Insights for Workforce Developers and Employers

RECENT ARTICLES

• From Accenture: Digital commerce never lived up to its promise. Yes, it increased choice and made buying easier. But consumers got overwhelmed by options and information, and now often struggle to make decisions. Brands are absorbing the cost in abandoned carts, high return rates, eroding margins and non-stop spending to reacquire the same customers. Agentic commerce flips that model. Click here to read more.
  
  
• From The Annie E. Casey Foundation: Accord­ing to the 2025 Kids COUNT® Data Book, 6% of Mary­land teenagers are not in school or work­ing. This seg­ment of the pop­u­la­tion — also known as oppor­tu­ni­ty youth or dis­con­nect­ed youth — faces an uncer­tain and often dif­fi­cult path to jobs that pay a liv­ing wage. How­ev­er, appren­tice­ship pro­grams are an increas­ing­ly pop­u­lar option for young peo­ple who want to start their careers and build com­pet­i­tive job skills. Click here to read more. 
  
  
• From The Aspen Institute: The South is the largest and fastest growing region in the US. It is tremendously diverse in both those who call it home and in the places that make it up. State and local policymakers like to point to their communities’ friendliness towards business investment, touting cheap land, ready labor, and lucrative subsidies gussied up as tax breaks. It’s difficult to label the results for workers and state economies an unalloyed success. Click here to read more.
  
  
• From Brookings: Participants agreed that current metrics are inadequate. Counting users or firms that have adopted AI is too shallow if it does not distinguish between light use of chatbots and deeper integration into production processes. Several interventions called for better indicators that capture diffusion depth, organizational change, productivity effects, and sector-specific outcomes rather than generic usage alone. The need for common definitions and interoperable statistical methods across countries came up repeatedly. Click here to read more. 
  
  
• From Center for American Progress: The newest jobs report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that 115,000 jobs were added in April 2026. This report follows months of volatile job gains and losses for the labor market, amounting to an average of 21,000 added per month since April 2025. Additionally, the unemployment rate for April 2026 remained at 4.3 percent. Although the latest report was largely upbeat, some signals of underlying weakness persisted. Long-term unemployment remained consistent, but the number of newly unemployed, or those jobless less than five weeks, ticked up by 358,000. Click here to read more. 
  
  
• From Center on Budget and Policy Priorities: Louisiana’s current trajectory should serve as a cautionary tale: punitive policies are expensive, divert funding away from essential public services, and are not needed to experience reductions in crime. As states grapple with stagnant revenue projections and looming fiscal burdens driven by federal funding cuts to health care and food assistance, lawmakers across the country can and should instead pursue measures that will reduce corrections costs without sacrificing public safety. Click here to read more. 
  
  
• From Economic Policy Institute: Over the last couple of years, the overall labor market has slowly weakened—with many arguing that the weakening is most pronounced for young college graduates The evidence is actually pretty mixed—by some measures the young college graduate labor market is notably weaker, but their outcomes are largely no worse than those of noncollege young people or the labor market writ large. Click here to read more. 
  
  
• From FedCommunities: Opportunity Zones were designed to incentivize long-term private investment in low-income census tracts to help spur economic growth and create jobs. Investors who reinvest eligible capital gains into specific qualifying funds receive tax benefits, including deferral of taxes on the original gain and, after a 10-year holding period, exclusion of appreciation on the new investment. Investments estimated at more than $100B nationwide made through the original OZ program, now referred to as OZ 1.0, have supported a range of activities, the most common of them in real estate, including multifamily housing development. Research has found these investments tended to cluster in urban and already-improving neighborhoods, with relatively modest activity in rural areas and more economically distressed places. Click here to read more. 
  
  
• From the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta: Firms report a clear boost in planned investments in AI, signaling that adoption is moving beyond experimentation and toward broader deployment. Data show that per-employee spending on AI rose by 50 percent over 2025 levels: overall, firms spent $1,358 per employee in 2025 and are anticipated to increase spending this year to $2,068 per employee. Multiplying this amount by the total number of private, nonfarm payroll employees, we get a ballpark estimate of $280 billion for the aggregate expected investment in AI by private firms in 2026. Click here to read more.  
  
