From recruiting and retention to company culture and the latest in HR tech, HR Brew delivers up-to-date industry news and tips to help HR pros stay nimble in today’s fast-changing business environment.

HR Brew

Amanda Schiavo

hr-brew.com

A woman hanging a help wanted sign in a window.

February BLS JOLTS report shows small changes since January 

The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ latest JOLTS data highlights a “historically tight” labor market, according to one expert.

What HR should know about the February JOLTS report

Mikaela Cohen

Generative ai hand reaching out from a web browser accepting a job application

Looking beyond the résumé: How talent pros can lean into skills-based hiring

“If we’re becoming a bit more innovative…then we won’t rely only on a document that speaks to past experience,” East Side Staffing’s Laura Mazzullo tells HR Brew.

The Kaseya logo against a green backdrop.

Tech company Kaseya credits YOY drop in attrition to its RTO policy  

“We believe that being in-person creates and fosters a collaboration that you just can’t get remotely,” Kasey’s Head of Global Recruitment Eric Lund tells HR Brew.

Tech company Kaseya credits YOY drop in attrition to its RTO policy

A magnifying glass icon denoting HR recruitment and retention

Recruitment & Retention

An illustration of a photo of HR Brew reporter Paige McGlauflin.

Paige McGlauflin

With the labor market cooling, experts have said that now is the best time for employers to invest in 

. The only problem is that companies aren’t actually doing that.

. Despite a modest increase in hiring demand in the first half of this year, internal hiring and promotion rates have actually fallen.

Hiring demand was up 6% year-over-year in the first half of 2025, down slightly from the 7% YoY increase in the first half of 2024, according to Workday’s internal data and external surveys.

However, internal hiring fell 8% YoY, and only 30% of all hires in June were internal. Additionally, promotion rates fell in 10 of the 11 industries tracked by Workday; manufacturing was the only one to see an increase in promotions.

“It is pretty rare for 10 industries to see a promotion recession all at the same time,” said Phil Willburn, VP of people analytics, insights, and experiences at Workday. “That was very surprising to me in our latest data.”

It’s creating some frustrations. More than 57% of job seekers feel stuck in today’s labor market, according to one of the surveys conducted by Workday for the report. (High performers, who are often more likely to land opportunities even in cooling markets, aren’t feeling so stuck, though: Attrition for high-performing employees was up in every single industry, with the largest spikes being in retail and healthcare, up 64% and 28% YoY.)

AI transformation may be to blame, Willburn said. Many companies have been eager to adopt the new technology, but haven’t necessarily focused on training their workers to use it. (Just 21% of business leaders surveyed by Workday believe investing in AI tools and upskilling will be a key retention driver in the next year.) Instead, they’re focused on getting these skills from external hires, which may push high-potential employees out the door.

“You need to have a clear and strong narrative around AI, because high performers, above anything else, they need growth,” Willburn said. “They want growth, and as soon as they feel slightly stagnant, they’re the ones who always have opportunities.”

 that HR leaders need to be involved in AI strategy with their C-suite peers, according to Willburn. Without a clear roadmap and communication around AI, workers will be left in the dust, lacking critical skills and fearing displacement. (Relatedly, 44% of employee comments about strategy and AI were negative.)

“When all of these tools are being rolled out, and then the CEO is like: ‘Why aren’t we adopting when we’re spending this much money?’ This is when HR is now coming in and saying, ‘This is how you actually drive behavior change,’” Willburn said. “My hope is that this is a wake up call for many organizations, and that then HR steps in and you’re going to see this improve in the near future.”

characters running across a crevice with a hand of "skills" helping them cross

Employers aren’t focused on internal mobility, research finds

Today’s cooling labor market is the perfect opportunity for employers to upskill and promote their own employees. They aren’t doing it.

Employers are failing to prioritize internal mobility, according to Workday research

 and companies pull back on external hiring, more are considering how to best develop and leverage their existing workforce.

