workplace

Why Engineering Is No Longer A Sure Thing College Major When It Comes To Jobs [Connley-Hampton]

On 07/29/2026, in career development, change, colleges, community colleges, computer science, corporate / business world, engineering, faculty/staff, higher education, programming, student-related, United States, universities, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Why Engineering Is No Longer A Sure Thing College Major When It Comes To Jobs — from forbes.com by Courtney Connley-Hampton; this article is behind a paywall
Exclusive LinkedIn data shows engineering majors have been hit hard in today’s weak, AI-affected job market. Here’s what specialties are hurting and what top schools are doing to respond.

While lots of recent college graduates are being battered by a weak hiring market, perhaps no group is more shocked by their current plight than those who majored in engineering, long considered among the safest, most secure, and highest-paying majors. Yes, engineering grads still make more than education and English majors.

Also relevant/see:

Chris Mayer’s posting on LinkedIn.com

[GIFTED ARTICLE] Amazon, gig companies see spike in workers on SNAP and Medicaid, study shows [Gurley & Lerman]

On 07/22/2026, in Amazon, business, career development, communities of practice, corporate / business world, Daniel S. Christian, economics, entrepreneurship, funding / grants, legislatures / government / legal, society, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Amazon, gig companies see spike in workers on SNAP and Medicaid, study shows — from washingtonpost.com by Lauren Kaori Gurley and Rachel Lerman
Amazon workers on federal aid nearly tripled between 2020 and 2025, while ride-hailing and food delivery drivers shot up on lists compiled by the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

While the number of working adults who depend on food stamps and Medicaid has ticked up since the start of the pandemic, the number of recipients who work at Amazon and on gig economy platforms has exploded, according to a new report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

The number of Amazon workers relying on the federal programs for the poor nearly tripled between February 2020 and September 2025, according to the report published Wednesday. And for the first time, ride-hailing and app-based food delivery companies — Uber, Lyft, DoorDash, Grubhub and Instacart — collectively ranked among the top three employers with workers receiving aid.

From DSC:
I have long disliked what the gig economy was/is doing to workers. A handful of entrepreneurs who started these companies have done very well for themselves, while the rest of the people who are doing most of the work hardly make anything. No medical insurance, no vision or dental insurance, and no retirement contributions/benefits. Amazon works its people to the bone (I saw this firsthand with our son and his deteriorating physical health while working for them), and look what it gets them? Bezos Inc. make out great — others…not so much.

Ride-hailing and food-delivery companies, meanwhile, shot past Walmart to collectively rank as the top employer of food stamp users and among the top three for Medicaid users, according to The Post’s analysis.

Steward Stories: How Heart of Oregon Corps Turns Service into Careers — from gettingsmart.com by Karen Pittman and Merita Irby

Our “Steward Stories” series captures lessons learned from interviews with leaders of mature, purpose-built ecosystem intermediaries. An ecosystem steward is a boundary-spanning leader who goes beyond traditional out-of-school time (OST) system building to weave together the diverse people, places, and possibilities that shape a young person’s daily life. Rather than managing a single isolated network, stewards collaborate across K-12 schools, youth development programs, and workforce systems to build vibrant, equitable learning ecosystems. They drive systemic change from practice to policy by creating purpose-built intermediaries, developing scalable cross-system training tools, and championing “Future Features” of learning. These core priorities include promoting learner agency, institutionalizing “unwalled” schools that connect community resources to formal education, broadening the definition of educators to include informal mentors, and normalizing pathways for students to receive school credit or credentials for out-of-school learning.

The starting points, paths, and targets set by these stewards are as varied as the conditions and opportunities present within their communities. But they share similarities in vision and approach. Learn More Here.

Learning ecosystems may be found anywhere, but it takes careful stewardship to help them thrive.
— Shift, Remake Learning

Free K-12 Career Literacy Resources from agilities.org

On 07/16/2026, in business, career development, collaboration, colleges, community colleges, corporate / business world, education, engagement / engaging students, engineering, entrepreneurship, experimentation, innovation, K-12 related, learning, skills, society, student-related, teachers, United States, workplace, youth, by Daniel Christian

Agilities — from agilities.org by the DeBruce Foundation; via Paul Fain
Help students build confidence and prepare for bright careers!
.

Also from Paul Fain, see:

Unlocking Opportunity: Progress on Moving More Students Toward Good Jobs — from highered.aspeninstitute.org

Released in partnership with the Community College Research Center (CCRC), Unlocking Opportunity: Progress on Moving More Students Toward Good Jobs highlights early outcomes from the first 10 colleges in the Unlocking Opportunity network. The report demonstrates that community colleges can rapidly increase enrollment in high-value workforce and transfer pathways while reducing enrollment in or improving programs with weaker labor market and bachelor’s degree outcomes.
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The economy is shutting young adults out of career-entry jobs, analysis finds [Kalser]

On 07/15/2026, in Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, business, career development, corporate / business world, economics, student-related, United States, workplace, youth, by Daniel Christian

The economy is shutting young adults out of career-entry jobs, analysis finds — from hrdive.com by Laurel Kalser
Artificial intelligence matters, but in a “narrow, early and age-specific way,” researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis said.

