
Fred Wang is a student at Harvard Law School.
In today’s News & Commentary, unemployed workers are taking longer to find jobs, Amazon is under investigation for potentially misleading investors about workplace safety, and how tech layoffs are affecting different generations of workers differently.
Unemployed workers are taking longer to find jobs, the Wall Street Journal reports. In April 2022, 526,000 unemployed workers had been out of a job for 3.5 to 6 months. That figure rose to 826,000 workers in December, per Labor Department estimates. This is because companies have started “dialing back on hiring last year, in part reflecting heightened uncertainty in the face of Federal Reserve interest-rate increases.”
Amazon is being investigated by the federal government for potentially misleading investors about the company’s safety record, the Wall Street Journal reports. The Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s Office is seeking documents on Amazon’s labor practices, under a federal law regulating wrongdoing that impacts banks. At the same time, the company is also under investigation by the Labor Department for workplace-safety violations. The Labor Department has already cited Amazon for not adequately reporting injuries at six of its warehouses.
Layoffs in the tech industry are a rude awakening for young workers, but not older ones, this New York Times report explains. This generational divide reflects the simple fact that older workers have more experience dealing with a cyclical crash. Millennial and Generation Z employees (born between 1981 and 2012) started their tech careers when tech companies were “conquering the world and defying economic rules.” But baby boomers and Generation X members (born between 1946 and 1980) have already lived through the dot-com crash.
Daily News & Commentary
Start your day with our roundup of the latest labor developments. See all
January 27
Judge rules firing of Whole Foods workers for wearing BLM masks legal; judge stands by order enforcing subpoenas against Starbucks Workers United; Fourth Circuit skeptical of UPS worker's ADA accommodation claim.
January 26
CA law to improve wages and conditions for fast food workers faces a ballot referendum; OK meat processing workers reeling after a coworker is killed by police onsite; Democrats and advocates urge stronger child labor protection; new report on wage theft
January 25
In today’s news and commentary, Biden renominates his pick for head of the DOL’s Wage and Hour Division; Walmart announces wage hike; Sanders plans Starbucks hearings as incoming chairman of the Senate HELP Committee; organizing efforts continue in the gaming industry; Amazon fires another union activist; and Harvard Law School launches the Center for Labor […]
January 24
HLS launches the new Center for Labor and a Just Economy, Lawmakers address construction worker deaths, and Local Progress publishes the local government round up on workers' rights.
January 23
Cooling labor market, Amazon investigations, and tech layoffs.
January 22
As Bloomberg detailed on Friday, Sen. Bernie Sanders, next in line to chair the powerful Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP), has not given up on last year’s struggle to secure sick leave for railway workers. According to Bloomberg, Sanders is quietly planning to introduce legislation in the coming months that would require rail carriers […]