Ford CEO Jim Farley recently made a bold statement, saying America needs a wake-up call when it comes to its labor shortage. Speaking on the Office Hours: Business Edition podcast, Farley pointed out that Ford alone has 5,000 open mechanic positions—and they’re offering a hefty $120,000 salary to fill them. That’s nearly double the median American salary! But, as Farley pointed out, it’s not just Ford facing this issue. The shortage of workers for manual-labor jobs, from mechanics to truck drivers to factory workers, is a broader problem across the U.S.
Farley got real, saying, “We are in trouble in our country. We’re not talking about this enough.” He went on to highlight that there are over a million openings in critical jobs like emergency services, plumbing, and skilled trades. It’s a serious issue, especially as manufacturing jobs continue to go unfilled. Despite a 4.3% unemployment rate, there were still 400,000 unfilled manufacturing jobs just in August. A recent study from the Manufacturing Institute and Deloitte found that recruiting and retaining workers is the top concern for most manufacturers right now.
For Farley, the lack of workers in these critical jobs is especially personal. He pointed out that these trades helped build the middle class, like how his own grandfather worked on Ford’s Model T. He said Ford is doing its part by raising wages—last year, the company agreed to a 25% pay increase over four years with the United Auto Workers union. But there’s still a big gap in the number of people entering these fields, which Farley says comes down to a lack of education and training.
“There’s no investment in trade schools,” Farley said. “We need to educate the next generation, like my grandfather, who came from nothing and built a good life working in the trades.”
On the flip side, younger generations, especially Gen Z, are increasingly turning to trade schools as a way to avoid the burden of student loans and secure a well-paying job. Enrollment in vocational schools jumped 16% last year, hitting its highest level since 2018. However, high-paying jobs that top $200,000 a year still tend to require advanced degrees, according to a recent study.
So, while more people are heading to trade schools, there's still a long way to go in making sure America has enough skilled workers to fill all those crucial jobs.
Approval of the way President Donald Trump is managing the government has dropped sharply since early in his second term, according to a new AP-NORC poll, with much of the rising discontent coming from fellow Republicans.
The survey from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research was conducted after Democrats’ recent victories in off-year elections but before Congress took major steps to try to end the longest shutdown in U.S. history. It shows that only 33% of U.S. adults approve of the way the Republican president is managing the government, down from 43% in an AP-NORC poll from March.
That was driven in large part by a decline in approval among Republicans and independents. According to the survey, only about two-thirds of Republicans, 68%, said they approve of Trump’s government management, down from 81% in March. Independents’ approval dropped from 38% to 25%.
The results highlight the risks posed by the shutdown, which Trump and his administration have tried to pin squarely on Democrats, even as U.S. adults have cast blame on both parties as the funding lapse has snarled air traffic, left hundreds of thousands of federal workers without paychecks and comprised food aid for some of the most vulnerable Americans. But it could also indicate broader discontent with Trump’s other dramatic — and polarizing — changes to the federal government in recent months, including gutting agencies and directing waves of mass layoffs.
Trump’s approval rating on government management erodes among Republicans
Republicans have generally been steadfast in their support for the president, making their growing displeasure particularly notable.
“I’m thoroughly disturbed by the government shutdown for 40-something days,” said Beverly Lucas, 78, a Republican and retired educator who lives in Ormond Beach, Florida, and compared Trump’s second term to “having a petulant child in the White House, with unmitigated power.”
“When people are hungry, he had a party,” she said, referring to a Great Gatsby-themed Halloween party held at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club in Florida. “I thought he seems callous.”
The survey found an overwhelming majority of Democrats, 95%, continue to disapprove of Trump’s management of the federal government, compared with 89% in March.
Trump’s overall approval holds steady
Even with the decline in support for his management of the government, Trump’s overall approval rating has remained steady in the new poll. About one-third of U.S. adults, 36%, approve of his overall handling of the presidency, roughly in line with 37% in an October AP-NORC poll. Approval of his handling of key issues like immigration and the economy have also barely changed since last month.
Health care emerged as a key issue in the shutdown debate as Democrats demanded that Republicans negotiate with them to extend tax credits that expire Jan. 1. But Trump’s approval on the issue, which was already fairly low, has barely changed.
