It’s said that patience is a virtue, and with the amount of waiting and seeing we’ve done with the labor market this year, we might as well all be saints. The labor market continued to gradually cool in November, with employers adding few jobs outside of the healthcare industry, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ latest jobs report. The unemployment rate also increased, sparking worries over the economy and a potential recession—but experts say it’s (still) too early to jump to conclusions.

Diving into the data. Employers added 64,000 jobs in November, after losing 105,000 in October. The labor market has seen little net change in job growth since April, the release stated. Though payroll data was collected for October, household data for that month was not collected because of the government shutdown. The BLS also revised down the jobs numbers for August and September, with the labor market losing 26,000 jobs, and adding 108,000, respectively.

Federal government employment declined by 6,000 in November, as well as by 162,000 in October, as the federal workers who accepted the Trump administration’s deferred resignation offers were removed from payrolls at the end of September. The federal government shrank by 271,000 jobs since January. At the same time, the unemployment rate rose to 4.6%, the highest level seen since September 2021.

Zoom out. HR leaders can prepare for 2026 by focusing on scenario planning, Zhao said. The labor market could pick up next year, or continue to cool, and employers will want to be ready either way.

For more on what HR needs to know about the latest jobs report, keep reading here.—PM

Technological revolutions in business used to be a product of IT—and your whip-smart IT colleagues sourced all their insights from our pals over at IT Brew. But now, AI is rewiring how we work. That’s moved a lot of transformation responsibility to the people team, and it’s shifting how HR pros think about talent.

“We’re going through a major technical revolution, and the last few would have been the introduction of the Internet, or mobile, or cloud. Now, when these three things happened, it was squarely the CIO…that was driving those [transformations],” said Shibani Ahuja, Salesforce’s SVP of enterprise IT strategy, at a virtual roundtable event hosted by hiring platform Indeed on Monday. “We’re shifting to this idea of agentic or autonomous AI that can [be] like a virtual hologram that is working alongside me, traversing the virtual halls of our organization, getting work done.”

The AI transformation isn’t like the previous technological revolutions, she added, because it’s not a venture to reconfigure processes with new technology. It’s one that invites companies to reimagine their entire business.

“This is bringing to light the complete redefinition of an organization,” Ahuja said.

For more on how AI is transforming work, including for HR professionals, keep reading here.—AD

Kelsey Kirkpatrick began her HR journey at Amazon in 2013 right after graduating from college with a degree in leadership and supply chain management. Pope Francis was just beginning to rearrange the Papal furniture, the Supreme Court was examining marriage equality, and the “Harlem Shake” was all over YouTube and aggregated by the fine people over at BuzzFeed. But Kirkpatrick, she was just beginning to understand the impact she could have in the HR field.

“I knew I wanted to be in a role where I had an impact on people,” she said of her decision to join the growing e-commerce pioneer. “And where I get the most energy is from helping others to find their true potential.”

Kirkpatrick is a senior talent leader supporting Amazon’s Worldwide Stores and general and administrative functions like finance, HR, and legal. Prior to this work, she directed talent management for Panos Panay, SVP for the company's devices businesses.

From the floor of a fulfillment center to the corporate business unit, Kirkpatrick has worked all over the tech behemoth. In more than a dozen years, Kirkpatrick has worked in seven different rotations inside Amazon under different leaders in different business units.

For more from our conversation with Kirkpatrick, keep reading here.—AD

Who said desk calendars have to be boring? Introducing the Morning Brew 2026 Daily Games Desk Calendar. It’s perfect for desks, nightstands, and kitchen counters, so give yourself (or others) the gift of entertaining coffee breaks.