You've probably noticed the disconnect. LinkedIn keeps showing you roles that match your profile. Recruiters still reach out. But somewhere between the posting and the offer letter, everything stalls.

Yesterday's JOLTS report confirmed what a lot of you have been feeling. Job openings surged to 7.6 million in April, the highest since May 2024. But actual hiring fell. Companies are window shopping for talent, not buying.

Let's get into it.

The ADP report kicked off jobs week. The May ADP National Employment Report released this morning, with forecasters expecting around 120,000 private-sector jobs added, up slightly from April's 109,000. Friday's BLS employment situation report is the one that moves markets, with April's 115,000 surprising to the upside. This week's trifecta will tell us whether the labor market is stabilizing or stalling.

Microsoft just built its own AI brain. At Build 2026, Microsoft unveiled seven in-house AI models, including MAI-Thinking-1, its first reasoning model trained entirely without OpenAI data. MAI-Code-1-Flash, a coding model, outperforms Claude Haiku 4.5 by 16 points on SWE-Bench Pro while using 60% fewer tokens. The $13B Microsoft gave OpenAI is looking more like tuition than a permanent partnership.

The White House wants to see AI models before you do. A new executive order signed June 2 asks AI companies to voluntarily submit their most powerful models for government testing 30 days before public release. The order also creates a federal AI cybersecurity clearinghouse. It's voluntary for now, which means it's a handshake today and potentially a mandate tomorrow.

Groupon cut 24% of its workforce to become "AI-native." The company slashed 400 positions under "Project Foundry," replacing merchant outreach with AI voice agents and shipping features without traditional engineering. Its stock went up. The company raised EBITDA guidance to $75-80M. The COO resigned.

Defense tech funding just shattered every record. Venture investment in defense startups hit $14.6 billion through May, already surpassing the previous full-year record of $9.6 billion set in 2025. Anduril raised $5B at a $61B valuation, making it the largest defense-tech venture raise ever. The sector now sits behind only AI labs as a destination for late-stage capital.

Hiring

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The April JOLTS report dropped yesterday and the numbers look like they're arguing with each other. Job openings surged to 7.6 million, up 731,000 from March, the biggest monthly jump since the post-COVID hiring frenzy. That's the highest level since May 2024.

But actual hiring went the other direction. Hires fell to 5.1 million. Quits held steady at 3.0 million. Layoffs were flat at 1.7 million. Economists are calling it a "low-hire, low-fire" pattern, and if you've been job searching, you already know what that feels like.

Here's the part that matters most: nearly the entire increase came from one sector. Professional and business services added 668,000 openings, accounting for more than 90% of the total jump. That's the consulting, finance, tech services, and management advisory lane, exactly where Second Ladder readers operate.

So why are companies posting but not pulling the trigger? A few things are colliding. Hiring managers need approval from more people than they did two years ago. AI tools are letting smaller teams absorb more work, so the urgency to backfill is lower. And with the BLS jobs report dropping Friday, some employers are waiting to see where the macro data lands before committing to headcount.

The gap between postings and hires also explains something you might have experienced firsthand: getting ghosted after multiple rounds. When openings sit unfilled for months, it's not because the company can't find qualified people. It's because the posting is aspirational, not operational. The budget is tentatively approved. The role exists in a spreadsheet. But nobody has signed off on the actual offer.

Why it matters: If you're job searching, this data is actually good news with a caveat. The demand is real, especially in professional services. But timelines are longer than they used to be, so the game right now is staying visible to hiring managers who have budget but are moving slowly. The roles will get filled. Just not on the timeline the postings suggest.

On June 1, GitHub switched Copilot from flat-rate pricing to token-based billing. The backlash was immediate. Developers on Reddit and Hacker News reported projected cost increases of 10x to 50x. One user estimated their monthly bill would jump from $29 to $750. Another from $50 to $3,000.

The core features, code completions and inline suggestions, stay free. What costs money now is the agentic stuff: long-running AI sessions that debug, refactor, and build across multiple files. The more you delegate to the AI, the more you pay.

This isn't just a developer story. It's a preview of how AI pricing will work everywhere. The subscription model trained people to use AI like a gym membership: pay $20, use it as much as you want. That model was never sustainable. Microsoft, Google, and Anthropic are all signaling that the next wave of AI tools will be metered like cloud computing, not sold like Netflix.

Why it matters: The professionals who understand AI economics, not just AI skills, will have an edge. Knowing which tasks are worth delegating to AI at $0.002/token vs. doing yourself is becoming a real workplace skill. The 56% wage premium for AI-fluent workers will increasingly go to people who can optimize cost, not just usage.

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Paste this into Claude or ChatGPT:

Broadcom reports Q2 earnings tonight. AI semiconductor revenue was $8.4B last quarter (up 106% YoY). Analysts expect it to break $10B for the first time.

Last issue's prediction: May BLS jobs report (drops Friday). We'll have results in the next issue.

Scientists built a chip that generates, steers, and reads light in a single device, a major step toward ultra-fast, energy-efficient computing. (ScienceDaily, Jun 2)

Researchers are mapping the Grand Canyon's hidden cave networks to solve a decades-old mystery about how snowmelt supplies the park's springs. (ScienceDaily, Jun 2)

NASA's X-59 supersonic jet is about to break the sound barrier for the first time, testing technology that could bring back commercial supersonic flight. (ScienceDaily, Jun 1)