Cornering The Job Market

Hosted by Pete Newsome

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Episodes

238

Latest episode

Aug 2026

Language

EN-US

About the show

The job market is changing faster than most people realize. Headlines are noisy, data is often misunderstood, and bad advice spreads quickly. Cornering the Job Market cuts through the confusion with clear, data-backed insights on what is actually happening in hiring, work, careers, and the labor market now, and in the future. Hosted by Pete Newsome, founder of one of America's top staffing and recruiting firms, this podcast breaks down the labor market from both sides of the table. Job seekers learn how employers are really making decisions. Hiring leaders and executives gain perspective on talent supply, candidate behavior, and where the market is heading next. Each episode translates complex labor data into plain English and connects the dots between hiring trends, economic signals, AI adoption, wages, layoffs, and workforce strategy. The focus is not hype or fear; with context, clarity, and practical takeaways you can use immediately. What you will hear on the show Weekly breakdowns of the U.S. job market using trusted data sources What hiring numbers actually mean for real people and real companies How AI is reshaping jobs, hiring, and career paths Why some roles stay in demand even during slowdowns What employers are prioritizing and what candidates often miss Honest conversations about layoffs, wage pressure, job hopping, and stability Tactical advice for job seekers at every career stage Strategic insight for HR leaders, hiring managers, and executives Who this podcast is for Professionals navigating a competitive or uncertain job market Early and mid-career workers trying to future-proof their careers HR leaders and talent acquisition teams Hiring managers and executives making workforce decisions Anyone who wants clear, credible insight into where work is headed Why Cornering the Job Market is different This show is built on real hiring experience, not theory. The insights come from thousands of real job searches, real placements, and real conversations with employers and candidates across industries like IT, finance, healthcare, marketing, HR, and engineering. The goal is simple. Help you understand the job market well enough to make better decisions, whether you are hiring, job searching, or planning your next move. New episodes New episodes drop regularly with timely commentary on breaking labor market news, hiring trends, and workplace shifts. Subscribe so you do not miss an update, especially when the market changes quickly.

Listen to episodes

60 recent

August 21, 202632 min

The Week in Jobs: One in Five Use LinkedIn for Dating & Why Response Speed Matters

The Wall Street Journal reported this week that LinkedIn has a dating problem: 22% of users say they've sent or received a message with romantic intent on the platform, and roughly one in four think that's acceptable behavior on a professional site. Pete and Peter also cover the flip side of that same article: one in five people say they check a potential date's LinkedIn profile before meeting them, since it's harder to fake a professional history than a dating profile. From there, a data point job seekers can actually use. Research from Cornell, George Mason, and Vanderbilt found that a one-hour delay in responding to a recruiter is associated with a 6% drop in the odds of getting hired, and a full-day delay drops those odds by 90%. Pete and Peter break down why: recruiters are usually talking to several candidates at once, and the first qualified person to respond often ends up several steps ahead in the process. They also cover a Monster survey finding that only 10% of workers say their job description matched the actual job, and 85% of candidates say they're more likely to apply to a job posting that reads as honest and specific rather than generic. Pete and Peter make the case for writing real, current job descriptions instead of recycling old ones, and for including salary ranges upfront. Other stories this week: no major layoffs reported, a first for 2026, though Charles Schwab is moving roughly 1,000 jobs offshore to India. The JOLTS survey, a key government measure of job openings and layoffs, is now getting responses from only about one in four companies surveyed, down from seven in ten before the pandemic. And the Richmond Fed reports the median length of unemployment has crept up to about 10.5 weeks. 4 Corner Resources' Q3 Employee Mindset Survey is live now at 4cornerresources.com/employee-mindset-survey, with a full episode on the results coming next week. Looking to hire or find your next role? Visit 4cornerresources.com.

August 14, 202644 min

The Week in Jobs: Google's AI Hiring Tool Doesn't Work & 54% Would Take a Pay Cut

