What do you tell the employee who got a pay-rise memo in one hand this week and a return-to-office notice in the other, while a friend at a rival firm got a redundancy letter for a job AI has apparently learned to do? Both of those employees are real this week, and neither of them is wrong about what happened to them.
Persol's latest survey has 73% of Japanese employers planning 2026 pay rises as retention becomes the priority. Two-thirds of employers told cfobrew they'll increase hiring in the second half of the year. A separate report reached hcamag's desk arguing AI adoption is producing more hiring, not less. At the same time, Visa confirmed a 7% workforce cut this week in what Reuters called an efficiency push, and Bloomberg reported AI is now doing customer service work at Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Microsoft and Uber all at once.
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Both halves of that picture are true, and that's the uncomfortable part. This week's Paper Cut is about what happens when the aggregate hiring story and the individual redundancy story stop matching, and what that split means for anyone trying to write an honest employer brand message in the middle of it. There's also genuinely good news to get to further down: EBN and EBClub have joined forces, and it's worth your attention.
