“They are making $120,000, $140,000 a year, and that’s not enough to live an upper-middle-class life in New York at all. And that’s the Mamdani voter.” Great piece from Eliza Shapiro, with a nice assist from Jonathan Mahler. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/07/n...

It's not that AI isn't coming for your job at some point. But the big shift toward automation of white-collar work is probably going to play out at small companies that grow into big ones, rather than at big established companies. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/07/b...

Worth keeping an eye on congressional retirements after last night's results. Dems had a pretty high number of retirements in the months after the 2021 elections. (Normally a problem, though obviously didn't end up costing them much in the 2022 midterms). www.npr.org/2021/12/09/1...

Great piece by @jbjudis.bsky.social on Zohran Mamdani's worldview and how it's the natural next step in the evolution of US socialism that began several decades ago. www.notus.org/perspectives...

I have a profile up today of the transparency activist and Tesla skeptic ‪Aaron Greenspan‬, who's unearthed lots of evidence undercutting Musk's claims about the company. This is what it’s like to devote yourself to taking on Musk and Tesla www.nytimes.com/2025/10/31/b...

Some actual NBA news www.nytimes.com/live/2025/10...

I'm working on a return-to-office story focused on people under 30. Would love to hear from anyone who fits that profile. Feel free to weigh in here: www.nytimes.com/2025/10/16/b...

I'm working on a return-to-office story focused on people under 30. Would love to hear from anyone who fits that profile. Feel free to weigh in here: www.nytimes.com/2025/10/16/b...

CA Gov Gavin Newsom signed a law today giving Uber and Lyft drivers the right to unionize: nytimes.com/2025/10/03/b... But they're still considered contractors not employees.

“There was a string of layoffs ... We see how everything is abused, the risk to the overall system. How if this continues there’s a real chance that people who are born in America won’t be able to get jobs.” Tech workers on why the H-1B issue blew up now. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/03/b...

There is a real epidemic in this country of people telling you they're sending you an email from their desk. If you're sending an email, can we just assume there's a decent chance it came from your desk and skip that part?

"The Magnificent Seven big tech companies—Alphabet, Amazon.com, Apple, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla—recently made up about 37% of the S&P 500’s market capitalization, the highest share on record." www.wsj.com/finance/stoc...

Well, kinda depends who you ask but I hear what you're saying. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/30/t...

To understand why Democrats feel pressure to energize their base and not compromise to avoid a shut down, consider how weak their support is among Dem voters. A recent Gallup poll found only 73% of Dems have a favorable view of their party, vs 21% unfavorable. news.gallup.com/poll/692978/...

Why are so many business leaders caving to Donald Trump? Because of the collapse of "the establishment," which had many good consequences and at least one dubious one: corporate America is no longer very good at collective action. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/26/b...

"Since the overall number of [H1B] applications could drop drastically, Amazon, Google and other big companies may find that their bids have less competition than they used to." Great piece on the data behind H1Bs and the likely effects of Trump's changes. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

A decade ago about 20% of the long-term unemployed were college grads. Today it's about 1/3. And the long-term unemployment rate for college grads has been rising pretty quickly the last two years. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/15/b...

The latest sign that the job market for college grads has weakened in the last few years: they account for a pretty rapidly rising share of the long-term unemployed. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/15/b...

Important piece from the WSJ www.wsj.com/business/air...

NEWS: Hundreds of developers who work on the video game Diablo have just voted to unionize with CWA. The union trend in the industry started a few years ago with quality assurance testers but has now blown up to include all job categories.

It looks like Doris Burke is being removed from ESPN's lead NBA broadcast crew. This is something she basically foresaw when I spoke to her back in 2018. www.nytimes.com/2018/04/28/b...

A few interesting polls from gallup this week: A poll on Trump's performance finds his overall approval rating at 40%, in line with his 1st-term average and up from a bit July. But his approval on the economy is 37%, 15 points below his 1st-term avg. news.gallup.com/poll/694370/...

Very excited to share the cover of my forthcoming book, “Mutiny: The Rise and Revolt of the College-Educated Working Class.” It’s due out in April, and you can check out the summary and pre-order here if it’s of interest. us.macmillan.com/books/978037...

Not the happiest topic, but I'd love to check in with you if you're in this position and would be open to discussing it with me. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/18/b...

"McDonald’s has established a business unit focused solely on chicken and is gaining market share ... Taco Bell aims to reach $5 billion in annual chicken sales by 2030. “We’ll continue to push the envelope on chicken,” Taco Bell CEO Sean Tresvant said. www.wsj.com/business/hos...

