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Breaking Job News: Federal Government Launches US Tech Force & Vanguard 2026 Job Outlook

• Pete Newsome

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AI may not be killing jobs (yet), but it is changing who gets hired. While headlines focus on disruption, the real labor-market story is subtler: hiring has slowed, productivity is rising, and AI is quietly reshaping how work actually gets done.

In this episode of Breaking Job News, host Pete Newsome breaks down Vanguard’s 2026 economic outlook and the latest CompTIA Tech Jobs Report to explain what’s really happening in the job market. You’ll learn why unemployment is expected to stabilize, why tech hiring hasn’t collapsed, and how demand is shifting away from flashy AI job titles toward AI-enabled skills across everyday roles.

Pete also explains why mid-career professionals currently have the advantage, why entry-level workers are feeling the most pressure, and how skills-based hiring is opening doors in tech support, network administration, web development, and beyond. Plus, he covers the launch of the U.S. Tech Force, an ambitious federal initiative that could turn government tech roles into a serious career accelerator.

 💬 What AI skill are you adding to your toolkit next?

News Articles: 
1. Vanguard Economic & Market Outlook for 2026: https://corporate.vanguard.com/content/dam/corp/research/pdf/isg_vemo_2026.pdf
2. CompTIA Tech Jobs Report - December 2025: https://www.comptia.org/en-us/resources/research/tech-jobs-report/
3. OPM U.S. Tech Force Announcement: https://www.opm.gov/news/news-releases/opm-launches-us-tech-force-to-implement-president-trumps-vision-for-technology-leadership/

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Pete Newsome:

Today's job market headlines are centered around technology jobs, including a brand new career path that's being created. But first up is Vanguard's 2026 outlook. And like everyone's outlook for next year, there's a lot of AI talk in this. It covers a lot more than the job market, but since that's all I'm focused on, I'll limit my thoughts to that. And I'll get to the AI in a second, but they described the labor market and the level that we need to operate to avoid increasing unemployment. Now, we were used to seeing about 150,000 jobs added for a couple of years, but that's dropped to only about 30,000 on average in the past year. And that's too low. Vanguard says that we need about 60,000 jobs a month to keep unemployment steady. We'll see if that happens over time. We just had a huge loss in October. We did have gains last month. We'll see what happens going forward. Hopefully, employment starts to increase. And they do expect that unemployment will hover around 4.2% through 2026.

Pete Newsome:

Now, back to the AI, they believe that AI isn't really changing hiring yet or employment overall. So we continue to see a lot of reports referencing the minimal impact so far, but I'm more concerned about what I think will be a significant impact going forward. And as I always say when this subject comes up, I hope I'm wrong. I hope organizations like Vanguard are right, they believe that AI's influence will really be seen in productivity and task design, not staff reductions. The angle that I come from is that once employers realize that agentic AI can replace not only one worker, but potentially teams of workers, they're naturally going to reduce staff. That's a concern that I have. I don't think it's getting enough attention. But we also know, as Vanguard points out, that the impact of this won't be evenly distributed. Professional, financial, and information services are adopting AI the fastest, while transportation, warehousing, and hospitality lag behind. And they do acknowledge that entry-level workers will feel the toughest impact of AI because it's just easier to replicate low-level tasks.

Pete Newsome:

And that's, I do agree with that. But the overall message from this is they're pushing back on the narrative that AI is killing jobs. And I would just tweak that a little bit to say AI hasn't yet killed a lot of jobs, but let's not rest too comfortably on that. Let's just make sure that we're paying attention to how it's going to impact jobs going forward. So in the next story, the December 2025 CompTIA Tech Jobs Report came out and it shows a technology labor market that's still active but clearly cautious. Sound like a recurring theme lately? It absolutely is. Employment across the technology industry remains relatively stable, but job posting activity has pulled back over the previous few months. That's a trend that is continuing. So we're seeing just continued employer hesitation, not collapse, but a slowdown for sure. The report also showed that technology occupation employment continues to be above the national average, so that's good for technology workers. Unemployment there is lower than the U.S. overall, and that's been the case for a long, long time.

