The Job Market Has Been “Cooling” for Three Years. Here’s What That Actually Means.
At the pandemic boom’s peak, job postings ran 60% above pre-pandemic levels. There were two open jobs for every job seeker. Posted wages were growing over 9% year-over-year. None of that was sustainable, and the cooldown has played out in stages: employers stopped posting aggressively but held onto workers, then workers stopped quitting because the incentives to move dried up, and now companies are squeezing more output from existing headcount rather than adding new people. Q3 2025 productivity hit 5.2%, the strongest quarterly gain in five years, while average weekly hours barely moved. That’s the signature of a utilization squeeze, not a collapsing economy.
The number that actually worries me is wages. Posted wage growth sits at just 2.1% year-over-year as of February 2026, now running below CPI at 2.4%. Workers’ real purchasing power is shrinking. That eventually hits consumer spending, which is what the broader economy runs on.
On AI: the footprint is still smaller than the headlines suggest. Only 18.9% of firms use AI tools regularly, and less than 5% of job postings mention AI-related terms. The broad-based wage slowdown across sectors is inconsistent with AI-driven displacement; it would create divergence among sectors rather than uniform cooling. The real risk to watch is the “low-fire” firewall. As long as layoffs stay low, this equilibrium holds. If tariffs, geopolitical pressure, or weakening demand pushes companies from hiring freezes to active cuts, the slowdown could accelerate fast.
Disney and Snap Both Cut 1,000 Jobs This Week. The Reasons Are Different.
Disney announced roughly 1,000 cuts Tuesday across marketing, studio and TV, ESPN, and corporate functions; new CEO Josh D’Amaro’s first major move since taking over in March. At 231,000 total employees, it’s less than half a percent of the workforce, but the cross-division scope signals real restructuring, not routine cleanup. The entertainment industry is under structural pressure from declining linear TV, streaming economics, and tighter ad markets. We’ve been watching this pattern build.
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Your Most Engaged Employees Are Working the Most Unpaid Hours and Planning to Quit
ADP Research surveyed 39,000+ workers across 36 markets and found that 62% report working up to five unpaid hours per week. That number climbs fast with seniority: 50% of upper managers and senior leaders work six or more unpaid hours weekly, and 20% of executives log 16 or more. Individual contributors, by comparison, are far less likely to reach those levels.
The counterintuitive finding: the workers putting in the most unpaid hours are also the most engaged and most likely to find meaning in their work. But they’re also the most stressed, the least productive by their own assessment, and the most likely to be looking for their next job. Engagement and burnout aren’t opposites; they coexist, especially at the senior level. I’ve watched this pattern play out for 20 years. Companies get comfortable with the extra effort their most dedicated people give, and stop seeing it as extra. It becomes the expectation. That works until those people walk, and the ones most likely to walk are the ones you can least afford to lose.
Parents Are Spending Up to $50,000 to Help Their Kids Land Entry-Level Jobs
Bloomberg reported this week on the career coaching industry for college students; packages run $3,000 to $10,000, and some firms charge $30,000 or more for competitive fields like investment banking. Command Education starts at $50,000. In 2019, about 5% of career coaches focused on college students. That share is now above 25%, according to the International Association of Career Coaches.
The demand makes sense given how hard the entry-level market has become. But Handshake’s Christine Cruzvergara makes a point worth hearing: private coaches aren’t offering anything fundamentally different from what college career centers already provide for free. Most students just don’t use those resources. The real problem is a hiring process opaque enough that candidates feel they need professional help just to navigate it.
Frequently Asked Questions
The rise reflects a cooldown from an unprecedented pandemic-era hiring boom, not a recession in progress. Recessions require a combination of rising unemployment, falling GDP, spiking layoffs, and contracting consumer spending. Right now, only unemployment is rising; layoffs remain near historic lows, and GDP is still growing.
It’s a real factor in specific cases like Snap, but not the primary driver of the broader slowdown. Only 18.9% of firms use AI regularly, and the uniform wage slowdown across all sectors is inconsistent with AI displacement, which would create divergence between sectors. What Sam Altman has called “AI washing” (using AI as cover for cuts that would happen anyway) is worth accounting for.
ADP Research found that 50% of upper managers work six or more unpaid hours weekly, versus 26% of individual contributors. The workers logging the most unpaid hours report the highest engagement and sense of meaning — but also more stress and stronger intent to quit.
For high-competition fields, targeted coaching on networking and interview strategy can help. But most private coaching offers nothing beyond what college career centers already provide for free. Most students simply don’t take advantage of what their school already offers.
