Latest news with #techindustry
Yahoo
4 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
More men are returning to the office. Here's why that matters for women.
The return to office is in full swing, but you might notice more men around the water cooler. According to the Department of Labor, men are returning to the office in greater numbers than women. In 2024, 29% of employed men reported working from home, down from 34% the previous year. Approximately 36% of women worked from home last year, unchanged from 2023. What's behind these numbers? It's likely a result of return-to-office initiatives in male-dominated industries like tech, Cory Stahle, senior economist at Indeed, told Yahoo Finance. Women accounted for only about a quarter of computer and mathematical jobs in 2024, according to the data. For some roles, like computer programmers and computer hardware engineers, the share is even lower — 17.8% and 14.3% — respectively. 'Many of these return-to-office efforts are coming at a time when demand for workers in male-dominated industries has weakened, giving employers the upper hand,' Stahle said. As for the unbudging number of women working remotely over that two-year period, there could be an explanation for that finding as well, according to Stahle. Female-dominated fields such as private education and health services, leisure and hospitality, and state and local government have been less affected by return-to-work mandates, he said. 'Many of the jobs in these industries are already in-person roles.' Obstacle for gender equity Whether women are trying to move up or break into fields where office time is required, the trend away from remote arrangements could have far-reaching repercussions for gender equity. Here's why: Nearly 9 in 10 CEOs said in a 2024 survey that they 'will reward employees who make an effort to come into the office with favorable assignments, raises, or promotions.' That could also play out in the gender wage gap that has persisted across industries for decades. Last year, women earned an average of 85% of what men earned, according to Pew Research Center. Will the pay gap get worse if in-office attendance is a prerequisite for pay bumps? "In theory, remote work can be viewed as either a positive or negative amenity: It may offer greater scheduling flexibility, enhancing work-life balance, but it may also limit access to face-to-face mentoring and raise concerns about potential career growth penalties,' said Zoë Cullen, a lead researcher for a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) study on remote work. We do know that roughly 8 in 10 CEOs envision a full return to the office in the next three years, and many of those making it mandatory have threatened employees with termination if they fail to follow the company's return-to-office mandate. So far, the types of jobs being hit by these mandates have been well-paying, white-collar roles, Stahle said. 'If a worker can't or chooses not to return to the office and loses their higher-paying job as a result, that will have clear implications for the pay gap and the economy,' he said. The arc of remote work Remote work has been facing into the wind all year. Organizations that describe their workplace environment as remote shrank dramatically between 2024 and 2025, according to a study by Payscale. Despite the pressure, plenty of workers, not just women, are standing their ground on full-blown return-to-office attendance and are willing to take a pay cut to hold on to some flexibility. A majority of job candidates would accept a pay cut to work remotely, according to a new survey by Criteria Corp. On average, employees are willing to accept a 25% pay cut for partly or fully remote roles, according to the NBER study. All that said, the balance of power has shifted. In 2023, when workers had the upper hand in a tight labor market, the odds of being penalized for not coming into the office were low, or in many cases, not realistic for employers, who were well aware that workplace flexibility was one way that they could hang on to and lure skilled workers. Return-to-office demands by many tech-oriented employers, including Amazon, Google, and Meta, hit a fever pitch earlier this year. 'In a softening labor market, employers have more leverage to demand in-office work,' Marc Cenedella, founder of Ladders Inc., a career site for jobs that pay $100,000 or more, told Yahoo Finance. 'The great resignation is over. The great return is upon us.' Sign up for the Mind Your Money weekly newsletter By subscribing, you are agreeing to Yahoo's Terms and Privacy Policy Hybrid to the rescue Compromise, however, has inched in. And that playbook can work for many women, who still shoulder a disproportionate share of caregiving responsibilities for children and aging parents, and need and value flexibility more than men. Flexible work benefits have stabilized enough to suggest a permanent place in employers' benefits, according to a new SHRM Employee Benefits Survey. Overall, hybrid office environments — where attendance is generally three days a week for so-called knowledge workers (not front-line ones) — are the norm now at more than half of companies, followed by traditional office environments at 27%, with remote-first environments making up only 16% of office types, per Payscale data. In fact, while 4 in 10 organizations deployed a return-to-office mandate in recent years, an increasing number have done a bit of soft shoe around the specific requirements and have loosened the rules depending on job type and for those who are top aging population factor Long-term trends in the workforce could ultimately help women gain ground. 