It’s undisputed that April showers bring May flowers, but the jury is still out on whether April job postings bring May hires.

Job openings rose to their highest levels in nearly two years, according to the April job openings and labor turnover survey (JOLTS) data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, published Tuesday. However, intent to hire isn’t necessarily guaranteed to materialize, as hires and total separations continue to decline, signaling continued selectivity from employers.

Diving into the data. Employers posted 7.6 million job openings in April, a significant jump from the 6.9 million posted in March. Openings in April were up over half a million year over year, and were the highest recorded since May 2024, when there were around 7.8 million openings. At the same time, though, total hires fell to 5.1 million in April, declining over 400,000 from March, and down 275,000 year over year.

Zoom out. Isaac Hagen, SVP of emerging verticals and sales excellence at ManpowerGroup, noted that job openings rising in April aligns with what his firm is seeing on the ground, noting, however, that a spike in hires isn’t guaranteed to follow.

For more on the latest JOLTS data, keep reading here.—PM

Paychex announced this week the launch of its new AI-powered intelligence solution Workforce Intelligence Strengthened by Expertise (WISE), designed to embed autonomous decision-making and task execution directly into the payroll and HR workflow for customers who use Paychex products.

The move comes as large HCM and HR tech vendors race to redefine HR processes amid an enterprise-wide AI transformation.

The new WISE solution layers an intelligence system behind Paychex flagship products including Paychex Flex, Paycor, and SurePayroll. WISE combines AI assistants, predictive analytics, and autonomous agents that can work on behalf of HR teams and managers, according to execs.

“It is really our next generation platform, and our goal is really to create that more agentic-, digital-workforce for our customers,” Ryan Bergstrom, Paychex’s chief product officer, said. “Not really just providing insights, but anticipating the needs and really getting to the point of recommending and executing work on their behalf, always with the human in the loop.”

For more on the new AI-powered intelligence platform, keep reading here.—AD

In May 2025, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei made headlines by predicting that AI would eliminate half of entry-level office jobs in the next one to five years.

While it would be folly to claim that any trend in the year since proves what will happen four years from now, for 2025 at least, a wave of AI-driven layoffs did not materialize, according to Gartner research.

Gartner studied nearly 1,400,000 jobs and found that only 21% of layoffs in the first half (H1) of 2025 were related in any way to AI. That percentage dropped to 13% in the second half of the year (H2).

What’s more, the bulk of those layoffs involved what Gartner terms “repositioning.”

For more on the repositioning phenomenon, keep reading on CFO Brew.—CV

Some I-9 mistakes used to be fixable paperwork issues. Now they may come with much higher stakes. On June 4, join HR Brew and Equifax to unpack ICE’s updated guidance, evolving error classifications, and what employers should prioritize before “we’ll deal with it later” becomes a strategy review.

In recent weeks employers including Zoom and Deloitte made headlines for reducing paid family leave benefits. Learn why recent high-profile reductions in parental leave don’t seem to reflect a wider trend—at least not yet.