workplace analytics company, estimated Thursday that the economy shed 9,000 jobs in October. The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago estimates that the unemployment rate ticked up to 4.4% last month.

    Even when the government was releasing data, economists and officials at the Federal Reserve weren’t sure how healthy the job market was or where it was headed next. A sharp drop in immigration and stepped-up deportations have helped keep the unemployment rate low simply by reducing the supply of workers. The economy doesn’t need to create as many jobs to keep the unemployment rate from rising.

    Jerome Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve, has called in a “curious balance” because both the supply of and demand for workers has fallen.

    Economists point to many reasons for the hiring slowdown, but most share a common thread: Greater uncertainty from tariffs, the potential impact of artificial intelligence, and now the government shutdown. While investment in data centers to power AI is booming, elevated interest rates have kept many other parts of the economy weak, such as manufacturing and housing.

    “The concentration of economic gains (in AI) has left the economy looking better on paper than it feels to most Americans,” Swonk said.

    Younger Americans have borne the brunt of the hiring slowdown, but many older workers have also struggled.

    Suzanne Elder, 65, is an operations executive with extensive experience in health care, and two years ago the Chicago resident also found work quickly — three months after she left a job, she had three offers. Now she’s been unemployed since April.

    She is worried that her age is a challenge, but isn’t letting it hold her back. “I got a job at 63, so I don’t see a reason to not get a job at 65,” she said.

    Like many job-hunters, she has been stunned by the impersonal responses from recruiters, often driven by hiring software. She received one email from a company that thanked her for speaking with them, though she never had an interview. Another company that never responded to her resume asked her to fill out a survey about their interaction.

    Weak hiring has meant unemployment spells are getting longer, according to government data. More than one-quarter of those out of work have been unemployed for more than six months or longer, a figure that rose sharply in July and August and is up from 21% a year ago.

    Swonk said that such increases are unusual outside recessions.

    A rising number of the unemployed have also given up on their job searches, according to research by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. That also holds down the unemployment rate because people who stop looking aren’t counted as unemployed.

    But Kaprive is still sticking with it — she’s taken classes about Amazon’s web services platform to boost her technology skills.

    “We can’t be narrow-minded in what we’re willing to take,” she said.

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  • ‘No hire’ job market leaves unemployed in limbo as threats to economy multiply

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    WASHINGTON — When Carly Kaprive left a job in Kansas City and moved to Chicago a year ago, she figured it would take three to six months to find a new position. After all, the 32-year old project manager had never been unemployed for longer than three months.

    Instead, after 700 applications, she’s still looking, wrapped up in a frustrating and extended job hunt that is much more difficult than when she last looked for work just a couple of years ago. With uncertainty over interest rates, tariffs, immigration, and artificial intelligence roiling much of the economy, some companies she’s interviewed with have abruptly decided not to fill the job at all.

    “I have definitely had mid-interview roles be eliminated entirely, that they are not going to move forward with even hiring anybody,” she said.

    Kaprive is caught in a historical anomaly: The unemployment rate is low and the economy is still growing, but those out of work face the slowest pace of hiring in more than a decade. Diane Swonk, chief economist at KPMG, calls it a “jobless boom.”

    While big corporate layoff announcements typically grab the most attention, it has been the unwillingness of many companies to add workers that has created a more painful job market than the low 4.3% unemployment rate would suggest. It is also more bifurcated: The “low hire, low fire” economy has meant fewer layoffs for those with jobs, while the unemployed struggle to find work.

    “It’s like an insider-outsider thing,” Guy Berger, head of research at the Burning Glass Institute said, “where outsiders that need jobs are struggling to get their foot in, even as insiders are insulated by what up until now is a low-layoff environment.”

    Several large companies have recently announced tens of thousands of job cuts in the past few weeks, including UPS, Target, and IBM, though Berger said it is too soon to tell whether they signal a turn for the worse in the economy. But a rise in job cuts would be particularly challenging with hiring already so low.

    For now, it’s harder than ever to get a clear read on the job market because the government shutdown has cut off the U.S. Department of Labor’s monthly employment reports. The October jobs report was scheduled for release Friday but has been delayed, like the September figures before it. The October report may be less comprehensive when it is released because not all the data may be collected.

    Before the shutdown, the Labor Department reported that the hiring rate — the number of people hired in a given month, as a percentage of those employed — fell to 3.2% in August, matching the lowest figure outside the pandemic since March 2013.

    Back then, the unemployment rate was a painful 7.5%, as the economy slowly recovered from the job losses from the 2008-2009 Great Recession. That is much higher than August’s 4.3%.

    Many of those out of work are skeptical of the current low rate. Brad Mislow, 54, has been mostly unemployed for the past three years after losing a job as an advertising executive in New York City. Now he is substitute teaching to make ends meet.

    “It is frustrating to hear that the unemployment rate is low, the economy is great,” he said. “I think there are people in this economy who are basically fighting every day and holding on to pieces of flotsam in the shark-filled waters or, they have no idea what it’s like.”

    With the government closed, financial markets are paying closer attention to private-sector data, but that is also mixed. On Thursday, the outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas unnerved investors with a report that announced job cuts surged 175% in October from a year ago.

    Yet on Wednesday, payroll processor ADP said that net hiring picked up in October as businesses added 42,000 jobs, after two months of declines. Still, the gain was modest. ADP’s figures are based on anonymous data from the 26 million workers at its client companies.

    Separately, Revelio Labs, a workplace analytics company, estimated Thursday that the economy shed 9,000 jobs in October. The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago estimates that the unemployment rate ticked up to 4.4% last month.

    Even when the government was releasing data, economists and officials at the Federal Reserve weren’t sure how healthy the job market was or where it was headed next. A sharp drop in immigration and stepped-up deportations have helped keep the unemployment rate low simply by reducing the supply of workers. The economy doesn’t need to create as many jobs to keep the unemployment rate from rising.

    Jerome Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve, has called in a “curious balance” because both the supply of and demand for workers has fallen.

    Economists point to many reasons for the hiring slowdown, but most share a common thread: Greater uncertainty from tariffs, the potential impact of artificial intelligence, and now the government shutdown. While investment in data centers to power AI is booming, elevated interest rates have kept many other parts of the economy weak, such as manufacturing and housing.

    “The concentration of economic gains (in AI) has left the economy looking better on paper than it feels to most Americans,” Swonk said.

    Younger Americans have borne the brunt of the hiring slowdown, but many older workers have also struggled.

    Suzanne Elder, 65, is an operations executive with extensive experience in health care, and two years ago the Chicago resident also found work quickly — three months after she left a job, she had three offers. Now she’s been unemployed since April.

    She is worried that her age is a challenge, but isn’t letting it hold her back. “I got a job at 63, so I don’t see a reason to not get a job at 65,” she said.

    Like many job-hunters, she has been stunned by the impersonal responses from recruiters, often driven by hiring software. She received one email from a company that thanked her for speaking with them, though she never had an interview. Another company that never responded to her resume asked her to fill out a survey about their interaction.

    Weak hiring has meant unemployment spells are getting longer, according to government data. More than one-quarter of those out of work have been unemployed for more than six months or longer, a figure that rose sharply in July and August and is up from 21% a year ago.

    Swonk said that such increases are unusual outside recessions.

    A rising number of the unemployed have also given up on their job searches, according to research by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. That also holds down the unemployment rate because people who stop looking aren’t counted as unemployed.

    But Kaprive is still sticking with it — she’s taken classes about Amazon’s web services platform to boost her technology skills.

    “We can’t be narrow-minded in what we’re willing to take,” she said.

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  • American Airlines announces cuts to management at its Texas headquarters

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    American Airlines has announced plans to cut a small number of management and support roles, mainly at its headquarters in Fort Worth, Texas

    American Airlines said Tuesday it will cut a “small” number of management and support roles, mostly at its Fort Worth headquarters, in an effort to recalibrate its workforce to match current needs.

    The company said in a statement that the layoffs “will help us optimize our performance and become even more efficient across the organization.” It also said it plans on investing in other areas that support its “long-term business objectives.”

    American did not disclose the number of jobs that will be affected by the cuts, and a company spokesperson declined to further comment.

    Airlines, including American, hired aggressively after the pandemic to meet a surge in travel demand as passengers returned to the skies. But that demand slowed earlier this year amid wider economic uncertainty, prompting major U.S. airlines to reduce their flight schedules and revise or withdraw their profit outlooks for the year.

