10-10-2024

California Governor Gavin Newsom signed legislation prohibiting private colleges and universities from giving special consideration to applicants with connections to these institutions. Known as "legacy admissions," many higher education institutions give some preference to applicants with family members who attended or donated to the school. Maryland is the only other state to ban legacy admissions for private schools. California's top public schools stopped using legacy admissions many years ago. Newsom said that “merit, skill and hard work” should determine college admissions and that this ban will open higher education to more applicants.

10-09-2024

It has become increasingly common for North Korean cybercriminals to use fake identities to gain access to various organizations through employment. According to a CIO.com article, the FBI has warned of attempts by North Korean IT workers to pose as non-NK nationals to help fund weapons development. In May 2024, the Justice Department arrested individuals helping North Korea to breach Fortune 500 companies using stolen American identities. In June 2024, the Wall Street Journal interviewed a CEO who reported stopping “over 50 candidates that were North Korean spies.”

10-08-2024

Thirty-four women filed a sex discrimination suit in 2019 against the FBI based on their experience in its training academy. The Justice Department investigated these complaints in 2022. In its report, the DOJ said that female candidates received a "disproportionate number of performance citations and were dismissed at rates higher than expected based on their share of the population." The DOJ has agreed to a $22.6 million settlement. In addition, two experts in Industrial Organizational Psychology will formally review the FBI's practices, policies, and procedures for Agent Trainees in Basic Training as part of the settlement.

10-03-2024

Gallup and Workhuman recently evaluated the relationship between recognition and turnover by tracking the career paths of 3,447 employees from 2022 to 2024. The results of their research provide insight into one of the more pressing issues facing employers today – retention of valuable employees.

10-02-2024

A federal judge in Kentucky partially blocked The Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE) program whose focus is to direct ten percent of transportation infrastructure funding to women and minority-owned firms. The Washington Post notes that DBE is at least the fourth such program in recent months to be blocked on constitutional grounds.

10-01-2024

News of the arrest of Sean Combs has raised the possibility of a #MeToo reckoning within the music industry. Combs, also known as “Diddy,” was arrested on September 16th after being indicted on charges of sex trafficking, racketeering and transportation to engage in prostitution. There is some discussion that the arrest could create the conditions for change within the music industry, an industry that has mostly avoided “the scrutiny and accountability that swept Hollywood, politics and much of the media world at the peak of the #MeToo movement in the late 2010s” according to the New York Times.

09-26-2024

A 35-year-old Bank of America junior banker died in May of this year. Reuters reported that his cause of death was acute coronary artery thrombus, which is a blood clot inside a blood vessel of the heart. Press articles stated this former Green Beret banker worked approximately 100 hours a week over the few weeks before his death. He had been working on a giant merger. Seemingly, in response, Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase Bank rolled out new rules on the number of hours bankers will work as part of their efforts to limit overwork.

09-25-2024

Starting in January 2025, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy expects all employees to come into the office five days a week. In his memo to employees, Jassy asserts the company sees significant benefits to having everyone in the office, including improved functioning within teams and strengthening its corporate culture. Amazon last adjusted employees' office schedules in February 2023, directing employees to come in three days a week. Jassy offers some flexibility for "extenuating" circumstances, like a sick child, house emergency, client meetings, or quiet to finish coding.

09-24-2024

Data from Lightcast, a labor analytic company, shows that U.S. employers will soon face the country's largest labor shortage. This labor shortage will come from Baby Boomers retiring, childbirth rates falling, Gen Z and Gen Alpha workers wanting jobs with college degrees, and fewer adults participating in the workforce. Women are not pursuing jobs in sectors with labor shortages, like plumbing, HVAC, and auto repair. The study also finds that working-age men are leaving the workforce due to an uptick in substance abuse issues and incarceration. In addition, workers over 65 did not return to work in the same numbers post-pandemic, and individuals under 25 have had low employment. Any growth in the U.S. labor market comes from immigration and foreign-born workers.