  
• From Gallup Workplace Insights: Affordability continues to be the main financial challenge for U.S. households, with concerns about various costs far outpacing all other financial worries. Inflation rose steadily in 2021, from 1.4% in January to 7% by December, and peaked at 9.1% in June 2022. It has since retreated, registering under 3% for most months since early 2025. Yet it has not consistently returned to the sub–3% range typical of the decade before 2021 — something consumers may be anticipating. Combined with the lingering effects of sustained inflation during and after the pandemic, Americans’ financial perceptions and outlook remain cautious. Click here to read more. 
  
  
• From the International Association of Workforce Professionals (IAWP): Stepping back, the Stronger Workforce for America Act is trying to bring the system closer to the promise people believe it already makes: if you show up ready to work, the system will help you build the skills you need and connect you to a job that actually moves your life forward. The truth has always been more complicated—full of barriers, mismatched programs, and pathways that don’t always lead where people hoped. This legislation doesn’t magically erase those challenges, but it does tighten the focus on what matters most: training that leads to real jobs, employers who help shape the path, and support that makes completion possible. Click here to read more. 
  
  
• From Jobs for the Future: Early lessons from Disrupt the Divide show that when colleges pair labor market and institutional data with student insights and a clear framework for action, they can redesign pathways so more learners—including Black learners and others facing barriers to advancement—can access and complete programs that lead to quality jobs that offer good pay, advancement opportunities, and voice and agency. These efforts are not one-off projects; they are building blocks of more accessible institutional systems that benefit students of all backgrounds. Click here to read more. 
  
  
• From JPMorganChase: Behavioral science strives to answer these questions. Essentially, it uses psychology, economics and sociology to analyze how people make decisions. It’s long been used in fields like healthcare and technology, but some innovative financial firms are now turning to this discipline to help clients better understand the psychology behind the decisions they make about money and life. At JPMorganChase, behavioral science is already making a meaningful difference—especially for high-net-worth clients and the teams who serve them. Click here to learn more.
  
  
• From Manpower: Two parallel forces dominate the engineering sphere right now. Like much of the economy, the field is no longer in a general slowdown. Engineering-related industries have turned the page and are in a fragile recovery period. But as organizations return to staffing demanding projects at a rapid clip, they face talent scarcity. We simply aren’t training enough engineering professionals globally to account for increased demand. Click here to read more.
  
  
• From McKinsey & Company: The humanoid value chain is forming now, and its trajectory will be shaped not by any single player but by coordinated movement across the ecosystem. OEMs will need to stabilize architectures and signal volumes credibly enough to trigger supplier investment; suppliers will need to invest ahead in modular, safety-certified capabilities to be prepared for the surge in demand; and end users can engage in real-world deployments that validate the business case and generate the operational data humanoids need to improve. Click here to read more. 
  
  
• From the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE): For generations, the transition from college to career followed a relatively stable script. Students graduated with a degree and maybe some internship and part-time job experiences, and secured an entry-level job. Entry-level jobs were not just jobs; they were training grounds, spaces where graduates made mistakes, developed judgment, and grew into professionals. That stability is breaking down. Click here to read more. 
  
  
• From the National Association of Counties (NACO): County governments are on the front lines of disaster recovery – rebuilding roads, utilities and public facilities after every federally declared disaster. In 2025 alone, 680 counties experienced at least one such event. Yet for years, counties submitted reimbursement requests and waited – sometimes for years – with no visibility into project status, cash flow timelines or where delays were occurring. Section 313 directly addresses that gap. Click here to read more. 
  
  
• From the National Association of Workforce Boards (NAWB): In March 2026, the National Association of Workforce Boards (NAWB) in partnership with NevadaWorks and the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC), hosted an action-oriented workshop in Las Vegas in March 2026. The workshop focused on the electric vehicle (EV) industry cluster and the workforce systems needed to support the full ecosystem—from critical mineral extraction and the lithium battery lifecycle to vehicle manufacturing, retail, and maintenance. Labor market data shows a nationwide shortage of workers with relevant EV skills, particularly in occupations that require industry credentials rather than traditional college degrees. Click here to read more. 
  
