The Biggest Employers Are Finally Ready to Hire Again, Most of Them Still Aren’t
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Big-company CEOs are feeling better about the economy, and for the first time in a while, that’s starting to show up in their hiring plans. The Business Roundtable’s CEO Economic Outlook Index rose 3 points to 94 in the third quarter, the strongest reading in more than 4 years and well above the index’s historic average of 83. The survey covered 174 CEOs between August 31 and September 11.
Hiring did the heavy lifting behind that gain. The hiring sub-index jumped 7 points, from 51 to 58, while sales and capital investment measures barely moved because they were already sitting at multi-year highs. Sales expectations held at 129, and capital investment plans edged up 3 points to 96.
Here’s how the hiring numbers break down. 36% of CEOs expect to add U.S. workers over the next 6 months, up from 30% last quarter. 37% expect no change, and 28% expect to cut headcount, down from 30%. Compare that with sales, where 83% expect revenue to grow and only 4% expect a decline, or capital spending, where 52% plan to invest more and just 6% plan to invest less.
Even with the jump, hiring is the one measure still sitting below its own long-run average. The hiring index has averaged 61 across the survey’s history, so 58 gets close without getting there. Sales, at 129 against a 112 average, and capital investment, at 96 against 77, are both well above their historical norms.
Business Roundtable Chair Chuck Robbins, also Chair and CEO of Cisco, called the results “welcome news” that “reflect the resilience of the U.S. economy, but affordability pressures remain a challenge for businesses and families.” Business Roundtable CEO Joshua Bolten said the hiring improvement is “encouraging, even as the broader economic picture remains mixed,” and warned that “further deterioration of the vital U.S.-Canada economic relationship and broader North American trading framework could deliver a major blow to that progress.”
The number I’d circle here is 28%. More than 1 in 4 of the largest employers in the country still plan to shrink their U.S. workforce over the next 6 months, and this is the good quarter. Look at the spread between what these CEOs expect to sell and who they expect to hire. 83% see sales going up. 36% see headcount going up. This gap has defined the economy for the past 2 years, and it hasn’t closed. Companies are planning to grow revenue and spend on equipment and technology without adding people at anything close to the same pace.
Some of that is automation, and some of it is discipline learned after the 2021-2022 overhiring stretch. Either way, the read for job seekers is the same: big-company hiring is improving from a weak base, and the strength right now sits in capital spending, not payroll. Worth remembering, too, who’s answering this survey. The Business Roundtable represents Fortune 500 companies, so this reflects corporate headquarters and large-scale operations, not the small and mid-sized businesses that employ most Americans. I’d call this a real improvement in sentiment at the top and wait for the September jobs report before calling it a hiring recovery. If your team is short-staffed and can’t wait for that recovery to show up, talk to us about hiring and we’ll help you fill the gap now.
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Layoffs Are Staying Low Even While Big Employers Hold Back on Hiring
The jobless claims data released this morning fills in the other half of this week’s labor market picture. Initial claims came in at 196,000 for the week ending September 12, down 10,000 from the prior week’s revised 206,000. The 4-week moving average, which smooths out weekly noise, fell to 203,250. A year ago, the same week saw 233,000 new claims.
The number of people already collecting benefits dropped as well. Continuing claims fell 39,000 to 1.73 million for the week ending September 5, and the insured unemployment rate slipped to 1.1% from 1.2%, both the lowest readings in the past 12 months of data. A year earlier, 1.925 million people were on the rolls. Before seasonal adjustment, actual new claims totaled 152,286, down nearly 14% from the prior week and well below the 195,433 filed in the same week of 2025.
A few states stood out in the detail. Michigan added 2,075 claims, which the state attributed to manufacturing layoffs, and California added 1,967. New York claims dropped 3,790 on fewer layoffs in transportation and warehousing, accommodation and food services, and education. New Jersey and Puerto Rico had the highest insured unemployment rates at 2.6%, followed by Massachusetts at 2.0%.
