American workers are feeling worse about their jobs than they did during the pandemic
That reading reflects the worst employees have felt about their work since Glassdoor began conducting the survey in 2016, the firm said in a report on Monday.
Employee sentiment is also lower than it was in 2020, when COVID-19 slammed the world economy and spiked the unemployment rate in the US to a peak of 14.8%.
Employee confidence dropped the most in the last month among white-collar industries, the firm said in its report.
Employees in the legal sector reported the biggest year-over-year decline in sentiment, with the percentage of workers who said they had a positive six-month outlook dropping to 52.6%, down 11.2 percentage points compared to levels last year.
Employees in the energy, mining, and utilities industry and the government and public administration industry saw the second-largest year-over-year decline, with sentiment dropping 7.5 percentage points compared to the same month in 2024.
Here are the five industries where workers were the most pessimistic, according to Glassdoor's survey: Restaurants and food service: 35.6%
Government and public administration: 36.1%
Arts, entertainment, and recreation: 39.1%
Pharmaceutical and biotechnology: 39.3%
Manufacturing: 39.8%
The decline in sentiment has hit its lowest recorded level for two straight months. According to Daniel Zhao, the lead economist of Glassdoor, it reflects the "steady cooling" of the job market and growing anxiety over the economy.
"While the labor market hasn't collapsed, workers are clearly feeling the strain," Zhao said in a note, pointing in particular to mid-level workers. "As confidence erodes, the risk of turnover rises, particularly in white-collar industries still grappling with sluggish hiring and restructuring."
The job market has sent mixed signals over the last several months.
While the unemployment rate remained near historic lows and the economy added more jobs than expected in June, the private sector lost 33,000 jobs, according to the payroll processor ADP.
Claims for continued unemployment have climbed steadily higher over the last year. In the week ending June 14, continuing claims hovered around 1.9 million, the highest number since 2021.
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Forbes
21 minutes ago
- Forbes
Platform Engineering Lessons From Public Sector Technology
The UK Houses Of Parliament & Elizabth Clock Tower (Big Ben bell inside). We need more software. Look into any corner of the enterprise computing landscape and you'll find a need for additional applications, wider network connections between existing resources and new-age AI entities, additional cloud observability services, supplementary data storage and analytics functions and (often above all, although organizations don't like to admit it) better data integration. What that often boils down to in the mind of the average CEO, CIO, CISO or CTO is the management control factor i.e. they want to be able to view their technology deployment and twiddle knobs (literally) on a vizualisation dashboard that turns the flow up, down or outwards on any given stream of the IT stack. But control isn't always what matters most; despite Covid-19, the rise of compartmentalized containerization with Kubernetes and disaggregated multi-cloud norms becoming the de facto standard… some people still haven't understood the need to embrace flexibility as the central ethos around which all computing structures should be built. The truth is, change will always outpace delivery if platforms are built for control, not flexibility. River Of Constant Change This (above) truism was offered by Jonny Williams, chief digital adviser, UK public sector at Red Hat. Speaking from his governmentally-aligned viewpoint (a sector that, in the UK at least, is traditionally known for its proclivity for management meetings, usually with tea and biscuits, rather than any esoteric adherence to flexible autonomy and optionality), he thinks that digital transformation remains a clear ambition across government. But as the recent Blueprint for a Modern Digital Government appears to suggest, delivery isn't working fast or effectively enough. 'The blueprint pulls no punches: transformation is too slow to meet the scale of public sector ambition,' said Williams. 'At the same time, teams across departments are being asked to do more with less. So it's not just about cost. It's about fewer people, less time, less complexity… and less friction. While the goals are consistent (better security, higher resilience, improved scalability), the blockers to achieving them are also familiar: legacy infrastructure, siloed delivery, too much overhead and not enough flow.' Williams uses the term 'flow' in the context of its much-beloved understanding by hardcore software application developers; when they are really in-the-zone (headphones on… Metallica playing, diet Pepsi and cold pizza on the side of the desk, keyboard alight with fingers peppering the command line with great code), they are said to be in a state of 'flow' and, clearly, that's a good place to be. In this context, many advocates and evangelists across the tech industry argue that platform engineering offers a compelling way forward i.e. flexibility from above and below is the core mantra. This means it's not about building another static technology stack. It's about creating evolving internal developer platforms that abstract complexity, support developers and accelerate service delivery… all while staying aligned with operational goals. An Insufficiency Of Infrastructure 'The UK Government (and for that matter the ruling body in any other Western or modern nation) typically doesn't lack ideas, it lacks infrastructure built to adapt when those ideas inevitably shift,' explained Williams. 'In many government departments, ageing platforms were built years ago to meet a particular need. They were often delivered via traditional programmes or projects, with big design up front, and implemented over months or years. They were rarely built with long-term evolution in mind.' At first, these incumbent government platforms did what they were supposed to. But the needs of the services running on top of them changed. Teams began exploring different architectural approaches… and quickly found that they needed flexible networking, updated security models and an ability to serve new types of workloads. Many want to experiment with AI or machine learning. But old platforms don't (and generally can't) keep up. The result is that teams get slowed down, demotivated and frustrated by tooling and processes that don't support the way they work. This is what the IT industry likes to call platform drift, or the 'lava lamp effect' i.e. teams bubbling away from the original platform until eventually, they break off entirely. 