Great piece by Jonathan Mahler today on how the forces that produced Mamdani have been building in NYC for decades--a backlash to the finance-driven economy that revived the city after the collapse of the 1970s. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/11/o...

New Gallup poll shows that employee engagement at work still hasn't come close to recovering from its big drop during the pandemic. gallup.com/workplace/69...

Does Ryan Reynolds not get paid for the movies he acts in? I've never seen a presumably rich person with so many side hustles in completely different lines of work. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/28/s...

A sign of the times: the data release that labor-market obsessives pay close attention to is the New York Fed's unemployment rate for recent college grads. It's been elevated for 2-3 years now. It's updated quarterly, and the next one is imminent. www.newyorkfed.org/research/col...

“I contacted our department and said, ‘Listen, I need to prepare you for the possibility that we may be graduating people without jobs.” The 50-year-long bull market for PhD economists is coming to an end, and it's not great news for everyone else. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/28/b...

Trump is suing the WSJ over the Epstein piece that discussed their relationship, including a letter Trump allegedly wrote Epstein for his 50th birthday www.law.com/2025/07/18/b...

“How you decrease cost is not by firing the cheapest employees. You take the cheapest employee and make them worth the expensive employee.” One of the most heated debates in the AI discourse is who's more vulnerable: entry-level workers or the middle-aged. www.nytimes.com/2025/07/07/b...

"Mr. Soros and guests, including Hillary Clinton and Edi Rama, the prime minister of Albania, gave toasts at the reception." www.nytimes.com/2025/06/18/s...

"In a rare instance of a Cowboys cheerleader discussing her compensation, Ms. McLean told The Times that in 2024, her 5th year, she had made $15/hr and $500 for each appearance... With the increased wages, veteran cheerleaders could now be making $75/hr." www.nytimes.com/2025/06/18/s...

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy sent employees a note today about the company's use of Gen AI. Among other things, Jassy said he expected it to lower headcount at the company in the next few years. www.aboutamazon.com/news/company...

"At a companywide meeting earlier this year, Nicholas Thompson, chief executive of the Atlantic, said the publication should assume traffic from Google would drop toward zero and the company needed to evolve its business model." www.wsj.com/tech/ai/goog...

Summer rocks and what’s even better is that it’s not even summer yet

Some very helpful numbers out from Gallup today about AI use in the workplace. Since last year, the portion of workers who use AI a few times a week has nearly doubled--to 19%. That figure for white-collar workers has increased from 15 to 27%. www.gallup.com/workplace/69...

Important piece from Natasha Singer on the race to get Gen AI into the hands of college students www.nytimes.com/2025/06/07/t...

The Supreme Court ruled yesterday that it should be just as easy for white men to sue for discrimination as any member of a minority group. Does this open the floodgates to reverse-discrimination lawsuits? And how common is that anyway? Some thoughts www.nytimes.com/2025/06/06/b...

Hmm. "A final phase, allowing nonprofessionals to submit columns with help from an A.I. writing coach called Ember, could begin testing this fall. Human editors would review submissions before publication." www.nytimes.com/2025/06/03/b...

NEWS: Video game workers at Microsoft have just reached a tentative contract with the company, the first in the industry in the U.S. after lots of union organizing over the past few years.

Fascinating piece www.nytimes.com/2025/05/21/w...

New piece on how A.I. is affecting coders at Amazon: "The company has raised output goals and become less forgiving about deadlines. One team was roughly half the size of last year, but was expected to produce roughly the same amount of code using A.I.” www.nytimes.com/2025/05/25/b...

"So Ms. Van Susteren gave the head of Skadden’s pro bono practice a call about her friend’s friend, a 47-year-old veteran, who she said had been unfairly issued a protective order in his divorce proceeding." www.nytimes.com/2025/05/25/b...

"Experts have valued the plane, formally donated to the Air Force, at $200 million, more than all of the foreign gifts bestowed on all previous American presidents combined." www.nytimes.com/2025/05/25/u...

Whoa, some serious Friday-afternoon-before-a-holiday-weekend news out of Paul Weiss www.nytimes.com/2025/05/23/b...

Yes, companies almost always pass along cost increases to consumers, tariffs typically aren't any different. That said, Trump may not be completely wrong to suggest that some companies also exploit these situations to raise prices by more than necessary. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/20/b...

"The newest technologies—so-called reasoning systems from companies like OpenAI and Google—are generating more errors, not fewer. As their math skills have notably improved, their handle on facts has gotten shakier." Great piece from Cade Metz and Karen Weise www.nytimes.com/2025/05/05/t...

Good piece by Roge Karma on the plight of the pro-tariff liberal www.theatlantic.com/economy/arch...