Latest news with #Handshake
Yahoo
02-08-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
AI is already replacing thousands of jobs per month, report finds
Artificial intelligence is already replacing thousands of jobs each month as the U.S. job market struggles amid global trade uncertainty, a report has found. The outplacement firm Challenger, Gray, and Christmas said in a report filed this week that in July alone the increased adoption of generative AI technologies by private employers led to more than 10,000 lost jobs. The firm stated that AI is one of the top five reasons behind job losses this year, CBS News noted. On Friday, new labor figures revealed that employers only added 73,000 jobs in July, a much worse result than forecasters expected. Companies announced more than 806,000 job cuts in the private sector through July, the highest number for that period since 2020. The technology industry is seeing the fiercest cuts, with private companies announcing more than 89,000 job cuts, an increase of 36 percent compared to a year ago. Challenger, Gray, and Christmas found that more than 27,000 job cuts have been directly linked to artificial intelligence since 2023. "The industry is being reshaped by the advancement of artificial intelligence and ongoing uncertainty surrounding work visas, which have contributed to workforce reductions," the firm said. The impact of artificial intelligence is most severe among younger job seekers, with entry-level corporate roles usually available to recent college graduates declining by 15 percent over the past year, according to the career platform Handshake. The use of 'AI' in job descriptions has also increased by 400 percent during the last two years. There are other reasons for recent job losses, with more than 292,000 roles having been terminated following cuts connected to the Department of Government Efficiency, previously led by Elon Musk, a former close ally of President Donald Trump, Challenger, Gray, and Christmas found. Senior vice president Andrew Challenger said in a statement, 'We are seeing the federal budget cuts implemented by DOGE impact non-profits and health care in addition to the government.' Amid the rising costs associated with tariffs, layoffs are also increasing in the retail sector, according to the firm. Through July, retailers announced more than 80,000 cuts, an increase of close to 250 percent compared to the same period last year. "Retailers are being impacted by tariffs, inflation, and ongoing economic uncertainty, causing layoffs and store closures. Further declines in consumer spending could trigger additional losses," said the firm. White collar workers are among those at highest risk of having their jobs wiped out by AI, executives have warned. But Challenger said early last month, 'There are roles that can be significantly changed by AI right now, but I'm not talking to too many HR leaders who say AI is replacing jobs,' he added, according to NBC News. In June, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said AI would 'reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains.' But he didn't specify a timeframe. Last month, The Wall Street Journal reported that Ford CEO Jim Farley would replace 'literally half of all white-collar workers in the U.S.' But experts argue that AI is currently affecting the job market in roundabout ways, such as many companies coming under intense pressure to cut costs because of the uncertain economic climate pushed by Trump's tariff policy and concerns about increasing inflation. As such, some companies are spending money on AI software instead of hiring new staff. The CEO of The Josh Bersin Company workforce consultancy, Josh Bershin, told NBC News,'There's basically a blank check to go out and buy these AI tools.' 'Then they go out and say, as far as head count: No more hiring. Just, 'stop.' So that immediately freezes the job market,' he added.
The Independent
02-08-2025
- Business
- The Independent
AI is already replacing thousands of jobs per month, report finds
Artificial intelligence is already replacing thousands of jobs each month as the U.S. job market struggles amid global trade uncertainty, a report has found. The outplacement firm Challenger, Gray, and Christmas said in a report filed this week that in July alone the increased adoption of generative AI technologies by private employers led to more than 10,000 lost jobs. The firm stated that AI is one of the top five reasons behind job losses this year, CBS News noted. On Friday, new labor figures revealed that employers only added 73,000 jobs in July, a much worse result than forecasters expected. Companies announced more than 806,000 job cuts in the private sector through July, the highest number for that period since 2020. The technology industry is seeing the fiercest cuts, with private companies announcing more than 89,000 job cuts, an increase of 36 percent compared to a year ago. Challenger, Gray, and Christmas found that more than 27,000 job cuts have been directly linked to artificial intelligence since 2023. "The industry is being reshaped by the advancement of artificial intelligence and ongoing uncertainty surrounding work visas, which have contributed to workforce reductions," the firm said. The impact of artificial intelligence is most severe among younger job seekers, with entry-level corporate roles usually available to recent college graduates declining by 15 percent over the past year, according to the career platform Handshake. The use of 'AI' in job descriptions has also increased by 400 percent during the last two years. There are other reasons for recent job losses, with more than 292,000 roles having been terminated following cuts connected to the Department of Government Efficiency, previously led by Elon Musk, a former close ally of President Donald Trump, Challenger, Gray, and Christmas found. Senior vice president Andrew Challenger said in a statement, 'We are seeing the federal budget cuts implemented by DOGE impact