The Job Market Is Holding Steady & Your Degree Is Worth a Little Less
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The quarterly panel of economists Indeed Hiring Lab surveys just delivered its most notable finding yet, and the finding is about pay, not layoffs or hiring freezes. Indeed Hiring Lab polled 123 economists between September 8 and 16 for its Q3 Labor Market Outlook Survey, and the group expects a job market that keeps drifting sideways instead of breaking in either direction. Their average forecast puts September unemployment at 4.15%, about flat with August, rising to 4.23% by year-end and 4.32% by next September.
Job openings offer a small bright spot. The panel now expects Indeed’s Job Postings Index to rise 0.13% in the fourth quarter, a reversal from the slow decline they’d expected three months ago. The panel disagrees sharply on this one: the most optimistic economists expect postings up 1.35%, while the most pessimistic expect a 1.67% drop. This optimism doesn’t hold over the next year. The 12-month outlook turns negative again, with postings expected down 0.89% by next September.
The real headline sits in a single number. Economists now expect AI to push down real wages for college-educated workers more than they did three months ago. On a 0-to-100 scale where 50 means neutral, that reading fell from 47.3 to 42.4, the largest shift anywhere in the survey. For workers without a degree, the reading held flat at 50.9, meaning the panel doesn’t expect AI to move their pay much in either direction. Economists also now see AI as more likely to replace college-educated workers than they did a year ago, with a score of 55.6, against 48.1 for workers without a degree, a reading close to neutral.
The panel is split on how big a deal any of this is. 45% call AI’s net effect on jobs a “minor negative,” 25% call it a “minor positive,” and 21% say it has no effect at all. Personal care, home health, and nursing lead the list of fields expected to add the most job postings, while administrative assistance and software development lead the list of expected declines. Those same two fields, along with data and analytics, top the list of jobs AI is expected to eliminate, though software development and data and analytics also appear on the list of fields AI is expected to help grow, a split verdict on the same work. Healthcare and care roles don’t appear on either AI list at all. Separately, 30% of the panel expects a “substantial” or “major” AI productivity boost over the next three years, up slightly from 29%, and 47% expect a “moderate” boost, up from 40%.
Report authors Laura Ullrich and Svenja Gudell put the wage finding directly: “AI’s near-term economic bite is more likely to be felt in the paychecks of degree-holding workers.” On the job postings rebound, they wrote that “it appears the panel is not converging on a positive recovery narrative, but rather inching away from an entirely negative one.” And on why healthcare keeps topping the hiring forecasts while staying off both AI lists, they noted that “at least in the panel’s view, AI simply isn’t yet touching what has been the fastest-growing corner of the labor market over the past several years.”
The number I’d circle here is 42.4. Three months ago, this same panel sat close to neutral on whether AI would pressure pay for college-educated workers. Now it’s the single largest shift anywhere in the survey, and it points down. My read is that wage pressure shows up before layoffs do. A company doesn’t need to cut anyone for pay to flatten. It only needs to open fewer roles for work AI now handles faster, and the people competing for the seats that remain lose their negotiating power.
The other detail worth sitting with is where the hiring growth is expected. Personal care, home health, and nursing sit at the top of the postings forecast, and neither the AI-loss list nor the AI-gain list touches them. The work AI isn’t touching yet is where panelists expect the most hiring to happen.
If you’re building a hiring plan, be honest with yourself about which roles you’re quietly redesigning around AI and which ones you’re leaving unfilled by default instead of by choice. If you hold a degree and work in admin, software, or data, start showing employers what you produce with these tools, because I expect the degree by itself to count for less at the offer stage over the next year. If your hiring plan needs a second look given where this survey points, talk to us about hiring and we’ll help you figure out where to invest.
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CEO Turnover Jumped in August, But Look at Where It Came From
CEO departures at U.S. organizations jumped sharply in August, and the number on its own looks alarming. Challenger, Gray & Christmas counted 186 CEO exits, up 55% from 120 in July and up 27% from 146 in the same month last year, according to its August CEO Turnover Report.
