TV News LIES

Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan says the headlines about Gen Z’s fears about AI and the job market are real.

The bank recently hired 2,000 top grads from 200,000 applications, the executive said in an interview with CBS News‘ Margaret Brennan on Face the Nation. As companies cite AI for widespread layoffs, Moynihan acknowledges that many young people feel scared and uncertain about the future.

“My advice to those kids, if you ask them if they’re worried about, they say they’re worried about—these are kids that we hire, 200,000 applications, we hire 2000 people.” Moynihan added that “if you ask them if they’re scared, they say they are. And I understand that. But I say, harness it … It’ll be your world ahead of you,” Moynihan said.

“My advice to those kids, if you ask them if they’re worried about, they say they’re worried about—these are kids that we hire, 200,000 applications, we hire 2000 people.” Moynihan added that “if you ask them if they’re scared, they say they are. And I understand that. But I say, harness it … It’ll be your world ahead of you,” Moynihan said.

Moynihan said it’s too soon to say how AI will play out in the job market, but he hopes to use efficiencies created by the technology to invest in more growth.

Moynihan said it’s too soon to say how AI will play out in the job market, but he hopes to use efficiencies created by the technology to invest in more growth.

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The food pantry at Penn State Harrisburg saw an uptick in students during the fall semester. Aimee Wheeler, who oversees the pantry, says she expects this coming semester to be just as busy.

"I expect to see even more in January and February, because students will be coming back from winter break and be stocking up," Wheeler said.

About a year ago, she said the food pantry might have had about nine visitors in a week. But lately, it's been more like nine visitors in a single day.

"We've seen more students than ever," Wheeler said.

And it's not just Penn State Harrisburg.

"We're hearing that there [is] an uptick, an increase in visits and not enough resources to go around," said Renee Houle Catazano, a vice president at Swipe Out Hunger. The national nonprofit estimates that two in five college students face food insecurity, meaning they lack consistent access to nutritious foods.

Between the uncertainty of SNAP payments due to the government shutdown and the rising cost of living, Houle Catazano said many students feel financially strained.

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Nineteen states will raise their minimum wages to ring in the new year for 2026, with most of them reaching a rate of $15 per hour or higher.

Another 49 cities and counties across the country will also be hiking their wage floors on Jan. 1, according to a breakdown by the National Employment Law Project.

Even though the federal minimum wage remains just $7.25 per hour, a majority of states now require employers to pay a higher rate. New Year’s Day is the most common time for states to implement scheduled increases to their minimum wages, thanks to cost-of-living adjustments written into state laws.

The highest state minimums will come to Washington State, at $17.13 per hour; New York, which will mandate $17 in the New York City metro area; and New Jersey, which will require $18.92 for long-term care workers.

Alaska and Florida are scheduled to raise their wage floors later in 2026, to $14 and $15, respectively. Oregon will also hike its minimum wage next summer to a rate still to be determined.

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The job market continues to show signs of cooling.

U.S. employers added just 64,000 jobs in November, according to a delayed report from the Labor Department Tuesday, while the unemployment rate rose to 4.6% from 4.4% in September. That's the highest unemployment rate in more than four years.

The jobs report was initially set to come out earlier this month, but the government's ability to monitor the job market was hampered by the six-week federal shutdown.

https://www.npr.org/2025/12/16/nx-s1-5645023/jobs-employment-labor-marketThat delayed job tallies for October and November, both of which were released on Tuesday. The report showed the U.S. saw a net loss of 105,000 jobs in October. That was led by a large drop in the federal workforce, as 162,000 government workers who'd taken buyouts earlier in the year were officially dropped from the payrolls.

Furloughed federal workers were unable to conduct their usual survey of households in October, so the unemployment rate for that month remains unknown.

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Thousands of Starbucks workers are gearing up to vote on whether to go on strike next week. 

The strike authorization vote is set to begin Friday and will remain open for several days, with Starbucks Workers United expected to share results after voting ends. Employees represented by the union have staged two national strikes over the last year, most recently in May to protest Starbucks' new dress code. Thousands of workers also walked off the job in December 2024.

As the voting gets underway, the union is also planning a series of rallies and pickets over the weekend outside Starbucks stores in dozens of U.S. cities.

Starbucks Workers United originated in Buffalo, New York, in 2021 and now represents 12,000 workers in approximately 550 Starbucks cafes across the country.

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Meta will lay off roughly 600 employees within its artificial intelligence unit as the company looks to reduce layers and operate more nimbly, a spokesperson confirmed to CNBC on Wednesday.

The company announced the cuts in a memo from its chief AI officer, Alexandr Wang, who was hired in June as part of Meta’s $14.3 billion investment in Scale AI. Workers across Meta’s AI infrastructure units, Fundamental Artificial Intelligence Research unit (FAIR) and other product-related positions will be impacted.

However, the cuts did not impact employees within TBD Labs, which includes many of the top-tier AI hires brought into the social media company this summer, people familiar with the matter told CNBC. Those employees, overseen by Wang, were spared by the layoffs,underscoring Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s bet on his expensive hires versus the legacy employees, the people said.

Within Meta, the AI unit was considered to be bloated, with teams like FAIR and more product-oriented groups often vying for computing resources, the people said. When the company’s new hires joined the company to create Superintelligence Labs, it inherited the oversized Meta AI unit, they said. The layoffs are an attempt by Meta to continue trim the department and further cement Wang’s role in steering the company’s AI strategy.

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