The US’s birth rate problem isn’t going away anytime soon.

Recently released birth data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirms that the US once again saw a decline in fertility last year. The US recorded 3,606,400 live births in 2025, 1% fewer than the year prior. The general fertility rate, at 53.1 births per 1,000 females aged 15 to 44, fell 1% year over year as well.

The fertility rate in the US has declined for nearly two decades now, after peaking in 2007 with 69.5 births per 1,000 girls and women in that 15 to 44 age range. As more baby boomers reach retirement age, the decline in fertility means there are fewer workers entering the workforce to replace them, which will worsen labor shortages in the future. It’s a challenge impacting many other countries, including those in East Asia and Europe.

For more on why the falling birth rate matters for HR, keep reading here.—PM

As employers seek to hire and retain top talent to deliver on their AI strategy, continuously recognizing their achievements will likely become vital.

That’s part of the thinking behind a deeper partnership between Achievers, a Canadian recognition and rewards platform, and Workday, which has been an Achievers customer since 2023.

Workday announced on April 16 that it selected Achievers to power its recognition product.

Ben Carter, Workday’s SVP of total rewards, said implementing a recognition program had helped boost engagement among the company’s workforce, and that he believed this offering could be a differentiator from traditional total rewards programs.

For more on Workday’s bet on recognition retaining employees, keep reading here.—CV

Reckless company spending used to look like private jets and $400 expensed sushi dinners at Nobu. Today, it’s a $113,000-a-month Claude invoice. AI bills at some companies are now running so high that human labor may actually be cheaper than the tech that was supposed to automate jobs.

Last month, an Nvidia exec told Axios that the cost of compute for his team was “far beyond the costs of the employees.” Uber’s CTO told The Information that the company already burned through its full 2026 AI budget and is “back to the drawing board.” A recent Goldman Sachs research note put it bluntly: Companies are “overrunning their initial budgets for inference by orders of magnitude.” Some software companies are already spending roughly 10% of their total engineering labor costs on AI, according to Goldman. And that could soon match what these companies pay humans.

For more on the cost of AI, keep reading on Tech Brew.—WK