The EBN Dispatch

Microsoft reported 36.6 billion dollars of quarterly net income and offered about 60,000 employees a voluntary exit. ING and Dropbox are cutting jobs too. This week's Paper Cut asks whether layoffs really bunch up at year end, and checks the data.

Four themes: why profitable companies are cutting jobs, whether layoffs bunch up at year end, engagement at its lowest since 2011 and labour's falling share of income, and whether AI is saving companies money. Then the Cut List, with nine employers confirming or detailing reductions, and the next EBClub events in Madrid, Paris, Rotterdam and London.

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Barclays is cutting about 5,000 jobs and calls AI the icing on the cake, not the cake. More than 100 people queued for one cafe job in Manchester. Volkswagen's works council says management plans a pay freeze to 2030. This week's Paper Cut asks who is blaming AI, and who is paying.

Four themes: who is blaming AI for job cuts, the first job for young people, AI at the manager's desk, and pay and accountability. Then the Cut List, with eight employers confirming or detailing cuts this week, and the next EBClub events in Madrid, Paris, Rotterdam and London.

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Nine in ten US CEOs expect to hire. Kroger, Netflix, TomTom and Airtable are cutting. Singapore's president says the first graduate job is losing demand. This week's Paper Cut asks how much of it is really AI.

Four themes: the cuts and the reasons given for them, the squeeze on the first job against CEO optimism, the hidden cost of AI at work, and trust, pay and monitoring. Then the Cut List, with seven employers confirming cuts or exits this week, and a look inside EBClub.

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Goldman's new hires manage AI agents, Citi shortens the ladder, Bayer cuts 70% of managers. This week's Paper Cut covers the org chart being redrawn.

Four themes: hiring that has frozen while the bottom rungs of the ladder shrink, AI rollouts with no clear owner for the people side, how companies are delivering their cuts, and the office argument reaching the courts. Then the Cut List, with seven employers confirming job reductions this week, and a look inside EBClub.

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Jobless claims fell. AI adoption climbed. Job applications are up. On paper, this was a good week. Then Nike, Workday and Citi all confirmed job cuts, a lawsuit alleged Ford disguised layoffs as poor performance, and tech-sector layoffs rose 77% in a single month. This week's Paper Cut looks at the gap between what the data says and what the week actually felt like.

In this week's Paper Cut:

- Nike, Workday and Citi all cutting jobs, even as layoff data eases

- Why AI adoption keeps climbing while AI transformation stalls

- A lawsuit alleging Ford used performance reviews to disguise layoffs

- LinkedIn's CEO on a hiring market drowning in AI-written applications

- The "two-job job": 61% of workers now doing more than one role

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Six companies confirmed job cuts this week, spanning insurance, media, pharmaceuticals, automotive and tech, while new research finds nearly half of CHROs are excluded from AI strategy entirely. Add graduates fighting brutal odds for entry-level roles and experienced women quietly pushed out of promotion and board pipelines, and the pattern holds: the decision gets made first, and the people it affects find out after.

In this week's Paper Cut:

- Legal & General, Admiral, BBC Sport, Novo Nordisk, Porsche and Microsoft all cutting jobs in the same week

- Why nearly half of CHROs are shut out of AI strategy decisions entirely

- Executives promising a shorter working week while graduates fight for a shrinking number of entry-level roles

- The quiet removal of experienced women from promotion and board pipelines

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Uber's own laid-off staff say AI was already doing their jobs, even though the company's layoff memo never mentioned it. Omnicom, Oracle and KPMG are all cutting too, and none of them are calling it a straightforward layoff either. Barclays staff are revolting against a tighter office mandate, and new evidence says older workers and graduates are both being quietly filtered out of hiring.

In this week's Paper Cut:

- Why Uber, Omnicom, Oracle and KPMG are all cutting jobs without quite calling it that

- New research linking AI exposure to slower wage growth rather than fewer jobs

- Barclays' staff revolt against a tightened return-to-office mandate, and the UK's new flexible-working rules

- Why older jobseekers say they feel invisible, even as everyone else is told to build a louder personal brand

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#employerbranding #hrnews #talentacquisition #futureofwork #workplacetrends

One employee says his AI bonus scheme is really proof he's not needed anymore. Meanwhile UK data centres will create a quarter of the jobs the industry promised, managers are being cut in one company and asked back in another, and this week's reckonings over who pays land three different ways.

This week on Paper Cut:

- The datacentre jobs that aren't materialising, and the robots stepping in anyway

- Why workers are learning to fake enthusiasm for AI in interviews and performance reviews

- Meta asking for managers back after a year of cutting them, and Uber's new 1% remote cap

- A Chinese supplier's graduates fired then compensated, and who else is or isn't paying up

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#employerbranding #aiatwork #returntooffice #talentattraction #futureofwork

Uber, Volkswagen and WPP all cut deeper this week, and the people who stayed were asked for more hours or more work, not more pay. Plus new data showing over half of laid-off workers don't believe the AI explanation for their own redundancy.

This week on Paper Cut:

- Uber's layoffs and the managers left holding a bigger workload

- Why over half of laid-off workers suspect AI is a cover story, and the university staff walking out over it

- What the data says actually keeps people, versus what most retention budgets fund

- Germany and consulting firms asking for more hours and office time, without paying more for either

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#employerbranding #employeeretention #returntooffice #talentattraction

Fei Zhaojun's boss asked if AI could replace coders. Two weeks later, he and 160 colleagues were laid off in Beijing. But a new HBR analysis, citing Goldman Sachs, argues most layoffs blamed on AI this year aren't actually AI's doing. Plus: Reed Hastings on why companies aren't families, Disney's early retirement memo, and why the graduate job market just hit its lowest point in a decade.

This week on Paper Cut:

- The Goldman Sachs number that undercuts most "AI layoff" headlines

- A coder's account of losing his job in Beijing, and what came next

- Reed Hastings, Brian Chesky and Tobi Lütke on why "family" and layoffs don't mix

- The entry-level job market squeeze, and what workers actually want instead

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