Insights for Workforce Developers and Employers

RECENT ARTICLES

• From Accenture: Some companies have burned through a year’s AI budget in a single quarter. Most companies manage tokens the same as cloud compute: reactively, when the bill arrives. The companies that pull ahead win on neither better models nor more compute, but by managing token consumption with the same rigor as capital allocation. The mistake is managing AI as a technology expense instead of an economic system. Click here to read more. 

• From The Annie E. Casey Foundation: Peo­ple rely on shared beliefs and assump­tions, often with­out real­iz­ing it, to inter­pret infor­ma­tion about top­ics like pover­ty and juve­nile jus­tice. These nar­ra­tives influ­ence not only what peo­ple believe but also what solu­tions they support. Data and research are essen­tial, but they are rarely enough on their own to change pub­lic think­ing. When facts are pre­sent­ed with­in a clear nar­ra­tive that explains why they mat­ter and what they mean, they become far more effec­tive at build­ing under­stand­ing and sup­port for action. Click here to read more. 

• From The Aspen Institute: In recent years, four issues have converged on American education simultaneously. Artificial intelligence, career-connected learning, school choice, and state governance. In the policy world, these tend to be treated as separate tracks, each with its own advocates, its own research base, its own political valence, its own funding stream. AI is a technology issue. Career pathways are a workforce issue. School choice is a governance and civil rights issue. State governance is a structural issue. This compartmentalization is a mistake. These four things are not separate problems. They are four pressures landing on the same worn-out design. Click here to read more.

• From Brookings: Data center construction is exploding amid the artificial intelligence (AI) boom—and so is the community backlash against these projects. Protests across the country and community concerns have prompted legislators to consider moratoriums on data center construction. At least 15 states have weighed pauses on data center development, and at least 100 localities have already approved their own. Click here to read more. 

• From Center for American Progress: The rise of cryptocurrency has brought with it new challenges in governance. Decentralized finance (DeFi), in particular, is a technology that seems purpose built to stymie regulation: It allows transactions to be pseudonymous and diffuse; it and its platforms evolve rapidly; it bypasses national borders; and it obscures information about transactions and assets, among other challenges. For these same reasons, DeFi presents massive national security risks, which regulators and law enforcement will not be able to address without strong legislation from Congress. Click here to read more. 

• From Center on Budget and Policy Priorities: In this report, we use the NHIS to estimate the total number of individuals with disabilities and those receiving SNAP, as it identifies individuals based on reported impairments as a broader measure of disability. In all subsequent figures and numbers based on the NHIS in this report, we adopt an expanded definition of disability. We also use SNAP Quality Control (QC) administrative data to analyze the demographic characteristics and benefit information of people with disabilities receiving SNAP, and to estimate by state the number of people with disabilities receiving SNAP and its benefits. Click here to read more. 

• From Economic Policy Institute: Allowing young teens to work more hours at night opens the door to problems ranging from poor academic outcomes to a greater chance of injury. Studies have consistently shown that intensive work at a young age is associated with poor academic outcomes; longer hours raise the risk of work-related illness and injury; and working later into the night exacerbates sleep deprivation that in turn can interfere with teens’ education and well-being. Allowing employers to schedule young teens to work until 9 p.m. also increases the likelihood of nighttime driving for new drivers, an additional risk factor for accidents. Click here to read more. 

• From FedCommunities: Child care interruptions can result in parents leaving work early or missing a full day. Sometimes, those interruptions even affect parents’ earnings or their ability to keep a job. We can also look at long-term benefits of quality child care. Since child care serves children during their early, sensitive years of development, it’s an opportunity to support the next generation of workers. This is especially true for children who are growing up in disadvantaged situations, like poverty. Click here to read more. 

• From the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta: It is widely recognized that demographics can have broad and consequential implications for factors including the neutral rate of interest, potential output growth, and transmission of monetary policy by affecting households’ decisions about consumption and savings over their life cycle. As the size and the composition of the age distribution change slowly, demographic projections are readily available and can be used to elicit valuable information about the low-frequency dynamics of key latent variables that guide monetary policy as well as asset valuations and inflation. Click here to read more. 