Dive Brief:

The decline in overall job openings, exacerbated by a rising demand for artificial intelligence-related skills, is causing employment opportunities for young adults aged 18 to 24 to deteriorate, according to researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
Between April 2023 — when the U.S. labor market was at its strongest — and December 2025, the employment rate among 18- to 24-year-olds fell by more than 2 percentage points, researchers William Rodgers, III, and Alice Kassens reported in a June 30 post. The decrease appeared primarily as higher unemployment, rather than as labor force exits, “indicating that younger workers were still searching for jobs but with fewer opportunities available,” the authors noted.
By contrast, there was no comparable slide for workers aged 25-64, whose employment outcomes remained largely stable, the researchers said.

Why recruiters can’t find workers and new grads can’t find jobs (it’s not AI) — from washingtonpost.com by Jon Marcus
Experts say a major labor shortage looms because of population shifts and a mismatch between new graduates’ skills and employers’ needs.

Recent college graduates complain they can’t find entry-level jobs because artificial intelligence is taking over.

Yet, tech recruiter Matt Walsh and other experts say the growth of AI and the struggle to find entry-level work mask a bigger problem: The United States is facing what’s projected to become the largest labor shortage in its history.

In sectors such as semiconductor production, the problem isn’t AI or too few jobs, said Walsh, CEO of the Phoenix-based search firm Blue Signal.

“It’s ridiculous,” he said. “There just aren’t enough people.”

Economists warn that the worsening labor problem, due in part to a skills shortage and population shifts, will be vast and reach beyond tech.

Among the trends that have been leading to this moment: a mismatch between the careers college graduates are pursuing and the jobs employers are struggling to fill. Far fewer students are majoring in health care fields than are needed to meet demand, for instance.

“We have pumped so many young people into business and finance” when what’s really in demand are graduates in other fields, Hetrick said. “It’s like a factory producing these workers like widgets, even though society is saying, ‘We really don’t need them.’ And the factory just keeps pumping them out.”

“Teachers ban it. Employers demand it.”

Also relevant/see:

The Shifting Career Ladder — from nafez.substack.com by Nafez Dakkak
AI is changing how work works and quietly removing the pathways through which young people learn to become experts.

AI is reshaping how people build skills, enter professions, and move along the career ladder and through the labour market.

In this conversation, I sit down with Matt Sigelmen founder of LightCast and now the President of Burning Glass Institute. Matt has dedicated his career to understanding the labor market and helping society improve the connections within in it.

Matt and I explore why people and opportunities are often only “a few skills apart,” why entry-level work may be losing its traditional role as the first rung of expertise, and why schools, universities, and employers now need to rethink the pathways that turn potential into mastery.

Educators need to be deeply aligned with what these changes are, and they need to shift the AI discourse from “how” questions to “what” questions. What do we need to teach? What do we need to keep in the curriculum?

Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Entry-Level Work: A Framework for Safeguarding and Reinventing Early Career Pathways

On 06/29/2026, in 21st century, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, business, career development, change, corporate / business world, economics, global / globalization, participation, pathways, policy, reinvent, society, student-related, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Entry-Level Work: A Framework for Safeguarding and Reinventing Early Career Pathways — from the World Economic Forum (weforum.org) and PwC

Artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping how organizations hire, develop and advance talent, and this is most visible at entry-level. Globally, more than one in three young workers are employed in occupations with medium to high exposure to AI-driven task change. How these roles evolve will have significant implications for organizational performance, workforce participation and economic mobility.

Will learning curated by employers replace degrees? — from universityworldnews.com by Louise Nicol

If universities do not future-proof their offer through deeper and more credible partnerships with employers and industry, what exactly prevents employers from educating and training people themselves?

This is why the future of higher education depends on far deeper and more operational partnerships with industry. Not symbolic advisory boards or occasional guest lectures but genuine co-design of curricula, shared ownership of applied projects and clear accountability for graduate capability.

Universities that integrate live industry problems, cross-faculty collaboration and work-based learning into the core of their programmes make themselves harder to replace. Those that acknowledge the existence of external learning platforms and deliberately build them into a broader educational journey strengthen rather than weaken their position.

The real risk for universities is not replacement but marginalisation. Employers will not abandon universities out of hostility or ideology. They will do so pragmatically if universities fail to add distinctive value beyond what employers can now deliver themselves.

From DSC:
Following are several companies that are using AI to connect people to work. That’s a significant piece of my Learning from the Living [AI-Based Class] Room vision.

