The real jobs problem CEOs are talking about isn’t hiring

In today’s CEO Daily: CEOs face a talent crunch that cost-cutting can’t solve.

The big leadership story: Tech leaders’ pay jumps.

The markets: In the red globally as oil prices rise

Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune.

Good morning. Happy post-Labor Day! This is the time of year when hiring is supposed to pick up, and Friday’s job report did show U.S. employers adding 162,000 jobs in August, 98% of which went to women. Much of the job growth was in lower-wage sectors like food service and home health care, and the Bureau of Labor Statistics expects total employment to grow only 3.5% between 2025 and 2035, down from the prior decade’s 10.9% rate. My conversations with CEOs about jobs elicit less optimism and more concerns about skills gaps, low engagement, the leadership pipeline, uncertainty about AI, and pressure to cut costs. Here’s what a few are doing about it.

Investing in skilled trades. BlackRock is investing $100 million in skilled trade training programs; it’s also partnered with Ford, Carhartt and Alphabet on the Alliance for America’s Skilled Trades. (More information on that here.) Meta has partnered with CBRE and other groups on a five-week program that guarantees a job upon completion. Matthew DiCanio is president and incoming CEO of Concentra, a national health care company that conducts employment screenings. He told me last week that he’s seeing “white-collar jobs shrinking slightly and blue-collar jobs picking up speed.” While trade schools are becoming more popular, most parents continue to push their kids towards four-year colleges, the annual cost of which can now surpass $100,000. But they’re favoring public or elite institutions, as I did with my kids. (The opportunity to think,........

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