• From Gallup Workplace Insights: Today, 70% say they are somewhat or extremely knowledgeable about AI, up from 64% in 2024. But instead of becoming more comfortable with the technology, Americans’ previously improving attitudes toward AI have lost momentum, according to the latest Bentley University-Gallup Business in Society research. More Americans than in past years believe AI does more harm than good and expect AI to reduce the number of U.S. jobs over the next decade. They are also less likely to trust businesses to use it responsibly. Click here to read more. 

• From the International Association of Workforce Professionals (IAWP): For decades, workforce development has focused on helping people prepare for employment. That usually means identifying a career goal, completing training, improving a résumé, preparing for interviews, and finding a job. That work is still essential. But in a labor market shaped by artificial intelligence, automation, changing skill requirements, and less predictable career paths, helping someone find a job is no longer enough. Job seekers also need help learning how to keep learning. Click here to read more. 

• From Jobs for the Future: High-quality career pathways are designed to make the journey from school to career more coherent and less dependent on chance. At their best, they are built backward from labor market demand and organized around clear course sequences, meaningful work-based learning, advising, postsecondary options, and credentials that employers value. That structure matters because it helps students see where they are headed and what steps will get them there. Click here to read more. 

• From JPMorganChase: JPMorganChase announced the firm intends to deploy over $750 billion through 2035 to increase housing supply and support homeownership in the United States. This marks a nearly 40 percent increase in the firm’s housing capital deployment compared to the past decade, and includes financing for 1,000,000 affordable housing units and helping 500,000 homebuyers purchase homes. Click here to learn more. 

• From Manpower: If there is one thing that feels fundamentally different about manufacturing today compared with just a few years ago, it is the pace and scale of change. Manufacturers are navigating a convergence of forces unlike anything we have seen in decades. Artificial intelligence is moving from experimentation to implementation. Supply chains continue to be reshaped by geopolitical tensions and regionalization. Energy costs remain volatile. Digital transformation initiatives are accelerating. And the competition for skilled talent has never been more intense. Click here to read more. 

• From McKinsey & Company: Increasingly powerful AI models are enabling new applications and creating more economic value, which, in turn, accelerates adoption and drives demand for ever greater computing power. This conforms with the economic principle known as the Jevons paradox, in which tech advances that allow more efficient use of a resource lead to rising consumption of that resource. As computing intensity rises, so do the energy requirements of AI data centers. Overall, their electricity demand is expected to grow considerably through 2030, with AI workloads accounting for about 70 percent of the increase. Click here to read more. 

• From the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE): The rapid evolution of artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping the landscape of higher education, not only in how the institutions teach and assess learning, but also in how they prepare students for an increasingly uncertain and dynamic employment landscape. AI has transformed the workforce by automating repetitive tasks, eliminating some roles entirely, and generating entirely new types of jobs. At the same time, employers are reevaluating employability, which entails the ability to obtain and maintain a job. Click here to read more. 

• From the National Association of Counties (NACO): On July 17, the U.S. Senate Environment and Natural Resources Committee advanced the Small County PILT Parity Act (S. 1175). This measure would amend the Payments in Lieu of Taxes (PILT) formula to provide fairer program funding to counties with populations smaller than 5,000. The legislation would bring needed fairness to the PILT formula and support rural counties tasked with providing government services on and around federal land to residents and visitors alike. Click here to read more. 

• From the National Association of Workforce Boards (NAWB): One of the most persistent challenges is how disconnected the workforce system can feel. There is often limited clarity around how employers, education providers, and workforce organizations should work together, what role each plays, what resources are needed to support effective implementation, and too little agreement on a needed common language to describe this work and related outcomes. These challenges were also evident in discussions about apprenticeships. While multiple approaches are designed to support talent development, many employers choose to create their own programs rather than pursue formal registration. Click here to read more. 

