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Labor
Jobs, wages, unions, and the supply of work.
The H-1B worker pool shrank by at least 124,553, but public data cannot say why
USCIS reported 211,600 properly submitted FY2027 registrations, 38.5% fewer than the prior year. The published counts prove that the pool contained at least 124,553 fewer prospective workers, but they cannot separate any effect of the disputed $100,000 payment policy from the wage-weighted lottery, labor demand or other forces.
Reuters' 9,000 Porsche figure includes 2,000 contracts that had already ended
Porsche's supervisory board supported a new restructuring initiative on July 22, 2026, but the company did not disclose its size. The public record shows that Reuters' reported 9,000 total mixes completed departures with possible future reductions, leaving the company-confirmed balance unknown and a media-based ceiling of about 6,900. [Reuters](https://live.euronext.com/en/financial-news/porsche-supervisory-board-backs-tougher-restructuring) [Tagesschau/SWR](https://www.tagesschau.de/inland/regional/badenwuerttemberg/swr-porsche-will-wohl-4-000-weitere-stellen-abbauen-100.html)
Did Meta's layoff process penalize protected leave? Public records cannot calculate the selection rates
Twenty-six Meta employees allege that AI-assisted performance measures converted protected absences or disability-related reductions in output into lower scores before Meta's May layoff selections. The mechanism is plausible, but every company-wide comparison group is incomplete, so the public record cannot show whether leave increased a worker's probability of selection.
June's Jobless Rate Fell to 4.2% While Employment Dropped 507,000: The Improvement Is an Exit, Not a Hire
On 2 July the U.S. unemployment rate fell to a one-year low of 4.2%, yet the same household survey showed employment down about 507,000 and the labor force down about 720,000. The arithmetic is airtight: the rate fell because the count shrank, not because the jobless found work. Who left and why is far less settled, and that gap matters because the Federal Reserve and markets mostly read the headline.
VW Is Closing the EV Flagships It Just Spent 2 Billion Euros Building. Neither Age Nor Fullness Cleanly Explains Which Plants Made the List.
On 26 June a leaked Volkswagen overhaul condemned four German plants, including the two pure-electric flagships it converted for roughly 2 billion euros only a few years ago, while sparing the 1938 Wolfsburg site. Our plant-by-plant comparison finds the list is not sorted by how old or how full each factory is. The clearest pattern is that single-purpose EV plants cluster on the closure list, but two facts complicate any clean rule: Wolfsburg is also VW's headquarters, and one condemned plant, Audi Neckarsulm, is flexible, not single-purpose.
UNITE HERE Bet the World Cup Would Pack the Hotels. Its Two Live Strikes Sit in the Cities Where the Rooms Stayed Empty.
Hotel workers walked out at the Sheraton Philadelphia Downtown and the Embassy Suites in Seattle's Pioneer Square, both staged next to World Cup stadiums. But those are two of the host cities the hotel industry's own trade group flagged as booking below forecast, which means the strikes' leverage rests on the tournament's television spotlight, not on a literal sold-out-room squeeze.