'As the baby boomer generation ages and companies grapple with fewer younger workers and our labor market tightens, companies can't afford to overlook any segment of the workforce, especially women,' said Gwenn Rosener, co-founder of recruiting firm FlexProfessionals. Because fewer people are born each year, our workforce is going to start to shrink, and we need workers to make products, provide services, and pay taxes, Bradley Schurman, a demographic strategist, told Yahoo Finance. 'So, as we enter this period of the Super Age, with more people over the age of 65 than under the age of 18, this is going to create market conditions that are going to increase the demand for workers of all ages because the supply is so low,' he said. 'Women will be able to negotiate for greater benefits and for greater salaries and more flexibility. And it's not just women, disabled and other marginalized groups will likely benefit too." Kerry Hannon is a Senior Columnist at Yahoo Finance. She is a career and retirement strategist and the author of 14 books, including the forthcoming "Retirement Bites: A Gen X Guide to Securing Your Financial Future," "In Control at 50+: How to Succeed in the New World of Work," and "Never Too Old to Get Rich." Follow her on Bluesky. Sign up for the Mind Your Money newsletter Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Washington Post
8 hours ago
- Business
- Washington Post
Court rules Mississippi's social media age verification law can go into effect
A Mississippi law that requires social media users to verify their ages can go into effect, a federal court has ruled. A tech industry group has pledged to continue challenging the law , arguing it infringes on users' rights to privacy and free expression. A three-judge panel of the 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals overruled a decision by a federal district judge to block the 2024 law from going into effect. It's the latest legal development as court challenges play out against similar laws in states across the country.
Yahoo
11 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
More men are returning to the office. Here's why that matters for women.
The return to office is in full swing, but you might notice more men around the water cooler. According to the Department of Labor, men are returning to the office in greater numbers than women. In 2024, 29% of employed men reported working from home, down from 34% the previous year. Approximately 36% of women worked from home last year, unchanged from 2023. What's behind these numbers? It's likely a result of return-to-office initiatives in male-dominated industries like tech, Cory Stahle, senior economist at Indeed, told Yahoo Finance. Women accounted for only about a quarter of computer and mathematical jobs in 2024, according to the data. For some roles, like computer programmers and computer hardware engineers, the share is even lower — 17.8% and 14.3% — respectively. 'Many of these return-to-office efforts are coming at a time when demand for workers in male-dominated industries has weakened, giving employers the upper hand,' Stahle said. As for the unbudging number of women working remotely over that two-year period, there could be an explanation for that finding as well, according to Stahle. Female-dominated fields such as private education and health services, leisure and hospitality, and state and local government have been less affected by return-to-work mandates, he said. 'Many of the jobs in these industries are already in-person roles.' Obstacle for gender equity Whether women are trying to move up or break into fields where office time is required, the trend away from remote arrangements could have far-reaching repercussions for gender equity. Here's why: Nearly 9 in 10 CEOs said in a 2024 survey that they 'will reward employees who make an effort to come into the office with favorable assignments, raises, or promotions.' That could also play out in the gender wage gap that has persisted across industries for decades. Last year, women earned an average of 85% of what men earned, according to Pew Research Center. Will the pay gap get worse if in-office attendance is a prerequisite for pay bumps? "In theory, remote work can be viewed as either a positive or negative amenity: It may offer greater scheduling flexibility, enhancing work-life balance, but it may also limit access to face-to-face mentoring and raise concerns about potential career growth penalties,' said Zoë Cullen, a lead researcher for a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) study on remote work. We do know that roughly 8 in 10 CEOs envision a full return to the office in the next three years, and many of those making it mandatory have threatened employees with termination if they fail to follow the company's return-to-office mandate. So far, the types of jobs being hit by these mandates have been well-paying, white-collar roles, Stahle said. 