• From the National Conference of State Legislatures: States are tightening requirements for new data center projects. Some jurisdictions now require developers to demonstrate adequate water supplies and supporting infrastructure before permits are approved, while others are reevaluating tax incentives to ensure they include water-conservation measures and community-impact considerations. In some areas, water availability is becoming as important as power access in determining where facilities are built. Click here to read more.

• From the National League of Cities (NLC): Many firefighters, along with other public safety personnel, experience high levels of stress due to exposure to traumatic events on the jobs, and continued exposure to high-stress situations may harm mental health and overall wellbeing. While fire departments respond to behavioral health crises and other complex community needs, local governments are exploring co-responder programs, which pair first responders with behavioral health or human services professionals. These programs may improve response outcomes for residents, reduce strain on emergency response systems and support the well-being of firefighters and other public safety personnel. Click here to read more.

• From the National Fund for Workforce Solutions: In June, our nation’s labor force participation rate — the portion of working-age adults who are employed or actively looking for work — fell to its lowest point in 50 years, excluding the COVID pandemic years. This isn’t due solely to retirements or a declining immigrant population. Many workers are opting out of the labor market and it spells trouble for families, businesses, and communities. Click here to read more.

• From the National Skills Coalition: National Skills Coalition’s observation of the Workplace Literacy program confirmed that there was an appetite among individual employers and among training providers to reach a population of English learners in the workforce who may never previously have qualified for incumbent worker training. The program also affirmed the urgent importance of digital skill-building for many of these workers and the businesses that employ them. Click here to read more.

• From Prosperity Now: Every organization pays close attention to how it is evaluated. Banks are no different. What gets measured gets managed, and activities that receive less emphasis can gradually receive fewer resources, less executive attention, and lower strategic priority. Modernization and accountability can advance together. Regulatory requirements should be clear, workable, and proportionate to a bank’s size and business model while maintaining meaningful incentives for locally responsive lending, attainable homeownership, small-business financing, responsible financial products, and effective nonprofit partnerships. Click here to read more. 

• From the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM): Based on this report, HR leaders should recognize that opening the gates to learning opportunities isn’t enough to spur engagement. Instead, they must build an environment of strong teams. In doing so, employees feel engaged in their work and connected to one another — and their managers. In turn, this supports further development through learning opportunities. Click here to read more. 

• From the Urban Institute: Rising property insurance premiums are quietly becoming one of the biggest threats to housing affordability in the United States. Evidence shows that current premiums are outpacing what household incomes can absorb, leaving more homeowners burdened by insurance nationally and in the country’s most disaster-exposed markets. Click here to read more.

• From the U.S. Chamber of Commerce: Despite ongoing debates around AI regulation, AI in Healthcare: A Cross-Agency Roundtable—a closed-door convening that brought together more than fifty leaders from government, healthcare, and industry under Chatham House rules—found substantial common ground across government and industry. Participants in a group of more than 50 health leaders repeatedly returned to three shared priorities: stronger public-private coordination, greater clarity, and building trust in AI-enabled healthcare.   Click here to read more. 

• From Workday: Ultimately, agentic AI isn’t about replacing the human element; it is about freeing up human capital to focus on strategic relationships and critical judgment. By laying the right financial infrastructure and operational guardrails today, we can turn consumption pricing into a powerful engine for predictable growth. Click here to read more.

• From Workforce Monitor: Staffing employment edged up during the week of July 13–19, with the ASA Staffing Index increasing by 0.6% to a rounded value of 90. Staffing jobs were 3.7% higher compared with the same period last year, down from 4.6% recorded the previous week. New starts also increased during the 29th week of the year, up 3.2% from the prior week. Close to half of all staffing companies (46%) reported gains in new assignments week to week, slightly above the average of 41% 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: Early adulthood is a critical financial moment when people begin building credit, taking on debt, and making investments in education, work, and housing that shape their long-term trajectories as consumers and workers. New and worsening challenges faced by today’s young workers make them particularly vulnerable and in need of greater protections and safeguards at the state and local levels. Click here to read more.

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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.