Good morning! Here's the latest in trending:

Crude reality: There's a 1 billion barrel crude shortage in the oil market and the 'journey back will be a long one.'

Use case? Crypto is like ESG for libertarians, with no real impact on the financial industry, according to Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari.

Unofficial referendum: Big losses for Keir Starmer's governing Labour Party, but the U.K. prime minister says he will not resign.

Whether AI is really triggering mass layoffs or companies are just using it as an excuse to cut costs, the fact is that workforce reductions are in the spotlight. The tech sector has been particularly vulnerable, like the 30,000 job eliminations at Oracle (ORCL) to the sweeping layoffs announced at Meta (META). Block (XYZ) also recently slashed 40% of the positions at the company, as well as the notable pink slips hitting PayPal (PYPL), Coinbase (COIN) and yesterday's announcement by Cloudflare (NET) that axed about 20% of its workforce.

Is it really that bad? While the figures are steep, the broader economy is more nuanced than the headlines. Many of these companies are "right-sizing" after years of post-pandemic over-hiring, while reallocating their capital away from middle management and legacy roles to fund the multi-billion dollar race towards the AI revolution. While the hefty percentages and numbers are creating the feel of a "white-collar recession," significant hiring is happening in other industries like healthcare, manufacturing, and infrastructure. Best and worst industries for job growth

Case in point: Employers have disclosed a total of 300,749 job cuts year-to-date, which is down 50% from the same period in 2025, according to the latest Challenger Report. Part of that was due to the massive job cuts stemming from DOGE announced at the beginning of last year, but private-sector layoffs were also 10% lower in the first four months of 2026. In fact, U.S. private sector employment rose by 109K in April, vs. +85K consensus and +61K in March, according to data released this week by the ADP.

Next up: The jobs report for April will be released this morning at 8:30 AM ET, with eyes on the number of non-farm payrolls, the unemployment rate, and average hourly earnings growth. As for the impact of AI on hiring, like any dramatic advance in technology, some jobs will be created and some will be eliminated, noted Yelena Shulyatyeva, senior U.S. economist for The Conference Board. "It's more like a five-year horizon to see whether productivity benefits will have a major impact."