  
• From the National Conference of State Legislatures: The recent cessation of penny production has caused nationwide shortages of the 1 cent coin, spurring states to create legislation and issue guidance for retailers and consumers on how to handle transactions. Most states passing legislation are either mandating or recommending that penny rounding be conducted symmetrically, rounding up or down to the nearest 5 cents based on the final digit of the total transaction amount. These policies are generally limited to cash transactions and are framed as promoting consumer transparency and certainty for businesses. Notably, the changes are not designed to have a revenue impact, as rounding is typically applied only after sales tax has been calculated. Click here to read more.
  
  
• From the National League of Cities (NLC): Supporting legacy and second-stage businesses does not require a new department or a large budget. Direct engagement such as collaboration with small businesses through a designated city office, and dedicated funding, staff or other resources to engage with longtime business owners builds the kind of trust that makes meaningful engagement and local economic revitalization come together. Cities that know their legacy businesses are better positioned to connect them with technical assistance, financing tools, and peer networks before a crisis hits. Click here to read more.
  
  
• From the National Fund for Workforce Solutions: Our childcare sector has been chronically underfunded for years. Educators in this space love their work and often subsidize classrooms with their own money and work long hours with low pay. This reliance on their passion rather than fair compensation is especially unbalanced, as over 90 percent of early care professionals are women and more than a third are people of color. Investing in quality jobs for early childhood educators is not just about strengthening a workforce. It is critical to ensuring that families have access to high-quality and reliable care options. Click here to read more. 
  
  
• From the National Skills Coalition: The AI economy is here – and it’s not just changing the way we look for a doctor, pay for a parking meter, or navigate daily life. It’s beginning to reshape how people do their jobs. In the next few years, AI’s impact on the labor market will accelerate. The question isn’t whether or when AI will change the economy, but who will benefit and who will bear the cost. If AI hasn’t affected your job yet, it will soon. But AI won’t affect every job in the same way. Some roles will disappear, others will change, and still others will experience a boom. Click here to read more.
  
  
• From Prosperity Now: Through a national survey and complementary focus group discussions, this research documents how participating institutions describe their current level of familiarity, areas of uncertainty, and informational needs. The findings are intended to provide an evidence-based foundation for policymakers, practitioners, and intermediaries seeking to better understand institutional perspectives and the conditions that may shape future engagement within existing regulatory frameworks. Click here to read more. 
  
  
• From the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM): U.S. employers reported adding 115,000 jobs in April — a figure well above expectations — according to the latest employment report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Economists had predicted that roughly 55,000 jobs would be added. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate stayed unchanged at 4.3%, and the number of unemployed people changed little at 7.4 million. The figure indicates continued growth for the labor market, although it is below last month’s figures, which showed that 185,000 jobs were created in March. Click here to read more. 
  
  
• From the Urban Institute: Building even a small amount of wealth can reduce a household’s risk of economic hardship, create stability, and serve as a springboard to economic mobility. But many American households today feel that building wealth is out of their reach, particularly in the face of the broader affordability crisis. We find that despite substantial disparities in wealth among working households with low and moderate incomes, these households use business equity, home equity, and retirement savings to create wealth. Click here to read more.
  
  
• From the U.S. Chamber of Commerce: The U.S. Chamber’s CO— Small Business Day event convened entrepreneurs, experts, and industry leaders for a full day of insights and practical guidance on growing a business in today’s economy. The event featured conversations on innovation, digital transformation, and scaling for success—highlighting real-world examples from small business owners who are leveraging new tools and strategies to drive growth. Click here to read more. 
  
  
• From Workday: With the rapid evolution of technology, close partnership with industry leaders is essential for agencies to remain adaptable, resilient, and mission ready. Modernization is no longer just about replacing legacy systems and business processes; it’s about reimagining the entire employee experience—from hire to retire—to meet the high expectations of today’s workforce and the citizens they serve. Click here to read more.
  