'Platform drift leads to platform sprawl. Different teams adopt alternative platforms to meet their needs. Any organization in this scenario loses consistency and the number of platforms multiplies without scaling value,' said Williams. 'This pattern is common across government, where hundreds of departments have deployed hundreds if not thousands of different platforms to solve the same problems. When developers face slow processes that ask them to raise a ticket just to provision an environment, or where AI is entirely distinct from their existing platform, or they can't get rapid feedback on a release, it's no surprise they look for alternatives. But at the scale of government, these challenges have an enormous impact.' How Traditional IT Platforms Work The root problem is not just technical. It relates to an entire delivery model. Traditional platforms are focused on maintaining a stable state. They solve problems after they appear, rather than anticipating future needs. That mindset, not just the tools themselves, is what many in this space think is holding back progress. Technology evangelists say they know that this challenge will only increase with the rise of emerging AI requirements. Platform engineering flips that model on its head. Instead of building a one-off platform and walking away, organizations build internal platforms the same way they build public-facing services… iteratively, based on user needs, with a product mindset. 'It starts with abstraction. A well-designed platform removes complexity, offering reusable components and self-service capabilities. Teams don't need to raise a ticket to create an environment or deploy code. They consume services directly. That's how you reduce stress, risk and overhead. That's how you do more with less,' said Red Hat's Williams. 'It also means continuous improvement. Platform teams gather feedback and ship updates. They measure usage and performance. Some of the best platform teams we've seen in government use product reviews, team charters, skills matrices, backlogs and user surveys… the same practices you'd expect from any good digital service team. Crucially, platform engineering enables what techies like to refer to as 'evolutionary modernization opportunities' today, meaning that rather than rip and replace, departments can support legacy applications and new services side by side, often making use of virtual machines and containers. It's all about giving teams the space to modernize incrementally, all while ensuring the platform can keep up. That's where the idea of the thinnest viable platform comes in i.e. start small, deliver value early and meet real user needs… then expand responsibly as those needs evolve. The Platform Is The (Change) Lever For digital transformation to succeed, Williams says platforms need to stop being 'passive infrastructure' and start being 'active enablers' in modern cloud computing architectures. That means embedding user needs into their DNA. It means investing in empowered, iterative, data-informed teams who align with wider organisational goals. 'Platform engineering isn't a silver bullet. But it's one of the clearest, most actionable levers we have to make digital transformation real – not just in pilots or proof of concepts, but at scale. With the right mindset, the right structure and the right investment, we can build platforms that keep pace with ambition. We can make value delivery easier. Then we can finally move from intent to impact,' concluded Williams. But can we really move forward with progressive government technology architectures (a sort of quadrilateral oxymoron, in the past at least) and talk about a future where public sector IT platform teams are established so that they develop and share projects? Amanda Brock, CEO of OpenUK, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting open computing, open data and open source at large points out what this future might look like… and highlights who is already working on it. 'We are seeing Emily Middleton [UK director for digital centre design at the British government's Department for Science, Innovation and Technology] drive departments' efforts centrally," said Brock. "This is happening alongside the UK's Government Digital Service, the Cabinet Office and others all being urged to operate as a central team, which is the right first step. Now they are looking to build cohesion and skills, to streamline processes and build understanding. I see this bedding-in towards a platform engineering approach as critical to create good practices and avoid silos.' Going deeper, Brock suggests that a centralized approach to computing helps to build shared understanding; this (in theory if not in practice) enables teams (in government or in the private sector) to to check whether others are already working on the same idea, and contribute to existing projects rather than building another new project. 'We are seeing talk of software and data service cataloges, but however we ultimately develop… building open source infrastructure as the base of a future digital spine at this level will allow access for all parts of the public sector and create a well-curated infrastructure that becomes an interoperable de facto standard,' said Brock, speaking at a media event in the House of Commons terrace this summer. Public Sector Progressiveness? Could we move to a technology future where the breadth and girth of public bodies enables them to adopt platform engineering for its flexibility factors even faster than we see in the private sector? Even if the deployment surface is 20% of existing technology projects at this level, the 80:20 knock-on effect could (arguably) be positive for all sectors. Insular information technology silos may soon be regarded as just as damaging as cultural, economic or political insularity, it may just be time to collaborate and listen.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
I led teams at Meta and Airbnb. My Big Tech career taught me an important lesson about dealing with chaos and crisis at work.