Caroline Bethune, manager of internal mobility at the conglomerate Cox Enterprises, says most companies take one of two routes when developing existing talent: They either dedicate part of their talent acquisition team to internal mobility and requisitions, or create a team focused on developing strategy around and creating (but not overseeing) initiatives like a talent marketplace or mentoring program.

Her team is trying to strike a balance between the two—an approach, she says, she hasn’t seen at many other companies.

“Our team is sort of in the middle of both of those,” Bethune told HR Brew. “So we’re uniquely setting a trend, I feel like, for what internal mobility could be outside of those two predominant spaces.”

This approach was informed by employee feedback and a desire to ensure the company’s internal mobility program was based on workers’ needs. Bethune saw an opportunity for a team that employees could turn to for feedback on their applications, interviews, or thank-you letters.

“I think being able to solve [those issues] is probably most critical for an HR partner or a business that’s looking to deepen their exposure in the internal mobility space,” Bethune said. “They first have to really understand: Where are your people today at? What are the pain points today? What do they think about the experience? What are the challenges they have moving in the organization? Because if you don’t have a really good pulse there, then everything you’re building doesn’t resonate with actual employees.”

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

What’s the best change you’ve made at a place you’ve worked?

We have four advisors that are on the team today. One of the things I felt where there was a gap was, there isn’t a centralized place for employees to go one-to-one to get career guidance. They can go to the HRBPs and they can give them some feedback, they certainly can go to their leader to help develop and build them. But there isn’t a team that actually sits closest to talent in the hiring practices giving them coaching and guidance and strategic advice, planning their career journey and having those conversations.

So my first thought was, well, let’s build one. If we’re going to focus on internal mobility, let’s have a team that is specifically there to empower and guide our employees through connecting to the right roles and opportunities. That’s the framing of where we created the team, and then we moved into: How do we actually build a scalable consult program? And so that’s what we do today. We meet employees where they are, but we offer one-to-one guidance for employees around coaching and development in their career journey.

What’s the biggest misconception people might have about your job?

That internal mobility advisors don’t participate in recruiting. Meaning that there is a distinction between traditional recruiters, and what our teams are doing from a talent delivery perspective, and then what we’re doing.

We’re still recruiting. Internal mobility is still an aspect of recruiting. It looks very different because, we don’t have specific

[requisitions] for you to then apply to, for us to go through the process with, and then for us to end up hiring someone. It’s not an end-to-end service. But what we are doing is we are helping to build awareness for our leaders around talent that otherwise they wouldn’t have known, which is a part of recruiting.

What’s the most fulfilling aspect of your job?

Helping people discover new possibilities within the company. Empowering them to grow, stay, and thrive. It’s incredibly rewarding to see someone go from feeling uncertain about their next step to landing a role that reenergizes their career, all while staying in a place they already know and value.

What trend in HR are you most optimistic about? Why?

Internal mobility—focusing on “build vs. buy” talent strategies—developing existing employees rather than constantly hiring externally.

What trend in HR are you least optimistic about? Why?

Erosion of trust in DEI efforts. Not because the work itself isn’t valuable, but because progress has stalled or even regressed in many organizations.

Cutout of a woman, Caroline Bethune, manager of internal mobility at Cox Enterprises, displayed on a templated background.

Want to build an internal mobility program? Start with this advice from one expert

It’s always good to stop and listen.

This internal mobility manager shares what employers should do first when developing their existing talent

There’s good news and bad news for anyone who felt like things were not as they appeared to be with the labor market.

The good news: You weren’t crazy. And the bad news: The labor market was performing 

 worse than initially reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

Employers added 911,000 fewer jobs between April 2024 and March 2025 than previously reported, according to a 

The preliminary benchmark, accounting for around 76,000 fewer jobs a month on average, is the largest downward revision since 2002. By comparison, 

 downsized job growth by 818,000 (though it was later adjusted to 598,000), and a revision in March 2009 downsized growth by 902,000.

