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The FBI is investigating how an unidentified federal agency was recently swept up in a yearslong campaign involving North Korean remote IT workers fraudulently obtaining jobs at major companies and other organizations. The North Korean campaign has been notorious for using remote IT contract jobs to infiltrate both Fortune 500 companies and smaller private sector firms. But experts contacted for this story said it’s not surprising the public sector has been implicated as well. They said the incident highlights a new kind of insider threat, as well as potential gaps in the government and industry vetting processes, especially for jobs like IT support work. During a panel discussion at a July 28 conference hosted by the Digital Government Institute in Washington, D.C., Todd Hemmen, deputy assistant director of the FBI’s Cyber Capabilities Branch, was asked whether the North Korean remote IT worker issue had impacted government. “Without getting into ongoing investigations, we identified just this past week a [Democratic People’s Republic...

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London —  ChatGPT is not yet causing the massive upheaval in the US labor market that many have feared since the chatbot’s launch in 2022, according to a new study by a research center at Yale University. The study comes amid widespread concerns that the proliferation of generative artificial intelligence, the technology that underpins ChatGPT, could put many jobs at risk as US companies increasingly turn to AI to cut costs through greater automation. The researchers looked at changes since the launch of ChatGPT in the distribution of workers among all the jobs available in the economy. The chatbot is underpinned by generative artificial...

ERS provides information on a range of farm labor issues, including: Finally, we provide links to key data sources with summaries. Size and Composition of the U.S. Agricultural Workforce The U.S. agricultural workforce has long consisted of two groups of workers: (1) self- employed farm operators and their family members, and (2) hired workers. From 1950 to 1990, employment in both groups of workers was in long-term decline, as mechanization contributed to rising agricultural productivity, thereby reducing the need for labor. Since 1990, however, employment levels have stabilized. The reduction in self-employed and family labor through 1990 was more rapid than the decline in hired labor. According to the Farm Labor Survey (FLS) of USDA's National Agricultural Statistical Service (NASS), the number of self-employed and family farmworkers declined from 7.60 million in 1950 to 2.06 million in 2000, a 73-percent reduction. Over this same period, the average annual employment of hired farmworkers (including on-farm support personnel and those who work for farm labor contractors)...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States gained a decent 64,000 jobs in November but lost 105,000 in October as federal workers departed after cutbacks by the Trump administration, the government said in delayed reports. READ MORE: The economy is giving mixed signals. Here's what experts say they mean The unemployment rate rose to 4.6%, highest since 2021. Both the October and November job creation numbers, released Tuesday by the Labor Department, came in late because of the 43-day federal government shutdown. The November job gains came in higher than the 40,000 economists had forecast. The October job losses were caused by a 162,000 drop in federal workers, many of whom resigned at the end of fiscal year 2025 on Sept. 30 under pressure from billionaire Elon Musk's purge of U.S. government payrolls. Labor Department revisions also knocked 33,000 jobs off August and September payrolls. Hiring has clearly lost momentum, hobbled by uncertainty over President Donald Trump's tariffs and the lingering effects of the high interest rates...

Sad female worker carrying her belongings while leaving the office after being firedIsbjorn | Istock | Getty ImagesLayoffs have been a defining feature of the job market in 2025, with several major companies announcing thousands of job cuts driven by artificial intelligence. In fact, AI was responsible for almost 55,000 layoffs in the U.S. this year, according to consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.There were in total 1.17 million job cuts through 2025, the highest level since the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 when there were 2.2 million layoffs announced by the end of the year. In October, U.S. employers announced 153,000 job cuts, and there were over 71,000 job cuts in November, with AI being cited for over 6,000 for the month, per Challenger. At a time when inflation bites, tariffs are adding to expenses, and firms are looking to carry out cost-cutting measures, AI has presented an attractive, short-term solution to the problem. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology released...

What's expected:Consensus estimate +56K (range -25K to +121K)July -23KJune +63KPrivate consensus estimate +45KUnemployment rate consensus estimate: 4.1% vs 4.1% priorParticipation rate consensus 61.4% priorPrior underemployment U6 prior 7.9%Avg hourly earnings y/y exp +3.0% y/y vs +3.2% priorAvg hourly earnings m/m exp +0.3% vs +0.1% priorAvg weekly hours exp 34.3 vs 34.3 priorAugust jobs so far:ADP employment report +38K (lowest since Jan) vs +47K expected and +46K prior ISM services employment 47.8 vs 47.4 priorISM manufacturing employment 51.2 vs 52.5 exp and 52.8 priorChallenger Job Cuts 52,881 vs 33,429 priorPhilly employment +27.9 vs +10.0 priorEmpire employment +9.3 vs +11.4 priorInitial jobless claims survey week 206K vs 187K priorRevelio Labs +36.5K vs +79.2K priorSeasonally, the headline reading is weak in August, according to BMO. It has come in below estimates 71% of the time and beating 29% of the time, by 71k and 18k, respectively, on average. Similarly, 36% of previous unemployment prints for August have been higher-than-expected, 28% have been lower-than-estimates,...

The Office of Personnel Management says new questions for federal job candidates, asking how they will advance the Trump administration’s policies, will appear on nearly all job applications, but candidates can still choose not to answer them without being penalized. OPM is telling agencies it is “mandatory” to include the Trump administration’s four new essay questions on nearly all applications on USAJobs, as part of the federal hiring process. Those questions, outlined under the administration’s Merit Hiring Plan, ask candidates how they would “advance the president’s executive orders and policy priorities,” and to name “one or two executive orders or policy initiatives that are significant to you,” and how candidates will help implement them if hired. The Trump administration released this plan in late May to ensure that “only the most talented, capable and patriotic Americans are hired to the Federal service.” In follow-up guidance, however, OPM downplayed the importance of the essays as just one piece of a candidate’s overall...

Unprecedented Scale A nationally representative study of more than 18,000 workers surveyed across job types, industries, regions and demographics. Multidimensional View Goes far beyond wages or job satisfaction to explore how job quality elements interact — compounding or offsetting one another — and impact worker success. Better Worker Representation Includes part-time and non-W-2 workers often excluded from national labor surveys. Why Job Quality Matters Now Workplace norms and worker expectations have shifted dramatically. Today’s labor market is shaped by new economic realities, evolving technologies and changing values. Yet we’re still relying on outdated metrics to define success. This study comes at a critical time — offering fresh insights into how job quality affects workers’ wellbeing, job satisfaction, health, work-life balance and personal financial situation, which all tie to burnout and turnover and ultimately affect U.S. economic competitiveness. It’s a call to leaders across public and private sectors: If we want a strong and stable workforce, we have to start by understanding what workers need to thrive at work. Source link...