What We're Reading: New Skills, Talent and Development [Thursday, October 9, 2025]

A majority of respondents in a new Indeed survey of tech talent report that tech workers are being reassigned due to AI, while 37% of respondents say their own roles have changed due to the adoption of Gen AI within the organization. Despite the growing prevalence of AI in technology fields, a third of tech workers say they aren’t receiving enough training on how to use AI at work. [HR Dive]

Nearly three-quarters of hiring managers say that it’s difficult to find candidates with the right skills in today’s market, according to a new report. In particular, hiring managers view Gen Z as lacking crucial skills: only 8% view Gen Z as prepared for the job market. [Fortune, subscription model]

More than half of states have dropped degree requirements for state-level jobs, expanding access for workers with skills gained through non-college pathways and supported by organizations like the Competency-Based Education Network (C-BEN) and Opportunity@Work. Stand Together’s Steve Taylor and Jonathan Wolfson, former deputy assistant secretary at the Department of Labor, argue that this shift is “long overdue,” but that there is more work for states to do to ensure that skills-based hiring works in workers’ favor. Taylor and Wolfson encourage state leaders to modernize their regulatory frameworks to focus on demonstrable workforce outcomes, employer validation and consumer protections tailored to short-term, skills-based training programs. [Governing]

On Wednesday, California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that the state has invested $30 million into 70 established apprenticeship programs in healthcare, education, and advanced manufacturing, among other non-traditional sectors. This investment represents the third round of California’s Apprenticeship Innovation Funding (AIF) through its Department of Industrial Relations. Awardees will use the funds to scale their apprenticeship programs and address workforce needs. 

 94% of C-suite leaders are facing a talent shortage when it comes to AI skills, according to a new global survey. By 2028, nearly half (44%) of leaders still anticipate 20-40% talent gaps in their organization; demand is especially high in AI governance, prompt engineering, agentic workflow design, and human-AI collaboration specialists. [World Economic Forum]

More than 6 in 10 knowledge workers express skepticism around generative AI, describing it as “unreliable.” In addition, almost half say that AI agents don’t understand their team’s work, and 54% say AI agents could create extra work for teams (as workers redo or correct outputs). At the same time, knowledge workers believe one-third of their work could be done by AI. [HR Dive]

Amazon Web Services’ Skills to Jobs Tech Alliance is expanding to Tennessee, partnering with major institutions, including Vanderbilt University, Tennessee State University, and Nashville State Community College. The expanded alliance aims to build more pathways to jobs in AI and cloud computing in Tennessee. Amazon will work to align study programs with industry demand for these skills, aiming to train over 1,000 Tennesseans in the Nashville area by 2027, and later expanding across the state. [StateScoop]

According to Moody’s, September saw “essentially no job growth.” Referencing data from ADP, private jobs fell 32,000 last month, with small gains limited to the health care and education industries and large states like California and New York. [Fortune, subscription model]

With the continued government shutdown, economists are growing concerned about the impact of the “data blackout” caused by the absence of the monthly jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The Federal Reserve has been using employment data from alternative measures, such as payroll provider ADP, but officials remain nervous about the October federal funds rate decision without comprehensive private sector data from BLS. [Investopedia]

A new study from Yale examining labor market disruption revealed that despite growing concerns about AI’s disruption to the entry-level job market, the data shows job shifts are following historical norms. Employment data shows that while broader occupational shifts are occurring, the forces driving these changes are mainly driven by a slowing economy, aging population, and a decline in immigration. These trends–and their impact on young workers in particular–are being conflated with the rise of AI, with researchers arguing that AI has changed people’s work, but not taken their jobs. [Fortune, subscription model]