Judd Antin has held leadership roles at Meta and Airbnb, where he worked between 2012 and 2022. During that time, he led teams through rapid changes, such as layoffs. He learned one secret to effective leadership: authentic clarity. Over the course of my career in Big Tech, I've been lucky to work at several successful, fast-growing companies. At Meta and Airbnb, I helped scale research and design teams from 2012 to 2022, ultimately becoming Head of Design Studio at Airbnb. I loved building teams of talented people, but it wasn't all roses. Rapid changes and looming crises were constants, as they seem to be at most companies. For example, I was working at Airbnb when COVID-19 hit in 2020. The company lost 80% of its business in a matter of weeks, and by May, I was forced to lay off more than 25% of my team. Managing that crisis and recovery was one of the most difficult leadership crucibles of my career. The everyday chaos of a fast-paced company was just as educational, though, and one strategy for managing it rose above the rest. The secret to effective leadership in times of change — whether it's reorgs, strategy shifts, or layoffs — is to provide authentic clarity. Clarity allows people to move forward calmly, even if they don't have all the answers. In a chaotic environment, providing clarity takes frequent communication in an authentic voice. Clarity, not certainty Early in my leadership career, I mistakenly assumed that being a decisive leader in a crisis meant projecting certainty. My logic was that people need to be reassured their leader knows exactly what to do. I quickly realized that was a fantasy. I can't remember a single time in my leadership career when I had all the answers. Once, in an effort to project certainty, I confidently presented some details using guesswork. But things were moving fast, and the information I shared was proven wrong just days later. What I thought would be useful only made me look foolish and ultimately damaged my team's trust in me. After a few failed efforts, I realized my team didn't need me to have all the answers; they just needed me to provide clarity about what was happening. I learned the importance of clarity in three key areas: What is happening? It's essential to clearly state the facts as you know them, even if they're incomplete, to help people process what's happening. Why is it happening? Sharing the "what" without the "why" is a key mistake. My understanding of the "why" was usually incomplete, but sharing any context I had helped my teams make sense of it. What does it mean for me? It's usually hard for people to translate high-level changes down to their level. Even simple reminders like "Your day-to-day work won't change," or "Here's when we'll know how this will affect our road map," helped people feel calmer. The best leaders I've worked with were proactive about answering these questions, reaching out to teams early and often. I made it a practice to hold frequent Q&A sessions with my teams, and say things like: "Good question, I don't know. Let me see if I can find out." I found that even a response like that could be clarifying. Communicate like a human People can tell immediately when leaders aren't being themselves, so it's important to communicate in your own voice. Early in my career, I followed instructions from HR or internal comms teams and stuck to the talking points. I used templates for my emails and repeated the language I was given during leadership meetings. But my team quickly called me out, and I realized I was hurting my reputation by communicating like a corporate puppet. Rather than relying on jargon or HR talking points, I started trying to speak honestly and vulnerably. The strategy I developed wasn't going rogue in a sensitive situation; it was translating the company's carefully chosen talking points into my own voice, using empathy. In practice, this also meant I'd say things like: "I don't know what's going to happen either. The uncertainty isn't great, but I'll let you know as soon as I know more." Or: "This sucks. Layoffs are hard for everyone, especially when it's good friends and talented colleagues we're saying goodbye to." Acknowledging real things like frustration or mistakes helped build trust by signalling we were all in the same boat. Repeat yourself. Then repeat yourself. The No. 1 mistake I've noticed leaders make during times of change isn't just poor communication; it's infrequent communication. Even leaders who were good at providing authentic clarity weren't doing so consistently. They'd communicate once and assume everyone understood. Or worse, they'd say nothing until they had all the answers, or there was something new to say. But that vacuum would often be filled with gossip and speculation. I learned the solution was simply to repeat the message. I'd share the most important messages multiple times via several channels and in different words, because different framings might resonate with different people. People have high anxiety and a short memory in times of crisis. Touching base often, even if there's little new information to share, builds confidence in a visible, highly present leader. Even without new information, it helps people feel confident that they didn't miss something. Leading through change was never about having all the answers During my Big Tech career, I observed that the most effective leaders in a crisis were rarely the ones with all the answers or the boldest vision. They were the ones who communicated clearly, showed up consistently, and were willing to be authentic. That's what builds trust and gets teams through chaos. Representatives for Meta and Airbnb did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider. Do you have a story to share about managing teams through rough seas in Big Tech? Contact the editor, Charissa Cheong, at ccheong@ Read the original article on Business Insider Solve the daily Crossword
