The US Department of Homeland Security finalised a rule on 14 October 2026 under which holders of several categories of US work permit, including the H-4 spouses of H-1B visa holders, can no longer keep working while a renewal is pending. The rule, published as 91 FR 65306, adopts without change an interim rule that … Read more
Czechia, Germany, South Korea and Poland have each fixed a higher minimum wage for 1 January 2027, while Ireland’s rise sits in its 2027 budget and Ukraine’s is still a government proposal. Of the confirmed rises checked for this article, the smallest is 3.0 percent in Poland. Czechia’s, at just over 11 percent, is almost … Read more
Canada lost 68,000 jobs in September and Australia lost 39,300, while Germany’s unemployment count, though lower than in August, was 40,000 higher than a year earlier. The three reports, released between 30 September and 15 October 2026, all show unemployment rising on an adjusted or annual basis, but the details differ: in Canada the losses … Read more
A worker in the Italian Mezzogiorno faces unemployment odds more than four times higher than a worker in the country’s industrialized north, according to the OECD’s Employment Outlook 2026, released July 7. In Newfoundland’s Division No. 9, unemployment sat at 29 percent versus 3.3 percent in Quebec’s Nicolet-Yamaska, a nine-to-one gap within a single country. The … Read more
Two things are true about the labor market right now, and they seem to contradict each other. Overall layoff activity in the US is running at its slowest pace in four years. At the same time, a steady stream of large, recognizable companies have announced significant workforce cuts within the same few weeks: Uber, Microsoft, … Read more
The World Bank has approved a new regional program intended to connect education, skills training, and employment for young people in Cabo Verde, Côte d’Ivoire, and Guinea. The program is called SIRA, short for Skills for Innovation, Resilience, and Aspirations. Its first phase has $642 million in financing and is expected to reach 5.4 million … Read more
On November 30, 2025, 2.83 million people sat China’s national civil service exam at the same time, in 250 cities, competing for 38,100 government positions. One of those positions, an entry-level police officer role at an immigration repatriation center in Ruili, a small city on the Myanmar border, drew 6,470 applications for a single opening. … Read more
PwC released its 2026 Global AI Jobs Barometer on June 15, analyzing more than a billion job advertisements across 27 countries and territories. The finding getting the most attention: AI is not simply eliminating or creating jobs. It is splitting the labor market into two tracks that are moving at very different speeds, and the … Read more
On June 7, 2026, every EU member state was legally required to have national pay transparency laws in force. Exactly four of them did: Italy, Slovakia, Lithuania, and Malta. If you are job hunting in one of those countries, salary ranges in job ads and a ban on salary history questions are now the law. … Read more
The headline number looks like good news. Employers project 5.6 percent more new graduate hires for the Class of 2026 compared to last year, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers’ spring update. 77.2 percent of recent graduates landed a role within three months of graduating, up from 63.3 percent a year earlier. Set … Read more