non-profits and health care in addition to the government.' Amid the rising costs associated with tariffs, layoffs are also increasing in the retail sector, according to the firm. Through July, retailers announced more than 80,000 cuts, an increase of close to 250 percent compared to the same period last year. "Retailers are being impacted by tariffs, inflation, and ongoing economic uncertainty, causing layoffs and store closures. Further declines in consumer spending could trigger additional losses," said the firm. White collar workers are among those at highest risk of having their jobs wiped out by AI, executives have warned. But Challenger said early last month, 'There are roles that can be significantly changed by AI right now, but I'm not talking to too many HR leaders who say AI is replacing jobs,' he added, according to NBC News. In June, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said AI would 'reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains.' But he didn't specify a timeframe. Last month, The Wall Street Journal reported that Ford CEO Jim Farley would replace 'literally half of all white-collar workers in the U.S.' But experts argue that AI is currently affecting the job market in roundabout ways, such as many companies coming under intense pressure to cut costs because of the uncertain economic climate pushed by Trump's tariff policy and concerns about increasing inflation. As such, some companies are spending money on AI software instead of hiring new staff. The CEO of The Josh Bersin Company workforce consultancy, Josh Bershin, told NBC News, 'There's basically a blank check to go out and buy these AI tools.' 'Then they go out and say, as far as head count: No more hiring. Just, 'stop.' So that immediately freezes the job market,' he added.
Fast Company
01-08-2025
- Business
- Fast Company
The fellowship offering job-hunting grads an AI training lifeline
In early March, Volkan Çinar, a chemistry postdoc at MIT, received an email recruiting him to train AI models. Çinar studies carbon-carbon bonds formation in graphene. Given the stiff competition for jobs in academia, Çinar was no longer sure if his dream of working in academia made sense. So he was receptive to the email's pitch. The email came from Handshake, the job search platform which connects 18 million students from 1,600 higher ed institutions to career opportunities, introducing its new MOVE (Model Validation Expert) Fellowship. The new program gives Handshake an entrée into the high end of AI model training, the hot sector that's seen Meta acquire a 49% stake in Scale for more than $14 billion and Surge bootstrap itself to $1 billion in revenue. For talent like Çinar, MOVE offers better money than teaching and comes with AI training. 'I'd never considered working in AI,' Çinar says. 'But given that I'm exploring other positions, I thought I'd give it a try,' even if it meant the risk of paving the road for AI models to take over his field. What to expect from the program The Fellowship's acceptance rate and pay range How to make yourself competitive for an AI gig A better way to source expert talent for AI labs
Time of India
30-07-2025
- Business
- Time of India
The first rung is gone: How AI is blocking US college grads from climbing the career ladder
Representative image There was a time in America when a college degree meant a head start. You studied hard, borrowed tens of thousands of dollars, and walked across a stage with the confidence that, somewhere on the other side, a career was waiting. Entry-level jobs, once the traditional bridge between academia and adulthood, offered modest pay but priceless experience. You started small, learned the ropes, and climbed. But for today's college graduates, that bridge is crumbling. And they're standing on the edge with nowhere to go. Across the United States, artificial intelligence isn't just transforming industries, it's quietly dismantling the bottom rungs of the labor market. And in doing so, it's threatening to break the very pipeline that once fueled American white-collar success. The collapse of the American career start For generations, the US economy operated on a simple contract: young workers offered time, energy, and low-cost labor. In return, companies offered experience and a foothold. That exchange launched millions of careers, from Wall Street to Silicon Valley. Today, that contract is dissolving. AI tools are now handling tasks once reserved for new hires: Generating reports, creating marketing copy, reviewing legal documents, and debugging code. The kind of 'gruntwork' that helped fresh graduates learn by doing is now being done, in seconds, by machines. And as a result, companies across America are hiring fewer young people. At one major recruiting firm in Chicago, requests for entry-level marketing staff have nearly disappeared. In Columbus, Ohio, a consulting firm opted not to hire an intern this summer, choosing ChatGPT to manage social media copy instead. In the tech world, it's worse. Among the 15 largest U.S. tech companies by market cap, the share of entry-level hires has plunged by 50% since 2019, according to SignalFire. In 2024, only 7% of their new hires were recent graduates. These jobs haven't moved overseas. They've moved into algorithms. Fewer jobs, more competition Recent US college graduates are now in the worst position in years. According to federal data, the national unemployment rate hovers around 4%. But among new bachelor's degree holders, it's far higher, 6.6% over the past year. That number doesn't include the underemployed, graduates working in retail, hospitality, or food services while searching for roles they trained for. Applications per job posting have surged. On the popular student job site Handshake, the number of entry-level roles posted this school year fell by 15%, while the number of applicants per position jumped by 30%. It's not just that there are fewer doors; it's that more people are now banging on them, including