'If a worker can't or chooses not to return to the office and loses their higher-paying job as a result, that will have clear implications for the pay gap and the economy,' he said. The arc of remote work Remote work has been facing into the wind all year. Organizations that describe their workplace environment as remote shrank dramatically between 2024 and 2025, according to a study by Payscale. Despite the pressure, plenty of workers, not just women, are standing their ground on full-blown return-to-office attendance and are willing to take a pay cut to hold on to some flexibility. A majority of job candidates would accept a pay cut to work remotely, according to a new survey by Criteria Corp. On average, employees are willing to accept a 25% pay cut for partly or fully remote roles, according to the NBER study. All that said, the balance of power has shifted. In 2023, when workers had the upper hand in a tight labor market, the odds of being penalized for not coming into the office were low, or in many cases, not realistic for employers, who were well aware that workplace flexibility was one way that they could hang on to and lure skilled workers. Return-to-office demands by many tech-oriented employers, including Amazon, Google, and Meta, hit a fever pitch earlier this year. 'In a softening labor market, employers have more leverage to demand in-office work,' Marc Cenedella, founder of Ladders Inc., a career site for jobs that pay $100,000 or more, told Yahoo Finance. 'The great resignation is over. The great return is upon us.' Sign up for the Mind Your Money weekly newsletter By subscribing, you are agreeing to Yahoo's Terms and Privacy Policy Hybrid to the rescue Compromise, however, has inched in. And that playbook can work for many women, who still shoulder a disproportionate share of caregiving responsibilities for children and aging parents, and need and value flexibility more than men. Flexible work benefits have stabilized enough to suggest a permanent place in employers' benefits, according to a new SHRM Employee Benefits Survey. Overall, hybrid office environments — where attendance is generally three days a week for so-called knowledge workers (not front-line ones) — are the norm now at more than half of companies, followed by traditional office environments at 27%, with remote-first environments making up only 16% of office types, per Payscale data. In fact, while 4 in 10 organizations deployed a return-to-office mandate in recent years, an increasing number have done a bit of soft shoe around the specific requirements and have loosened the rules depending on job type and for those who are top aging population factor Long-term trends in the workforce could ultimately help women gain ground. 'As the baby boomer generation ages and companies grapple with fewer younger workers and our labor market tightens, companies can't afford to overlook any segment of the workforce, especially women,' said Gwenn Rosener, co-founder of recruiting firm FlexProfessionals. Because fewer people are born each year, our workforce is going to start to shrink, and we need workers to make products, provide services, and pay taxes, Bradley Schurman, a demographic strategist, told Yahoo Finance. 'So, as we enter this period of the Super Age, with more people over the age of 65 than under the age of 18, this is going to create market conditions that are going to increase the demand for workers of all ages because the supply is so low,' he said. 'Women will be able to negotiate for greater benefits and for greater salaries and more flexibility. And it's not just women, disabled and other marginalized groups will likely benefit too." Kerry Hannon is a Senior Columnist at Yahoo Finance. She is a career and retirement strategist and the author of 14 books, including the forthcoming "Retirement Bites: A Gen X Guide to Securing Your Financial Future," "In Control at 50+: How to Succeed in the New World of Work," and "Never Too Old to Get Rich." Follow her on Bluesky. Sign up for the Mind Your Money newsletter Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Here's what the biggest names in tech and business think AI means for white-collar jobs
The biggest names in tech don't agree on what AI means for white-collar jobs. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei sparked fears when he said that AI could wipe out 50% of entry-level office jobs. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman doesn't see such a risk. He's not alone. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei issued a warning in May that AI is going to wipe out entry-level white-collar jobs He said other AI companies and the government are "sugarcoating" the risks of breakthrough technologies within the next five years. Other CEOs and business leaders have disagreed or framed the change with more optimism. "And the hard part about this is, I think it will happen faster than previous technological changes. But I think the new jobs will be better, and people will have better stuff," OpenAI CEO said in June. Here's what some of the biggest names in tech and business are saying about the future of jobs. Dario Amodei Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei kicked off the conversation by warning about how quickly large language models are advancing. "We, as the producers of this technology, have a duty and an obligation to be honest about what is coming," Amodei told Axios. "I don't think this is on people's radar." Amodei said it can seem weird that the AI companies would warn about their