A leaked internal memo shows Google's own recruiting team doesn't fully trust the company's AI screening tool. The memo, marked "do not share widely" and shared widely within hours, admits a "non-trivial possibility" that the AI is ignoring or ruling out qualified candidates, and now Google is asking applicants to fill out a separate form so a human can manually review their resume. Pete and Peter dig into why that matters beyond one company: average applications per job jumped from 115 in 2022 to 244 in 2025, which is exactly the volume problem AI screening is supposed to solve. They also cover new SHRM data showing 85% of recruiting leaders expect to increase their use of AI screening, and 63% of job seekers report already being screened or interviewed by AI, up 13 points in six months. One number Pete calls inexcusable: 70% of candidates say they were never told AI was involved in their application. Pete and Peter disagree a bit on how far the technology has come (Pete calls well-built AI screening close to ideal, Peter still calls it a necessary evil), but they agree on one thing: candidates should be told upfront. The leaked Google memo also warned that human reviewers get tired of resumes that all sound alike from AI-generated answers. Pete and Peter's advice for candidates: let AI handle formatting, but keep the actual content and voice your own. From there, a new Monster survey found 54% of workers would take a pay cut for job security, and 61% would give up some part of their pay or work arrangement just for stability, even though the data still shows roughly one job opening for every job seeker. They also cover a slowdown in ADP's weekly hiring numbers, a three-year high in NFIB's small business hiring plans, and an MIT report on what it calls "disposable workers," which Pete and Peter push back on hard when it comes to contract employment. 4 Corner Resources' quarterly Employee Mindset Survey results are coming soon. Looking to hire or find your next role? Visit 4cornerresources.com.

August 10, 202638 min

The Week in Jobs: July's Jobs Report Turns Negative & LinkedIn Cracks Down on AI Slop

The July jobs report finally turned negative: the US lost 23,000 jobs, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics revised May and June's numbers down by a combined 103,000. Pete and Peter argue the losses matter less than they sound, since 264,000 people also left the labor force this month. Fewer job seekers competing for roughly the same number of openings still adds up to a healthy market on paper, even though unemployment ticking down partly reflects people exiting the workforce rather than finding jobs. The bigger story underneath the monthly numbers: baby boomer retirements are shrinking the labor force, a trend Pete and Peter expect to continue for at least the next five years. They also break down a new Indeed survey of economists, where 57% expect AI to lower wages and 61% worry about AI displacing college-educated workers, and get into whether a bachelor's degree still prepares graduates for the workforce it's supposed to lead them into. That includes a pointed take on the University of Michigan's decision to hide first-semester grades from new students. They also cover the NFIB's monthly small business survey, where more than half of small businesses say they can't find qualified applicants, and why that gap persists even with plenty of candidates in the market. They close with LinkedIn's new plan to let users flag posts as AI slop, a feature Pete and Peter can't wait to use. 4 Corner Resources' quarterly Employee Mindset Survey results are coming soon. Looking to hire or find your next role? Visit 4cornerresources.com.

July 31, 202637 min

The Week in Jobs: A Startup Offered Interviews for Tattoos & AI Is Actually Growing Jobs

Pete and Peter open with the strangest hiring story of the year so far. LemonLime, a five-person AI startup, offered instant interviews to anyone at a networking event willing to get the company's logo tattooed on their body. The backlash was swift, but so was the attention, and Pete and Peter debate whether the stunt was tone-deaf or quietly brilliant marketing. From there, two weeks running of actual good AI news. A new ZipRecruiter survey of 1,000 employers found 35% say AI is growing their headcount, and 24% say it already has. The same survey found a less encouraging trend underneath it: 38% moved basic data work off entry-level employees onto AI, and 31% raised the experience requirements on their entry-level postings, which Pete and Peter argue defeats the purpose of calling a job entry-level at all. Revelio Labs published the first read from a new AI jobs tracker, showing companies that adopted AI grew headcount 27% faster than companies that didn't, with the growth concentrated more in senior roles than junior ones. Pete and Peter also break down a Daron Acemoglu op-ed in Axios arguing that the tax code itself is tilting the playing field: employers pay roughly a 30% payroll tax on human wages, versus an estimated 5% effective tax cost on the same $100 invested in AI or automation. They close with a Harvard Business Review piece making the case for hiring job hoppers, a batch of layoffs at BMW, Porsche, and Visa, and an ADP report showing private payrolls declining for a fifth straight week, right before next month's official jobs report. Visit 4cornerresources.com for hiring and job search resources.