About one-third, 34%, of Americans said they approved of Trump’s handling of health care in the November poll, compared with 31% in October.
And many of his supporters are still behind him. Susan McDuffie, 74, a Republican who lives in Carson City, Nevada, and retired several years ago, said she has “great confidence in Trump” and thinks the country is on the right track. She blames Democrats for the shutdown and the suffering it’s caused.
“I just don’t understand how the Democrats can care so little about the people,” she said, scoffing at the idea that Democrats were trying to use the shutdown to force Republicans to address soon-to-skyrocket health care costs.
“I don’t have any patience for the Democrats and their lame excuses,” she said, arguing that people who are scared about SNAP benefits expiring and struggling to put food on the table are a more pressing issue.
Plenty of blame to go around
When it comes to the shutdown, there is still plenty of blame to go around. Recent polls have indicated that while Republicans may be taking slightly more heat, many think Democrats are at fault, too.
“I truly do believe it’s everybody. Everybody is being stubborn,” said Nora Bailey, 33, a moderate who lives in the Batesville area in Arkansas and does not align with either party.
After recently giving birth, she said, she faced delays in getting a breast pump through a government program that helps new mothers while her son was in intensive care. And she is worried about her disabled parents, who rely on SNAP food stamp benefits.
Overall, she said she is mixed on Trump’s handling of the job and disapproves of his management of the federal government because she believes he has not gone far enough to tackle waste.
“I don’t see enough being done yet to tell me we have downsized the federal government instead of having all these excess people,” she said.
It’s possible that Trump’s approval on handling the federal government will rebound if the government reopens. But the showdown could have a more lasting impact on perceptions of the president, whose approval on the economy and immigration has eroded slightly since the spring.
Lucas, the Florida Republican, said shutdowns in which civilians aren’t paid are the wrong way to address ideological disagreement.
“Air traffic controllers? Really? You want to not pay the people in whose hands your lives are every day?” she said. “We need to be addressing these conflicts like intelligent people and not thugs and bullies on the playground.”
US credit and debit-card spending climbed in October from a year earlier by the most since early 2024, reflecting strong demand from higher-income households as well as price increases, according to the Bank of America Institute.
Spending per household rose 2.4% last month on an annual basis, according to the study, based on Bank of America Corp. aggregated card data. Compared with September, card spending rose 0.3%, the fifth straight monthly increase.
Spending was likely restrained by the government shutdown, and by bad weather which limited retail activity on the East Coast, according to the institute.
At the same time, some of the strength in retail spending likely reflected price increases rather than a pickup in volume. Headline inflation was 3% in September. While the number of retail transactions edged up in October, it remained lower than earlier this year, the BofA study found.
Meanwhile, spending by high-earning households outpaced that of those lower down the income ladder. The gap is largely due to stronger wage growth for upper-income individuals, while pay gains have generally trended lower for other groups, the institute said.
While 62% of respondents to Bank of America’s 2025 holiday survey indicated they are financially strained, the institute noted that across all income cohorts, households hold more deposits than before the pandemic.
Waymo is finally ready to hit the highway. Starting today, the company’s robotaxis will gradually start to include more highway trips in its routes in Phoenix, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. In addition, Waymo’s Bay Area service is extending south to San Jose, including 24/7 curbside access at both terminals of San Jose International Airport — the company’s second airport service after Phoenix.
Since its inception, Waymo’s robotaxis have typically avoided highways, opting instead for longer routes that stick to local roads when ferrying passengers. This has not gone unnoticed by customers, who often note their trips can take longer because the vehicles are prohibited from using routes that travel on highways. But after years of testing, including on public highways with employees as well as on closed courses and in virtual simulation, Waymo says it’s ready to start offering highway trips to a lot more people.
“Freeway driving is one of those things that’s very easy to learn, but very hard to master when we’re talking about full autonomy without a human driver as a backup,” Dmitri Dolgov, co-CEO of Waymo, said in a briefing with reporters. “And at scale. So it took time to do it properly with a strong focus on system safety and reliability.”