own technology. "Well, what if they're right?" Amodei said. Sam Altman OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said some jobs will go away, but society will adapt. "And the hard part about this is, I think it will happen faster than previous technological changes. But I think the new jobs will be better, and people will have better stuff," Altman said during a live episode of The New York Times' "Hard Fork" podcast in June. Altman said that even if it were true that such a large number of jobs were about to be wiped out, "the inertia of society" wouldn't allow for it. "And the take that half the jobs are going to be gone in a year or two years or five years or whatever — I think that's just — I think that's not how society really works," he said. "Even if the technology weren't ready for that, the inertia of society, which will be helpful in this case, is like — there's a lot of mass there." Jensen Huang Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang didn't mince words. "I pretty much disagree with almost everything he says," Huang told reporters of Amoedi's views at VivaTech 2025 in Paris. "He thinks AI is so scary, but only they should do it." Huang said that he's much more optimistic. "If you want things to be done safely and responsibly, you should do it in the open," Huang said, likening AI development to medical research, where transparency and peer review are essential. "I believe AI is not that expensive. Do I think AI will change jobs? It will change everyone's — it's changed mine." Marc Benioff Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said he's seeing no evidence of such a near-immediate upheaval. "That isn't how I see AI," Benioff said during a recent onstage interview at the 2025 AI for Good Global Summit. "Maybe they have AI, I don't have. But in the AI I have, it's not going to be some huge mass layoff of white-collar workers, it is a radical augmentation of the workforce." Benioff encouraged people to "shed their fear" about AI. "When I'm talking to our customers, I'm not hearing them say, "Oh, now I'm laying off these people because this A,B,C technology increase because of AI.' So, I think we need to somehow shed the fear of what that all means." Jim Farley Ford CEO Jim Farley said he sees problems ahead. "Artificial intelligence is going to replace literally half of all white-collar workers in the US," Farley said during an appearance at the Aspen Ideas Festival. Farley said he's concerned that too much of the American education system is focused on four-year degrees instead of trades. Mark Cuban Mark Cuban said the situation will be the opposite of Amodei's warning. "Someone needs to remind the CEO that at one point there were more than 2m secretaries. There were also separate employees to do in office dictation. They were the original white collar displacements," Cuban wrote on in a post on Bluesky. "New companies with new jobs will come from AI and increase TOTAL employment," he continued. Brad Lightcap Like Altman, OpenAI's COO Brad Lightcap doesn't see the sky falling. "We have no evidence of this," Lightcap said during the "Hard Fork" podcast taping. "And Dario is a scientist. And I would hope he takes an evidence-based approach to these types of things." Lightcap said that every technology changes the job market. "I think every time you get a platform shift, you get a change in the job market," he said." I mean, in 1900, 40 percent of people worked in agriculture. It's 2 percent today. Microsoft Excel has probably been the greatest job displacer of the 20th century." Andy Jassy Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said that AI is already changing workflows. He said it will soon lead to a reduction in some jobs. "As we roll out more Generative AI and agents, it should change the way our work is done," Jassy said in a memo posted to the Amazon website. "We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today, and more people doing other types of jobs." Sebastian Siemiatkowski Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski said AI may cause a recession due to the sheer number of job cuts. "I don't want to be one of them," Siemiatkowski said of CEOs who downplay the changes AI will bring. "I want to be honest, I want to be fair, and I want to tell what I see so that society can start taking preparations." 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Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Amazon's AWS has joined the AI agent craze. Now the real work of showing Fortune 500 companies how to actually use them begins
Amazon Web Services joined the agentic AI frenzy in a big way this week, revealing at a New York City event Wednesday a host of services and tools dubbed Agentcore that let technologists build and deploy so-called AI agents capable of automating internal tasks while potentially overhauling the way consumers interact with online businesses too. These agents, to many in the tech industry, are the next evolution in our new AI-powered future, where artificial intelligence not only acts as an assistant, but can autonomously complete complex multi-step actions with just some human intervention in sensitive sectors like healthcare, and no human intervention in lower-risk areas. But at least in the short term, the real battle between AWS and agentic AI competitors may depend less on technology differentiation, and more on who employs the most quality talent to help guide large corporations on where to even begin with AI agents. Businesses 'are frustrated because they want someone to tell them what to do and how to do it,' Dave Nicholson, chief technology advisor at The Futurum Group, told Fortune. 