  
• From Workforce Monitor: Staffing employment grew during the week of April 13–19, with the ASA Staffing Index increasing by 0.8% to a rounded value of 88. Staffing companies cited no one particular factor that hindered growth. Staffing jobs were 5.3% higher compared with the same period last year, up from 3.6% recorded the previous week. New starts also increased in the 16th week of the year, up 2.2% from the prior week. Three in 10 staffing companies (30%) reported gains in new assignments week to week, below the average of 40% so far in 2026. Click here to read more.
  
  
• From WorkingNation: There’s no single definition of rural America. Some rural communities are a small, but bustling, town center surrounded by vast swatches of farm land. Other communities are mountainous with a few homes and businesses scattered about the region. What they have in common is a population that wants to live and work in a community that offers a slower pace of life, one with financial stability. Providing quality jobs is key to making that happen. It takes a coalition of partners to make it work. While the number of U.S. farms continues a slow decline, and with tech playing an expanding role in all industries, the rural American job market is diversifying. The shift from traditional agricultural jobs towards manufacturing, clean energy, and health care is creating new opportunities that can provide that economic mobility and security. Click here to read more.

• From WorkRise: Evidence shows that workforce practitioners, such as workforce program managers, career counselors, and training coordinators, can take practical steps to support young people’s mental health without requiring clinical expertise. Through low-cost staff training, simple screening and referral processes, and leveraged resources provided by the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act, workforce development professionals can help improve completion rates and job placements for opportunity youth, elevating their prospect for long-term economic mobility. Click here to read more.

Click here to return to the MAX Mondays main page.

DATA TOOLS

• From Atlanta Regional Commission: Each week ARC, in partnership with Neighborhood Nexus, provides updated research and analytics through the 33^on blog. From a look at dhousing, rental rates, and cost of living to the job market and latest on wages, this blog .is a one-stop portal to a treasure trove of local and regional data. Click here to learn more.

• From Brookings: Using data from hundreds of thousands of real job transitions, the Job Mobility and Smart Growth Toolkit shows how workers can advance through labor markets—featuring national and city-by-city data on wage levels, local labor demand, and job mobility rankings for 441 occupations, from retail salespeople to cooks to computer programmers.  Click here to see the toolkit.

• From Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA): BEA is part of the United States Department of Commerce is a U.S. government agency that provides official macroeconomic and industry statistics, most notably reports about the gross domestic product (GDP) of the United States and its jurisdictions. Click here to access the data.

• From Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS): BLS is a unit of the United States Department of Labor and the principal fact-finding agency for the U.S. government with detailed labor economics and statistics. Click here to access the data.

• Career Ladder Identifier and Financial Forecaster (CLIFF): Career Ladder Identifier and Financial Forecaster, or CLIFF, is an umbrella for interactive financial planning tools designed by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta to provide information about benefits loss along a career path. Click here to access CLIFF.

• From Eviction Lab: The Eviction Lab Tracker shows the past year’s eviction statistics for five Atlanta counties and area census tracks. Click here to learn more.

• From FedCommunities: FedCommunities is offering Using Qualitative Research to Understand the Economy: A Toolkit for researchers, policymakers, employers, and workforce organizations interested in engaging directly with the populations they serve to elevate those populations’ perspectives in policy, programming, and practice. Research that engages communities as equal partners can yield unique, authentic results. This new Worker Voices Project toolkit, “Using Qualitative Research to Understand the Economy: A Toolkit,” offers insights on the community-engaged qualitative research practices used for the Fed’s Worker Voices Project and shows how researchers, policymakers, and workforce organizations might use these methods in their own work. Click here to access the toolkit. 

