🔮 A double-sided skills shortage prediction, thanks to AI

Hey HR Pros!

The labor market is about to divide along a fault line that most workforce plans aren't built to handle.

On one side: white-collar roles in finance, information, and business services facing growing pressure from AI.

On the other: construction, healthcare, and the skilled trades heading toward some of the steepest projected shortfalls in decades, with very little AI relief in sight.

That's the core finding from a new Indeed Hiring Lab analysis, and it reframes the entire AI-and-jobs conversation. The challenge for HR leaders isn't managing AI adoption in the abstract. It's positioning workers and hiring strategies ahead of a structural mismatch that will take 15 years to fully unfold.

This edition covers that shift alongside three other stories every HR leader should have on their radar:

Coming Up:

• 🎤 Only 44% of employees feel their pay is fair, and managers may be the link HR is missing

• 🤐 1 in 4 employees complete work tasks with AI and keep it to themselves

• 🥜 Peanut butter pay? Only 4% of employers actually gave everyone the same raise this year

• ⚡ AI could push information-sector unemployment to 21% while the trades face unrelieved shortages

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🎤 Only 44% of Employees Feel Their Pay Is Fair, and Managers Are Leaving Pay Conversations to Chance

HR teams are doing more on compensation than ever: market data, equity analyses, documented pay philosophies, and formal review cycles. But when it comes to whether employees actually trust pay decisions, something is breaking down.

Salary.com's 2026 Pay Practices and Compensation Strategy Survey found a 31-point gap between how many HR professionals believe pay is fair and how many think employees feel that way. The report points to a manager training gap as a core driver: pay conversations are landing in the hands of people who don't have the framework, language, or preparation to have them well.

When managers can't explain decisions confidently and consistently, employees fill that space with doubt.

Key insights

• 🗺️ Job architecture is the foundation. Without a formal structure for roles and levels, managers have no defensible framework to explain pay decisions to the employees who ask.

• 🎤 Managers are the last mile. Pay philosophy means little if the people delivering it approach those conversations without training, language, or direct support from HR.

• 📉 Communication can't cover structural gaps. Better messaging won't close the trust deficit if the underlying decisions aren't built on a consistent, well-documented framework employees can actually see.

• 🔎 The gap is a signal, not a verdict. The 31-point disconnect between HR confidence and employee perception is measurable, which means organizations can identify exactly where the pay process is breaking down.

Read more: https://www.salary.com/resources/report/pay-practices-survey

⚡ AI Could Push Information-Sector Unemployment to 21% While Construction and Healthcare Go Short-Staffed

A new Indeed Hiring Lab analysis of U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data lays out a labor market heading in two directions at once. Declining immigration, falling fertility rates, and a wave of retiring workers are set to shrink the overall U.S. labor force significantly by 2032. AI tools can absorb some of that pressure, but only in white-collar sectors where shortages will be least severe.

For construction, healthcare, and the skilled trades, which face the deepest projected shortfalls, AI offers very little relief.

New college graduates continue to concentrate in finance, business, and information fields, which face the highest AI-related displacement in some scenarios, widening a gap between where workers are prepared to go and where the economy will actually need them.

Key insights

• 🏗️ Shortages will concentrate where AI can't reach. Construction and healthcare face the steepest projected labor gaps through 2032, and those are precisely the sectors where AI productivity tools offer the smallest relief.

• 🎓 New graduates are heading toward the higher-risk zones. Graduates in finance, business, and information fields face meaningful displacement in high-AI scenarios, while the trades and health sectors go short on the workers they need most.

• 🔀 Employer roles will shift toward friction management. HR will increasingly be in the business of moving workers across sectors and roles, using data-informed strategies to match available talent with where the economy actually needs it.

• 🛠️ Skills-first hiring is a structural response, not a trend. Dropping degree requirements in favor of demonstrated ability helps employers reach workers who can fill the gaps that AI and credential filters together are leaving open.

Read more: https://www.hrdive.com/news/a-massive-labor-force-loss-is-coming-what-can-employers-do/820944/

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🤐 1 in 4 Employees Use AI to Complete Work Tasks and Won't Tell Anyone About It

A new INTOO survey finds employee confidence in AI is high: a majority describe themselves as experts at using it for work. But the same data reveals a more concerning picture. One in four employees would not feel comfortable disclosing to colleagues that they used AI to complete a work task, even as they rely on it regularly.

Without clear guidelines or the psychological safety to share how work gets done, organizations lose visibility into productivity gains, emerging risks, and practices worth scaling. And when employees feel embarrassed asking for help with new technology, the learning that happens stays individual, not collective.

Key insights

• 🔒 Covert use blocks organizational learning. When employees keep AI use to themselves, companies lose visibility into where productivity gains are happening, where risks are emerging, and what practices are worth scaling.

• 😳 Embarrassment is a structural barrier. With 42% of employees reluctant to ask for help with new technology, knowledge gaps close through trial and error rather than shared learning or structured guidance.

• ⚖️ Unclear policies produce uneven behavior. Without practical guidance on what is acceptable, employees default to personal judgment, producing inconsistent usage across teams and raising the risk of unintended policy violations.

• 🧑‍💼 Younger workers carry compounded pressure. Employees aged 18 to 34 are the most likely to call themselves AI experts and the most likely to worry about job security, a combination that raises the stakes for unguided, isolated experimentation.

Read more: https://www.intoo.com/us/blog/the-hidden-culture-issue-slowing-ai-adoption/

🥜 Despite the Headlines, Only 4% of Employers Actually Gave Everyone the Same Raise

Peanut butter pay: The practice of spreading salary increases evenly across all employees, regardless of individual performance, role, or contribution, the same way you'd spread peanut butter across a piece of toast.

Reports of a peanut butter paywave have been circulating. Mercer's 2026 QuickPulse US Compensation Planning Survey tells a different story. Only 4% of participating organizations distributed raises equally to everyone.

The vast majority are still differentiating by individual performance, market positioning, and peer comparisons. Merit increases came in close to forecast across most industries, with sector-level patterns showing only modest variation.

One less-discussed finding in the report: salary structures are expanding at a lower rate than merit increases, meaning employees are moving through pay grades faster than ranges are growing, and compression is building up as a problem HR leaders will need to manage sooner than they may expect.

Key insights

• 🎯 Performance differentiation is still the norm. The 4% figure from Mercer is a clear signal: equal raises remain the exception, and most employers continue to tie compensation to individual contribution and market positioning.

• 📐 Salary structures are falling behind merit rates. When structure adjustments grow at a lower rate than merit increases, employees move through pay grades faster than ranges can expand, and compression accumulates as a problem HR will manage later.

• 🏥 Healthcare pay is showing signs of recovery. After years at or near the bottom of industry pay comparisons, healthcare organizations delivered meaningful increases in 2026, a sign the sector may be becoming more competitive.

• ⚙️ Tech is recalibrating its compensation ambitions. The information sector projected a higher rate and delivered less, reflecting a broader reassessment as AI investment reshapes what organizations need and how many people they need to do it.

Read more: https://hrexecutive.com/despite-headlines-peanut-butter-pay-raises-remain-rare-mercer/