'There isn't enough [talent] to go around. Humans are the bottleneck.' Nicholson added that AWS and other cloud and large tech companies will need to heavily lean on partner companies to assist with customer education and implementation too. The business case for agents was pushed into the forefront last year by Salesforce, with the announcement of a new division it calls Agentforce. Google, OpenAI and other cloud and technology players have since rushed to announce AI agent tools and services geared toward corporations. On Thursday, a day after AWS's showed off its agent tools, OpenAI announced a new, general purpose agent for users of its ChatGPT product. Fear of missing out With just about every CEO these days under pressure to craft an AI strategy, the incoming AI agents may be poised to capitalize on the situation. 'This is the highest level of 'fear of missing out' ever among behemoths in the IT industry right now,' Nicholson said. 'These are existential decisions being made at Microsoft, Google, and Amazon.' In an interview with Fortune after his keynote presentation announcing a new in-house collection of agent-building services dubbed AgentCore as well as a marketplace for agents, AWS VP of agentic AI, Swami Sivasubramanian said that Fortune 500 execs whose companies don't start experimenting with the technology risk missing out on a transformational moment as pivotal as the creation of the internet. 'Agents are fundamentally going to change how we work and how we live,' Sivasubramanian said when asked how execs at Fortune 500 companies can be sure that their investments in building or deploying AI agents isn't supplanted by a new shiny technology of the moment next year. The executive provided an example of how AI technologies will make it feasible for an agent to, for example, not only plan an itinerary for a trip, but do all of the bookings too. 'You can give it a high level objective, like, 'Hey, create me a 10 day itinerary in December to visit Australia,'' he said. 'It actually understands the objective. Breaks it down into…I need a flight, I need activities to go see in these cities, and then, based on my preferences, it creates a customized itinerary, and actually also secures reservations by calling APIs.' That's the type of personal, tangible, example that gives this AWS executive and other proponents of AI agents, the belief that many customer experiences can be overhauled, or created from scratch, with this technology — in ways that might even be hard to envision now. Agentic rolemodels needed Slick as some of these scenarios may sound however, the reality is that there are currently few examples of corporations using agents at massive scale. The green field of opportunity is sure to be attractive for some, but it's also a big challenge for the companies selling agentic products and tools since there are not many real-world examples to guide or inspire. Amazon Web Services' market leadership in cloud computing should serve as some advantage, providing a large existing customer base to sell to. And because those companies' operations are already dependent on AWS, they have more patience for any bumps Amazon experiences as it refines its AI agent business. 'They're more likely to get two or three strikes,' Nicholson said of AWS and its AI agent rollout. But it's an open question whether AWS' initial focus on heavily marketing its new agentic tools to software developers versus the executives with the purse strings will prove problematic. 'They have disjointed messaging,' Mark Beccue, an analyst at the research firm Omdia, told TechTarget. 'When talking about agents, you must have the complete story.' AWS' Sivasubramanian said that most C-suite customers that he meets with naturally look inward to how their own organization runs when considering where and how to deploy AI agents first to help automate, or reduce the time to complete, boring, repetitive tasks. This, of course, raises the question of when and how AI agents will disrupt or displace jobs and in which areas. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy recently weighed in on the overall AI boom in an employee memo, saying that while these technologies will both eliminate current roles while creating new ones, 'we expect that this will reduce our total corporate workforce [over the next few years] as we get efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company.' On Thursday, a day after AWS' agent-focused summit, the company carried out layoffs of at least hundreds of employees. A day earlier, Sivasubramanian, perhaps not surprisingly, struck an optimistic tone when discussing a new world full of AI agents that now Amazon — and many rivals — are rushing to bring to fruition. 'Yes, in the short term, if you look at [past] transformations, there were actually changes on the specific job categories [in which people worked], 'but then we as humans have really adapted to these changes and then started working on different things. You don't find people who are doing Y2K engineering anymore.' 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