Noam Scheiber

Starbucks to Pay $39 Million in Landmark N.Y.C. Labor Law Settlement

Starbucks settles with NYC over violations of the city's fair scheduling law. Presumably the deal wasn't going to get better for Sbux under the administration of Zohran Mamdani, who has joined striking Starbucks union members on their picket lines www.nytimes.com/2025/12/01/n...

Young Workers, Eyeing Their Careers, Learn to Embrace the Office

An alarming new data point in the return-to-office debate: Remote work seems to be raising unemployment for recent college grads www.nytimes.com/2025/12/01/b...

The Writer Who Dared Criticize Silicon Valley

Interesting story from David Streitfeld about a writer whose critique of Silicon Valley came a few decades too early but is now landing www.nytimes.com/2025/11/27/t...

The 'Great Flattening': White Collar Workers Hit by Historic Wave of Layoffs | KQED We talk to experts and hear from you: have you been navigating a layoff?

Great conversation today on @kqedforum.bsky.social with @alexis-madrigal.bsky.social, Aki Ito and Alisia Gill about what's going on with white-collar layoffs www.kqed.org/forum/201010...

So Chip-maker A has turned a relatively small amount of its own money into a relatively large amount of demand for its own chips.

One example: Chip-maker A invests money in Chip-buyer B. Chip-buyer B levers up on that money, and uses the borrowed money to buy chips from Chip-maker A.

What the rise of CoreWeave tells us about the AI bubble The Nvidia-backed data center company that transitioned from crypto to AI is at the precarious center of the industry’s necessary infrastructure expansion.

Very interesting episode of the Decoder podcast, drilling down on the mechanics of circular AI-industry financing and what it looks bubble-like www.theverge.com/podcast/8196...

"In sharp contrast to the campaigns of Hillary Clinton & Biden, the Mamdani campaign was an intraparty insurrection seeking to displace what a dysfunctional and failed old guard. This semi-revolutionary element gave the Mamdani campaign its moral legitimacy: the reform of a moribund institution."

"Mamdani built an insurgency within the Dem Party primary electorate first by mobilizing traditionally quiescent young voters--many of whom have found that their B.A.s do not guarantee a good job or any job at all--and then drawing in nonwhite voters and more of the college-educated middle class."

From Tom Edsall www.nytimes.com/2025/11/11/o...

Zohran Mamdani and the Revenge of the Struggling Yuppie

“They are making $120,000, $140,000 a year, and that’s not enough to live an upper-middle-class life in New York at all. And that’s the Mamdani voter.” Great piece from Eliza Shapiro, with a nice assist from Jonathan Mahler. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/07/n...

Mass Layoffs Are Scary, but Probably Not a Sign of the A.I. Apocalypse

It's not that AI isn't coming for your job at some point. But the big shift toward automation of white-collar work is probably going to play out at small companies that grow into big ones, rather than at big established companies. www.nytimes.com/2025/11/07/b...

House retirement tracker: Senior Democrats exit as the GOP is confident of a takeover A growing number of House lawmakers have opted not to run again in 2022, but so far more Democrats than Republicans are choosing to end their service.

Worth keeping an eye on congressional retirements after last night's results. Dems had a pretty high number of retirements in the months after the 2021 elections. (Normally a problem, though obviously didn't end up costing them much in the 2022 midterms). www.npr.org/2021/12/09/1...

Why Zohran Mamdani’s Socialism Might Have a Future Outside New York City In 1973, I was part of the leadership of the New American Movement, a socialist group that would later merge with Michael Harrington’s Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee to form the Democratic ...

Great piece by @jbjudis.bsky.social on Zohran Mamdani's worldview and how it's the natural next step in the evolution of US socialism that began several decades ago. www.notus.org/perspectives...

I have a profile up today of the transparency activist and Tesla skeptic ‪Aaron Greenspan‬, who's unearthed lots of evidence undercutting Musk's claims about the company. This is what it’s like to devote yourself to taking on Musk and Tesla www.nytimes.com/2025/10/31/b...

Live Updates: N.B.A. Player and Coach Arrested in Gambling Investigation

Some actual NBA news www.nytimes.com/live/2025/10...

Are You a Young Employee Asked to Spend More Time in the Office?

I'm working on a return-to-office story focused on people under 30. Would love to hear from anyone who fits that profile. Feel free to weigh in here: www.nytimes.com/2025/10/16/b...

Are You a Young Employee Asked to Spend More Time in the Office?

I'm working on a return-to-office story focused on people under 30. Would love to hear from anyone who fits that profile. Feel free to weigh in here: www.nytimes.com/2025/10/16/b...

Gig Drivers Win the Right to Unionize in California

CA Gov Gavin Newsom signed a law today giving Uber and Lyft drivers the right to unionize: nytimes.com/2025/10/03/b... But they're still considered contractors not employees.

The Tech Recruitment Ruse That Has Avoided Trump’s Crackdown on Immigration Every Sunday, newspapers are full of ads for tech jobs that aren't really looking for applicants. They reveal an aspect of U.S. immigration law that hurts both domestic and foreign workers — yet has e...

Relatedly, @alecmac.bsky.social wrote a very good piece a few months back on a topic I touch on, which is the Potemkin job ads companies run when they're trying to secure a green card for a worker and are supposed to try to find a U.S. worker first.

The Fuel Behind Trump’s $100,000 Visa Fee: Lost U.S. Tech Jobs

“There was a string of layoffs ... We see how everything is abused, the risk to the overall system. How if this continues there’s a real chance that people who are born in America won’t be able to get jobs.” Tech workers on why the H-1B issue blew up now. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/03/b...

There is a real epidemic in this country of people telling you they're sending you an email from their desk. If you're sending an email, can we just assume there's a decent chance it came from your desk and skip that part?

"The Magnificent Seven big tech companies—Alphabet, Amazon.com, Apple, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla—recently made up about 37% of the S&P 500’s market capitalization, the highest share on record." www.wsj.com/finance/stoc...

Well, kinda depends who you ask but I hear what you're saying. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/30/t...

And Republican views of the GOP remain strong. 91% favorable versus 8% unfavorable.

By contrast, around this time in the previous cycle, Sept. 2023, 93% of Dems had a favorable view of their party vs 7% unfavorable. news.gallup.com/poll/511979/...

To understand why Democrats feel pressure to energize their base and not compromise to avoid a shut down, consider how weak their support is among Dem voters. A recent Gallup poll found only 73% of Dems have a favorable view of their party, vs 21% unfavorable. news.gallup.com/poll/692978/...

"Through the 1960s, corporate lobbying was a collective enterprise--a large majority happened thru trade associations, not lobbyists that companies hired directly. That had flipped a generation later. By 1998, companies spent 63% of their lobbying money on their own lobbyists."

Why Corporate America Is Caving to Trump

Why are so many business leaders caving to Donald Trump? Because of the collapse of "the establishment," which had many good consequences and at least one dubious one: corporate America is no longer very good at collective action. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/26/b...

$100,000 Per Employee: How the H-1B Visa Fee Could Reshape Work Forces Because sponsoring a visaship comes with significant upfront costs, employers need higher-earning workers to justify the new expense.

"Since the overall number of [H1B] applications could drop drastically, Amazon, Google and other big companies may find that their bids have less competition than they used to." Great piece on the data behind H1Bs and the likely effects of Trump's changes. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...