    In September, Lufthansa Group said it would shed 4,000 jobs by 2030, most of them in Germany. Southwest Airlines announced earlier this year it was slashing 15% of its corporate workforce, its first major layoffs in 53 years.

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  • Layoffs are piling up, raising worker anxiety. Here are some companies that have cut jobs recently

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    NEW YORK (AP) — It’s a tough time for the job market.

    Amid wider economic uncertainty, some analysts have said that businesses are at a “no-hire, no fire” standstill. That’s caused many to limit new work to only a few specific roles, if not pause openings entirely. At the same time, some sizeable layoffs have continued to pile up — raising worker anxieties across sectors.

    Some companies have pointed to rising operational costs spanning from President Donald Trump’s barrage of new tariffs and shifts in consumer spending. Others cite corporate restructuring more broadly — or, as seen with big names like Amazon, are redirecting money to artificial intelligence.

    Federal employees have encountered additional doses of uncertainty, impacting worker sentiment around the job market overall. Shortly after Trump returned to office at the start of the year, federal jobs were cut by the thousands. And many workers are now going without pay as the U.S. government shutdown nears its fourth week.

    “A lot of people are looking around, scanning the job environment, scanning the opportunities that are available to them — whether it’s in the public or private sector,” said Jason Schloetzer, professor business administration at Georgetown University’s McDonough School. “And I think there’s a question mark around the long-term stability everywhere.”

    Government hiring data is on hold during the shutdown, but earlier this month a survey by payroll company ADP showed that the private sector lost 32,000 jobs in September.

    Here are some companies that have moved to cut jobs recently.

    General Motors

    General Motors moved to lay off about 1,700 workers across manufacturing sites in Michigan and Ohio on Wednesday, as the auto giant adjusts to slowing demand for electric vehicles.

    Hundreds of additional employees are reportedly slated for “temporary layoffs.” And GM has recently moved to downsize other parts of its workforce, too — including 200 layoffs mostly impacting engineers in Detroit, and other 300 job cuts at a Georgia IT Innovation Center, which it is also shuttering.

    Paramount

    In long-awaited cuts just months after completing its $8 billion merger with Skydance, Paramount is going to lay off about 2,000 employees — about 10% of its workforce.

    Paramount initiated roughly 1,000 of those layoffs on Wednesday, according to a source familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The rest of the cuts will be made at a later date.

    Amazon

    Amazon will cut about 14,000 corporate jobs as the online retail giant ramps up spending on artificial intelligence.

    Amazon said Tuesday that it will cut about 14,000 corporate jobs, close to 4% of its workforce, as the online retail giant ramps up spending on AI while trimming costs elsewhere. A letter to employees said most workers would be given 90 days to look for a new position internally.

    CEO Andy Jassy previously said he anticipated generative AI would reduce Amazon’s corporate workforce in the coming years. And he has worked to aggressively cut costs overall since 2021.

    UPS

    United Parcel Service has disclosed about 48,000 job cuts this year as part of turnaround efforts, which arrive amid wider shifts in the company’s shipping outputs.

    In a Tuesday regulatory filing, UPS said it’s cut about 34,000 operational positions — and the company announced another 14,000 role reductions, mostly within management. Combined, that’s much higher than the roughly 20,000 cuts UPS forecast earlier this year.

    Target

    Last week, Target that it would eliminate about 1,800 corporate positions, or about 8% of its corporate workforce globally.

    Target said the cuts were part of wider streamlining efforts — with Chief Operating Officer Michael Fiddelke noting that “too many layers and overlapping work have slowed decisions.” The retailer is also looking to rebuild its customer base. Target reported flat or declining comparable sales in nine of the past eleven quarters.

    Nestlé

    In mid-October, Nestlé said it would be cutting 16,000 jobs globally — as part of wider cost cutting aimed at reviving its financial performance.

    The Swiss food giant said the layoffs would take place over the next two years. The cuts arrive as Nestlé and others face headwinds like rising commodity costs and U.S. imposed tariffs. The company announced price hikes over the summer to offset higher coffee and cocoa costs.

    Lufthansa Group

    In September, Lufthansa Group said it would shed 4,000 jobs by 2030 — pointing to the adoption of artificial intelligence, digitalization and consolidating work among member airlines.

    Most of the lost jobs would be in Germany, and the focus would be on administrative rather than operational roles, the company said. The layoff plans arrived even as the company reported strong demand for air travel and predicted stronger profits in years ahead.

    Novo Nordisk

    Also in September, Danish pharmaceutical company Novo Nordisk said it would cut 9,000 jobs, about 11% of its workforce.

    Novo Nordisk — which makes drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy — said the layoffs were part of wider restructuring as the company works to sell more obesity and diabetes medications amid rising competition.

    ConocoPhillips

    Oil giant ConocoPhillips has said it plans to lay off up to a quarter of its workforce, as part of broader efforts from the company to cut costs.

    A spokesperson for ConocoPhillips confirmed the layoffs on Sept. 3, noting that 20% to 25% of the company’s employees and contractors would be impacted worldwide. At the time, ConocoPhillips had a total headcount of about 13,000 — or between 2,600 and 3,250 workers. Most reductions were expected to take place before the end of 2025.

    Intel

    Intel has moved to shed thousands of jobs — with the struggling chipmaker working to revive its business as it lags behind rivals like Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices.

    In a July memo to employees, CEO Lip-Bu Tan said Intel expected to end the year with 75,000 “core” workers, excluding subsidiaries, through layoffs and attrition. That’s down from 99,500 core employees reported the end of last year. The company previously announced a 15% workforce reduction.

    Microsoft

    In May, Microsoft began began laying off about 6,000 workers across its workforce. And just months later, the tech giant said it would be cutting 9,000 positions — marking its biggest round of layoffs seen in more than two years.

    The latest job cuts hit Microsoft’s Xbox video game business and other divisions. The company has cited “organizational changes,” with many executives characterizing the layoffs as part of a push to trim management layers. But the labor reductions also arrive as the company spends heavily on AI.

    Procter & Gamble

    In June, Procter & Gamble said it would cut up to 7,000 jobs over the next two years, 6% of the company’s global workforce.

    The maker of Tide detergent and Pampers diapers said the cuts were part of a wider restructuring — also arriving amid tariff pressures. In July, P&G said it would hike prices on about a quarter of its products due to the newly-imposed import taxes, although it’s since said it expects to take less of a hit than previously anticipated for the 2026 fiscal year.

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  • Paramount to lay off 2,000 employees shortly after its merger with Skydance

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    In long-awaited cuts just months after completing its $8 billion merger with Skydance, Paramount has begun layoffs set to impact about 2,000 employees

    AP Business Writer — In long-awaited cuts just months after completing its $8 billion merger with Skydance, Paramount has begun layoffs set to impact about 2,000 employees.

    Paramount initiated roughly 1,000 of those layoffs company-wide on Wednesday, according to a source familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to publicly comment on behalf of the company. The rest of the cuts will be made at a later date, they said.

    In all, 2,000 job reductions amount to about 10% of the Paramount’s total workforce.

    “These decisions are never made lightly, especially given their effect on our colleagues who have made meaningful contributions to the company,” CEO David Ellison wrote Wednesday in memo to employees, which was obtained by The Associated Press.

    The prospect of coming job cuts has hovered above Paramount employees for a while now. Ellison on Wednesday reiterated that the company has been working to restructure since the completion of its merger in August — and noted that workforce cuts are “part of that process.”

    It’s not uncommon for businesses to initiate layoffs following a merger. And when Skydance completed its purchase of Paramount, the combined company said it would look for “opportunities to streamline its business.” Paramount reportedly began making cuts in August.

    Since launching “new Paramount” just months ago, Ellison has already moved to add more acquisitions to the media giant’s portfolio and shake up leadership at CBS, its top broadcast network. On Oct. 6, the company announced that it had bought news and commentary website The Free Press — and installed its founder, Bari Weiss, as the editor-in-chief of CBS News.

    The company is now rumored to be eyeing an even heftier acquisition: Warner Bros. Discovery, the home of HBO, CNN and DC Studios.

    Neither Paramount or Warner have publicly confirmed talks. But Warner recently signaled that it may be open to selling all or parts of its business — in light of “unsolicited interest” it said it had received from multiple parties. The company has been reportedly resistant to Paramount’s initial approach. According to CNBC, which cited anonymous sources, Warner had rejected three offers from Paramount as of last week.

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  • Amazon cuts 14,000 corporate jobs as spending on artificial intelligence accelerates

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    Amazon will cut about 14,000 corporate jobs as the online retail giant ramps up spending on artificial intelligence while cutting costs elsewhere.