July 28, 202629 min

The Week in Jobs: Unemployment Claims Hit a 57-Year Low, but 93% Say Wages Aren't Keeping Up

A rare quiet week for once: no major layoffs, no new AI panic. Pete and Peter open with the number that earned the good-news label this week: initial unemployment claims came in at 187,000, the lowest since 1969, well under the 250,000 mark that typically signals a healthy job market. Add in roughly one open job for every unemployed worker, and the data says the market is about as balanced as it's been in years. So why does it still feel bad out there? A new Monster survey found 93% of workers feel their wages aren't keeping up with the cost of living, and 85% say they've had to dip into savings just to keep up. Pete and Peter also talk through why job switching doesn't pay like it used to: changing companies still tends to bring a 10% to 20% raise versus 3% to 5% for staying put, but far fewer people are making that move right now compared to the post-COVID hiring surge. From there, they cover a new Google survey describing today's AI use as "shallow," and Google's own framing that AI is meant to be an assistant, not a replacement, a read Pete and Peter mostly agree with based on their own daily use. They close with Amazon's decision to cut staff in its Artificial General Intelligence group, and a publicly disclosed OpenAI safety incident in which a model in a sandboxed test environment reportedly tried to reach the open internet. 4 Corner Resources' quarterly Employee Mindset Survey results are coming soon. In the meantime, visit 4cornerresources.com for hiring and job search resources.

July 21, 202656 min

Job Applicant Fraud Is Skyrocketing: TurboCheck's Mike Mark on Fake Candidates and Deepfakes

Pete Newsome sits down with Michael Mark from TurboCheck for a conversation most hiring teams aren't having yet, but should be: candidate fraud. TurboCheck's data shows fraud running around 40% across all roles on average, and as high as 70% to 80% for some remote technical positions. Mike lays out the three tiers behind it: individuals padding resumes or juggling multiple undisclosed jobs, organized crime groups placing fake candidates to access company systems, and nation-state actors, including North Korea, which Mike says has pulled over $1 billion from US companies through fake job placements to help fund its nuclear weapons program. The two dig into how sophisticated this has gotten: LinkedIn profiles built years ago during COVID and left to "season," GPT-written resumes, AI face masks and deepfakes on video interviews, and real-time AI tools that feed candidates answers through a teleprompter. They also talk through why manual screening alone can't keep up with AI-generated fraud, and why human judgment paired with verification technology is the combination that actually works. Pete shares why 4 Corner Resources became a TurboCheck customer after running into a bait-and-switch candidate in a hybrid healthcare role, where one person interviewed and a different person showed up for the job. Mike walks through TurboCheck's four core tools: a patented identity check screening name, email, phone, and location against nearly 1,000 data points; biometric face verification that catches AI masks and confirms a candidate stays the same person from first call through employment; government ID document verification; and reference verification to confirm references are real people. They close with practical advice for job seekers: research any company before applying, and be cautious if a "job" asks for sensitive information like a Social Security number early on or the process moves suspiciously fast. Learn more about TurboCheck at turbocheck.com, and visit 4cornerresources.com for hiring and job search resources.

July 18, 202643 min

The Week in Jobs: Texas Targets Ghost Jobs, AI Spying on Employees, & a Shrinking Workforce

Pete and Peter open with a story job seekers have been waiting years for: the Texas Attorney General is going after LinkedIn over ghost job postings, subpoenas included. Estimates put fake job postings at 20% to 33% of what's out there, and Texas now joins New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Kentucky, and California in taking legal aim at the practice. They also dig into an overlooked wrinkle: the federal government itself requires companies sponsoring H-1B visas to post jobs publicly even when a candidate is already chosen, and plenty of private employers quietly do the same thing. They cover what candidates can do to protect themselves from the fraud that follows fake postings, since handing over something like a Social Security number to the wrong company can cost real money. From there, they discuss a Wall Street Journal story on employers hiring firms to research employees' online activity, including tools that claim up to 70% accuracy at unmasking anonymous profiles. Pete and Peter debate where legitimate screening ends and employers digging into private lives begins, and argue that most of it has no business being an employer's concern. They also break down a second Wall Street Journal piece on how a shrinking labor force, with more workers projected to leave than enter over the next four years, could make AI's rise easier to absorb. Job openings and unemployed workers currently sit at close to a 1-to-1 ratio, and the economy has historically needed roughly 250,000 new jobs a month just to hold that balance. As the workforce shrinks, that number could approach zero, potentially shifting some leverage back toward workers even as AI adoption continues. Layoffs this week: Verizon is closing 274 retail stores nationwide, and Volkswagen confirmed the largest layoff in automotive industry history. On a brighter note, weekly unemployment claims came in at 208,000, a historically low number. 4 Corner Resources' quarterly Employee Mindset Survey analysis is still underway. Pete and Peter will dedicate a full episode to those results soon. In the meantime, visit www.4cornerresources.com for hiring and job search resources.

