Who is most afraid of AI taking their job? In this special edition of The Week in Jobs, Pete and Peter walk through 4 Corner Resources’ Q4 2026 Employee Mindset Survey, the fourth and final quarterly edition of the year, and the answers surprised them: IT workers, the highest earners, and women, who now worry about AI more than men do. The survey tracks how American workers earning $50,000 or more feel about their jobs, their confidence in the 2026 job market, and the threat of AI. The overall mindset score, job satisfaction, and employee confidence all edged up, and so did the perceived AI threat, though by less than Pete expected a year ago.

One in three IT workers name AI as the biggest threat to their job, compared with 16.2% of workers in all other professions combined. The highest earners are the most worried about AI’s impact on their careers, a jump this quarter, which fits a pattern Pete and Peter see all year: the people who use AI the most worry about it the most. The share of women who see AI as a significant career risk rose from about 16% in January to almost 24%, while the share of men edged down. Entry-level workers are less afraid of AI, even though Pete believes it is hitting them hardest, a finding neither host could fully explain.

The biggest move of the year belongs to entry-level job market confidence. In January, 13% of entry-level workers said they were unconfident about the job market over the next six to 12 months. Now it is 30%, more than double. Workers ages 18 to 29 are the most frustrated group in the survey, with 53.6% expecting to leave their job within two years or already looking. Pete and Peter warn of a squeeze: baby boomers are retiring in large numbers while the entry-level pipeline stays shut, which they say will leave a leadership gap down the road.

The survey also shows a K-shaped economy at the worker level. Lower earners are more worried about the job market than people in households earning over $100,000, and higher earners are building savings cushions while lower earners are not. Men are saving at a much higher rate than women, which Pete and Peter wonder may be tied to the AI worry gap.

On return to office, the share of workers required to be in the office climbed from 51% at the start of the year to nearly 60%, yet it bothers workers less than it did earlier in the year. Pete and Peter’s read: workers are accepting it because they have little leverage in a low hire, low fire market. Distrust of official government job market data also rose, from about 20% in January to 29%.

Their overall verdict for 2026: the year that could have been worse.

See the full results and the year’s trend data at 4cornerresources.com under the Survey tab. New episodes of The Week in Jobs every Friday.

The Trump administration took its H-1B crackdown public this week. At a press conference, JD Vance named eight companies (Microsoft, Adobe, Cognizant, Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, Wipro, HCL, and Capgemini), and the Department of Labor suspended their use of the PERM program indefinitely, cutting them off from a key step in sponsoring H-1B workers for green cards. PERM is the process that lets H-1B workers stay beyond six years and apply for permanent residency. Vance said the eight companies have received more than 230,000 H-1B approvals and more than 100,000 permanent labor certifications since 2009, and that Microsoft laid off 6,000 workers last year while receiving 6,300 H-1B visas and nearly 3,000 green cards. Microsoft says roughly 80% of those were existing employees renewing or extending their status.

Pete and Peter back the move and call it long overdue. Most of the named firms are consultancies built around filing H-1Bs and placing workers at other companies, while Microsoft and Adobe happen to be two of the largest direct employers of H-1B workers. They also point out that the program is hard on the visa holders themselves, who often cannot leave a sponsoring employer without risking deportation. And they say offshoring, like last week’s DoorDash story, deserves the same scrutiny, since both let companies avoid hiring American workers. Their hope: the policy outlasts the next election.

Pete and Peter also meet a brand-new workplace term, “loud working,” from a Business Insider article. It is the opposite of quiet quitting: making sure your manager sees everything you are doing. Their verdict is that it is just smart career advice with a trendy name, as long as it does not turn into playing politics instead of doing good work.

Layoffs are back in the headlines. HubSpot is cutting roughly 600 jobs and Amazon announced more cuts, both citing a push to remove layers of middle management, and neither named AI as a reason. Surveillance camera company Flock cut about 18% of its staff, a few hundred people, in what has been attributed to public backlash against the company.

They close with a survey finding that 90% of workers say their employers expect more loyalty than they give back. Also in the results: 71% say companies focus more on profits than on employees compared with five years ago, only 4% say less, and 49% of workers who are not actively job hunting would still take a call from a recruiter. Pete and Peter’s take is that loyalty is the wrong word for the employment relationship, and they have a message for hiring managers: a team that looks happy may still be open to other offers.

Visit 4cornerresources.com for hiring and job search resources.

The September jobs report came in far below expectations this week: the BLS reported only 29,000 jobs added, well short of the roughly 90,000 both ADP and the consensus forecast had pointed to. Previous months were also revised down a combined 60,000 jobs, and July's number has now flipped from a loss to a gain and back to a loss again in three separate revisions. Pete and Peter say the back-and-forth has gotten so extreme that the headline numbers are losing credibility by the month.

The harder story inside the report: unemployment rose from 4.1% to 4.2%, its first increase in a while, and unemployment among 20-to-24-year-olds is now at 8%. The number of people seeking their first job climbed to 818,000, up 116,000 from the prior reading. Pete and Peter tie this directly to an Arkansas welfare ad that ran this week, one that used a young man playing video games as the face of a "typical" welfare recipient to promote new work requirements. Given what the data actually shows about how hard it is for young job seekers to find work right now, Pete and Peter call the ad out as badly timed and out of touch.

They also cover DoorDash's announcement of a new 3,000-person customer support and admin center in India, one of more than 2,100 similar centers now operating there. Costco, McDonald's, Charles Schwab, and Southwest Airlines have all opened comparable offshore centers recently. Pete and Peter question why this kind of offshoring, unlike manufacturing jobs moving overseas, draws so little public attention or political pressure to bring the work back to the US.

Elsewhere: Glassdoor's worker confidence index hit its third record low of 2026, with workers' six-month outlook dropping to 42.9%. Small businesses with fewer than 10 employees pulled back hiring the hardest this month, even as many of them say they still can't find qualified candidates, a disconnect Pete and Peter attribute partly to job seekers gravitating toward recognizable brand names over smaller companies that don't typically use outside recruiting help.

They close with California's newly signed "No Robo Bosses" law, which bars employers from firing or disciplining workers based solely on an automated decision starting in July 2027, and LinkedIn's CEO predicting that AI will eventually touch every job in some form. That echoes a bigger claim Elon Musk has made repeatedly: that robots and AI will eventually do all the work, and universal basic income will make everyone rich as a result. Pete and Peter aren't buying it, and they question how "everyone gets rich" squares with basic supply and demand.

Looking to hire or find your next role? Visit 4cornerresources.com.