    Teams and individuals impacted by the job cuts will be notified on Tuesday. Most workers will be given 90 days to look for a new position internally, Beth Galetti, Senior Vice President of People Experience and Technology at Amazon, wrote in a letter to employees on Tuesday. Those who can’t find a new role at the company or who opt not to look for one will be provided transitional support including severance pay, outplacement services and health insurance benefits.

    Amazon has about 350,000 corporate employees and a total workforce of approximately 1.56 million. The cuts announced Tuesday amount to about a 4% reduction in its corporate workforce.

    In June CEO Andy Jassy, who has aggressively sought to cut costs since becoming CEO in 2021, said that he anticipated generative AI would reduce Amazon’s corporate workforce in the next few years.

    Jassy said at the time that Amazon had more than 1,000 generative AI services and applications in progress or built, but that figure was a “small fraction” of what it plans to build.

    Amazon has announced plans to invest $10 billion building a campus in North Carolina to expand its cloud computing and artificial intelligence infrastructure.

    Since 2024 started, Amazon has committed to about $10 billion apiece to data center projects in Mississippi, Indiana, Ohio and North Carolina as it builds up its infrastructure to try to keep up with other tech giants making leaps in AI. Amazon is competing with OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, Meta and others. In a conference call with industry analysts in May, Jassy said that the potential for growth in the company’s AWS business is massive.

    “If you believe your mission is to make customers’ lives easier and better every day, and you believe that every customer experience will be reinvented with AI, you’re going to invest very aggressively in AI, and that’s what we’re doing. You can see that in the 1,000-plus AI applications we’re building across Amazon. You can see that with our next generation of Alexa, named Alexa+,” he said.

    Amazon’s workforce doubled during the pandemic as millions stayed home and boosted online spending. In the following years, big tech and retail companies cut thousands of jobs to bring spending back in line.

    The cuts announced Tuesday suggests Amazon is still trying to get the size of its workforce right and it may not be over. It was the biggest culling at Amazon since 2023, when the company cut 27,000 jobs. Those cuts came in waves, with 9,000 jobs trimmed in March of that year, and another 18,000 employees two months later. Amazon has not said if more job cuts are on the way.

    Yet the jobs market which has for years been a pillar in the U.S. economy, is showing signs of weakening. Layoffs have been limited, but the same can be said for hiring.

    Government hiring data is on hold during the government shut down, but earlier this month a survey by payroll company ADP showed a surprising loss of 32,000 jobs losses in the private sector in September.

    Many retailers are pulling back on seasonal hiring this year due to uncertainty over the U.S. economy and tariffs. Amazon Inc. said this month, however, that it would hire 250,000 seasonal workers, the same as last year’s holiday season.

    Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData, said in a statement that the layoffs “represent a deep cleaning of Amazon’s corporate workforce.”

    “Unlike the Target layoffs, Amazon is operating from a position of strength,” he said. “The company has been producing good growth, and it still has a lot of headroom for further expansion in both the U.S. and overseas.”

    But Saunders noted that Amazon is not immune to outside factors, as global markets tighten and underlying costs climb.

    “It needs to act if it wants to continue with a good bottom-line performance. This is especially so given the amount of investment the company is making in areas like logistics and AI. In some ways, this is a tipping point away from human capital to technological infrastructure,” he said.

    Amazon will post quarterly financial results on Thursday. During its most recent quarter, the company reported 17.5% growth for its cloud computing arm Amazon Web Services.

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  • Boeing defense workers on strike in Midwest reject company’s latest offer

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    Boeing workers at three Midwest plants where military aircraft and weapons are developed voted Sunday to reject the company’s latest contract offer and to continue a strike that started almost three months ago.

    The strike by about 3,200 machinists at the plants in the Missouri cities of St. Louis and St. Charles, and in Mascoutah, Illinois, is smaller in scale than a walkout last year by 33,000 Boeing workers who assemble commercial jetliners but threatens to complicate the aerospace company’s progress in regaining its financial footing.

    “Boeing claimed they listened to their employees – the result of today’s vote proves they have not,” Brian Bryant, president of the International Association of Machinists union, said in a statement.

    Union leaders say talks have stalled over issues such as wages and retirement benefits, while Boeing has argued that workers’ demands exceed the cost of living in the Midwest.

    Ahead of Sunday’s vote, the union told its members that it did not recommend approval of the company’s latest offer, which it said “had no meaningful improvements” to retirement benefits and wage increases for workers with more seniority.

    Negotiations escalated over the summer in the days leading up to the strike, with the workers rejecting an earlier proposed agreement that included a 20% wage hike over the life of the five-year contract.

    Boeing quickly countered with a modified agreement that didn’t boost the proposed pay raises but did remove a scheduling provision affecting the workers’ ability to earn overtime pay. Workers rejected that offer, too, and went on strike the next morning.

    The company has said that it was prepared for a strike, with a contingency plan in place “to ensure our non-striking workforce can continue supporting our customers.”

    Boeing’s Defense, Space & Security business accounts for more than one-third of the company’s revenue. Boeing is set to report its third-quarter earnings on Wednesday.

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  • Target is eliminating 1,800 corporate jobs as it looks to reclaim its lost lustre

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    Target said Thursday that it is eliminating about 1,800 corporate positions in an effort to streamline decision-making and accelerate initiatives to rebuild the flagging discount retailer’s customer base.

    About 1,000 employees are expected to receive layoff notices next week, and the company also plans to eliminate about 800 vacant jobs, a company spokesperson said. The cuts represent about 8% of Target’s corporate workforce globally, although the majority of the affected employees work at the company’s Minneapolis headquarters, the spokesperson said.

    Chief Operating Officer Michael Fiddelke, who is set to become Target’s next CEO on Feb. 1, issued a note to personnel on Thursday announcing the downsizing. He said further details would come on Tuesday, and he asked employees at the Minneapolis offices to work from home next week.

    “The truth is, the complexity we’ve created over time has been holding us back,” Fiddelke, a 20-year Target veteran, wrote in his note. “Too many layers and overlapping work have slowed decisions, making it harder to bring ideas to life.”

    Target, which has about 1,980 U.S. stores, lost ground to Walmart and Amazon in recent years as inflation caused shoppers to curtail their discretionary spending. Customers have complained of messy stores with merchandise that did not reflect the expensive-looking but budget-priced niche that long ago earned the retailer the jokingly posh nickname “Tarzhay.”

    Fiddelke said in August when he was announced as Target’s next CEO that he would step into the role with three urgent priorities: reclaiming the company’s position as a leader in selecting and displaying merchandise; improving the customer experience by making sure shelves are consistently stocked and stores are clean; and investing in technology.

    He cited the same goals in his message to employees, calling the layoffs a “necessary step in building the future of Target and enabling the progress and growth we all want to see.”

    “Adjusting our structure is one part of the work ahead of us. It will also require new behaviors and sharper priorities that strengthen our retail leadership in style and design and enable faster execution,” he wrote.

    Target has reported flat or declining comparable sales — those from established physical stores and online channels — in nine out of the past 11 quarters. The company reported in August that comparable sales dipped 1.9% in its second quarter, when its net income also dropped 21%.

    The job cuts will not affect any store employees or workers in Target’s sorting, distribution and other supply chain facilities, the company spokesperson said.

    The corporate workers losing their jobs will receive pay and benefits until Jan. 8 as well as severance packages, the spokesperson said.

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  • Watch those texts! Smartphones emerging as a new way for public figures to get into hot water

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    NEW YORK — NEW YORK (AP) — Some politicians carry threats to their livelihood in the palms of their hands.

    News stories in recent weeks about offensive or ill-advised text messages have blown up the careers of several young Republicans in a chat group, led a nominee for a White House job to drop out, threatened the campaign of a Democrat running for Virginia attorney general and embarrassed a federal prosecutor.

    Memories are still fresh of this spring’s inadvertent inclusion of a journalist on a Signal chain where Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other leaders discussed military strikes, possibly the second Trump administration’s most embarrassing moment.

    For journalists, it’s something else entirely. Bad smartphone behavior is fertile ground for reporters seeking insight into people who look to lead us — and presents a challenge to nail down stories when “that’s fake” looms as a default defense.

    Paul Ingrassia, who was President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Office of Special Counsel, withdrew his name from consideration Tuesday. His Senate support had crumbled following Politico’s Oct. 20 report that Ingrassia said in a text chain that he had a “Nazi streak” and believed the federal holiday honoring the birth of Martin Luther King Jr. should be tossed into hell.