Despite being released in September 2025, the benchmark is unrelated to the latest employment situation data from the BLS, which found that employers added 

“The latest economic data—which are wholly unaffected by today’s preliminary revisions—suggest the labor market is weakening for all workers,” Elise Gould and Ben Zipperer, senior economists at the Economic Policy Institute, 

 via the nonprofit. “Job growth has been especially weak since May. Household survey rates also point to falling prime-age Black employment and higher unemployment for US-born workers.”

Leisure and hospitality saw the steepest downward revision of all major industries, adding 176,000 fewer jobs than originally reported. That was followed by professional and business services and retail trade, which saw declines of 158,000 and 126,200, respectively.

However, transportation and warehousing and utilities both had more job growth than initially reported, adding 6,600 and 3,700, respectively.

Each year, the BLS adjusts its employment numbers for a specific period, originally taken from its monthly establishment survey, using estimates from state unemployment insurance tax records as its benchmark. These records are less timely, but more comprehensive than the BLS’s survey, which has in recent years 

 to get robust response rates. The BLS is expected to release its full revision early next year.

One reason for the discrepancies between the monthly survey data and revisions may be how immigration is factored into each report, Ron Hetrick, principal economist at Lightcast, 

. State unemployment insurance records only include workers who are eligible for unemployment, not undocumented workers who are on employers’ payrolls and pay taxes but ineligible for unemployment benefits. Meanwhile, the monthly survey data does not ask about immigration status. And, as the Trump administration began revoking the legal statuses of thousands of immigrants, they were removed from payroll counts.

“There were more people working on payrolls and that is what the survey is measuring. Now they aren’t,” Hetrick wrote. “These people drove growth and were initially counted, and now they are leaving payrolls.”

 Tuesday’s revisions come as the Trump administration has 

 to the agency’s data and practices. President Trump’s nominee to lead the BLS has advocated for releasing the jobs report on a quarterly basis to ensure what he claimed is greater accuracy. But economists reacting to Tuesday’s benchmark data noted that despite its flaws, it’s better to take the monthly report for important talent-related decision making than have to wait months to get that data.

“If I had to choose between less accurate information today to guide a decision, versus more accurate data four months from now—after the decision is made—I’d always choose the former,” Kory Kantenga, head of economics for the Americas at LinkedIn, 

An illustration of a businessman slipping down a downward trending line graph.

Employers added 910 fewer jobs than initially estimated, per BLS revision

Tuesday’s preliminary benchmark from the BLS marks the largest downward revision of employment data in recent history.

Employers added 910,000 fewer jobs than the BLS originally estimated

The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ August 

 was, well, not good. Employers made few job gains, while the unemployment rate rose to its highest level in years. As the labor market slowed further this summer, experts have again sounded the alarm about an economic downturn. Let’s take a closer look.

Employers added just 22,000 jobs in August, well below 

 of 75,000. Meanwhile, June job gains were revised down by 13,000, and July job gains were revised up to 79,000. The unemployment rate increased to 4.3%, the highest seen since October 2021.

 that a recession may be imminent, while Mark Zandi, an economist at Moody’s, 

 that the labor market is already in one, and has been since June, Business Insider reported. While one month of data is not enough evidence of a recession, the unemployment rate rising while job gains are slowing is a concerning early sign, said Glassdoor’s chief economist, Daniel Zhao, noting if this trend continues in the coming months, it could trigger the Sahm rule (a recession indicator).

“A more substantial downturn is definitely something that businesses have to plan for,” Zhao said. “It’s not a guarantee, but especially with the increasing unemployment rate there are more signs that the job market is weakening in an unhealthy manner.”

Amy Glaser, SVP of business operations at staffing firm Adecco, cautioned employers against letting the topline August numbers drive their talent decision-making.

“We’ll have to wait and see what comes out in September. At this point, I’m still optimistic the labor market is going to remain resilient and strong,” she said. “We’ve called 2025 the year of durability in terms of the labor market. Unemployment changed very minimally, so there’s still opportunity out there for millions of Americans on a daily basis.”

