Barclays is cutting about 5,000 jobs and calls AI the icing, not the cake. A cafe job drew 100 people in person, Volkswagen plans a pay freeze to 2030, and ASML links executive pay to staff satisfaction. This week's Paper Cut, with the Cut List.
Nine in ten US CEOs expect to add staff, yet Kroger, Netflix, TomTom and Airtable are cutting, Singapore's president says the first graduate job is losing demand, and Accenture will fund only $29 a head for Claude. This week's Paper Cut sorts the AI story from the cost story.
How to find the real employment story, decide which truths candidates need, create credible employee content, manage difficult messages and reduce the gap between what you promise and what people experience.
IKEA spent years being held up as the company that reskilled rather than reduced when AI came for customer service. In 2026, both Inter IKEA and Ingka Group announced layoffs. What the case still proves, what it never proved, and what employer brand teams should take from both halves of the story.
Anduril’s “Don’t Work Here” campaign is bold, witty, and viral - the kind of employer branding most tech companies dream of. But behind the clever copy sits a defence-tech mission that’s a world away from beanbags and burritos. Can a compelling EVP override ethical unease?
Goldman Sachs says new hires now manage AI agents, Citi shortened the analyst ladder, Bayer cut 70% of its managers and only 4% of US CHROs feel ready to lead AI-driven change. Add frozen hiring, fresh cuts at FICO, DNB and Oracle, and a court fight over the office.
Nike, Workday and Citi all cut jobs this week even as layoff claims eased and AI adoption climbed. Add a lawsuit alleging Ford faked layoffs as poor performance, a hiring market drowning in its own application volume, and workers quietly doing two jobs for one paycheck.
Legal & General, Admiral, BBC Sport, Novo Nordisk, Porsche and Microsoft all cut jobs this week, while new research finds nearly half of CHROs are excluded from AI strategy entirely. Add graduates fighting brutal odds for entry-level roles and women over 50 quietly pushed out, and the pattern holds.
New China-focused research finds widespread agreement that employer branding should support business strategy. But limited executive ownership, cautious budgets and communication-led measurement suggest a sizeable gap between ambition and execution.
Oracle, Omnicom and KPMG are all cutting jobs this week without blaming AI, even as Uber's own staff say it's already doing their work. Add a Barclays office revolt and fresh evidence that older workers and graduates are both being filtered out of hiring, and the pattern holds all week.
Younger workers are struggling to get the experience employers want, while experienced candidates increasingly find that years in the workforce count against them. Is hiring becoming biased towards a narrowing middle?
One employee says his AI bonus scheme is really proof he's not needed anymore. Meanwhile UK data centres will create a quarter of the jobs they promised, managers are being cut and reinstated depending on the company, and this week's reckonings over who pays land three different ways.