    Less than a week earlier, Politico exposed a Telegram chat group with leaders of youthful Republican groups across the country involved in casually racist and violent talk. So far, the outlet says seven people have lost jobs due to the story.

    “Part of the reason this is such an important line of coverage for Politico right now is it gives readers as close to an unfiltered look at the way powerful people think and express themselves in private as they’re going to get,” said Alex Burns, its senior executive editor.

    He described texts as one of the few remaining frontiers of inadvertent authenticity. They recall past moments of infamy, like when President Richard Nixon made the ill-advised decision to tape his White House conversations, transcripts of which brought the phrase “expletive deleted” into the American lexicon.

    There are countless cringeworthy moments caught on “hot” microphones, such as during the Cold War with the Soviet Union, when President Ronald Reagan joked before a 1984 radio address that “we begin bombing in five minutes.” Most public figures now know that virtually everyone around them carries a video camera-equipped smartphone.

    Some of the recently-unearthed text messages — Black people called monkeys or “watermelon people,” images of gas chambers or urinating on the graves of opponents — are stunning and dark. You can’t help but wonder: what were they thinking? Were they thinking?

    Probably not, in part because texting is such a ubiquitous, low-friction form of communication in today’s world, said Cal Newton, professor of computer science at Georgetown University. Guards that people have up when talking with other people — be reasonable, civil, careful — are often missing.

    Some parts of our brain “don’t recognize text on a glowing piece of glass as ‘I’m in a conversation with other people,’” Newton said. Bad impulses, and the tendency to amplify or exaggerate, slip out because they can’t see reactions.

    Still, it’s not like people don’t understand, on some level, that they’re communicating on a medium where conversations can be saved on screen shots. There were nervous warning signs in some of the chats: “If we ever had a leak of this chat we would be cooked,” one young Republican said.

    It reminds Sarah Kreps, a Cornell University professor who teaches about the intersection of politics and technology, of politicians whose careers are ruined by affairs. Everyone sees the cautionary tales, but it doesn’t stop the behavior.

    “There’s this overconfidence — ‘it can’t happen to me. It happens to other people and it won’t bring me down,’” Kreps said.

    Beyond texts, Burns said Politico is in the market for other insightful open source reporting, such as audio, video or behind-the-scenes memos. He would not say whether the Ingrassia texts came as direct result of how Politico handled its previous story, but he believes his outlet has proven it has handled these stories responsibly.

    There’s a high bar of newsworthiness for reporting on private communications, he said.

    “We’re not throwing stuff out there that’s merely embarrassing or vulgar,” Burns said. “There’s a specific reason why this material is newsworthy and we’re explaining in the stories why we think it is more than people just blowing off steam in private.”

    While the Politico stories immediately impacted careers, voters will ultimately decide the impact of the National Review’s Oct. 3 story on Jay Jones, the Virginia attorney general candidate. In 2022 texts to a former colleague, Jones said former Virginia Republican House Speaker Todd Gilbert should get “two bullets to head.” He described Gilbert’s children dying in the arms of their mother.

    Jones has apologized for the texts and not disputed their accuracy.

    In a statement to Politico for its story, Ingrassia attorney Edward Andrew Paltzik said he did not concede the authenticity of the “purported” messages. “In this age of AI, authentication of allegedly leaked messages, which could be outright falsehoods, doctored, or manipulated, or lacking critical context, is extremely difficult,” he said.

    The ability now to concoct something that sounds real, coupled with public mistrust in the media, compels news organizations to tell readers as much as possible about how the material was verified without breaking agreements to confidential sources.

    In its story about the January 2024 chat that Ingrassia was involved in, Politico said it interviewed two other participants. It explained why the sources were granted anonymity and had the person who showed reporters the entire chain say why they came forward. The second person verified Ingrassia’s phone number.

    For a story in Lawfare this week about how Lindsey Halligan, the Virginia prosecutor behind the case against New York Attorney General Letitia James, messaged reporter Anna Bower on Signal to complain about some of her reporting, Bower detailed how she made sure it was really her. Bower had assumed it was a hoax; it’s rare for a U.S. attorney in a high-profile case to contact a journalist.

    She had met Halligan one time years before, and asked the texter to say when that meeting was and who she was with. After the person answered correctly, Bower checked through another source to see if the phone number the messages came from was indeed Halligan’s.

    Halligan later complained that their text conversation was off the record. Bower explained the rules of journalism to readers: A source must assume that a conversation with a reporter is on the record unless there’s an explicit agreement otherwise ahead of time — and this wasn’t done.

    The Atlantic editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, wrote at length about how he handled being added to the Signal text chain about military operations. He, too, initially thought it was a hoax. He removed himself from the chat group when he became convinced it was real, then received confirmation from the National Security Council.

    Said Burns: “The burden is always on us to show the reader why we are completely convinced the material is authentic.”

    ___

    David Bauder writes about the intersection of media and entertainment for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social

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  • Citi Foundation is putting $25M toward tackling young adults’ unemployment and AI labor disruptions

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    NEW YORK — NEW YORK (AP) — Young jobseekers, challenged by a rapidly changing labor market, are having a tough time.

    The U.S. unemployment rate for 22- to 27-year-old degree holders is the highest in a dozen years outside of the pandemic. Companies are reluctant to add staff amid so much economic uncertainty. The hiring slump is especially hitting professions such as information technology that employ more college graduates, creating nightmarish job hunts for the increasingly smaller number who do complete college. Not to mention fears that artificial intelligence will replace entry-level roles.

    So, Citi Foundation identified youth employability as the theme for its $25 million Global Innovation Challenge this year. The banking group’s philanthropic arm is donating a half million dollars to each of 50 groups worldwide that provide digital literacy skills, technical training and career guidance for low-income youth.

    “What we want to do is make sure young people are as prepared as possible to find employment in a world that’s moving really quickly,” said Ed Skyler, Citi Head of Enterprise Services and Public Affairs.

    Employer feedback suggested to Citi that early career applicants lacked the technical skills necessary for roles many had long prepared to fill, highlighting the need for continued vocational training and the importance of soft skills.

    Skyler pointed to the World Economic Forum’s recent survey of more than 1,000 companies that together employ millions of people. Skills gaps were considered the biggest barrier to business transformation over the next five years. Two-thirds of respondents reported planning to hire people with specific AI skills and 40% of them anticipated eliminating jobs AI could complete.

    Some of Citi’s grantees are responding by teaching people how to prompt AI chatbots to do work that can be automated. But Skyler emphasized it was equally important that Citi fund efforts to impart qualities AI lacks such as teamwork, empathy, judgment and communication.

    “It’s not a one-size-fits-all effort where we think every young person needs to be able to code or interface with AI,” Skyler said. “What is consistent throughout the programs is we want to develop the soft skills.”

    Among the recipients is NPower, a national nonprofit that seeks to improve economic opportunity in underinvested communities by making digital careers more accessible. Most of their students are young adults between the ages of 18 and 26.

    NPower Chief Innovation Officer Robert Vaughn said Citi’s grant will at least double the spaces available in a program for “green students” with no tech background and oftentimes no college degree.

    Considering the tech industry’s ever-changing requirements for skills and certifications, he said, applicants need to demonstrate wide-ranging capabilities both in cloud computing and artificial intelligence as well as project management and emotional intelligence.

    As some entry-level roles get automated and outsourced, Vaughn said companies aren’t necessarily looking for college degrees and specialized skillsets, but AI comfortability and general competency.

    “It is more now about being able to be more than just an isolated, siloed technical person,” he said. “You have to actually be a customer service person.”

    Per Scholas, a tuition-free technology training nonprofit, is another one of the grantees announced Tuesday. Caitlyn Brazill, its president, said the funds will help develop careers for about 600 young adults across Los Angeles, New York, Orlando, Chicago and the greater Washington, D.C area.

    To keep their classes relevant, she spends a lot of time strategizing with small businesses and huge enterprises alike. Citi’s focus on youth employability is especially important, she said, because she hears often that AI’s productivity gains have forced companies to rethink entry-level roles.

    Dwindling early career opportunities have forced workforce development nonprofits like hers to provide enough hands-on training to secure jobs that previously would have required much more experience.

    “But if there’s no bottom rung on the ladder, it’s really hard to leap up, right?” Brazill said.

    She warned that failing to develop new career pathways could hurt the economy in the long run by blocking young people from high growth careers.

    Brookings Institution senior fellow Martha Ross said Citi was certainly right to focus on technology’s disruption of the labor market. But she said the scale of that disruption is “too big for philanthropy” alone.