Healthcare added around 31,000 jobs in August, the largest increase of any industry but also below the average monthly gains of 42,000 that the sector reported over the last year. The healthcare industry has made up the bulk of the labor market’s job gains in recent years, and now a moderation in healthcare hiring may not adequately make up for cooling in other sectors.

“There’s no guarantee that healthcare will continue to add jobs at the pace that we’ve seen in recent years. So even if healthcare is continuing to add jobs in the short to medium term, it might not be enough to outweigh the declines in jobs that we’re seeing across all other industries,” Zhao said.

Healthcare was followed by social assistance, which added more than 16,000 jobs, and accommodation and food services, which added over 13,000 jobs. Additionally, retail trade added 10,000 jobs, mostly driven by general merchandising.

Meanwhile, professional and business services reported a decline, with 17,000 fewer jobs added—the steepest of any industry. That sector was followed by durable goods manufacturing and the federal government, which added 19,000 and 15,000 fewer jobs, respectively.

Unfortunately for employers, it’s uncertain how the economy will play out over the next few months. The Federal Reserve is expected to meet and cut interest rates later this month. Lower interest rates could free up cash for businesses and allow them to pursue business investments that lead to hiring.

“Overall, I would say that rate cuts will be stimulative, but it’s not a guarantee that it will outweigh some of these other factors that aren’t related to rates at all,” Zhao said.

The other primary factor at play is tariffs. Despite being locked up in court challenges, many of President Donald Trump’s 

 went into effect in August, charging a 10% to 50% tax on imported goods, depending on the origin country. The impact of tariffs on consumers and businesses isn’t yet known, though sectors like retail and leisure and hospitality—both of which reported employment gains in August—will likely be negatively affected, according to Zhao.

In light of this uncertainty, Glaser said employers are focused on making multiple contingency plans.

“I think if Covid taught us anything as employers, it taught us the ability to be agile and to move quickly,” she said. “So employers are trying to get ahead of it, as we speak today.”

Weak August jobs data is bad news for employers

“A more substantial downturn is definitely something that businesses have to plan for,” an economist tells HR Brew.

Abysmal August jobs report puts recession fears back on employers’ radar

The dog days of summer are coming to an end, and the labor market is already experiencing a frost.

Employers reported a decline in job openings in July, while all other turnover including hiring and separations stagnated from June, according to Wednesday’s 

job openings and labor turnover survey (JOLTS) data

 from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Let’s take a closer look.

Employers reported 7.2 million job openings in July, down from 7.4 million in June. Meanwhile, organizations made 5.3 million hires, and saw 3.2 million quits and 1.8 million layoffs and discharges in July, all unchanged from June.

“Employer cautiousness continues,” Rajesh Namboothiry, SVP at Manpower US, told HR Brew. “They’re not hiring, but they’re not firing either.”

Additionally, the ratio of job openings per unemployed person edged up slightly to 1 in July, which Namboothiry said is a bad sign for job seekers. “It is getting tough for job seekers,” he said, adding, “We know that from data, we know that from talking to our talent, that it is getting tougher for them to find jobs. There are less jobs and more job seekers.”

Healthcare and social assistance reported the steepest drop in job openings (a trend supported by 

), declining by 181,000 between June and July, followed by retail trade and arts, entertainment, and recreation, which fell by 110,000 and 62,000, respectively.

In professional and business services, quits increased by 197,000, the largest spike of any industry, while layoffs fell by 130,000. Meanwhile, quits declined the most in construction (down by 80,000), transportation, warehousing, and utilities, and accommodation and food services (both down by 49,000).

Manufacturing was a bright spot in Wednesday’s data, reporting a 41,000 spike in job openings and an increase of 21,000 hires between June and July.

“We have seen that over the last couple of months manufacturing activities have slightly picked up locally,” Namboothiry said. “So that is an indication that we may see some pockets of manufacturing jobs to be added, skilled trade jobs added, which is a positive.”

