Government focus on Ukraine and Taiwan
News reports confirm that the U.S. and other governments have focused on Ukraine and Taiwan, particularly concerning defense and security issues.
In March 2025, NPR reported that Taiwan was monitoring Washington's support for Ukraine, concerned about potential shifts in U.S. foreign policy.
“The nation's largest employers have a message for office workers: Help not wanted.
Amazon.com said this week it would cut 14,000 corporate jobs, with plans to eliminate as much as 10% of its white-collar workforce. United Parcel Service said on Tuesday it reduced its management workforce over the past 22 months by about 14,000 positions, days after retailer Target said it would cut 1,800 corporate roles. Earlier in October, white-collar workers from Rivian and Molson Coors to Booz Allen and General Motors got pink slips or learned they would come soon.
A leaner new normal for employment in the U.S. is emerging: Large employers are retrenching, making deep cuts to white-collar positions and leaving fewer opportunities for experienced and new workers. Added up, tens of thousands of newly laid off white-collar workers are entering a stagnant job market with seemingly no place for them.
Nearly two million U.S. people have been without a job for 27 weeks or more, according to recent federal data.
At 5:30 a.m. on Tuesday, Kelly Williamson woke up to a text from her employer, Amazon's Whole Foods Market, urging her to check her email.
"Review asap and stay home from work today," the message said. Williamson's role on the asset-protection team was being eliminated. The badge and laptop for the 55-year-old from Austin, Texas, were deactivated. Her belongings would be mailed to her. She was given 90 days to look for another job at the company.
Behind the wave of white-collar layoffs, in part, is companies' embrace of artificial intelligence, which executives hope can handle more of the work that well-compensated white-collar workers did. Investors are pushing the C-suite to work more efficiently with fewer employees.
Factors driving slower hiring include political uncertainty and higher costs.
Altogether, the forces are remaking what office work looks like in the U.S., leaving the managers who remain with more workers to supervise and less time to meet with them, while saddling employees fortunate enough to remain with heavier workloads.
The cascade of restructurings has created a feeling of uncertainty for managers and staff. It is tightening the options for those who are looking for employment.
About 20% of Americans surveyed by WSJ-NORC this year said they were very or extremely confident that they could find a good job if they wanted to, lower than in past years.
Meanwhile, opportunities for front-line, blue-collar or specialized workers are growing. Companies describe shortages of trade, healthcare, hospitality and construction employees, while firms pause hiring for consultants and managers, lay off staff in retail and finance and deploy AI to do work in accounting and fraud monitoring.
"The system just feels like it's messed up," said Chris Reed, 33, who was laid off a year ago from his job in technology sales, his field for more than a decade.
Reed, in New Braunfels, Texas, recently took a job selling Toyotas after spending 10 months looking for work. Reed supports his three children, ages 10, 8 and 6, and his wife, a stay-at-home mom and student. "In tech, I'm qualified, I have the experience. I didn't get any of those jobs," he said.
After his layoff, he said, he applied to more than 1,000 jobs. To make ends meet, covering food, gas, utilities and two car payments, Reed said he emptied his 401(k) and sold stocks, cryptocurrency and Pokemon cards he collected with his son. His home was put in foreclosure when he couldn't make mortgage payments, he said.
This summer, a friend referred him to the dealership job. He commutes two hours or more a day and often hustles on the floor from the 8:30 a.m. open to its 9 p.m. close. Sometimes he goes days without seeing his children; he wakes up before they go to school and returns home after bedtime.
The white-collar jobs on the chopping block have been roles that many U.S. workers aspired to secure. They paid up for college credentials to qualify for an interview, and then landed comfortable jobs as controllers, human-resource managers and midlevel engineers.
Now what once was a stable position feels like a ticking time bomb, with employees who worked their way up the corporate ladder awaiting their turn for a video call announcing their last day.
Jobs that pay more and require a bachelor's degree are more exposed to AI than other positions, economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia found.
Even as the economy grows, hiring has weakened, with economists expecting slower job creation this fall. In such an environment, companies are getting choosier -- and both veteran white-collar workers and new college graduates seeking their first jobs are getting squeezed.
Mo Toueg, who runs a headhunting firm, said he has seen the number of 40-year-olds in search of work increase in the past year. "They're telling me they can't keep up with the technology that's out there as much. Tech is outpacing their skill set," said Toueg, chief executive of Gobu Associates.
Job applicants said they are getting rejected in favor of candidates who have almost identical work experience to the job posting. Firms can now hire employees that match their exact, desired qualifications, said Melissa Marcus, an Austin-based managing director for an employment consulting firm. "The companies that have money to spend right now on head count are asking for the moon and the stars," she said.
The dynamic is squeezing entry-level hiring. The Class of 2025 submitted more job applications than the Class of 2024, while receiving a smaller number of offers, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers.
"I felt like I was putting a lot of work into getting myself into the job market, and the ladder had been pulled out from under me," said Kobe Baker, 23, who began a job hunt in January 2025, shortly after he graduated from Baylor University.
Baker, now based in Bloomfield, N.J., had hoped to break into the New York City job market. He widened his search before landing a customer-service job in late September. He said many young people want to be independent but can't find a foothold in the job market.
Mike Hoffman, chief executive of growth-advisory consulting firm SBI, said in the past six months he cut software developers by 80% while productivity has surged. "We have someone managing clusters of [AI] agents that are doing coding," he said. "Our AI writes its own Python," a programming language.
On Monday, the online-learning company Chegg said it would cut 388 jobs globally, about 45% of the workforce, as it pivots to an AI model that automatically answers students' questions.” [1]
1. Layoffs Hit White-Collar Jobs --- Tens of thousands of reductions send workers into a stagnant market. Ellis, Lindsay; Tucker-Smith, Owen; Pohle, Allison. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 29 Oct 2025: A1.
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