recently laid-off junior workers trying to get back in. The gruntwork was the training To outsiders, automating menial tasks might seem like progress. But in practice, it's gutting the process by which American workers have traditionally learned. If AI is eliminating the work that once helped young Americans build careers, then the workforce may soon find itself without a bench. The experience catch US employers are shifting expectations, too. What used to be considered "entry-level" now demands experience, AI fluency, and the ability to supervise tools that barely existed three years ago. But college curricula haven't kept pace. Most graduates haven't been trained in how to work with or around generative AI tools. And now, they're being asked to prove themselves in a workforce that no longer provides the space to learn. It's a system out of sync: A fast-moving job market, and an education system playing catch-up. Not just a job market crisis, a generational one The loss of entry-level jobs isn't just a temporary setback. It threatens to fracture the long-term health of America's workforce. Without that foundational experience, the future pool of mid-career professionals, managers, and executives will shrink. The economy may remain productive in the short term, but brittle in the long term, with fewer workers capable of strategic thinking, leadership, or institutional memory. It's a slow erosion of upward mobility. And for the US, a nation built on the belief that hard work can get you ahead, it's a profound challenge to the American Dream itself. Searching for a new on-ramp Some US companies are experimenting with fixes. The Tulsa-based energy firm Williams launched a two-day business fundamentals bootcamp for new hires, trying to substitute AI-lost learning with intentional mentoring. Others, like Carlyle, train new analysts in how to work alongside AI—having them check and refine machine-generated analyses, rather than building them from scratch. But these examples are exceptions. Most companies continue to reduce headcount at the entry level, benefiting from AI-driven efficiency without reimagining how young professionals will be developed. A system at risk of abandoning its future America's most ambitious, educated young people are increasingly being told: There's no seat for you at the table. It's a problem that transcends employment statistics. It touches everything: Student loan debt, mental health, family formation, entrepreneurship, and national competitiveness. If a generation cannot start, it cannot grow. And if it cannot grow, neither can the country. AI was never meant to replace ambition. But unless the US rethinks how it integrates young workers into the future of work, that's exactly what may happen. Ready to navigate global policies? Secure your overseas future. Get expert guidance now!
Yahoo
22-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Handshake's CEO says the AI training world is evolving from generalists to STEM experts getting paid over $125 an hour
Handshake CEO says AI training now needs STEM experts, not generalists. Handshake was founded in 2014 as a recruiting platform and expanded to AI training in 2025. Meta's investment in Scale AI led to increased demand for Handshake's services, the CEO said. A kitchen-table side hustle is on the cusp of requiring an advanced degree. The data annotation industry has paid hundreds of thousands of part-time contractors around the world to filter, rank, and train AI responses for the world's largest AI companies. Now, who does that contracting work is changing, according to one tech CEO. Garrett Lord, the CEO of job search and AI training platform Handshake, said the data annotation industry is moving from requiring generalists to needing highly specialized math and science experts. "Now these models have kind of sucked up the entirety of the entire corpus of the internet and every book and video," he said on an episode of the "Grit" podcast released on Monday. "They've gotten good enough where like generalists are no longer needed." Lord said that frontier AI labs need experts in areas like accounting, law, and medicine, as well as in STEM domains like physics, math, and chemistry. The CEO said that contractors are making an average of over $100 to $125 an hour on the platform, applying their domain expertise to AI training projects. Pay for generalists ranges between a couple of dollars to about $40 per hour based on task and location, generalist contractors on other platforms told Business Insider. Lord's remarks come after big shake-ups at one of Handshake's competitors: Scale AI recently received a $14.3 billion investment from Meta. Just hours after Meta announced its blockbuster deal, Google halted multiple projects with the company, BI reported last month. OpenAI and Elon Musk's xAI have paused some Scale projects, too, Scale contractors working on them told BI. Handshake and other data labeling platforms like Appen, Prolific, and Turing have welcomed the deal. Executives from these companies said they are seeing more interest from Big Tech clients. "The labs don't want the other labs to figure out what data they're using to make their models better," Lord said in an interview with Time magazine published last month. He added that demand for Handshake's services "tripled overnight" in the wake of the Meta deal. "If you're General Motors or Toyota, you don't want your competitors coming into your manufacturing plant and seeing how you run your processes," he told Time. A Scale spokesperson told BI last month in a statement that "nothing has changed" about its customer data protection. "Security and customer trust have always been core to our business, and we will continue to ensure the right protections are in place to help safeguard all of our work with customers," the statement said. Handshake did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Read the original article on Business Insider Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
