U.S. hiring falls to just 57,000 in June amid elevated inflation, global turmoil

The AI-induced career crisis we detailed last week is clearly accelerating: even the 'resilient' professional and business services sector managed only 36,000 jobs, a sector supposedly least vulnerable to automation. That's the economic equivalent of a pat on the head before the guillotine drops.

Professional services added those 36,000 positions 'despite AI vulnerability' — a phrase that reads like a grim joke from a tired executive. It's as if the sector is trying to convince itself that human judgment still matters, even as AI tools are being deployed to obliterate those very roles. The 36,000 figure represents a tiny fraction of the workforce, and one suspects it's only a matter of time before those jobs are absorbed by GPT-8 or whatever the next hype-cycle brings. The cheerful narrative from Silicon Valley's propagandists — that AI creates more jobs than it destroys — takes another body blow.

And what of the broader economy? 'Elevated inflation' and 'global turmoil' are the go-to scapegoats for any disappointing data, but the real story is the growing gap between AI-haver and AI-have-not. The study showing heavy AI investors hired more now seems almost quaint: those gains were concentrated among a lucky few, while the rest of the economy stagnates. The rest of us are left with 57,000 jobs and a sinking feeling that the automation dividend has been redirected to the C-suite. Pass the paracetamol — or a stiff drink.