    “We did not handle previous displacements due to automation very well,” Ross said. “We left a lot of people behind. And we now have to decide if we’re going to replicate that or not.”

    ___

    Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.

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  • Citi Foundation putting $25M toward tackling unemployment and AI labor disruptions

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    NEW YORK — NEW YORK (AP) — Young jobseekers, challenged by a rapidly changing labor market, are having a tough time.

    The U.S. unemployment rate for 22- to 27-year-old degree holders is the highest in a dozen years outside of the pandemic. Companies are reluctant to add staff amid so much economic uncertainty. The hiring slump is especially hitting professions such as information technology that employ more college graduates, creating nightmarish job hunts for the increasingly smaller number who do complete college. Not to mention fears that artificial intelligence will replace entry-level roles.

    So, Citi Foundation identified youth employability as the theme for its $25 million Global Innovation Challenge this year. The banking group’s philanthropic arm is donating a half million dollars to each of 50 groups worldwide that provide digital literacy skills, technical training and career guidance for low-income youth.

    “What we want to do is make sure young people are as prepared as possible to find employment in a world that’s moving really quickly,” said Ed Skyler, Citi Head of Enterprise Services and Public Affairs Ed Skyler.

    Employer feedback suggested to Citi that early career applicants lacked the technical skills necessary for roles many had long prepared to fill, highlighting the need for continued vocational training and the importance of soft skills.

    Skyler pointed to the World Economic Forum’s recent survey of more than 1,000 companies that together employ millions of people. Skills gaps were considered the biggest barrier to business transformation over the next five years. Two-thirds of respondents reported planning to hire people with specific AI skills and 40% of them anticipated eliminating jobs AI could complete.

    Some of Citi’s grantees are responding by teaching people how to prompt AI chatbots to do work that can be automated. But Skyler emphasized it was equally important that Citi fund efforts to impart qualities AI lacks such as teamwork, empathy, judgment and communication.

    “It’s not a one-size-fits-all effort where we think every young person needs to be able to code or interface with AI,” Skyler said. “What is consistent throughout the programs is we want to develop the soft skills.”

    Among the recipients is NPower, a national nonprofit that seeks to improve economic opportunity in underinvested communities by making digital careers more accessible. Most of their students are young adults between the ages of 18 and 26.

    NPower Chief Innovation Officer Robert Vaughn said Citi’s grant will at least double the spaces available in a program for “green students” with no tech background and oftentimes no college degree.

    Considering the tech industry’s ever-changing requirements for skills and certifications, he said, applicants need to demonstrate wide-ranging capabilities both in cloud computing and artificial intelligence as well as project management and emotional intelligence.

    As some entry-level roles get automated and outsourced, Vaughn said companies aren’t necessarily looking for college degrees and specialized skillsets, but AI comfortability and general competency.

    “It is more now about being able to be more than just an isolated, siloed technical person,” he said. “You have to actually be a customer service person.”

    Per Scholas, a tuition-free technology training nonprofit, is another one of the grantees announced Tuesday. Caitlyn Brazill, its president, said the funds will help develop careers for about 600 young adults across Los Angeles, New York, Orlando, Chicago and the greater Washington, D.C area.

    To keep their classes relevant, she spends a lot of time strategizing with small businesses and huge enterprises alike. Citi’s focus on youth employability is especially important, she said, because she hears often that AI’s productivity gains have forced companies to rethink entry-level roles.

    Dwindling early career opportunities have forced workforce development nonprofits like hers to provide enough hands-on training to secure jobs that previously would have required much more experience.

    “But if there’s no bottom rung on the ladder, it’s really hard to leap up, right?” Brazill said.

    She warned that failing to develop new career pathways could hurt the economy in the long run by blocking young people from high growth careers.

    Brookings Institution senior fellow Martha Ross said Citi was certainly right to focus on technology’s disruption of the labor market. But she said the scale of that disruption is “too big for philanthropy” alone.

    “We did not handle previous displacements due to automation very well,” Ross said. “We left a lot of people behind. And we now have to decide if we’re going to replicate that or not.”

    ___

    Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.

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  • After winning Trump’s $20 billion, President Milei must win votes as Argentine industry reels

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    BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — The factory floor used to roar.

    Walking around his textile mill in southern Buenos Aires, Luciano Galfione pointed out the up-to-the-minute machines that once whirred and clattered as 200 employees churned out fabric to be transformed into athleisure and other apparel for Argentina’s vast middle class.

    But on Monday afternoon, the factory was so quiet that Galfione’s footsteps rang clear through the compound. A handful of workers at the Galfione Group factory in Argentina’s capital spooled yarn and dyed cloth.

    Almost two years after libertarian President Javier Milei stormed to power on a promise to rescue Argentina’s crisis-stricken economy through harsh austerity and free-market reforms, falling orders and surging competition have forced Galfione to cut operations by 80%, lay off or suspend half his staff and use his own savings to keep his family’s 78-year-old firm afloat.

    Other companies have simply closed their doors. Over 17,600 businesses — among them 1,800 manufacturers and 380 textile companies — have folded in the last year and a half, according to Fundación Pro Tejer, a nonprofit representing textile manufacturers.

    “We’re seeing an industry in crisis, and it’s about to go bankrupt,” said Galfione, who also runs Fundación Pro Tejer. “Not only textiles. Textiles are just the first and fastest to fall.”

    As Argentina heads to Oct. 26 midterm elections widely seen as a referendum on Milei’s policies, Galfione’s troubles reflect bigger shocks jolting the country. The economy has sputtered. Cheap imports have gutted manufacturing. Spending has stumbled, squeezed by higher unemployment and lower wages.

    The turmoil engulfing Argentine financial markets began when voters in the manufacturing belt of suburban Buenos Aires — a region that for decades represented the dream of national industry nurtured by tariff protection — punished Milei in a provincial election last month.

    The scale of Milei’s humiliation triggered a sharp peso sell-off and sent officials scrambling to secure $20 billion in financing from a friendly Trump administration.

    President Donald Trump, who sees a kindred spirit and fellow culture warrior in Argentina’s chain saw wielding leader, shocked Argentines and Americans alike Tuesday by warning that the $20 billion was contingent on Milei’s success in what is shaping up to be a hotly contested legislative election.

    Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent went further on Wednesday, saying that the U.S. could tap investment funds to provide Argentina with up to $40 billion.

    “Just helping a great philosophy take over a great country,” Trump explained after meeting Milei at the White House.

    Thousands of miles away, many Argentines are losing patience with that philosophy.

    Those interviewed on the streets of Buenos Aires Wednesday had no illusions about Trump’s lifeline fixing their problems.

    “Let’s say they give us this money from abroad. What am I going to do with it?” asked Walter Willatt, a 56-year-old newsstand owner whose son was just laid off from a local Toyota dealership. “If the economy revives it will have to be through domestic consumption.”

    Over a year ago, markets cheered as Milei fulfilled his flagship promise to reduce the runway inflation that he inherited from his populist predecessors. Many Argentines — who had grown accustomed to supermarkets revising prices upward everyday — hailed Milei’s program as a miraculous outbreak of normalcy in a notoriously topsy-turvy economy.

    But today, price stability is old news as Argentines contend with a lengthening list of worries.

    Unemployment in Buenos Aires Province climbed to 9.8% in the second quarter of this year, compared to 7.3% during the same period in 2023, before Milei entered office. Salaries nationwide haven’t kept up with inflation. Milei’s major subsidy cuts mean that even if prices have stabilized, Argentines are paying more for bus fares, utility bills and healthcare.

    “Milei’s challenge is that the public now assumes inflation has gone down, that’s a given,” said Marcelo J. García, Director for the Americas for the Horizon Engage political risk consultancy firm. “There’s a new generation of demands. The economy needs to grow, there needs to be job creation. I’m not sure that government is prepared to meet those demands.”

    Rodolfo Núñez, a 43-year-old former factory worker in Pilar, outside Buenos Aires, said he voted for Milei in 2023 because he wanted change. Then the blows began to fall. His daughter’s epilepsy medication shot up in price. His retired parents struggled to afford groceries on their $300-a-month pension.

    On Aug. 29, the ceramic factory where he worked for the last 18 years shut down. The company, ILVA, fired all the plant’s 300 workers in a WhatsApp message that cited the economic crisis, leaving Núñez and his colleagues in limbo, without severance pay or health insurance.

    ILVA did not respond to a request for comment.