New York Post
an hour ago
- New York Post
Foreign tourism to NYC expected to see ‘devastating' $4B drop this year according to industry experts
For foreign tourists, the shine is coming off the Big Apple. Some 2 million fewer visitors from other countries are expected to make the trip to New York City this year, which could cost New York City $4 billion in foreign tourism dollars for 2025, a major industry group said. 5 Big Apple businesses that cater to floods of tourists are already feeling a pinch as foreign travelers are ditching New York this summer, The Post has learned. Stephen Yang Advertisement The drop — which could be as much as 14% — will have a brutal affect on the New York economy, as foreign tourists usually spend big, according to NYC Tourism + Conventions, which did the study. 'Although international visitors make up 20% of total visitation, they account for approximately 50% of all visitor spending, making them essential to New York City's economy,' group CEO Julie Coker said in a statement. 'Combined, this downward revision represents an estimated loss of over $4 billion in direct spending.' Advertisement Big Apple businesses that usually cater to floods of tourists told The Post they are already seeing things slow to a trickle — which is a major disappointment after NYC Tourism + Conventions announced a 'full recovery' for NYC tourism from the effects of COVID-19 in 2024. They blame a variety of causes for the drop, including the United States' new positions on foreign policy and tariffs, especially the new attitude toward Canada. 5 Tourists gather in Times Square in Manhattan. Stephen Yang 'There is an absolute real-world decline in tourism and revenue due to Trump's tariffs, and aggressive posting towards our friendly northern neighbors,' said tour guide operator Matt Levy of Spread Love Tours, who told The Post he is now 'belt tightening' and seeking to take on 'luxury' clientele to make up for losses. Advertisement Levy, whose company caters to a 'significant number of student travel groups from Canada,' was slammed with a staggering 85% drop in revenue from Canadian visitors this year, he said — effectively wiping out a national demographic that makes up 30% of his total revenue. 'For 2026, I would bet hard money it will go to zero [dollars from Canada],' Levy said, noting all of his Canadian revenue from 2025 came from groups that put their deposit down pre-election. 'The kids, the parents want to go, but the school boards are saying, 'Why are we going to go spend money to generate taxes in a country where the president hates us?'' he continued. ''Rather, we can spend money and generate taxes in our own nation.'' 5 K. Krombie, tour guide at Purefinder New York and author of 'Death in New York: History and Culture of Burials, Undertakers and Executions.' Michael Nagle Advertisement K. Krombie, a tour guide who operates Purefinder New York tours like 'Death in New York' and 'Central Park: Scandal and Vice,' told The Post she has seen a 'drop in revenue.' 'I think a lot of it is based around politics,' she said. 'I think some of it is a defiant boycott, and a lot of it is financial, because of the global effects of the tariffs. People are like, 'well, we can go somewhere else to spend our money.' . . . It's devastating, and utterly noticeable, but it's one of those things that you only really can study in hindsight.' 5 Seventeen-year-old Britany Vimos, who sells NYC souvenirs to tourists across the street from Byrant Park. Nicole Rosenthal/NY Post Lori Pickhardt, New York City Manager of Tours By Foot, said there was one hope for city tourism. 'We are hopeful the fall of the US dollar entices people to take advantage of travel to the US, but we are not expecting things to pick up for the next 3.5 years since there seems to be no sense of concern in the United States about the impact on small American businesses or the American consumer.' Christina Hansen, the spokesperson for Central Park's horse carriage drivers, said the union is missing 'a lot of our customer base, which is the UK, Canada, Ireland and Australia. 'But I think domestic tourism is down too . . . because of economic chaos, air travel issues and [a] perceived terror threat due to foreign policy decisions.' 5 Women sell fruit in front of the Hard Rock Cafe in Midtown, Manhattan. Stephen Yang Advertisement Even a manager at a Midtown Applebee's, who declined to provide his name, told The Post his business is down at his location by more than 20% since last year – and blames dwindling tourism numbers for it. A Hard Rock Café worker similarly lamented: 'I don't think it's been the same since last year.' Still, NYC Tourism said that it will continue its global marketing campaign 'with focused outreach across Canada, Mexico, the UK and Western Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and Asia Pacific. 'Our welcoming spirit will not waver,' Coker added, 'and global travelers have an open invitation to visit the one and only New York City when they're ready.'
