It is getting harder to tell whether companies are changing how work gets done, or just changing the story they tell about it.
In the same week that employers talk up efficiency, workers are watching layoffs stack up, managers are quietly redesigning pay, and jobseekers are rewriting their own timelines to stay “hireable”. This is what a cooling market looks like in practice: less trust, more workarounds, and a sharper fight over who gets protected when budgets tighten.
Your employees know the truth. Does your EVP? At Fathom we measure the "Credibility Gap" between your promise and their reality.
What follows is a field guide to the patterns showing up across AI rollouts, reward decisions, and hiring behaviour, plus a new weekly layoffs tracker you can scan in under a minute.
This Week’s Paper Cut's
