Welcome back to Cornering the Job Market. Today's headlines include a new course from the Department of Labor that you can take entirely by text message. We'll talk about what it is and I'll tell you how to sign up. Also, more job cuts from a household name in gaming.
But first, ADP Research just dropped its annual People at Work report. And the headline number is one that every employer really needs to hear. Out of more than 39,000 workers surveyed across 36 countries, only 22% strongly agreed that their job was safe from being eliminated. Think about that for a second. We have a very nervous workforce right now. Worldwide unemployment is near historic lows, but despite that, fewer than one in four workers feel confident that they're going to keep their job. In the US, that number is a little better, but it's still low. 28% of American workers said they felt secure. But there's a notable gender gap. 31% of men felt safe compared to only 23% of women. That's an eight-point difference in the same economy with the same labor market, but very different levels of confidence depending on your gender. That's probably worth spending more time thinking about and solving. Also, the type of work you do matters a lot. Knowledge workers were the most confident at 30%, which I found surprising given the threat by AI to knowledge work. That was really interesting to see because skilled task workers came in at 18%. When we know that skilled work is much safer because of AI. So it seems to me that this is a workforce feeling concerned for reasons having nothing to do with AI. And also repetitive task workers, they felt the least safe. Only 16% feel safe in their jobs right now. Now they measured levels as well. Seniority plays a big role. C-suite executives felt the most secure at 35%. I wonder why. I wonder why the people who are making the decisions on who gets cut would feel the most safe. Can't imagine. But individual contributors, only 18% felt safe. So look, that just makes sense. I would be shocked if this data showed anything other than that. Because the further you are from the decisions as they're being made, well, the less control you have. So yes, it's natural to feel safe. Here's where it gets interesting for employers.
Workers who did feel secure were six times more likely to be fully engaged on the job, 6.3 times more likely to be highly motivated, and 3.3 times more likely to say that they were productive. And they were also two times more likely to say they had no intention of leaving. So those numbers are pretty alarming, too, and should be paid attention to by anyone who has employees because you're looking at an entirely different workforce depending on whether people feel safe. And the fix that ADP points to is pretty clear. Workers who felt their employer invested in their development were 5.3 times more likely to feel secure. So transparency and investment, that's a clear formula. Communicate. Communicate to your employees, start there and invest in them, train them. While all these changes are going on right now with AI, that is more important than ever anyway. And seeing that it ties to their job security, which ties to their to their productivity and engagement, well, there's every reason to do it, and certainly no reason not
to. Now, they also talked about AI. Adoption has gone mainstream. Half of all workers globally said they use AI tools at least multiple times a week. One in five use it nearly every day. In the US, 19% are daily users, and 23% still haven't tried AI at all. Daily AI users were more engaged, at 30% fully engaged compared to just 14% for the people who never use AI. They were also less stressed. Only 11% of daily AI users reported feeling overloaded versus 23% of non-adopters. That sounds great, but there is a catch. Daily AI users are also four times more likely to say that they felt less productive than they could be. I get that. I talked about that on one of the shows earlier this week, where AI is creating a lot of work that you didn't do before, even though it makes you more efficient and in theory more productive, but you're doing more to get AI ready. I think that's all gonna level out at the very near future where once all these tools really find their baseline, they've settled, then the productivity is really gonna kick in, but it's not showing up yet in the numbers. So that's where AI is on this
report. There is one more thing that I wanted to point out that 62% of workers in the survey, and this is worldwide, said they put in unpaid hours every week. Most said five hours or less, but 12% reported working 16 hours or more for free. And the C-suite and upper management logged the most. Nella Richardson, who's ADP's chief economist, said free work comes at a cost. People who put in unpaid hours are more likely to feel unproductive and stressed. They're also more likely to quit. And the data backs are up. The more unpaid hours workers log, the more stress and less productive they felt, and the more likely they were to be job searching. So free labor isn't actually free if it's costing you your best people.
Let's get back to AI for the next story. The U.S. Department of Labor just did something really interesting and I think very beneficial. They launched a free AI literacy course that you can take entirely by text message. The program was built through a public-private partnership between the DOL and an education tech company called RIST. It covers five areas understanding AI principles, exploring AI use cases, crafting effective prompts, evaluating AI outputs, and using AI responsibly. Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez de Riemer said the initiative ensures every American worker has a chance to learn foundational AI skills. Now we know there's a lot of free resources already. I see the AI companies themselves consistently offering free tools, and you can go on YouTube and get things. But I really love this approach from the Department of Labor. I this is one of the rare things I see coming from our government that I appreciate and that we should all appreciate. Because a text-based messaging course like this is the best way to reach workers who probably need AI literacy the most. People who work in warehouses, home health aids, people in rural areas without reliable broadband to use. So these aren't people signing up for the online certificates that I just mentioned in the free courses. So meeting them where they are is what this is all about. And the course it looks like it's going to take 10 minutes a day to use. What a great starting point to help out. So good job, Department of Labor. I will give credit where it's due. And this is one of the rare cases where I will attribute it to a federal government agency. And look, because ADP's data, as we just talked about, is showing that the workforce, half the workforce is using these tools already, so we don't want anyone left behind there. If you want to sign up, text the word ready to 20202, and you'll get a seven-day course delivered to your phone. 10 minutes a day, no laptop, good to go. So that is a really cool story.
But in the third headline today, not as good, unfortunately, some bad news, more layoffs. Epic Games announced it is cutting more than a thousand jobs. And on top of the layoffs, the company expects to save $500 million by reducing uh contracting, slashing marketing spin, and eliminating open rolls. Not good for the employees, but it's a business decision. We continue to see these layoffs and savings and stock prices going up. That's been the trend lately. Every time we see a cut. The CEO of Epic Games, Tim Sweeney, sent a note to their employees that said, we're spending significantly more than we're making, and we have to make major cuts to keep the company funded. Well, yeah, I mean, if you're spending more than you're making, you unfortunately have to make tough decisions like this. Ironically, Fortnite is still the number one game in America by monthly active players on PlayStation and Xbox, but the average play time is falling sharply, and that's what's causing the financial strain. Unfortunately, for Epic, it's their second round of major layoffs in the past three years. Their CEO didn't want to make the point that the layoffs aren't related to AI. He said that specifically, looks like he wanted to get that on record. In an industry where AI is certainly threatening a lot of jobs, we know that that is the case right now. And I suspect it indirectly it is tied to AI because of rising chip prices. The data centers that are being built to support AI are absorbing all the semiconductors right now at a pace that has never existed before. So there has to be an indirect tie there. And look, for anyone who is watching the job market, we know that gaming is just it's it's been really hard hit. And I suspect a lot of that is due to AI as well, where you can create a lot faster with a lot fewer people than you used to be able to do in the not too distant past. So anything related to software is changing rapidly. So that is it for today. Those are our headlines.
But here's a fun fact, and this is about office temperature, the perfect one. What do you think it is? Apparently it is 71.6 degrees Fahrenheit or 22 Celsius. Statistically, according to whoever feeds me these fun facts, that is the perfect office temperature. I think that's about right. I like it a little bit cooler, but that's just my personal preference. So I can live with 71.6. Thank you for listening today. Please like, subscribe, share with anyone who might be interested. I would appreciate that. And I look forward to talking to you tomorrow.