News / workers
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1 min read
They Fired the Humans. The AI Still Doesn't Pay.
Read more . . . →They had a story about this. AI transformation. The robots would do the work, profits would climb, shareholders would cheer, and the humans — well, the humans would figure it out. It was always a tidier story for the people who write the memos than for the people who receive them. Gartner just studied 350 companies — all over $1B revenue, all running AI tools — and found that the ones cutting the most workers saw no better return than the ones that kept people. Zero correlation. The study dropped May 5. The layoffs kept coming anyway. 38,000 jobs gone...
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1 min read
The Tariff Refund That Isn't Coming
Read more . . . →The Supreme Court killed most of Trump’s tariffs. The government owed $166 billion in refunds. They built a portal and said everyone would get their money back. Two-thirds of eligible importers couldn’t log in when it launched. Small businesses spent hours on hold with Customs and got no answer. Trade experts are now telling anyone who’ll listen that the government will probably just keep tens of billions it’s legally required to return — not out of malice, just attrition. The application process is complex enough that most small claims will time out or get buried, and nobody’s going to prison...
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1 min read
Happy Small Business Week
Read more . . . →During National Small Business Week, the people in charge want you to think about the heroic small business owner grinding away at their dream. What they don’t want you to think about is the Joint Economic Committee data they dropped at the same time: small businesses with fewer than 10 employees have been shedding jobs for 13 straight months, and the losses in 2025 were 4.5 times worse than during the actual pandemic. Not a little worse. Four and a half times worse. The tariffs that were supposed to save American business are eating the businesses they were supposed to...
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1 min read
Zuckerberg Laid Off 8,000 People to Pay for Servers
Read more . . . →The number is $135 billion. That’s Meta’s AI infrastructure spend this year — Zuckerberg just raised the forecast again because apparently $115B wasn’t enough silicon for the guy who already owns your attention span. To cover the difference, he’s cutting 8,000 employees starting May 20, plus cancelling 6,000 open roles. Fourteen thousand positions, gone. Meta posted record profits last quarter. The budget isn’t tight — the priorities are. He told them at a company town hall. To their faces. “The layoffs are a direct consequence of the AI budget.” The company restructures into AI “pods,” which sounds like a sci-fi...
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1 min read
Roaring back: 98,000 manufacturing jobs gone since the tariffs hit
Read more . . . →The promise was simple: slap tariffs on everything, factories come back, workers win. Trump said it enough times it started to sound like gravity. Twelve months in, the U.S. has shed 98,000 manufacturing jobs. Not some. Ninety-eight thousand. Since April’s tariff escalation alone, 72,000 more. The factories aren’t roaring back. The workers are just gone. He just announced 25% tariffs on EU cars and trucks. More factories coming, supposedly. Except supply chain managers surveyed by CNBC are now reporting double the layoffs compared to last year — 32% reporting job cuts, up from 16% in April. The tariffs didn’t bring...
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1 min read
Jack Dorsey Fired 4,000 People and Called It Innovation
Read more . . . →Jack Dorsey laid off 40% of Block’s staff — 4,000 people — and told the world it was because of AI. Said the business was strong, profits were up, growth was good. Just… didn’t need those people anymore. Specifically didn’t need the policy team. Specifically didn’t need DEI. Fascinating which roles the machines replaced first. Here’s the part that should make you furious: he then went on record saying most companies are “late” and will make similar cuts within the year. He turned a mass firing into an industry announcement. A roadmap. Every CEO in America now has their script...
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3,000 Rallies Today Because the Tariff Revolution Was a Scam
Read more . . . →Three thousand May Day rallies across the country today. Five hundred labor unions marching. The National Education Association — three million members — calling a national walkout. The slogan is “Workers Over Billionaires,” which is apparently still a controversial position in 2026. Trump said tariffs would bring the factories “roaring back.” A year later, 100,000 manufacturing jobs are gone. A Kearney report confirmed the tariffs didn’t drive reshoring or reduce import dependence. What they did was hand every American household a $1,500 tax bill — the largest tariff increase as a share of GDP since 1993. The factories didn’t come...
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1 min read
Tomorrow Is May Day. The Company Already Replaced You.
Read more . . . →Tomorrow is International Workers’ Day. This year, corporations are celebrating by laying off 882 people a day. Tech alone has cut 95,000 jobs in 2026 — Meta starts firing another 8,000 on May 20, Oracle just eliminated 30,000 people to fund $156 billion in AI infrastructure. Not to survive. To accelerate. You were the cost they were looking for an excuse to cut. The framing is always the same: “toward AI,” “efficiency,” “long-term value creation.” What that means is they found the machine that does your job for less. No benefits. No vacation. No back-talk. And the record profits keep...
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"Tariff Relief" Means Pack Up Your Workers and Leave
Read more . . . →Trump dropped his “tariff relief” offer to Canadian steel companies yesterday: move your production to the US or keep paying 50%. The United Steelworkers — the union representing the people actually doing the work in Hamilton, Sault Ste. Marie, and across the country — called it blackmail and extortion. Not metaphorically. That’s the actual terminology for “relocate everything or face consequences.” They chose a precise word and they meant it. The workers on those lines are already being laid off under the current tariff regime. Trump’s offer doesn’t save them — it gives their employers an offramp to close up...
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Your boss made 341 times what you did last year
Read more . . . →The numbers came in. Median CEO pay hit $29.4 million in 2025 — up 23.2% in a single year. Your salary increase was “held steady” at 3.5%. The CEO pay ratio is now 341:1. Last year it was 300:1. They’re moving faster than inflation, just in the wrong direction. This was the same year that Meta cut 700 workers after paying its executives $921 million. The same year Disney, SNAP, and Cleveland Cliffs announced mass layoffs. The board rooms were handing out bonuses at target while HR was firing off termination emails. Nobody called an emergency shareholder meeting about that...
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