Navigating the 2026 Labor Market with the Second #WTF Is Up Report

Larry Port (00:00):
Dream job or nightmare? It’s hard to know if a career that looks great on paper will actually lead you to the life you want to live. So welcome to Dream Job Cafe. I’m Larry Port. I’ll be asking different professionals the questions you won’t find anywhere else. So grab a coffee, settle in. This is Dream Job Cafe. Sponsored by Wayspark.co, where we help people navigate careers in a crazy world. Hey everybody. I’m Larry Port with Wayspark. This is the second WTF is up report where we take a look at what the fuck is up. So the first article we’re going to take a look at is one that was written in The Economist and this was part of a cover story that the economist did about AI. This headline is a little juicy. It says, “Is AI putting graduates out of work already? If you are studying coding, we might have some bad news.” So what’s interesting is that there’s a lot of mixed information here and I’m just going to read from the slide between 2022 and 2024 graduates and the least exposed quintile.

(01:04):
Now what’s kind of interesting about that is that people are measuring exposures of what careers are exposed to AI and what aren’t. So this is the least exposed quintile, which means the least 20% of everybody studying subjects such as education, philosophy and civil engineering saw their average full-time employment rate fall by just 1.5 percentage points. Those in the most exposed, including computer science, computer engineering and whatnot, suffered a 6.6 percentage point drop. And I love this headline, Forget Python Study Plato. What they’re saying is that, okay, philosophy, you were a philosophy major. Employment actually went up. Maybe because there was one person that got hired in philosophy, I don’t know, but you saw that computer science went down. Now this is data from 2022 and 2024 and more updated data has a rosier picture. But in any case, that’s what the story’s telling from the economist perspective.

(02:02):
It’s a little gloomy. However, this is brand new information and this is from the Wall Street Journal. This was published in April of 2026. The headline is college graduates are finally catching a break in this job market. So remember, this is Wall Street Journal. This is looking at a lot of very, very current stuff. One comment they have right here is that a widely watched survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers shows employers expect to boost new graduate hires by 5.6% this spring from a year ago. So that’s way more current because we’re looking at spring 2026 versus the data from 2022 through 2024. And then another survey by ZipRecruiter found that a third of employers plan to hire a greater share than the previous year. So that’s exciting. Another item I say is that graduates who worked during school landed jobs at twice the rate, 82% of those who didn’t.

(02:59):
So what this says is that, all right, you’re going to have to probably get a job during school if you want to be able to be competitive in the labor market. So if you’re in college right now, make sure that you have some good work experience, internship experience. Doesn’t have to be with a big bank or something like that. It’s just got to be work. Off the AI path for a little bit, but it is graduation season. So one of the articles is about, okay, well, where are people really liking to live and what are good spots for young graduates? Where are they going to go? Where are they going to find work? I’ve heard anecdotally that a lot of people want to go to Nashville, Austin and Atlanta. But the top spots, and this takes into consideration wages, hiring, affordability. So Birmingham, Alabama takes number one spot followed by Tampa, Florida and number two, San Jose, California in number three, which means that the high tech sector is doing a lot of hiring at very high wages.

(03:56):
However, affordability is kind of tough because San Jose is the seat of Silicon Valley. Columbus, Ohio, Gil Buckeyes, right? That’s number four and Raleigh, North Carolina is five. And then Nashville is on the list. There’s a couple other cities on the list, even New York City’s on the list, but it’s worth taking a look at this article if you’re interested. Okay. Back to the AI front and back to employment is that there are companies that say that AI is actually helping with entry level jobs, not killing these entry level jobs. This was in the Wall Street Journal in May. So let’s take a look. MetLife, pretty big company, increased intern and new grad hiring by nearly 30% last year and expects entry level headcount in 2026 to grow again, they say. IBM also is expanding entry level hiring this year. So we’re seeing some kind of healthy signs and despite all the jim and gloom about AI, it sounds like the reality is that young graduates and younger people, entry level workers that have work experience and that also know how to use AI well are going to be fine.