Put this next to the Business Roundtable numbers above, and you get the full shape of this labor market in 2 data points. CEOs say only 36% plan to add workers, yet almost nobody is getting laid off. Low hiring and low firing at the same time. For anyone with a job, that’s good news. 196,000 claims in a country with roughly 153 million covered workers means employers are holding onto the people they have, and companies that trimmed headcount in 2024 and 2025 appear to have found their level.
For anyone looking for work, the flip side matters more. A low layoff rate just means the openings that exist aren’t getting refilled by churn, so the person you’re competing against for a job is more likely to be another job seeker than someone who just got cut, a dynamic that lines up with the shrinking labor force data I covered last week. One line worth watching: Michigan’s 2,075 extra claims tied to manufacturing is small on a national scale, but it’s the second time this summer a state has flagged factory job losses in its comments. If that shows up again next week, it stops being noise. If you’re actively job hunting in a market like this one, see what’s open right now and get in front of openings before they close.
Why Nearly Half of Gen Z Is Choosing a Trade Over an Office Job
A new Thumbtack report shows young Americans rethinking what a safe career even looks like, and a lot of them are landing on the trades. Thumbtack’s third annual Future of the Skilled Trades Report surveyed 1,000 Americans ages 16 to 30 in July and found more than 80% saying it has gotten harder for young people to build a stable career, with 4 in 5 believing AI will eliminate many traditional entry-level jobs. They aren’t just worried about it. 92% have already made at least one change to their career strategy in response to the job market.
The headline finding is that nearly half of Gen Z is learning or seriously considering a skilled trade. 30% said AI specifically made them more interested in the field, and 3 in 4 believe the trades may become one of the smartest career choices for their generation.
Thumbtack also surveyed about 1,500 of its own tradespeople, and the numbers there back up the shift from the other direction. Among pros with less than 2 years in the trades, 38% came from corporate or white-collar jobs, and 26% said they entered the trades after burnout or a career reset. Nearly 8 in 10 pros would recommend the trades to a young person, and business looks strong for many of them: nearly half reported higher demand and income than a year ago, and nearly three-quarters turned away work in the past year, mostly because a project didn’t fit or wasn’t profitable enough.
AI is showing up inside the trades themselves, and the adoption pattern is worth noting. 35% of pros use it regularly to manage their business, mostly for marketing, customer communication, and research, but usage is heaviest among newcomers: 52% of pros with under 2 years of experience use AI routinely, compared with just over 25% of those with 20 or more years. Thumbtack’s marketplace data ranked Washington, D.C., Charlotte, Atlanta, Raleigh-Durham, and Baltimore as the top 5 markets for the trades, with Chicago, West Palm Beach, Austin, Seattle, and Dallas rounding out the top 10.
Thumbtack Co-founder and CEO Marco Zappacosta framed it this way: “As AI reshapes the workforce, America’s need for skilled labor is only becoming more urgent.” He put the goal as bringing technology and the trades together, adding that “AI can help skilled professionals become more productive, build stronger businesses and spend more time doing the work only they can do.” Deon Marecheau, owner of Antillean Restoration and a Thumbtack Pro Advisor, put it in more personal terms: “There’s a lot of interest from young people who want to learn the trades. Bringing apprentices onto our team gives us a chance to develop talented people who can grow with our business or take those skills wherever their career leads.”
The stat I keep coming back to is 38%. Among people who’ve been in the trades less than 2 years, nearly 4 in 10 came out of an office job. Those are people who already had the career everyone calls safe and decided a truck and a license were the better bet. I’d also separate two things in the Gen Z numbers. Nearly half “learning or seriously considering” a trade is a big figure, but considering costs nothing. The real signal is the 92% who’ve already changed something about their plans. When 9 in 10 young adults are adjusting course before they’ve even settled into a first job, the message about entry-level office work has landed.
The part I’d tell any parent watching this is the AI adoption split. New tradespeople use AI at twice the rate of the veterans in their own field. The trades are turning into a business you manage partly with software, and the 22-year-old electrician who knows how to market, quote, and schedule with AI is going to outearn the one who doesn’t.
