Hey there — the headlines this week said the economy added 162,000 jobs in August. The real story is buried in Table B-1.
The information sector — computing infrastructure, publishing, broadcasting — shed 23,000 jobs in a single month. That’s nearly three times its prior monthly average. The same month, food service added 59,000 and local government education added 42,000. The recovery is real. It’s just not in the jobs you’re applying for.
Today: August’s mixed jobs report, a food company cutting 13%, Oracle’s September wave, two major office closures, and five remote companies still building teams.
In This Issue:
- 🔥 The Big Story: August added 162K jobs — but the info sector lost 23K
- ⚡ Quick Hits: 4 major market movements this week
- 🏢 Companies Hiring: 5 remote-first companies actively building right now
- 🎯 Career Signal: Two paths through the AI job market — and how to read which one you’re on
- ✅ Quick Win: The one data source to bookmark before your next negotiation
🔥 The Big Story
The August Jobs Report Has Two Very Different Stories. Which One Applies to You?
The best monthly jobs number in a year — and the worst info-sector reading in recent memory.
The data. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported 162,000 nonfarm payrolls added in August — five times the prior 12-month average of 31,000 per month. Unemployment held at 4.1%. Average hourly earnings rose to $37.75, up 0.3% for the month and 3.1% year-over-year. On the surface, this is a labor market rebound. And in several industries, it is: food services and drinking places added 59,000 jobs, local government education added 42,000, manufacturing added 16,000, and health care added 13,000.
The bigger picture. The information sector shed 23,000 jobs in August, following losses that had averaged 8,000 per month over the prior 12 months. August came in at nearly three times that pace. Losses hit computing infrastructure providers, data processing, web hosting, publishing, and broadcasting. These aren’t sectors most people associate with restaurant work. They’re the sectors where knowledge workers, remote professionals, and digital-economy job seekers spend their careers. The recovery underway in the August headline number isn’t happening in the labor market most of this community inhabits. The two labor markets are moving in opposite directions — and the gap widened in August.
Why this matters: The 162,000 headline is real, but it’s not your number if you work in tech, media, or digital services. The -23,000 in information is closer to your reality. Competition per open role stays elevated, timelines stay long, and the bar for applications keeps rising. See the full August report →
📊 Stat of the Week
23,000 → Jobs lost in the information sector in August alone — nearly 3x the sector’s prior monthly average loss of 8,000 — in the same month the broader economy added 162,000 (BLS, September 4, 2026)
⚡ Quick Hits
Campbell’s Cuts 13% of Salaried Workforce. This Is Not a Tech Story.
Not every layoff this week wore a hoodie. Campbell’s announced it reduced its salaried workforce by 13% — roughly 515 employees — through voluntary early retirement and layoffs, as part of a plan to slash $500 million in costs by 2030. The Camden-based company reported $9.7 billion in net sales for the fiscal year ended August 2 — a 5% decline from the prior year. Campbell’s also cut its quarterly dividend by 36%, closed two snack facilities, and plans to raise prices on 60% of its products. The pattern matters: a 156-year-old consumer staples company shrinking headcount, cutting dividends, and raising prices simultaneously. This is cost-cutting under revenue pressure — a reminder that job displacement in 2026 isn’t only an AI or tech story. See the earnings results →
Oracle Is Running Another Layoff Wave in September. Cloud Revenue Is Up 77%.
The cuts never stopped. Oracle eliminated 21,000 full-time positions in fiscal year 2026 — 13% of its workforce — while recording $1.8 billion in restructuring charges and borrowing $43 billion to fund AI infrastructure. Managers were asked in August to identify additional employees ahead of the fiscal second quarter opening September 1, with reports of double-digit cuts on specific teams and reductions of at least 30% in entire divisions. This while cloud infrastructure revenue surged 77% in fiscal 2026 and total revenue rose to a record $67.4 billion. Oracle has committed to $156 billion in capital spending for AI data centers. Revenue up. Headcount down. The capital is going to infrastructure, not people. See the record results →
eBay Is Closing Its San Francisco Office for Good on September 30.
The lease expired. eBay is not renewing it. The company filed a WARN notice in April for its office at 300 Mission Street in San Francisco, effective September 30. 198 employees will be offered relocation to its San Jose headquarters; 28 are being laid off. eBay confirmed earlier this year it would cut roughly 800 employees globally — about 6% of its workforce — as part of an efficiency push. The broader signal: major tech companies are quietly exiting San Francisco commercial real estate, concentrating headcount in suburban campuses and specific metro areas. A role listed as “Bay Area” increasingly means San Jose, Bellevue, or Austin — not downtown SF. Confirm exact office locations before you accept. Check WARN filings →
Samsung Moved Its U.S. Electronics HQ From New Jersey to Texas. 739 Jobs Hit the WARN List.
Samsung Electronics America filed a WARN notice covering 739 employees at its Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey headquarters — effective September 30 — as it relocates its U.S. consumer electronics division to Plano, Texas. Employees were offered relocation or separation. An additional 100+ at the Plano campus were also cut as part of the transition. Samsung joins Tesla, Oracle, and others in moving major U.S. operations to Texas, citing lower costs and no state corporate income tax. This is the company’s second major U.S. relocation in under a year. If you’re applying to a major consumer electronics or tech company and see a listing at a legacy East Coast or Midwest address, verify the office is actually still operating — the map is changing faster than job postings are being updated. Check NJ WARN filings →
🏢 Companies Hiring
The cuts are loud. The openings are quieter. Here are five remote-first or remote-friendly companies building teams right now — every link goes directly to a company-owned career page.