HR and TA leaders should expect sluggish turnover to continue in the coming months. While 

 from the Federal Reserve later this month could stimulate some business activity and boost hiring, other challenges—including 

—will likely force businesses to continue their trepidatious approach.

As economic uncertainty festers, businesses will likely continue pursuing short-term talent strategies. Namboothiry said he hasn’t had long-term workforce planning conversations with clients for several months now.

“There was a time when they were looking a year ahead. Now it’s not even a quarter ahead,” Namboothiry said.

A Now Hiring sign with Now crossed out and replaced with Not

July’s sluggish JOLTS data is a sign of what’s to come

Despite rate cuts expected this month, continued economic challenges are expected to only further stagnate labor turnover.

The labor market cooled even further in July. It’s only expected to continue.

Following major shakeups at the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), September’s labor market data has many on their toes.

President Donald Trump fired BLS commissioner Erika McEntarfar on Aug. 1, following a 

 that estimated employers added only 73,000 jobs in July and revised job growth down by 258,000 in May and June.

“She will be replaced with someone much more competent and qualified. Important numbers like this must be fair and accurate, they can’t be manipulated for political purposes,” Trump 

 on his social media platform. There has been zero evidence of “rigged” data on her part.

McEntarfar’s removal raised concerns among experts including former BLS commissioners (appointed by both Democratic and Republic presidents), who warned it could 

 Then, on Aug. 11, Trump nominated a replacement: E.J. Antoni, chief economist of the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank that published Project 2025.

 in front of the Senate HELP Committee this month, has been met with outcry from many economists, who’ve said he is 

 to lead the BLS and fear he would use the agency and its data to 

further the Trump administration’s political agenda

, rather than report objective statistics.

The outcry sends a worrying signal to HR and talent acquisition (TA) leaders, who use BLS data for everything from forecasting changes in labor supply and demand by location to tracking wage growth by industry.

“Bipartisan groups, including former BLS officials and commissioners, economists, watchdog orgs, condemned that firing as a literal threat to statistical independence… [that] is something that will make every chief people officer, every economist, every talent acquisition leader, raise their eyebrows quite a bit,” Matt Staney, VP of community at HIGHER Community, a professional group that counts more than 12,000 senior TA leaders among its members, told HR Brew.

At the time of McEntarfar’s firing, Lauren Winans, CEO and principal HR consultant at Next Level Benefits, assumed that the BLS commissioner must have done something “really egregious” to warrant her dismissal, until she looked at the revisions.

“But then when you dig into it, the updates and the revisions that were made to the data are pretty standard, because it’s statistical data, and because things are collected in somewhat of an antiquated way, and there are delays,” she said, adding later, “I thought the rush to judgment to immediately go after the commissioner was a little shortsighted, because then it creates this crack in the stability and the credibility of the agency itself.”

. But proposals from the Trump administration and Antoni to “improve the data”—by 

 for a quarterly, for example—could impact how HR leaders craft their hiring strategies, Winans said. Additionally, after significant methodological changes, it could take months before the data is trustworthy again.

“Certainly if they make a shift in methodology, I probably would give it at least a couple of cycles before I maybe trust the data, because when you switch that methodology, that does kind of create some significant change in the way the numbers look and how long it takes to kind of catch up with itself,” Winans said, noting she would continue to use the data as one of several indicators of economic health.

However, McEntarfar’s baseless firing over an upsetting jobs report has already sowed mistrust in future data among HR and TA leaders, said Staney. Employers were planning their hiring strategies on a quarterly basis, as crises from policies like tariffs worsened economic uncertainty. As the integrity of the jobs data creates more uncertainty, TA leaders’ planning will only become more short term.

“When TA leaders pitch workforce strategy to execs, they need to be able to point to independent and trusted sources, and we’re running out of those now, if these sources become political tools,” said Staney. “If he just implants a loyalist into the BLS to just paint whatever picture he wants, we’re going to be flying completely blind, and nobody’s going to trust anything, and companies are not going to hire in a healthy way, and our unemployment situation will worsen.”