    “What Milei promised, he didn’t do. He messed with retirees, he messed with my daughter and he messed with the workers,” he said from outside the padlocked ILVA factory where dozens of dismissed employees now camp out in protest, the air filled with smoke from burning tires and roasting chicken.

    “What do I tell my landlord? That I can’t pay her next month? Where am I going to go?”

    Núñez said he voted for the opposition in last month’s regional elections.

    Government statistics show poor and middle-class households cutting back on all but essential spending. Clothing sales, for instance, fell 10.9% in September compared to the year before. The collapsed consumption reverberates down the supply chain.

    “We’re reducing costs as much as we can, trying to survive with very low production and without making money,” said Alejandro Schvartz, owner of Visuar, a household appliance vendor and producer whose sales dropped roughly 25% in the first half of this year.

    Other policies that Milei depends on to fight inflation — such as high interest rates and central bank interventions to defend the peso — further erode the competitiveness of Argentine industry.

    The peso has become so strong that shoppers now get more bang for their buck by splurging anywhere but Argentina — from Chile’s malls to Brazil’s beaches.

    Upon taking office, Milei tore down trade barriers and relaxed import restrictions, opening Argentina to an avalanche of cheaper industrial and textile products. Chinese e-commerce companies like Temu and Shein pay no import duties for products valued below $400.

    But Milei maintained sky-high taxes for Argentine manufacturers, giving local companies no choice but to pass on the cost to consumers.

    “This is not a fair playing field,” said Pablo Yeramian, director of the Argentine textile company Norfabril, who has already cut 20% of his staff.

    As scenes of Milei beaming beside Trump in Washington flashed across Argentine televisions on Tuesday, some manufacturers couldn’t help wishing that the similarity between the two presidents was, in at least one way, more than just rhetorical.

    “No developed country in the world surrenders its industrial sovereignty,” said Galfione, pointing to Trump’s “Made in America” ambitions for the U.S. “I think instead of doing what the U.S. tells us, we should do what they do.”

    ___

    Associated Press writer Andrea Vulcano in Buenos Aires, Argentina, contributed to this report.

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  • Career experts say asking for a raise isn’t off the table in a tough job market

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    NEW YORK (AP) — With the U.S. experiencing a significant hiring slowdown, it’s a daunting time to be looking for a job. Many workers are staying put instead of changing jobs to secure better pay. Artificial intelligence tools increasingly screen the resumes of applicants. Now may seem like an inappropriate time to request a raise.

    But sticking around doesn’t mean wages and salaries have to stagnate. Career experts say it’s not wrong, even in a shaky economy, to ask to be paid what you’re worth. Raises aren’t even necessarily off the table at organizations that are downsizing, according to some experts.

    “A lot of people think if their company has done layoffs, the likelihood of getting a raise is pretty low,” said Jamie Kohn, a senior director in the human resources practice at business research and advisory firm Gartner. “And that might be true, but the the other way to think about it is that this company has already decided to reinvest in you by keeping you on.”

    This article is part of AP’s Be Well coverage, focusing on wellness, fitness, diet and mental health. Read more Be Well.

    When should you ask?

    If you’ve taken on greater responsibilities at work and have received strong performance reviews, or if you’ve learned you’re paid substantially less than colleagues or competitors with similar levels of experience, then it may be the right time to ask for a pay adjustment.

    “They know that you’re taking on more work, especially if you’ve had layoffs on your team,” Kohn continued. “At that point, it is very hard for them to lose an employee that you know they now are relying on much more.”

    Another signal that it’s time to ask for an adjustment is if you’re working a second job to make ends meet or your current financial situation is causing angst that impacts job performance, said Rodney Williams, co-founder of SoLo Funds, a community finance platform.

    “There’s nothing wrong with saying, ’Hey, I need to raise my financial position. I’m willing to do more,” Williams said. “I’m willing to show up earlier, I’m willing to leave later, I’m willing to help out, maybe, and do other things here.”

    Some people view asking for more compensation as less risky than switching to a new job. “There is a sense of not wanting to be ‘last in, first out’ in a potential layoff situation,” said Kohn.

    Know your worth

    Before starting the compensation conversation, do some research on current salaries. You can find out what people with comparable experience are making in your industry by searching on websites such as Glassdoor, where people self-report salaries, or ZipRecruiter, which gathers pay data from job postings and other sources.

    Three years ago, a lot of people asked for 20% pay increases because of price inflation and high employee turnover coming out of the coronavirus pandemic, Kohn said. Companies no longer are considering such big bumps.

    “Right now, I think you could say that you are worth 10% more, but you’re unlikely to get a 10% pay increase if you ask for it,” she said.

    Your success also depends on your recent performance reviews. “If you’ve been given additional responsibilities, if you are operating at a level that would be a promotion, those might be situations where asking for a higher amount might be worth it,” Kohn said.

    Compare notes with colleagues

    Many people view the topic as taboo, but telling coworkers what you make and asking if they earn more may prove instructive. Trusted coworkers with similar roles are potential sources. People who were recently hired or promoted may supply a sense of the market rate, Kohn said.

    “You can say, ‘Hey, I’m trying to make sure I’m being paid equitably. Are you making over or under X dollars?’ That’s one of my favorite phrases to use, and it invites people into a healthy discussion,” Sam DeMase, a career expert with ZipRecruiter, said. “People are way more interested in talking about salary than you might think.”

    You can also reach out to people who left the company, who may be more willing to compare paychecks than current colleagues, DeMase said.

    Brag sheet

    Keep track of your accomplishments and positive feedback on your work. Compile it into one document, which human resources professionals call a “brag sheet,” DeMase said. If you’re making your request in writing, list those accomplishments when you ask for a raise. If the request is made in a conversation, you can use the list as talking points.

    Be sure to list any work or responsibilities that typically would not have been part of your job description. “Employers are wanting employees to do more with less, so we need to be documenting all of the ways in which we’re working outside of our job scope,” DeMase said.

    Also take stock of the unique skills or traits you bring to the team.

    “People tend to overestimate our employers’ alternatives,” said Oakbay Consulting CEO Emily Epstein, who teaches negotiation courses at Harvard University and the University of California, Berkeley. “We assume they could just hire a long line of people, but it may be that we bring specialized expertise to our roles, something that would be hard to replace.”

    Timing matters

    Don’t seek a raise when your boss is hungry or at the end of a long day because the answer is more likely to be no, advises Epstein, whose company offers training on communication, conflict resolution and other business skills. If they’re well-rested and feeling great, you’re more likely to succeed, she said.

    Getting a raise is probably easier in booming fields, such as cybersecurity, while it could be a tough time to request one if you work in an industry that is shedding positions, Epstein said.

    By the same token, waiting for the perfect time presents the risk of missing out on a chance to advocate for yourself.

    “You could wait your whole life for your boss to be well-rested or to have a lot of resources,” Epstein said. “So don’t wait forever.”

    Responding to “no”

    If your request is denied, having made it can help set the stage for a future negotiation.

    Ask your manager what makes it difficult to say yes, Epstein suggested. “Is it the precedent you’d be establishing for this position that might be hard to live up to? Is it fairness to the other people in my position? Is it, right now the company’s struggling?” she said.

    Ask when you might revisit the conversation and whether you can get that timeframe in writing, DeMase said.

    Laura Kreller, an executive assistant at a university in Louisiana, recently earned a master’s degree and asked for her job description to change to reflect greater responsibilities and hopefully higher pay. Her boss was kind but turned her down, citing funding constraints. Kreller said she has no regrets.

    “I was proud of myself for doing it,” she said. “It’s better to know where you stand.”

    ___

    Share your stories and questions about workplace wellness at [email protected]. Follow AP’s Be Well coverage, focusing on wellness, fitness, diet and mental health at https://apnews.com/hub/be-well

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  • 31K Kaiser Permanente nurses, other health care workers strike for better wages

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    SAN FRANCISCO — SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — An estimated 31,000 registered nurses and other front-line Kaiser Permanente health care workers went on strike Tuesday to demand better wages and staffing from the California-based health care giant.

    Organizers say the five-day strike across 500 medical centers and offices in California, Hawaii and Oregon is the largest in the 50-year history of the United Nurses Associations of California/Union of Health Care Professionals. The strike could grow to include 46,000 people.

    Those on strike, including pharmacists, midwives and rehab therapists, say wages have not kept pace with inflation and there is not enough staffing to keep up with patient demand.

    They are asking for a 25% wage increase over four years to make up for wages they say are at least 7% behind their peers.