(05:02):
This is one guy from a college called Western Governor’s University. He said that the employees surveyed by his campus are still hiring, but they’re looking for students to have work experience and AI fluency, kind of just what I said. Now, let’s say that you’re like, “All right, I’m really freaked out about AI and I’m a young college graduate and I don’t believe in my career.” This was published back in March, talks about what young workers are doing to AI proof themselves. And it covers a bunch of people that are in what these highly exposed industries and how they’re adjusting things, but they’re really kind of moving far afield. So this one profiles this guy named Ryder Perez and he was studying computer science as an undergraduate, but then he started getting worried about what he was seeing on the wall. So he dropped out of college and went into trade school to be an electrician.

(05:53):
And it says here that enrollment at vocational focused community colleges has boomed in recent years growing by 20% since 2020. So a lot of people are going back to trade school. We need the trades. That’s the other part of the equation here is that a lot of people are retiring. So you got these baby boomers who are in trades, they’re electricians, they’re working in very highly skilled trades that afford very good lives, good salaries. And if you start a business, you can make a gazillion dollars. So a lot of people are going back to trade school. This is one of them. Another guy here, this guy, Curtis, he was looking at being like an animator. He now passed his initial firefighting exam and is interviewing with area fire departments. So we did a podcast episode where we interviewed a fireman and found out what this job is like.

(06:39):
They make a lot of money. They have a ton of free time. So if Curtis here wants to continue his animation exploits, he’s going to have plenty of time to do so. Okay. Another one if you want to say, “All right, you know what? White collar work is not for me. ” So aircraft technicians, here’s another one. We’re talking about skilled trades. We just talked about like, okay, a fireman, we talked about electrician. Aircraft technician, we are in trouble here. We cannot find enough of them. Okay. 40% of the people that do this are approaching retirement age. You thought flights are expensive now. Well, once these cats retire, forget about it. By the way, air traffic control is another one in the aviation industry where they can’t find enough people. Pilots too, there’s a pilot shortage. So if you’re interested in aviation, there’s a lot of different things to do.

(07:23):
And this is a high paying job. It says that at United Airlines, licensed entry level technicians make about $81,000. That’s entry level, $81,000. After eight years, wage tops out, technicians make roughly 135 grand before overtime. Now, overtime is time and a half. So you got to do the math, that’s a pretty high salary. So the other thing is that 40% of these mechanics are over 60. 40% are over 60. So it’s kind of a big problem that the industry is facing, which is why they’re doing these … It says signing bonuses of 75 grand. So if you’re looking at a skilled trade, this might be one to take a look at. Another one, nurse practitioner is the hottest job in healthcare and healthcare is the hottest sector of the economy, especially when it comes to employment. So whenever they come up with the jobs reports and they’re like, “Oh, we hired X number of people this work this month.” Well, most of them are in healthcare, not the most of them, but the biggest subgroup come from healthcare.

(08:29):
And a nurse practitioner is a nurse who can prescribe medications and doctor type of work. So this is a hot field. So if we’re talking skilled trades, we got stories about electricians, we have firemen, aircraft engineers or technicians and nurse practitioners, so all places to kind of look. Now another thing for recent graduates, okay I know I’ve been talking a lot about skilled trades, but this is an article in The New York Times by a woman named Jodi Kanter. She’s an investigative reporter, but she wrote a book called How to Start Discovering Your Life’s Work. And so this editorial, this is a hard time to start a career. These two words can help. And the words are craft and need. So her point is, when we hone our crafts, we build up protection against being regarded as disposable or interchangeable. Any employer can eliminate any job at any time, but your craft is truly yours and cannot be taken away.

(09:30):
Basically what she’s talking about is doing something that you do, but do it with your own spin, make it unique and be very, very good at it. Master that craft, she’s saying. The other thing is to take a look at what’s going on in the world. She says, there is a wiser way to seize the future, which is to think about need. What is your own assessment of what society will need during your working years the next four or five decades? Now, if you think about what’s happening, you think about this shift to robotics, you think about people getting older, demographics, living longer, right? So all those people are going to be need to take care of. We’re moving into kind of like an autonomous vehicle age that may shift things too. So there’s all this stuff if you’re paying attention to what’s happening in the world that is really exciting and that you can be part of.

(10:20):
So surveying and paying attention is a big part of this. Anyhow, that’s the WTF is up report number two. I hope you enjoyed it and stay tuned to the Wayspark Podcast. If you like this episode, please like it or share it with your friends. And if you can, be grateful for something today. Thanks for listening. Don’t forget to like and subscribe to Dream Job Cafe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. And don’t forget to check out Wayspark.co, where we help people navigate careers in a crazy world.