President Donald Trump stands in the oval office, with large printouts of economic graphs stacked on the Resolute desk

BLS’s leadership shakeup sends worrying signal for employers

President Trump’s firing of the BLS commissioner, and subsequent outcry from experts, is a bad sign for HR leaders who rely on the data.

Why leadership changes at the BLS are worrying for employers

The worst hiring practice Kasey Harboe Guentert has witnessed is lacking a clear hiring plan.

Harboe Guentert is an executive consultant at HR consultancy APTMetrics, where she helps employers make “smart, fair, and data-driven decisions when building their teams.” She is also the co-author of 

, which helps employers better recruit, assess, and select candidates.

“Every new requisition shows up and the hiring manager just does it all by themselves, without any support necessarily,” Harboe Guentert said. “The way they actually conduct the interview and the questions they ask and how they evaluate the capabilities of the candidate, it's just completely random.”

It’s a practice she says is “unfortunately still common,” and one that ultimately hurts hiring managers and their teams. Inarticulate hiring processes can be time consuming, Harboe Guentert said. Even if hiring managers ask good questions, without objective criteria to evaluate candidates, they can end up choosing candidates based on personal feelings (aka, 

Hiring managers typically have a good understanding of what success looks like in the job they’re hiring for, even if they haven’t formally communicated that. But encouraging them to focus on that “will get them away from the: “Can you sell me this pen?” or, “do I have a beer with this person?” of question,” Harboe Guentert said.

One of the most meaningful changes I led at Airbnb was building out structured, role-specific definitions of what success looks like for jobs like software engineers, machine learning engineers, customer support, or members of our trust team. These definitions, called competencies, helped us create a shared language for evaluating talent, making hiring and promotion decisions fairer, more transparent, and more consistent. It aligned teams around expectations and gave people a clearer path to grow.

That my work is just about writing job descriptions or checking boxes in the hiring process. In reality, it’s about shaping how companies define success, grow talent, and make decisions that affect real people’s careers. I use research, data, and deep collaboration to build systems that help organizations hire and develop fairly and strategically. It’s not just HR—it’s business-critical design.

I’m deeply curious about what people actually do at work. Not just their job titles or high-level responsibilities, but how they think, solve problems, and create value every day. When I’m learning about a role, I go deep below the surface. I ask about the moments that make someone’s work satisfying or frustrating, what decisions they have to make, who they rely on, and what great performance looks like in their context.

I’ve sat with software engineers walking me through code reviews, listened to customer service reps explain how they balance empathy with policy, and talked with trust and safety team members about the ethical choices baked into their daily work. I ask questions until I can picture myself in the role, not to do it, but to understand it well enough to build systems that reflect its complexity and value.

This kind of deep listening and analysis helps me design fairer, clearer talent practices. But more than that, it reflects what drives me: I care about people’s work. I think what people do every day matters. And I believe that understanding those details—really understanding them—is the first step to making work better.

The growing recognition that how we define, hire, and develop talent really matters, not just to companies, but to people’s lives. There’s a shift happening toward more intentional, evidence-based, and human-centered approaches to work. We’re seeing more organizations invest in clarity, fairness, and transparency—not as afterthoughts, but as core to good business.

I’m especially hopeful about the increasing collaboration between researchers, practitioners, and technologists. When we bring together data, design, and deep understanding of jobs, we can build systems that work better. That gives me hope for a future where people are seen more fully for what they bring, and where career paths are clearer and more inclusive.

I’m least optimistic about the decline in thoughtful, open discussion around diversity, equity, and inclusion. These conversations have become more politicized and, in some cases, more performative—making it harder to engage with the real, nuanced work that DEI requires. What concerns me most is the risk of losing momentum on efforts that are essential to building fair and effective workplaces. When we stop talking honestly about equity, we stop understanding how to create a better workforce.

A portrait of Kasey Harboe Guentert against a green background with dark green star graphics