Companies are “looking to stay lean into 2026” as a new “corporate playbook” reveals hiring freezes in major industries, the Wall Street Journal reports. “You’re going to see a lot of wait and see,” chief executive of staffing company Kelly Services Chris Layden told the Journal. “Some of the looming uncertainty will mean that we’re going to continue to see an investment in capital over people.” According to the report, “66 percent of leaders surveyed” at a recent gathering in Midtown Manhattan “said they planned to either fire workers or maintain the size of their existing teams next year. Only a third indicated they planned to hire.” This comes as the “unemployment rate those to 4.6 percent in November, its highest in four years.” “We’re close to zero job growth. That’s not a healthy labor market,” Federal Reserve governor Christopher Waller said at the gathering. “When I go around and talk to CEOs around the country, everybody’s telling me, ‘Look, we’re not hiring because we’re waiting to try to figure out what happens with AI. What jobs can we replace? What jobs do we don’t?’” “Everybody’s afraid for their jobs. I’m dead serious,” said Waller. Per the Journal, “some of the weakest industries for new job openings include those in well-paid fields such as data analytics, software development, marketing and entertainment, she said. Job postings are stronger in industries such as healthcare and construction.” President Donald Trump on Friday touted a graph showing plummeting federal employment as “Big News for the USA!” “The post cited jobs numbers from earlier this month showing federal employment at its lowest in more than a decade, down 271,000 jobs since he took office,” MS Now reports. “The Trump administration casts those numbers in a wholly positive light, as indicative of a strong private sector, even as the labor market stalls.” Read the full report at the Wall Street Journal.
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