These companies were listed on an article entitled,
“Can AI be an effective career coach?”
— from achievepartners.com and Ryan Craig

FutureFit AI
Bridge the gap between talent, training, and employment at scale

AI-powered workforce technology connecting people to careers, employers to talent, and workforce partners to tools for integrated and intelligent workforce systems.

PathPilot AI

Empowering every job seeker with personalized AI coaching. Helping organizations scale career services and improve outcomes.

Empower Students with Career-Ready Skills
Help students discover career pathways, develop essential skills, and connect with opportunities. PathPilot provides personalized guidance that scales across your entire institution.

AI-powered career exploration and pathway planning
Skills assessment aligned with NACE competencies
Resume builder and interview preparation tools
Job matching with local and national employers
Institutional analytics and outcome tracking
Integration with existing career services systems

Pathific — Design your future
The all-in-one platform that connects your strengths to programs, careers, and real salary outcomes — powered by AI.

High school, post-secondary, newcomer to Canada, or career change — Pathific meets you where you are.

Your all-in-one career compass
Quality career guidance shouldn’t depend on where you go to school, when you start your journey, or where you come from. Using the latest AI and comprehensive Canadian data, we built a platform that gives everyone clear, data-driven pathways to their future. No more one-size-fits-all advice. No more guessing. Just your strengths, connected to real data.

OpportuNext

See Where Your Skills Can Take You | Find new career path opportunities with one simple search.

OpportuNext from Signal49 Research is a free-to-use career tool created in partnership with the Future Skills Centre. Using big data, it matches a person’s skills with viable career paths — often including some you have not considered.

If AI Eats the Entry-Level Job, Where Do Young People Learn to Work? (Ryan Craig, Achieve Partners) — from humanistxyz.substack.com by Allison Dulin Salisbury; via Ryan Craig
“The public should not be subsidizing colleges whose students lack relevant, paid, in-field work experience.”

That is the trap at the center of this conversation: everyone wants to hire someone with three years of experience, and almost no one wants to provide those three years.

And Ryan’s policy prescription is unusually concrete: pay employers to hire and train apprentices, following the countries that have scaled apprenticeship far faster than the U.S.; require colleges receiving federal student aid to provide relevant, paid, in-field work experience; and build a market of intermediaries that can make the whole thing operational.

Ryan’s view is that higher education remains critically important. But college without meaningful work experience may become a much worse bet, especially for students who cannot afford to guess wrong.

The Evolving L&D Roles in 2026 Exploring who you might become next — from liftedlnd.substack.com by Lifted L&D

1. The Learning Experience Architect
This is really the evolution of the instructional designer. The difference is that the focus is no longer on building individual courses. Instead, the focus shifts towards designing capability ecosystems.

In modern learning platforms, learning is dynamic and increasingly personalised. AI engines infer skill levels, recommend resources, generate practice scenarios and adapt content based on how people engage. The role of the Learning Experience Architect is to orchestrate that environment so it genuinely supports capability development.
…

Across all of these emerging roles, three themes keep appearing.

The first is data fluency. …
The second is systems thinking. …
The third is human judgement.

Also relevant/see:

Important insights from this PwC global jobs report — from linkedin.com by Ross Dawson & PwC

Why Students Aren’t All In on AI—And What They Want From Colleges — from insidehighered.com by Colleen Flaherty
New Student Voice data reveal students are embracing AI as a learning tool while worrying about dependence, career disruption and inconsistent institutional responses.

Read on for six takeaways from the survey and additional insights—including how institutions can start to close the gap between students’ optimism about AI as a learning tool and their faith in their colleges’ ability to help them navigate change.

Takeaway 1: More students are using AI than ever for coursework, while a significant share—20 percent—remain resisters.

Takeaway 2: “Worried about dependence” is the most common student stance on AI.

Takeaway 3: A majority of all students expect AI to somewhat (39 percent) or very (16 percent) negatively impact their career prospects.

Takeaway 4: Just one in 10 students says that their institution is handling AI’s rise very well, in a thoughtful and proactive way.

…and more >>

Addendum:

AI Budgets in Education Show No Sign of Decline — from campustechnology.com by Rhea Kelly

Key Takeaways

Education AI budgets are holding steady or increasing: Wasabi found that 98% of education organizations expect AI infrastructure budgets to increase or remain steady, with 46% planning increases.
Storage costs are the top AI implementation challenge: Half of education respondents cited data storage issues, including storage and access costs, as the No. 1 challenge for AI projects.
Cloud security and ROI remain pressure points: Only 47% feel confident keeping data unaltered and operational after a cyberattack, 44% lost access to public cloud data after an attack, and 37% of AI projects currently show positive ROI.

Learning Ecosystems

[GIFTED ARTICLE] Amazon, gig companies see spike in workers on SNAP and Medicaid, study shows [Gurley & Lerman]

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