Sorry, job seekers. The labor market is worse than we thought.

Welcome back to our Sunday edition, where we round up some of our top stories and take you inside our newsroom. Good news for New Yorkers looking to get their $20 celebrity smoothie fix: Erewhon is coming to the Big Apple. The high-end grocer is opening a “tonic bar” inside an upcoming members club called “Kith Ivy.”

On the agenda today:

• Teaching AI to be more humanlike is a lucrative side hustle — if you can stomach what you see.
• America has reached peak homebuyer’s remorse, and it’s hurting sellers.
• Amazon is reverting to its hardcore mindset.
• A day in the life of the wellness-loving VC who married Paris Hilton.

But first: Is it cold in here, or is it just the job market?

If this was forwarded to you, sign up here. Download Business Insider’s app here.

This week’s dispatch

Bad news for job seekers

Friday’s jobs report was pretty bleak.

Hiring stalled in August, and prior months were revised lower, too, all but confirming the labor market’s summer slowdown.

Other metrics weren’t great:

• The manufacturing sector has lost jobs so far this year.
• Youth unemployment continues to rise, a bad sign for Gen Zers.
• Even a relatively stable sector like healthcare is showing signs of cooling.

A JPMorgan strategist described the report in one word: “ouch.”

The Bureau of Labor Statistics also releases separate monthly survey data on job openings and labor turnover (known among econ wonks as the JOLTS data).

One stat from that report, released last week, stood out to me: The number of unemployed Americans in July outnumbered available jobs for the first time since 2021.

In other words, there are just not enough jobs for people who are on the hunt.

At Business Insider, we spend a lot of time covering leadership, careers, and the workplace. In particular, we like to go behind the data and see how these trends impact real people.

Job seekers have told us they’ve tried networking, working on certifications, and using AI to help find jobs in a cooler labor market. Some are even going old school with their applications, such as dropping off paper résumés or doing in-person tryouts with potential employers.

My colleague Tim Paradis reported on how applying for jobs has never been easier — and that’s exactly the problem.

He found that job applications submitted on LinkedIn rose more than 45% in May from a year ago, according to the company’s most recent figures. Applying for many jobs with just a few clicks is appealing. The downside is that it can be harder to stand out.

Case in point is Mody Khan, a former Microsoft employee who said he has struggled to land a job for the past nine months. He said he applies to new roles every week and, to make himself more marketable, he said he completed an AI certification.

But he said the stakes are getting higher as his savings dwindle.

“It’s a very, very dangerous situation,” he said.

If you’ve been navigating the job market, we’d love to hear your story. Please email me at [email protected].

The secret lives of AI annotators

Training AI to be less offensive, less robotic, and more humanlike can be a lucrative side hustle or full-time gig, with rates that can surpass $50 an hour.

Yet annotators also say they’re frustrated with the secrecy and gray areas of their work. They say they’ve been asked to upload pictures of their faces or bait the chatbots into abetting violent crime, and they don’t know what the purposes of their projects are.

They’re also scared that they’re helping replace human workers.

Sellers beware

Instead of rushing to the finish line, homebuyers are backing out of deals at record rates. They’re skittish about the rising costs of homeownership and the job market. Plus, mortgage rates aren’t doing them any favors.

With more homes on the market and less competition from other homebuyers, those on the hunt can afford to be picky when it comes to picking the best bargain.

That leverage won’t last forever, though.

Amazon’s cultural shift

CEO Andy Jassy has spent the last year taking Amazon back to its roots. He’s shaved off layers of management, enforced a five-day RTO mandate, created a “bureaucracy mailbox,” and more.

Under his leadership, the e-commerce giant has been at the forefront of a cultural workplace shift that’s taking over corporate America. Jassy’s hardline style of employee management and his do-more-with-less culture has created a playbook that various company leaders can study, even if not everyone embraces his approach.

Back to its hardcore mindset.

Also read:

• Amazon is ready to enter the AI agent race in a big way, according to internal documents

The simple life

Carter Reum is the cofounder of the early-stage venture capital firm M13 and the husband of Paris Hilton. From the living room of their 15,000-square-foot “dream house,” Reum spoke to BI’s Ben Bergman about his daily routine.

Reum is a big believer in wellness, and he says he enters his at-home cryochamber twice a day. He also says he and Paris like to cook and do ab or push-up challenges together. Yet, thanks to AI, he thinks his routine will seem outdated in a year.

Day and night.

Also read:

• I’m Grindr’s CEO. I skip breakfast thanks to Mounjaro, read with my kids, and can’t imagine life not in ‘founder mode’

This week’s quote:

“A lot of this sort of feeling of disappointment is due to unreasonable levels of hype.“

— David Krueger, an assistant professor at the University of Montreal, on AI’s progress beginning to stall.

More of this week’s top reads:

• Exclusive: A top Meta policy manager is leaving — and she rated the company’s performance on the way out.
• Elliott is taking on Pepsi, but today’s activist campaigns are more playbook than knife fight.
• Exclusive: Klarna dials back remote work and says it’s losing top talent to companies with stronger in-office culture as IPO nears.
• NFL RedZone, the league’s popular highlight show, is getting commercials, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
• Banker vs bot: How AI is changing four Wall Street jobs.
• Instagram finally has an iPad app that I want to use.
• Is the class of 2029 the most screwed ever?
• “This is mission critical”: Inside Tesla’s battle to get Full Self-Driving approved in Europe.

• MrBeast has ambitions for a phone service in the mold of Ryan Reynolds’ Mint Mobile.

  The BI Today team: Steve Russolillo, chief news editor, in New York. Lisa Ryan, executive editor, in New York. Dan DeFrancesco, deputy editor and anchor, in New York. Akin Oyedele, deputy editor, in New York. Grace Lett, editor, in New York. Amanda Yen, associate editor, in New York.

The post Sorry, job seekers. The labor market is worse than we thought. appeared first on Business Insider.