    Kaiser Permanente has countered with a 21.5% increase over four years. The company says that represented employees earn, on average, 16% more than their peers, and it would have to charge customers more to meet strikers’ pay demand.

    The company said health clinics and hospitals will remain open during the strike, with some in-person appointments shifted to virtual appointments, and some elective surgeries and procedures being rescheduled.

    Kaiser Permanente is one of the nation’s largest not-for-profit health plans, serving 12.6 million members at 600 medical offices and 40 hospitals in largely western U.S. states. It is based in Oakland, California.

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  • Uncertainty over economy, tariffs forces retailers to be cautious on holiday hiring

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    NEW YORK — NEW YORK (AP) — Uncertainty over the economy and tariffs is forcing retailers to pull back or delay plans to hire seasonal workers who pack orders at distribution centers, serve shoppers at stores and build holiday displays during the most important selling season of the year.

    American Christmas LLC, which creates elaborate holiday installations for commercial properties such as New York’s Rockefeller Center and Radio City Music Hall, plans to hire 220 temporary workers and is ramping up recruitment nearly two months later than usual, CEO Dan Casterella said. Last year, the company took on 300 people during its busy period.

    The main reason? The company wants to offset its tariff bill, which Casterella expects to be as big as $1.5 million this year, more than double last year’s $600,000.

    “The issue is if you overstaff and then you underperform, it’s too late,” Casterella said. ”I think everyone’s more mindful now than ever. ”

    Job placement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas forecasts hiring for the last three months of the year will likely fall under 500,000 positions. That’s fewer than last year’s 543,000 level and also marks the smallest seasonal gain in 16 years when retailers hired 495,800 temporary workers, the firm said. The average seasonal gain since 2005 has been 653,363 workers, the firm said.

    Among other companies cutting holiday payrolls: Radial, which powers deliveries for roughly 120 brands like Lands’ End and Cole Haan and operates 20 fulfillment sites. It plans to hire 6,500 workers, fewer than last year’s 7,000, and is waiting to the last minute to ramp up hiring for some of its clients, chief human resources officer Sabrina Wnorowski, said.

    Bath & Body Works, based in Reynoldsburg, Ohio, said it plans to hire 32,000 workers, lower than the 32,700 a year ago.

    Among the bright spots: Online behemoth Amazon Inc. said Monday it intends to hire 250,000 full-, part-time and seasonal workers for the crucial shopping period, the same level as a year ago.

    “We saw real strong signals that there’s been a cooling in the labor market, even beyond what our expectations were in the first nine months of the year,” Challenger’s senior vice president Andy Challenger said. “We are having lots of regular conversations with companies about pending layoffs and changes they’re making to their workforce.”

    In addition to overall economic uncertainty, Challenger noted companies are using artificial intelligence bots to replace some workers, particularly those working in call centers. And he’s also seeing companies hiring workers closer to when they need them.

    Meanwhile, the list of companies staying mum about their specific holiday hiring goals keeps growing. Target Corp., UPS and Macy’s are declining to offer figures, a departure from the past. UPS had hired 125,000 seasonal hires last year, while Target announced last year it planned to hire 100,000 workers. Macy’s last year said it would hire 31,500 seasonal workers.

    Retailers’ hiring plans mark the first clues to what’s in store for the U.S. holiday shopping season and come as the U.S. job market has lost momentum this year, partly because Trump’s trade wars have created uncertainty that’s paralyzing managers trying to make hiring decisions.

    The Labor Department reported in early September that U.S. employers — companies, government agencies and nonprofits — added just 22,000 jobs in August, down from 79,000 in July and well below the 80,000 that economists had expected.

    The government shutdown, which started Oct. 1 and has delayed the release of economic reports, could worsen the job picture.

    In an attempt to exert more pressure on Democratic lawmakers as the government shutdown continues, the White House budget office said Friday that mass firings of federal workers have started.

    The firings are happening as hundreds of thousands are already furloughed and still others are being required to report to duty without pay.

    Analysts will be closely monitoring the shutdown’s impact on spending. For now, many retailers say that consumers, while resilient, are choosy about what they buying. Analysts will also be closely watching how shoppers will react as retailers push through price increases as a result of high tariff costs in the next few months, experts said.

    Given an economic slowdown, holiday spending growth is expected to be smaller than a year ago, according to several forecasts.

    Mastercard SpendingPulse, which tracks spending across all payment methods including cash, predicts that holiday sales will be up 3.6% from Nov. 1 through Dec. 24. That compares with a 4.1% increase during the year-ago period.

    Deloitte Services LP forecasts holiday retail sales to be up between 2.9% to 3.4% from Nov. 1 through Jan. 31. That’s compared to the same year-ago period when retail sales increased 4.2% from the year before.

    Adobe expects U.S. online sales to hit $253.4 billion this holiday season from Nov. 1 to Dec. 31, representing a 5.3% growth. That’s smaller than last year’s 8.7% growth.

    Given the uncertainty, companies increasingly want to hire workers closer to when they need them, experts said.

    “In today’s environment, brands are really looking for us to be agile,” Radial’s Wnorowski said. “Radial is meeting that need of the customer and the consumer with a more flexible and disciplined approach to hiring.”

    So for some of its clients, Radial will now be hiring two weeks before Thanksgiving weekend, the traditional start for the holiday shopping season, instead of four weeks before the kickoff, she said. Radial is also speeding up training of holiday hires due to new technology that’s simplifying their tasks. It used to take a couple of days to train a worker, but now it only takes a couple of hours, she said.

    Meanwhile, Target said it’s again embracing a three-prong approach. It starts first by offering current workers additional hours and then taps into a separate pool of workers— 43,000— who pick up shifts that work for their schedules. The Minneapolis-based company also hires seasonal workers across its nearly 2,000 stores and more than 60 distribution facilities to meet demand, it said.

    For the past few years, Walmart, the nation’s largest retailer and the largest private employer, has been offering the extra hours available during the holidays to its workers, a Walmart spokesperson said, noting it’s worked well and the feedback from customers and workers has been “overwhelmingly positive.”

    The Bentonville, Arkansas-based retailer said there may be some seasonal hiring on a store-by-store basis, but the majority of stores will dole out those hours to current workers.

    Waiting until the last minute to hire workers could mean a mad scramble to find talent, but companies say that due to the slowing economy, they don’t anticipate having a hard time finding the needed pool.

    Meanwhile, the temporary halting of the release of economic reports leaves retailers in the dark about forecasting sales and the workers they need to meet the demand.

    “Certainly, for our customers not having access to data will put more of a challenge on their ability to forecast,” Wnorowski of Radial said. “But we’ll stay very close to them as we go into peak and we’ll adjust as soon we see things changing.”

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  • California oil workers face an uncertain future in the state’s energy transition

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    SACRAMENTO, Calif. — SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Thirty years ago, Willie Cruz was shocked when he learned the Southern California oil refinery where he worked was shutting down.

    Cruz, now a 61-year-old living in Arizona, had spent five years working in the environmental department when Powerine Oil Company said it would close the plant in Santa Fe Springs, southeast of Los Angeles.

    Cruz feared getting laid off again if he stayed in the industry. He decided to look into respiratory therapy, in part because he’s asthmatic. A federal job training program paid for his schooling.

    “I thought it was pretty cool, you know — go from polluting to helping, right?” Cruz said.

    Now he’s advising his son, Wilfredo Cruz, as the Phillips 66 refinery in Los Angeles where the 37-year-old has worked for 12 years plans to close by the end of the month.

    Thousands — perhaps tens of thousands — of workers could lose jobs in the coming years as California tries to reduce its reliance on fossil fuels. Energy company Valero said earlier this year it would close a refinery in the Bay Area.

    California’s leading Democrats are grappling with how to confront lost jobs and high gas prices that the oil industry says are the result of the state’s climate policies.

    State energy regulators are negotiating to keep the Valero plant open and recently backed off a proposal to penalize oil companies for high profits, while Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation to speed oil well permitting in the Central Valley. That action came after years of Newsom declaring he was “taking on big oil.”

    That inconsistent messaging has left the industry’s workers unsure of what the future holds.

    California was the eighth-largest crude oil producer in the nation in 2024, down from being the third-largest in 2014, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. The Valero and Phillips 66 refineries set to close account for roughly 18% of California’s refining capacity, according to state energy regulators. They both produce jet fuel, gas and diesel.

    The Phillips 66 refinery will start shutting down this month and end active fuel production at the end of 2025, the company said. The closure is based on multiple factors and “in response to market dynamics,” Phillips 66 said.