Pete Newsome:

I believe that's going to continue for the foreseeable future. But hiring has slowed. It did slow in November, in particular, with declines across nearly every major technology position type, including software developers, systems engineers, cybersecurity analysts, and AI engineers. So we do see that decline almost universal right now. AI hiring is also a trend that they're seeing. I'd be shocked if they didn't talk about that. But while dedicated AI job postings declined, the AI hiring intent index continues to trend up, showing employers increasingly want AI skills embedded across positions, not just in jobs specific to AI. So for anyone in the job market, anyone who may enter the job market, having AI skills on your resume is becoming an absolute must. At the very least, it will be a differentiator. It will separate you from other candidates in the market. So make sure you're using AI in whatever it is you do. I know we're talking about technology jobs here, but I believe very strongly that every worker out there, if at all possible, should be using it to elevate the quality of their work, the efficiency of their work, whatever it is you do. But back to the report. The experience requirements that they talked about reveal another key dynamic.

Pete Newsome:

Employers are prioritizing mid-level talent or mid-career talent, where nearly 45% of technology job postings require four to seven years, or in many cases, more than eight years, while only about 21% of the job postings target early career candidates with fewer than three years of experience. It's not too big of a difference from what we see historically, but it does indicate why entry-level workers continue to face a tougher market despite overall employment stability and technology. And then we also saw from this report that degree requirements continue to loosen. It talked about that, where a majority of positions for roles like tech support, network administration, and web development don't require a four-year degree. And it just continues to reinforce that employers are rapidly moving towards skills-based hiring over degrees. It's quickly becoming evident that it is not that much of a difference maker, and it's certainly not the barrier to entry that it used to be.

Pete Newsome:

So the biggest takeaway that I have from this report is the shift from AI jobs to AI-enabled jobs. The vast majority of organizations are adopting AI, they're implementing new tools and technologies as we speak. So, number one, if you're not in the loop with that, get there quickly and make sure that you're embracing it. Lean into AI that will benefit your employer if you are an employee somewhere, or at the very least, your profession as a whole. And then the final story for today the U.S. Office of Personnel Management just launched the United States Tech Force, which is part of a government-wide effort to recruit the top engineers, data scientists, and AI leaders to modernize federal systems. Doesn't that sound nice? The modernization of federal systems? They're antiquated to say the least. And this is not going to be a pilot. It spans nearly every major agency, from Treasury to Defense, Homeland Security, and the VA, and it's backed by partnerships with some of the biggest names in technology, from cloud providers to AI companies.

Pete Newsome:

So this is really cool. They're trying to make a different pitch here. They're trying to make federal work a career accelerator, not a career dead end. The participants are going to be offered advanced training and work-aside industry leaders and then move between public service and the private sector to make that easier to do. That's really cool because, as being in the staffing industry a long time, I very often over the years have seen a hard line where commercial organizations don't want to hire someone coming from government work, vice versa. The skills don't translate, the tools and technologies haven't often translated because, in large part, the government systems are so antiquated, they just haven't been able to keep up. So really cool to see, I think, not only as someone in the technology space, but just as an American, I love that this kind of progress, very positive story we don't often see is happening. So that I'm sure will get a lot of interest from folks in the technology space. So good to see. And we'll close on that positive headline.

Pete Newsome:

We don't get to do a lot of that these days, so we'll take advantage of it. But before we go, your fun fact, as always, in the state, there's around 675,000 Americans who work as fast food cooks. Does that number sound high? I think it's indicative of how much fast food we consume. So probably a side. I had to look up with the current number because just a few years ago it was a lot less. And so it seems we're um we're eating more fast food all the time. But hey, it's a holidays. Enjoy it while you can. Enjoy your fast food. I try not to too often, but uh we'll slip up on occasion. So thank you for listening today. Please like, subscribe, share with anyone who might be interested. And I look forward to talking to you very soon.