Novo used its Capital Markets Day on Monday to put a number on the restructuring: 67,000 employees, down from a peak above 78,000 in 2025. Nine thousand of the departures were last fall’s announced layoffs. The other 4,000, a spokesperson told BioSpace, came from attrition, retirements, voluntary exits, and decisions not to backfill. The money goes to R&D. Investors marked the stock down nearly 8 percent that day anyway.
Look hard at the second number. A reduction run through retirements and unfilled seats removes experience first by design, because the people eligible to retire are the ones who have been there longest. There is no WARN notice and no unemployment claim, which is part of why the year-to-date average for initial jobless claims is the lowest since 1969 while large employers keep shrinking. The weekly report counts people who were pushed. It has no line for people who were allowed to leave without a replacement.
Policy tightened the other end of the pipe. The White House extended the $100,000 H-1B payment requirement through September 21, 2027, while the implementing guidance sits on appeal after a Massachusetts judge struck it down in June. Whatever the merits, it raises the price of importing mid-career technical talent and, by extension, the value of the domestic bench. One correction to a footnote from last week: in Mobley v. Workday, the plaintiffs are asking to certify four subclasses, including applicants over 40, and the class certification hearing is set for March 9, 2027.
The work those seats used to do did not retire. It moved to a different budget line. SIA’s new MSP landscape report puts global spend under managed service provider programs at $244 billion for 2025, up 4 percent and the strongest growth since 2022, with another 4 percent forecast for this year. SIA’s research lead credits better market conditions, programs expanding into new countries, and continued growth in statement-of-work spend. Fifty-seven percent of staffing buyers now run an MSP.
The segment data points the same way. U.S. engineering staffing is on track for a record $10.6 billion this year, up 3 percent after a 4 percent decline in 2024. Among the engineering staffing firms SIA surveyed in September, median revenue was up 10 percent year over year in August, and a net 29 percent reported rising new orders, led by data centers, power generation, and grid work. Airswift added roughly 30 percent to its U.S. contractor base in a single acquisition the same week.
Every contingent program I have helped build crossed the same line eventually: the month statement-of-work spend passed open requisitions in the headcount plan, and nobody in the room remembered deciding it should. Why does it keep happening? A retirement frees a salary and leaves the problem behind, and the problem goes to whoever can start Monday. On a substation commissioning job, that is rarely someone doing it for the first time.
Cangrade ran 71,747 behavioral assessments of Gen Z and millennial workers against the four things HR decks have said about them for twenty years: entitled, short on soft skills, job-hoppers, in it for the money. None held. Novelty ranked last of 16 motivators and is falling fastest. Comfort, meaning stability and psychological safety, ranked first. Pay ranked fifteenth. Emotional intelligence topped the competency list, while active listening and critical thinking sat near the bottom.
Some of us have seen this movie. Around 1991 the word for our cohort was slacker, and there was a film and a newsmagazine cover to prove it. The slackers went on to run the plant, close the books, and keep the servers up through Y2K, and nobody ran a correction. Nobody will run one this time either. The kids want stability and a manager who listens. So did we. We just got tired of waiting and learned to supply both ourselves.
Welcome to the club, kids. There are no jackets.