Shopify — “Digital by Design,” ~8,000 employees, remote across the Americas and globally → Shopify powers commerce for millions of merchants across 175 countries and has processed more than $1 trillion in cumulative merchant sales. The company operates on a “Digital by Design” model — employees work from wherever they work best, connecting in person a few times a year through Port offices and the annual Summit. Current openings span engineering, product, finance, legal, commercial, and operations. See open positions →
Cloudflare — evolving to a distributed hybrid model, building globally across engineering and security → Cloudflare is the infrastructure behind much of the modern internet — security, performance, and reliability at massive scale. The company has historically been globally distributed and is now intentionally evolving into an even more distributed model. Roles span engineering, security research, customer success, and infrastructure globally. See open positions →
Stripe — 600+ open roles globally, including remote U.S. positions across engineering, sales, and marketing → Stripe processes payments for millions of businesses worldwide, from first-time founders to global enterprises. Open roles include remote U.S. positions in marketing, security engineering, and sales, as well as positions in New York, San Francisco, Dublin, and Singapore. See open positions →
Elastic — distributed by design, employees in 40+ countries, open roles across engineering, product, and security → Elastic builds the search and observability platform used by more than half the Fortune 500. The company is distributed by design — employees work remotely across 40+ countries and in 25 global offices, with no preference for either model. Elastic received 2026 Comparably awards for Best Company Outlook, Best Leadership, and Best Career Growth. See open positions →
Figma — remote roles across engineering, design, product, and go-to-market globally → Figma builds the collaborative design platform used by teams at major companies worldwide. The company hires globally across engineering, design, sales, and operations, with remote openings across North America, Europe, and APAC. See open positions →
Know someone between jobs? Forward this section — it might be exactly what they need.
🎯 Career Signal
PwC’s 2026 Global AI Jobs Barometer — which analyzed more than one billion job ads across 27 countries — found that AI is splitting the labor market into two distinct tracks. “Professionalised” roles, where AI automates routine tasks and amplifies human expertise, are seeing twice the growth in available jobs and 42% faster salary growth than “democratised” roles, where AI makes the job itself easier for non-experts to perform. The practical translation: a recruiter, radiologist, or senior analyst using AI tools sees more demand and higher pay. A role whose core tasks AI now handles at scale sees the reverse — more competition, flatter wages, shrinking headcount. The wage premium for AI skills hit 62% this year. For job seekers, the question is whether your target role requires judgment, domain expertise, and stakeholder complexity that AI amplifies — or primarily structured tasks that AI replaces. If it’s the latter, adding one layer of genuine expertise or cross-functional ownership is the clearest path to the professionalised track.
🧠 Skill-Building Reads
The right data is out there. Here’s where to find it.
PwC 2026 Global AI Jobs Barometer — Full Report and Findings, Free → The complete research behind the two-track labor market analysis: 1 billion+ job ads analyzed across 27 countries, covering how AI is reshaping headcount, wages, and productivity by sector, occupation, and company type. The occupational breakdown — what’s professionalizing vs. what’s democratizing — is practically useful for evaluating career moves and positioning your skills. No paywall, no signup required. Read it →
BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook — 10-Year Employment Projections for Every U.S. Occupation, Free → The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes authoritative 10-year outlook projections for hundreds of occupations — projected growth rate, median pay, typical education required, and number of new job openings expected annually. Different from O*NET’s task profiles, the OOH focuses specifically on long-run demand trends. Useful for career pivots, targeting growth fields, or benchmarking whether a role has long-term momentum. Read it →
Microsoft Learn — AI Skill-Building Paths, Free, Self-Paced, No Prerequisites → Microsoft’s official learning platform includes structured paths for AI fluency, prompt engineering, Azure AI fundamentals, and applied AI skills — all free, all self-paced. The catalog has expanded significantly in 2026 with role-based paths for non-technical professionals including marketers, HR professionals, and project managers. No coding background required for many paths. Credentials earned here are stackable and employer-recognized. Read it →
✅ Quick Win
Before your next salary negotiation, pull up the BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook and look up your target occupation’s median pay by region.
Go to bls.gov/ooh, search your job title, and check the Pay tab. You’ll get the national median and links to regional wage data by state and metro area. In a market where hiring managers know the data and most candidates guess, showing up with the BLS number shifts the dynamic. It’s primary government data — not a crowdsourced survey, not a platform estimate — and it’s free.
What we’re watching: Oracle’s WARN filing timeline as September cuts materialize in state disclosures; the October 2 release of the September jobs report; and whether Campbell’s price hikes and cost cuts can stabilize a business five quarters into declining sales.
🎯 Bottom Line
This week’s numbers arrived in two registers at once. The economy added 162,000 jobs — real gains, wage growth, a labor market that looks healthier on paper than it did a month ago. But the information sector shed 23,000 in a single month at nearly three times its prior pace, Campbell’s cut 13% of its salaried workforce, Oracle is running another headcount reduction before September closes, and eBay and Samsung both filed September 30 WARN notices as they exit legacy office footprints. These aren’t corrections to return to baseline — they’re the new operating model, where companies cut human cost while revenue climbs and physical presence shrinks toward specific hub cities. The good news is that Shopify, Cloudflare, Stripe, Elastic, and Figma are all actively hiring for remote roles right now, posted on their own career pages. That’s where RemoteHunter.com focuses: verified remote openings from companies building for the long term, paired with AI tools for resumes and cover letters that help you show up as a sharp, well-prepared candidate from day one.
Until next week — keep building.
— The RH Team 🤙
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