This week, we’re covering:
Workforce and Labor Trends, By the Numbers
Will Agentic AI Reshape Enterprise Functions?
Rebuilding the First Rung of the Opportunity Ladder
The Soft Skills Crisis Is Getting Worse: What Can L&D Do?
Partnerships, Investments, and Company Innovation
What We’re Reading (And Listening To)
Workforce and Labor Trends, By the Numbers
Private employment fell by 32,000 jobs in November, ADP said on Wednesday, reporting the third decline in four months
44.3% of employers did not backfill a position left by a departing employee in 2025, as voluntary quit rates decline for the third year in a row at 35.9%.
51% of leaders say they don’t have a “clear AI strategy,” per a recent report from accounting firm BDO.
87% of workers are now using AI at least weekly and over half are using it daily, according to the 2025 KPMG American Worker Survey, revealing a “bottom-up” adoption strategy of AI in the workplace.
The unemployment gap between high school graduates and college graduates has narrowed nearly 10 percentage points since 2000.
According to MIT’s Project Iceberg, AI has the potential to replace nearly 12% of the U.S. labor market, representing more than $1 trillion in annual wages.
Will Agentic AI Reshape Enterprise Structures?
Historically, technology adoption has lived within the IT function, while issues of strategy and human resources belong to other areas. But agentic AI may reshape this: 76% of respondents to a recent survey say agentic AI is “more like a coworker than a tool.” According to a new piece from MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group, “organizations now face an unprecedented challenge: managing a single system that demands both human resource approaches and asset management techniques.”
Rebuilding the First Rung of the Opportunity Ladder
Entry-level and early-career jobs—once the dependable “first rung” on the ladder from school to work—are vanishing, leaving many graduates without a clear path into the workforce as the experience gap grows for these roles. In Forbes, Bruno Manno argues that one of the most promising solutions is a “portfolio model” of work-based learning, building a series of shorter-term work experiences rather than traditional first jobs to break into a career. As Dana Stephenson, CEO and Co-founder of Riipen puts it, “Experience is not one thing. It’s a collection of experiences that build confidence, skill, and professional identity.” To rebuild opportunity, Manno says that education and employers must expand access to project-based learning, apprenticeships, and other work-based experiences.
The Soft Skills Crisis Is Getting Worse. What Can L&D Do?
The “soft skills crisis” is intensifying, according to Dr. Jeffrey Bergin, Chief Learning Officer at General Assembly. Many new and early-career workers—especially younger, tech-savvy ones who are comfortable using AI and digital tools—are arriving on the job with strong technical skills, but lacking essential soft skills like communication, critical thinking, and problem solving. In a new General Assembly survey of hiring leaders, 22% said early-talent workers were “very or completely prepared,” while 56% identified poor soft skills as a major weakness, up from 50% the year before. To respond, learning and development (L&D) teams should partner with HR to shift toward a skill-based hiring and training model: one that defines specific soft and durable skills needed for success and builds early-career development programs around them.
Partnerships, Investments, and Company Innovation
Investors have spent nearly $5 billion on HR investment in the first three quarters of 2025, a 20% increase compared to the same time period in 2024. Key areas of investment were compensation intelligence, benefits technology, candidate tools, payroll processing, and human capital management, the latter receiving 90% of capital in Q3. [HR Executive]
Workforce solutions provider TalentBridge announced this week a new partnership with ServiceNow. Through this partnership, TalentBridge will join a hire-train-deploy pilot program designed to identify high-quality talent, certify them in ServiceNow, and connect them to jobs at American companies. [The Globe and Mail]
FedEx Corp. (FedEx) launched an AI Education and Literacy program, an internal training program that will help its employees develop AI fluency and workplace skills. FedEx will also partner with Accenture to provide customized, scalable training programs through its LearnVantage platform.
Achieve Partners, which invests in businesses in economically-critical sectors to bolster skills development and build talent pipelines, released a short film highlighting the promise of apprenticeships as engines of career opportunity and economic mobility. The short film features Americans whose lives have been improved by apprenticeship programs in technology, healthcare, and education technology.
What We’re Reading (And Listening To)
Trump’s Broken Promise of “One Million Apprentices” [Washington Monthly]
The New Rules of Work: How AI is Reshaping Human Value [Fast Company]
The Ghost Growth Trap: Why “Advancement in Name Only” is Killing Trust [HR Daily Advisor]
What the Jobs Report Tells Us About the Economy [The New York Times, subscription model]
Diversity in the Workplace Needs a New Metric [The Wall Street Journal, subscription model]
Thank you for reading “New Skills, Talent and Development”! Our team is experimenting with a new format and biweekly cadence through the end of 2025. Let us know what you think.
This edition of “New Skills, Talent and Development” was drafted by Zoe Almeida and Annie Han and edited by Julia Pasette-Seamon and Erica Price Burns.