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Today's Job News: Unemployment Is UP, OpenAI Announces Jobs Platform, Amazon Having Hard Time Hiring

• Pete Newsome

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In today's episode of Cornering the Job Market, Pete discusses the August employment numbers released this morning by the BLS, OpenAI's new jobs platform that's coming in 2026, an Amazon memo that indicates they are having trouble recruiting AI talent, and why Gen Z is ditching office jobs for insurance and real estate.

News Articles:
1. Employment Situation Summary: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm
2. OpenAI blog: https://openai.com/index/expanding-economic-opportunity-with-ai/
3. TechCrunch on OpenAI's job platform taking on LinkedIn: https://techcrunch.com/2025/09/04/openai-announces-ai-powered-hiring-platform-to-take-on-linkedin/
4. Amazon's hiring woes: https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-ai-talent-wars-internal-document-2025-8
5. GenZ choosing insurance and real estate over office jobs: https://www.businessinsider.com/gen-z-real-estate-agents-insurance-carreer-trend-2025-8

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Pete Newsome:

The big headline for today are the undeniably bad employment numbers that were released this morning for BLS. Now these are August numbers. Non-farm payroll increased by only 22,000 jobs versus an expected 75,000. So yet another big miss where expectations don't match up to reality. And then unemployment increased to 4.3%. This is an awful trend. It was 4.2% in July and 4.1% in June. So we are seeing the job market and, by association of course, the economy, heading in the wrong direction. And if that wasn't bad enough, there was another oops, they did it again moment for the BLS, where they revised down June numbers by 27,000 from what was originally reported. So look, the labor market is just heading in a wrong direction right now and we have more unemployed people than open jobs. That hasn't happened in a long time. So there's every reason to expect a big rate cut from the Fed when they meet on September 17th. Look for that coming very soon. And then, if that's not enough, on September 9th so just in a couple of days there's another big jobs revision expected from the BLS heading in the wrong direction. So I'll report on that as soon as it comes out. But it's just a mess right now in the labor market. There's no question about that.

Pete Newsome:

In other news, openai has announced that they will debut the OpenAI Jobs platform in mid-2026. Now this came from a blog yesterday by Fiji Simu, with OpenAI. He said that OpenAI has a mission to make AI skills and opportunities as accessible as air. I'm not really sure what that means and I'm also not really sure we need open AI involved in the hiring process. It's already bad enough with what AI has done replacing humans. And look, call me old fashioned, but I don't want robots recruiting people, I want people recruiting people. I think that's what we need more of right now, and Tech Crunch reported on this, suggesting that LinkedIn is who they're going directly after, and I'm no fan of LinkedIn, but this isn't the direction we need to go in right now, in my opinion. We already have X involved in the job market. They're trying to be a job board. These technology companies do great with technology. We need to let people continue to do what they do best with recruiting. That is my very strong opinion on that. We'll see what happens. There is so much that's going to change between now and mid-2026 in the job market, and with AI specifically, so it's hard to really know what that will end up looking like, but it's coming.

Pete Newsome:

According to OpenAI Next up, business Insider reports that Amazon is having a tough time hiring AI talent. Now, this is according to a confidential internal HR document not so confidential, I guess where it specifies that Amazon's unique pay structure, strict salary bans, rigid in-office rules and lagging AI reputation have all been major recruiting barriers. The article quotes the internal memo where it says Gen AI hiring faces challenges like location, compensation and Amazon's perceived lag in the space. Competitors often provide more comprehensive and aggressive packages. Now, after the story broke, amazon's spokesperson first claimed that the company was evolving recruitment strategies to remain competitive, but then flipped and called the story's premise wrong. Without offering further detail, we'll see if more comes out on this, but it was just yesterday that I shared CEO Andy Jassy has been really ruthless about some of his rules that he's put in place since taking over. Return to office, in particular, has upset a lot of Amazon employees, and they're even going so far as to monitor the employee's phone use for personal time. They want them to track it and then they're going to deduct how much they can expense based on how much personal use there is.

Pete Newsome:

What is going on at Amazon? I mean, this company was the darling of employers for so long. Maybe not so much anymore. I'm sure this story will continue to evolve and finally, for today, it seems that what's old may be new again, with real estate and insurance emerging as hot career paths for gen z.

Pete Newsome:

Business insider wrote an article saying that young professionals are turning away from office space jobs for these industries because they allow them hot career paths for Gen Z. Business Insider wrote an article saying that young professionals are turning away from office space jobs for these industries because they allow them to work on their own terms. Now, this makes sense to me, because these roles have a low barrier to entry and offer income that's tied to effort, not just how long you've been there, because nobody wants that these days Well, nobody's probably ever wanted that but specifically not younger workers. And while older generations saw these as safe, steady jobs, they give young people an opportunity to manage their careers on their own terms, which is a really attractive thing. So it looks like that, instead of ping pong tables and kegerators in the office, which were the in thing five to 10 years ago, it's now about freedom and ownership of your time, which I believe makes much more sense. This is a good trend, which were the end thing five to 10 years ago. It's now about freedom and ownership of your time, which I believe makes much more sense. This is a good trend and, before we go, the fun fact for today the term rush hour originated in the 1890s from, of course, new York City, and it referred to the chaotic surge of workers commuting to and from jobs during peak times.

Pete Newsome:

I mean, we all know what it means, but it was a phenomenon that highlighted the growing industrialization and urbanization of the US workforce at that time. And I think about this all the time when I drive during rush hour and I work at home, but it's not really rush hour like it used to be. I think school starting affects the traffic more than jobs, so maybe we should I don't know change the name. I guess it's still rush hour, but for a different reason than how it started. So there you go. Thanks for listening. Please like, subscribe, give me your feedback, argue with me if you don't agree with anything I share. I'd love that too. Any comments are great and I look forward to talking to you soon. Have a great weekend.