Analytics & Insights.
Analytics, insights, and ideas on how people, systems, and technology evolve together. Where strategy meets practice, exploring the workforce, change management, and the future of work.
Beta Insights.
2026 Workforce Insights: Burning Questions
Ten insights on the workforce questions keeping professionals up at night—and what they mean for 2026.
AI Resistance: The Lighthouse Is Out
Are we sending the right signals for AI adoption? And is it creating or mitigating resistance?
Why a Sandbox? The Power of Play in Adult Learning
Exploration of play and sandbox environments for adult learning.
Beta Analytics.
The Great Stay Dashboard.
Tracking the macro unfreeze against the lived experience.The market is unfreezing — the experience is not.
Quits rate continues to hover near the historical floor. The Great Stay is real. Workers are staying put — not by choice, but by conditions.
Reported job openings sit near the 2010s norm, not above it. That baseline is the story: employers are listinglike it’s a normal market, but hiring rates say they’re not actually moving. The gap between listing and hiring is where the signal gets loud.
The gap between data and experience. Jobs data can look good at the macro level. This is the mainstream media take. But the micro experience of each applicant can still be frustrating, demoralizing, and often painful. Both truths can coexist. Quits rate is part of the story; I’ll explore more.
Follow the analysis. New reads monthly.
Sources: BLS JOLTS, Employment Situation Report.
Field notes.
America Has a Back-Pay Crisis
July 2026002Cognitive Depth vs. Temporary Speed
July 2026003How to Ask Your Leaders for What You Need During Disruption
June 2026004Meritocracy Cannot Survive a Market of Unverified Experts
June 2026005The Threat to Meritocracy Isn't DEI. It's Your ATS.
June 2026006What Leadership Composition Reveals
May 2026007Does the hiring market feel broken to you? That's because it is.
May 2026008The Great Stay Destroyed Workforce Mobility
May 2026009America is Experiencing AI Burnout
April 2026010Bots Battling Bots
April 2026011Diversity of experience is your human advantage over AI.
April 2026012“If Claude Doesn’t Come Up Soon”
March 2026013People Recession. Corporate Boom.
March 2026014Recalibration or Shadow Cut?
February 2026015The Validation Trap
February 2026016Pay Transparency Theater
January 2026017Trades are the 2026 Power Play
January 2026018The Middle is Vanishing
January 2026019Staying isn’t Loyalty
January 2026020The Employee-Leadership Divide
January 2026021Silence at the Top
January 2026022Hybrid Creep
January 2026023Networking Won’t Save You
December 2025024Fall Forward
December 2025025The Painful Reality of Leading
November 2025026They're calling it the "Great Stay”
October 2025027Candidate experience matters
September 2025The market may unfreeze at the population level while the lived experience of finding a job remains a struggle for much longer.
— Karida Palmer