    The announcement came after Newsom signed a law last year aimed at preventing gas price spikes that allows energy regulators to require that refineries keep a certain amount of fuel on hand to avoid shortages when they go offline for maintenance. But the company said its decision was unrelated to the law.

    Phillips 66 said it is “committed to treating all our refinery workers fairly and respectfully throughout this process.”

    Valero announced plans to “idle, restructure or cease refining operations” at its refinery in the Bay Area city of Benicia by the end of April. The company didn’t respond to emails seeking comment on the status of its plans.

    Valero pays about $7.7 million annually in taxes to the city, making up around 13% of Benicia’s revenues, City Manager Mario Giuliani said.

    “It’s a significant and seismic impact to the city,” he said of the planned closure.

    Forty-six oil refineries in California closed between 2018 and 2024, according to the state’s Employment Development Department. The fossil fuel industry employs roughly 94,000 people in the state, according to the Public Policy Institute of California.

    One study estimated that the state would lose nearly 58,000 workers in the oil and gas industries between 2021 and 2030. About 56% of those workers will have to find new jobs because they are not retiring, according to the 2021 report by the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

    Lawmakers approved the Displaced Oil and Gas Worker Fund in 2022 to help workers receive career training and connect with job opportunities. The state has since awarded nearly $30 million overall to several groups to help workers across the state — from oil-rich Kern County to Contra Costa County in the Bay Area.

    But the funding is set to run out in 2027, and state lawmakers wrapped up their work for the year without an agreement on whether to extend it.

    Newsom spokesperson Daniel Villaseñor said the governor is committed to supporting displaced oil workers “and affected communities in transitioning into new and emerging jobs and economic opportunities.”

    Newsom approved $20 million in the state’s 2022-2023 budget for a pilot program to train workers in the industry who’ve lost their jobs to plug abandoned oil wells in Kern and Los Angeles counties.

    California needs a clear plan for workers who will lose jobs because of the state’s energy transition, said Faraz Rizvi, the policy and campaign manager at the Asian Pacific Environmental Network.

    “We’re in solidarity with workers who have been displaced and who are looking for a relief to ensure that they’re able to find work that is important for their communities,” Rizvi said.

    But Jodie Muller, president and CEO of the Western States Petroleum Association, said the state can protect jobs by changing its climate policies.

    “The extremists fighting to close California refineries should explain why they are OK with destroying some of the best blue-collar jobs out there — because we certainly are not,” she said in a statement.

    For many workers, the industry offers an opportunity to earn a living wage without a college degree.

    Wilfredo Cruz was attracted in part by the paycheck. After more than a decade, he makes a base salary of $118,000 a year as a pipe fitter at the Phillips 66 refinery.

    But there are downsides.

    Every day when Cruz gets home from work, he showers immediately to try to shield his son from exposure to any harmful chemicals. He also never lets the 2-year-old ride in the car he takes to work.

    Now he’s enrolled in an online cybersecurity training course, schooling paid for by the state program that’s set to expire in the next couple of years.

    “There’s not really a real clear plan to be able to get workers from this oil industry into these new fields,” he said. “So, you feel kind of forgotten.”

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  • Air traffic controllers who duck unpaid work during the gov’t shutdown could be fired, Duffy warns

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    Even though the U.S. has a stark shortage of air traffic controllers, ones who call in sick instead of working without a paycheck during the federal government shutdown risk being fired, the U.S. transportation secretary warned.

    Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said this week that he understands the controllers’ frustrations and worries. But during an appearance Thursday on Fox Business, he said that by calling in sick they are causing major disruptions to air traffic, and it won’t be tolerated.

    “If we have some of our staff that aren’t dedicated like we need, we’ll let them go,” Duffy said, noting that more than 90% of controllers have been showing up to work during the shutdown. “… It’s a small fraction of people who don’t come to work. They can create this massive disruption. And that’s what you’re seeing rippling through our skies today.”

    Airports across the country have experienced delays this week because of a shortage of controllers, more than half of which Duffy attributed to work no-shows. The worst problems have come at smaller airports in Burbank, California, and Nashville, Tennessee, but there have also been delays at major hubs in Newark, New Jersey, Chicago, Denver and Dallas-Fort Worth.

    Even a small number of controllers not showing up for work is causing problems because the Federal Aviation Administration has a critical shortage of them. Duffy has made it a priority to increase hiring to try to eliminate the shortage in the next few years, but he said controllers who are “problem children” could still be fired.

    A Transportation Department spokesperson reinforced that message in a statement Friday, saying, “if there are rare bad actors that don’t show up purposefully and cause disruptions to our operations, consequences are inevitable.”

    The controllers’ union, the National Association of Air Traffic Controllers, has also stressed that members need to keep working during the shutdown.

    “We must be clear. NATCA does not condone a coordinated activity that disrupts the national airspace system or damages our reputation. Such actions are illegal. Risk your careers and destroy our ability to effectively advocate for you and your families,” Mick Devine, the union’s executive vice president, said in a video to members.

    Like other affected federal workers, controllers are worried about how they will pay their bills during the shutdown when they won’t get paychecks. Duffy and the union’s president have acknowledged the unfairness of their situation, which only adds more stress to their already stressful jobs.

    NATCA President Nick Daniels said controllers might have to take time off to work a second job just to make ends meet during the shutdown. But Duffy said that right now, he thinks the controllers who are missing work are “lashing out” in frustration.

    “It’s going to eventually be that when people don’t have money, they have time to start making life choices and life decisions. And it shouldn’t be waiting for air traffic controllers to break because of having to take out loans, credit card debt, paying bills, gas, groceries, mortgages. Those things aren’t going to stop,” Daniels said.

    Flight disruptions caused by controllers missing work might add to the pressure on Congress to reach an agreement to end the shutdown. That’s what happened in 2019, but so far Democrats and Republicans have shown little sign of getting close to ending their standoff.

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  • Air traffic controllers who duck unpaid work during the gov’t shutdown could be fired, Duffy warns

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    Even though the U.S. has a stark shortage of air traffic controllers, ones who call in sick instead of working without a paycheck during the federal government shutdown risk being fired, the U.S. transportation secretary warned.

    Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said this week that he understands the controllers’ frustrations and worries. But during an appearance Thursday on Fox Business, he said that by calling in sick they are causing major disruptions to air traffic, and it won’t be tolerated.

    “If we have some of our staff that aren’t dedicated like we need, we’ll let them go,” Duffy said, noting that more than 90% of controllers have been showing up to work during the shutdown. “… It’s a small fraction of people who don’t come to work. They can create this massive disruption. And that’s what you’re seeing rippling through our skies today.”

    Airports across the country have experienced delays this week because of a shortage of controllers, more than half of which Duffy attributed to work no-shows. The worst problems have come at smaller airports in Burbank, California, and Nashville, Tennessee, but there have also been delays at major hubs in Newark, New Jersey, Chicago, Denver and Dallas-Fort Worth.

    Even a small number of controllers not showing up for work is causing problems because the Federal Aviation Administration has a critical shortage of them. Duffy has made it a priority to increase hiring to try to eliminate the shortage in the next few years, but he said controllers who are “problem children” could still be fired.

    A Transportation Department spokesperson reinforced that message in a statement Friday, saying, “if there are rare bad actors that don’t show up purposefully and cause disruptions to our operations, consequences are inevitable.”

    The controllers’ union, the National Association of Air Traffic Controllers, has also stressed that members need to keep working during the shutdown.

    “We must be clear. NATCA does not condone a coordinated activity that disrupts the national airspace system or damages our reputation. Such actions are illegal. Risk your careers and destroy our ability to effectively advocate for you and your families,” Mick Devine, the union’s executive vice president, said in a video to members.

    Like other affected federal workers, controllers are worried about how they will pay their bills during the shutdown when they won’t get paychecks. Duffy and the union’s president have acknowledged the unfairness of their situation, which only adds more stress to their already stressful jobs.

    NATCA President Nick Daniels said controllers might have to take time off to work a second job just to make ends meet during the shutdown. But Duffy said that right now, he thinks the controllers who are missing work are “lashing out” in frustration.

    “It’s going to eventually be that when people don’t have money, they have time to start making life choices and life decisions. And it shouldn’t be waiting for air traffic controllers to break because of having to take out loans, credit card debt, paying bills, gas, groceries, mortgages. Those things aren’t going to stop,” Daniels said.

    Flight disruptions caused by controllers missing work might add to the pressure on Congress to reach an agreement to end the shutdown. That’s what happened in 2019, but so far Democrats and Republicans have shown little sign of getting close to ending their standoff.

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