• From the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, Center for Workforce and Economic Opportunity (CWEO): The Atlanta Fed maintains a variety of data intelligence tools for informing workforce partners. Click here to learn more.
  • The Atlanta Fed’s Job Calculator determines the net employment change needed to achieve a target unemployment rate after a specified number of months. The user can adjust the target unemployment rate, the number of months, and the assumed labor force growth.
  • Labor Force Participation Dynamics provides data on the behavioral, demographic, and cyclical factors associated with labor force participation.
  • The Labor Market Distributions Spider Chart allows monitoring of broad labor market developments by comparing current conditions to those in up to two earlier time periods that the user selects.
  • Labor Report First Look provides a concise view of the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Employment Situation Summary. The tables and charts in the First Look offer a quick look at current and historical data along with data constructed from the summary. Data in the First Look will be updated with each release of the summary, which usually occurs on the first Friday of each month.
  • The Unemployment Claims Monitor displays data from the weekly and monthly unemployment claims reports from the U.S. Department of Labor. It is updated every Thursday. Users will find weekly and monthly data on claims and on who have filed for unemployment insurance, including special unemployment programs like Short-Time Compensation (or Workshare), Unemployment Compensation for Federal Employees, Ex-Service Members, and Extended Benefits programs.
  • Wage Growth Tracker measures the wage growth of individuals. It is constructed using microdata from the Current Population Survey (CPS) and is the median percent change in the hourly wage of individuals observed 12 months apart.   

• From Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis: The Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) is an online database consisting of hundreds of thousands of economic data time series from scores of national, international, public, and private sources. FRED, created and maintained by the Research Department at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, goes far beyond simply providing data. It combines data with a powerful mix of tools that help the user understand, interact with, display, and disseminate the data. Click here to access FRED.

• From the Georgia Department of Education (GaDOE): Georgia Insights is an initiative of GaDOE focused on improving and increasing the role of data-informed decision making among education decision makers in the state. Georgia Insights is the go-to location for GaDOE’s dashboards, data files, and data resources. By providing data in a streamlined, usable, and useful manner, Georgia Insights equips educators, parents, and communities with the tools and information needed to enact positive change in Georgia’s schools. Click here to learn more.

• From the Georgia Department of Labor: The Georgia Department of Labor provides access to a complete set of data tools for workforce developers to better understand the labor market conditions in Georgia. The portal also includes resources for job seekers and employers. Click here to learn more.

• From Georgia Municipal Association (GMA): GMA’s Dashboard includes indicators for each city in Georgia along with city and statewide averages for comparisons. Users can choose economic, education, household, population, demographic, and labor data. Click here to learn more.

• From Georgia Power: Georgia Power’s Community & Economic Development team maintains interactive tools to take a deeper dive into the data on target industries, the labor force, and more. This includes Georgia’s Top Industries. Click here to learn more.

• From the Governor’s Office of Student Achievement (GOSA): GOSA supports accountability and transparency through strategic data use and collaboration with education stakeholders to advance student success. Click here to learn more.=

• From the National Fund for Workforce Solutions: The National Fund for Workforce Solutions’ Workforce Equity Dashboard provides disaggregated data that uncovers racial gaps in workforce outcomes, identifies opportunities to advance racial equity across systems, and informs high-impact strategies to build a future where employers, workers, and communities prosper. This dashboard was developed in partnership with the National Equity Atlas. Click here to learn more.

• From Neighborhood Nexus: Neighborhood Nexus, a data partner of ARC, developed Data Nexus, a powerful tool to find, visualize, analyze, and download community data including demographic, education, health, and economic indicators from state and national sources, all in one place. Click here to learn more.

• From Prosperity Now: The Prosperity Now Scorecard is a comprehensive resource for data on household financial health, racial economic inequality, and policy recommendations to help put everyone in our country on a path to prosperity.  Click here to access.

• From the Technical College System of Georgia: TCSG’s Data and Research provides access to the System Scorecard, enrollment data, and more. Click here to learn more.

• From the University of Georgia, Carl Vinson Institute of Government (CVIOG): CVIOG has developed toolkits and other resources on a variety of workforce topics. Click here to learn more.

• From the U.S. Chamber of Commerce: Right now, there are too many jobs without people to fill them. As a result, businesses can’t grow, compete, or thrive. The America Works Data Center captures trends on job openings, labor force participation, quit rates, and more. Click here to learn more.

• From WorkSource Georgia: Through its portal, WorkSource Georgia provides access to labor market facts, area profiles, industry profiles, educational profiles, and occupational profiles. Click here to learn more.