The Agenda:
Who is hiring?
Top HR and work-related articles
Tips for CV making, job search, interviews, and career progression
Industries trends
Leadership
Recruitment news
Freelancing news
Vocational guidance
Mindfulness
Psychological insert
Top stories from my clients
Blog recap
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Who is hiring?
The headline number looks reassuring.
Global unemployment sits at 4.9%, stable, unchanged from last year, a sign that the labour market has not collapsed under the weight of AI disruption, trade uncertainty, or the slow cooling of post-pandemic growth.
But stability, as the International Labour Organisation warns in its latest report, should not be mistaken for health.
Beneath the surface, the picture is more complicated and more interesting.
The broader “jobs gap,” which captures everyone who wants paid work but cannot access it, is projected to reach 408 million people in 2026.
Job quality improvements have stalled, and the workers who are most exposed: young people, low-income earners, and those in countries with fast-growing but structurally weak labour markets, are not seeing much relief from a steady unemployment rate.
What is changing, and changing fast, is where work is being created and what it requires.
Five areas are driving most of the growth right now: healthcare and social assistance, technology roles tied to AI and cybersecurity, clean energy and electric vehicles, construction and infrastructure, and advanced manufacturing, particularly in semiconductors.
These are not boom sectors in the traditional sense.
Hiring is targeted and strategic, concentrated where demographics, public investment, and technological shift happen to converge.
Healthcare leads the way almost everywhere, driven by ageing populations in high-income countries and a structural gap in care provision that no amount of automation is likely to close anytime soon.
Clean energy is expanding faster than the overall labour market, with job creation spreading across battery manufacturing, grid infrastructure, and EV production.
In the Gulf, construction and digital transformation are fuelling some of the strongest recruitment momentum in the world.
In white-collar and financial services, the mood is considerably cooler.
Workers, sensing the shift, are staying put; the quit rate is near historic lows, which says something about how people read the current moment.
Artificial intelligence is now the central variable in almost every conversation about work.
It is reshaping hiring processes, restructuring roles, and quietly raising the bar for entry.
Thirty-five per cent of entry-level jobs now require AI skills, a figure that did not exist in any meaningful way three years ago.
The effects are uneven: India’s IT sector saw substantial slowdowns in hiring in 2025, with cuts to mid-level and senior roles partly attributed to AI adoption.
Optimism among fully remote workers has dropped noticeably, possibly because the kinds of knowledge work that made remote jobs abundant are precisely the kinds most exposed to automation.
Hybrid workers, by contrast, have held steady, suggesting that physical presence and human coordination still carry value that software cannot easily replicate.
This does not mean AI is simply eliminating jobs.
The World Economic Forum projects 170 million new roles by 2030 alongside 92 million losses, a net gain, but one that requires significant movement across sectors and skill sets.
The challenge is not the number, it is the transition.
For new graduates and young job seekers, 2026 presents a genuinely mixed picture; the unemployment rate for recent college graduates has reached 5.6%, one of the highest levels in a decade outside of the pandemic.
Young people are entering a market that is hiring, but selectively and with rising expectations.
At the same time, there are real signs of improvement; more than three in four recent graduates landed a role within three months of finishing their studies, up from 63% just a year ago.
Employers project graduate hiring to be up 5.6% compared to last year.
The top growing sectors for new entrants include information, engineering services, construction, and professional services.
The gap that remains is one of expectations: current graduates expect starting salaries around $80,000; actual offers average closer to $56,000.
And the skills employers want, particularly digital fluency and AI literacy, are still not consistently built into most educational pathways.
Young people are motivated and adaptable, but the system around them is still catching up.
The overall mood in the global job market right now is one of cautious adaptation.
Salary transparency is becoming a differentiator, job seekers are demanding data, and the employers who offer it are attracting more trust.
Flexibility, digital skills, and the ability to keep learning are no longer nice-to-haves.
The market is not broken, but it is selective, uneven, and moving faster than most people and most institutions are comfortable with.
That is both the challenge and, for those paying attention, the opportunity.
Top 10 Multinationals Hiring Right Now:
Amazon
Microsoft
Google (Alphabet)
Meta
Thales
Nvidia
Salesforce
Boston Scientific
Dexcom
Accenture
Top HR and work-related articles
The European Union has expanded the European Globalisation Adjustment Fund (EGF), introducing a significant change to how and when workers can access support during company restructuring.
Until now, the fund was only available to people who had already lost their jobs.
Under the new rules, workers who are at risk of redundancy but have not yet been dismissed will also be eligible for assistance, a first for the programme.
The reasoning behind the change is practical: layoffs caused by restructuring rarely happen all at once.
They tend to come in waves, meaning that many workers know well in advance that their position is at risk.
The EU’s view is that waiting until someone is actually unemployed before offering support is too late.
Intervening earlier, while the person is still employed but facing an uncertain future, gives them a better chance of transitioning smoothly into a new role.
The support available through the EGF includes training to develop or update skills, official certification of those skills, job-search assistance, and career advice.
These measures are designed to help workers move into different roles or industries rather than face a prolonged period of unemployment.
The update was first signalled in the EU’s Industrial Action Plan for the European automotive sector, published in March 2025, reflecting broader concern about the pressures facing industries like automotive and steel amid economic shifts and geopolitical uncertainty.
The EGF change was proposed alongside an amendment to the European Social Fund Plus, the EU’s main instrument for investing in people and social rights, which the Council had already adopted in September 2025.
The new rules will remain in place until the end of 2027, when the current EGF programme is due to expire.
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There is a phrase that has echoed through offices and boardrooms for decades: “It’s not personal, it’s business.”
The implication is that emotional distance is a mark of professionalism, but that logic is looking increasingly outdated, and the evidence against it is hard to ignore.
Writing in Harvard Business Review, researcher Paul Ingram argues that professional friendships are not a soft extra; they are a serious asset, both for individuals and for organisations and right now, most of us are undervaluing them.
The context matters: employees today spend more of their waking hours at work than with family or non-work friends.
The post-pandemic years have left many professionals more isolated than before, and the former US Surgeon General has spoken of an epidemic of loneliness with measurable consequences for productivity, engagement, retention, and links to nearly one million premature deaths worldwide each year.
The research is detailed: people who feel genuinely connected to colleagues are more engaged, more collaborative, more resilient, and less likely to leave.
They also tend to speak up more honestly and take more initiative, two things organisations consistently say they want and consistently struggle to encourage.
The relationships you build at work are not incidental to your professional life.
In many ways, they are the foundation of it.
https://employment-social-affairs.ec.europa.eu/news/eu-expands-support-workers-risk-job-loss-2026-05-21_en
https://hbr.org/2026/01/dont-underestimate-the-value-of-professional-friendships?ab=HP-hero-for-you-1
Tips for CV making, job search, interviews, and career progression
Negotiating your salary is not just acceptable; most employers expect it.
The key is to prepare before any offer arrives: research market rates for your role, know what you bring to the table, and decide on your minimum acceptable package in advance.
Once you have a written offer