Zoom out and the picture calms down. Through the first eight months of the year, 1,226 CEOs have left their posts, down 18% from 1,504 over the same stretch in 2025, and the lowest year-to-date total since 2022, when 895 exits had been recorded through August. Public company CEO exits are slowing too, at 243 for the year, down 23% from 317.
Two specific groups drove most of August’s jump. Government and nonprofit organizations accounted for 62 exits, close to a third of the month’s total and more than double the 30 recorded in August 2025. Separately, 22 exits came from interim CEOs finishing their terms, the most of any month this year, as organizations wrap up replacing the wave of interim leaders they installed in 2025. Retirements (50) and CEOs stepping down (44) made up just over half of the remaining departures.
Hospitals stand out as one of the few sectors ahead of last year’s pace, with 103 exits so far this year, up 21% from 85. Health Care/Products moved in the opposite direction, down 55% to 65 exits, the steepest drop among the larger sectors tracked in the report.
Progress continued on another front too. Women made up 27.6% of new CEOs so far this year, up from 25.1% at this point in 2025, putting 2026 on pace to beat last year’s full-year rate of 25.4% and approach the 2023 peak of 28.7%.
The 186 headline looks like a surge, but most of it traces back to two specific sources: a third of the month’s exits came from government and nonprofit organizations, and another chunk came from interim CEOs finally being replaced. Strip those out, and August looks close to a normal month in what’s shaping up to be the calmest year for CEO turnover since 2022.
The hospital number deserves closer attention than the headline gets it. Hospital CEO exits sit 21% ahead of last year at the same time nursing and home health lead nearly every hiring forecast on this page. When the top job keeps turning over in a sector that’s already fighting to staff itself, the effects reach the people below the CEO fast. For anyone hiring or job hunting at the leadership level, a new CEO usually means a fresh look at the executive team within the first year, and often the layers underneath it too, which creates real openings. The steady climb in women taking the top job, now 27.6% of new CEOs, shows boards looking past the traditional pipeline when they fill those seats. If your leadership bench needs a closer look before your next transition catches you off guard, explore our staffing services and get ahead of it.
An Iced Coffee Became This Week’s Interview Controversy
Not every workplace debate this week involves a spreadsheet. A Miami recruiter named Caitlin Wehniainen posted a TikTok about some of her Gen Z candidates showing up to interviews with iced coffee in hand, and it set off a genuine argument online about interview etiquette. Her complaints were specific: the sipping, the ice rattling in the cup, the wet hand from condensation, and the drips left behind on the way through the lobby.
The Wall Street Journal’s Julia Munslow found the split mostly follows generational lines. Younger candidates see the drink as harmless. Gen X and baby boomer interviewers are more likely to read it as too casual, or as a sign of weak preparation and poor time management. Peter Bennett, a 66-year-old recruiter in Culver City, said candidates should finish the drink in the car before walking in. His 30-year-old son said he doesn’t care what someone’s drinking as long as they can do the job.
A few experts offered a reason for the generational gap. Many younger workers graduated straight into virtual interviews and never picked up the in-person routine that older interviewers take for granted, and Wehniainen thinks a discouraging job market has left some candidates preparing less carefully than they used to. Most of the experts landed on the same piece of advice regardless: read the room. Kelly McCulloch, chief people officer at Inspire Brands, which runs Dunkin’, said her company hires for skills over beverages and offers candidates a drink anyway. Executive coach Alisa Cohn said hot coffee reads as more formal than iced. San Francisco recruiter Alina Nguyen said a drink alone shouldn’t get anyone rejected.
My advice to candidates is simple: finish it in the car. You control little in an interview beyond how you show up, so remove anything that gives the interviewer a reason to think about something other than your answers. My advice to hiring managers is just as direct. If an iced coffee knocks a strong candidate out of your process, the process has a problem, not the candidate. A lot of people in their twenties did most of their interviewing on a screen, and nobody ever taught them the in-person rules that used to be common knowledge.
Employers can close that gap easily. If you expect a certain level of polish when someone walks through the door, say so in one line in the interview confirmation email instead of silently judging candidates against a standard you never stated. If you’re preparing for interviews on either side of the table, see what’s open right now and walk in ready.
