The Department of Labor stopped accepting and processing permanent labor certification applications for eight employers on October 8: Microsoft, Adobe, Cognizant, Infosys, TCS, Wipro, HCL, and Capgemini. Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling announced the action at a White House fraud task force briefing. Vice President JD Vance said it will last “as long as it needs to” and could reach other technology companies.
PERM is the first step toward an employment-based green card, so a freeze changes how these employers lock in specialist talent for the long term. No end date has been set, no written legal basis has been published, and existing H-1B visas are not affected. Officials cited ongoing investigations without detailing allegations. The details are thin, but the direction is clear: federal pressure is moving toward domestic hiring, which raises the value of experienced professionals who can start without sponsorship or a long ramp.
The broader labor picture is steady rather than strong. ADP’s NER Pulse shows private employers adding an average of 24,750 jobs a week over the four weeks ended September 26, down from 25,250 after five straight weeks of acceleration. The figures are preliminary, seasonally adjusted, and lag by two weeks, so the next revision matters more than this week’s reading.
The staffing indicator keeps setting highs. SIA | Bullhorn data show U.S. staffing hours up 11 percent from a year earlier for the week ending October 3, with industrial up 17 percent, professional up 9, and IT up 8. Office and clerical, down 7 percent, remains the only category in decline. Employers are buying specialist hours and industrial capacity, not clerical volume.
Hays shows the other side. The recruiter reported Monday that group permanent placement fees fell 7 percent like-for-like on a 12 percent drop in volumes, while temp and contracting slipped 1 percent. Northern Europe was the weak spot, North America grew, and Hays is narrowing to 16 core countries to cut about £50 million a year in costs. I have watched enough hiring freezes to know the work finds whichever contract type is still approved. So who gets the call when the permanent requisition is frozen and the project start date is not? The professional who has done it before and can start Monday.
RGP asked 500 professionals who use AI at work how much of the result belongs to them. Among Gen X, 82 percent said the work reflects their own expertise and judgment. Among Gen Z, 52 percent said so. Fifteen percent of the Gen X group spend more of the day with AI than with colleagues, against 33 percent of Gen Z.
Nobody in our cohort needs a study to tell them this. We learned the software the way we learned everything else: somebody handed us a manual that was already out of date, and we read it anyway. The tool writes the first draft. We know what the second draft is supposed to say. Then we go get lunch, and the sandwich is better than anything the model has suggested.
The survey comes from a staffing firm, covers 500 people, and does not define its age bands. Read it with that in mind. We did.