July 10, 202632 min

The Week in Jobs: The AI Jobs Apocalypse Debate, a Trade Jobs Boom, & an RTO Firing Gone Wrong

Pete and Peter promised something lighter this week, and for the most part, they deliver. They open with a new Goldman Sachs report weighing whether an "AI jobs apocalypse" is actually coming. Goldman's answer is more measured than the headlines: disruption spread over roughly 10 years, concentrated mostly in entry-level roles. MIT economist and Nobel laureate Daron Acemoglu takes a tougher stance in the same conversation, predicting millions of displacements and noting that "no general law of economics says that job creation must match job destruction." Pete and Peter don't fully agree on the timeline, but both expect entry-level workers to feel it first. From there, they talk through an AI phone auto-attendant demo they sat in on this week, a Deutsche Bank report claiming AI productivity gains are still years off (a claim Pete and Peter push back on), and why AI adoption looks so different depending on whether a company is an early adopter, a cautious tester, or still on the sidelines. Then the good news: ZipRecruiter data shows apprentice-trained trade workers earn a median of $91,000 a year versus $65,000 for self-taught workers, construction jobs are up 34% year over year, and manufacturing is up 32%, all while most white-collar hiring sits flat. Pete and Peter get into why trade schools still lag far behind colleges on marketing and admissions, and why that gap matters more as AI squeezes entry-level office work. They also cover the NFIB small business index, where 84% of small businesses actively hiring say they still can't find qualified applicants, and close with a Wall Street Journal story that's hard to make up: a co-founder at Barnhill Investments who helped write the company's return-to-office policy was fired under that same policy for not coming in. 4 Corner Resources' quarterly Employee Mindset Survey results just came in, and Pete and Peter will dig into what workers are thinking about the job market on next week's episode. In the meantime, visit www.4cornerresources.com for hiring and job search resources.

July 2, 202638 min

The Week in Jobs: June's Weak Jobs Report, Volkswagen's 100K Layoffs, & the AI Jobs Debate

Pete and Peter are back after a short summer break, and June's jobs report didn't make for an easy return. The U.S. added just 57,000 jobs against a forecast of roughly 110,000, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics quietly revised away 74,000 previously reported jobs from April and May. Add that to 2025's total revisions of over a million jobs, and Pete and Peter dig into why the monthly jobs report is losing its credibility with the people who used to rely on it most. They also break down a bleaker number that gets less attention: long-term unemployment (workers out of a job for 27 weeks or more) now sits at 27.3% of the unemployed, up 286,000 people year over year. Then there's the cost-of-living math from a new ZipRecruiter analysis: a single earner needs about $100,000 a year just to cover typical rent and infant care, and $122,800 to buy a home, while only 28% of job postings actually pay six figures. From there, the conversation turns to layoffs: Volkswagen's historic cut of 100,000 jobs, Microsoft's smaller-than-expected 2.5% workforce reduction, and the debate over how many of 2026's layoffs are actually AI-driven versus companies using AI as a convenient explanation. Pete and Peter close with Ford's move to rehire 300 engineers after CEO Jim Farley's own prediction of major AI-driven white-collar job losses, and what that says about the gap between AI's potential and where companies actually are with it. 4 Corner Resources' quarterly Employee Mindset Survey is nearly ready, and Pete and Peter will bring you those results soon. In the meantime, visit www.4cornerresources.com for hiring and job search resources.

May 29, 202638 min

The Week in Jobs: CEO Confidence Declines, Top AI Bosses Are Split, And Fraud Is On The Rise

CEO confidence dropped in the latest survey data, and that kind of news travels fast. We break down what the numbers actually show, how "wait and see" behavior spreads from leadership to budgets to open reqs, and why geopolitical uncertainty is doing most of the driving right now. Then we get into AI, specifically the shifting public statements from major industry leaders. We ask what's behind the messaging and what the real job market impact looks like. The near-term risk people are underestimating isn't the replacement risk. It's overreliance. AI gives confident-sounding answers, and if you're not verifying the work, your own judgment gets weaker over time. Technical fluency and strong fundamentals are the qualities that hold. We close on fraud. ZipRecruiter's latest data on AI in the hiring pipeline sets the table, and then we get into what we're seeing on the front lines: fake candidate profiles, bait-and-switch interviews, and job scams that target applicants with stolen postings and identity traps. Remote hiring screening has changed, and we cover what's now standard. 📽️ WATCH TODAY'S EPISODE ON YOUTUBE: https://youtu.be/E4h5y0dZ77c 🧠 WANT TO LEARN MORE? Be sure to subscribe and check out 4 Corner Resources at https://www.4cornerresources.com/ 👋 FOLLOW PETE NEWSOME ONLINE: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/petenewsome/ Blog Articles: https://www.4cornerresources.com/blog/