Waymo will start conducting highway trips in Phoenix, Los Angeles, and the San Francisco Bay Area. Initially, only early-access users — those who have opted in to test new Waymo features — will be able to take trips that include freeway travel. Over time, the feature will expand gradually to more riders as performance data and feedback are collected. From the rider’s perspective, the experience will stay familiar. Users hail a ride via the Waymo app, view their ETA and route preview, and if the freeway route is significantly faster, the system automatically selects it.
Waymo is hoping riders will reward the service with higher ratings, as freeway routing can make trips up to 50 percent faster, such as from San Francisco to Mountain View, while also helping connect riders more efficiently to public transit, and improving “first-mile” and “last-mile” mobility.
The challenges of highway driving are numerous. Higher traffic speeds mean Waymo’s autonomous vehicles will have less time to make consequential decisions. Any mistake can carry a higher degree of severity. The company’s engineers say that their hardware stack, which include lidar, camera, and radar, have 360-degree visibility and can “see” objects up to three football fields away.
“Freeway driving is one of those things that’s very easy to learn, but very hard to master when we’re talking about full autonomy without a human driver as a backup.”
Because freeways can be so much more challenging, Waymo has built more redundancy into its systems to account for a wider variety of edge cases, including simulating a total power failure to one of Waymo’s dual onboard computers. In that scenario, the system immediately activates its backup, allowing the vehicle to maintain control and safely navigate to the nearest freeway exit. Pierre Kreitmann, principal software engineer at the company, likens this to a human suddenly losing half their vision and brainpower but still driving safely.
When Waymo vehicles do need to pull over, the company says it has well-established protocols to keep riders safe and ensure their trips can continue. Waymo is coordinating closely with the Arizona Department of Public Safety, California Highway Patrol, and other regional safety authorities to ensure readiness and alignment with local rules and regulations.
Highways have been a top target for Waymo for many years now. Critics have cited the avoidance of highways as evidence that autonomous vehicles aren’t ready for the realities of driving long distances. Self-driving truck companies have largely stuck to highways in their testing, though usually with human safety drivers in the front seat.
Waymo is unique insofar as it is one of the only robotaxi companies offering trips in fully driverless cars. Tesla operates a “robotaxi” service in California with safety drivers behind the wheel that’s only open to select riders, which apparently includes highway routes.
The extension of Waymo’s service area to San Jose, including the city’s airport, has been in the works for months. The company still does not offer commercial service to San Francisco International Airport (SFO), which makes San Jose’s Mineta Airport the company’s first official airport in California.
There will be dedicated curbside pickup and drop-off zones at both Terminals A and B. Meanwhile, SFO is still in the early pilot stage. Waymo received its permit to start commercial operations at SFO in September, but it’s still coordinating with airport officials to phase in operations gradually. The company has been locked in negotiations with SFO for several years as it seeks to assure regulators that its vehicles can handle their chaotic environments, with thousands of cars, taxis, shuttles, and passengers constantly intermixing every day.
Airports and highways are inexorably linked, as most airports are accessed through highway driving. They’re also huge cash cows for ridehail companies, accounting for an estimated 20 percent of human-driven services like Uber and Lyft. Waymo will need to master both airports and highways if it wants to successfully compete with traditional ridehailing — to say nothing of making a profit.
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Here’s the tech scoop: Anthropic’s building this colossal backend with state-of-the-art cloud compute and optimized GPU clusters designed for Claude’s massive language models. This setup isn’t just about scale—it’s about lightning-fast inference and fine-tuning on the fly, so developers get smoother, smarter AI responses. Instant wins for anyone building AI apps that need robust, reliable LLM access.
For businesses, this is huge—more infrastructure means more uptime, faster innovation cycles, and easier integration of Claude into real-world workflows. Imagine enterprises tapping into this to automate complex tasks or power next-gen customer experiences without sweating latency or scaling issues. What kind of Claude-powered game changer are you hoping to see next?
In 2024, the average annual full-time adjusted salary for employees in the EU was €39 800, reflecting a 5.2% increase from €37 800 in 2023.
Among the EU countries, the highest average annual full-time adjusted salary was recorded in Luxembourg (€83 000), followed by Denmark (€71 600) and Ireland (€61 100).
Source dataset: nama_10_fte
In contrast, the lowest average salaries were recorded in Bulgaria (€15 400), Greece (€18 000) and Hungary (€18 500).