AI is flooding the job market

Plus: Apple under fire; Microsoft losing to OpenAI

Author

Joey Padgett
June 26, 2025

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Hey people!

Welcome back to Forests Over Trees, your tech strategy newsletter. It’s time to zoom-out, connect dots, and (try to) predict the future.

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AI is flooding the job market

Plus: Apple under fire; Microsoft losing to OpenAI

⚡ Tech News Takes ⚡

  • What’s up: Employers are overwhelmed by a surge in job applications, as AI drafts resumes and even applies to jobs on candidates’ behalf. LinkedIn says applications are up 45% year over year, now reaching 11,000 per minute. In response, companies are deploying AI tools for screening and interviews, but applicants are also using AI to game these systems, leading to what some describe as “AI vs. AI” hiring. Identity fraud, regulatory scrutiny, and lawsuits are rising, prompting calls for more authenticity and better verification in hiring.

  • So what: This is a huge problem. I know qualified, talented friends who are job searching and have applied to 100+ jobs with no interviews… and hiring managers who are posting jobs (on LinkedIn, etc.) and getting gouged with costs for candidates that aren’t a good fit! I want to help, and it starts with getting smarter on the issue… so if you’re a recruiter, hiring manager, or job searcher, please reply to this email to let me know (replies are always for my eyes only). Would love to hear your story and talk through ideas for what might help.

  • What’s up: A U.S. court granted Anthropic partial summary judgment in a major copyright case, ruling that training LLMs on purchased books and digitizing print copies qualifies as “fair use.” However, the court rejected fair use for pirated books retained in Anthropic’s internal library and ordered a trial to assess damages. Plaintiffs argue up to 5 million pirated titles could be in scope, with potential statutory damages of $750B+.

  • So what: This is a big win for the AI industry, despite Anthropic still being on the hook for piracy… And it’s an enormous win for content creators. If AI companies know that they can safely purchase and use content, they’ll do it. And content creators (meaning news orgs, authors, etc) will be incentivized to make deals. We should expect more cases to further shape precedent and iron out additional details, but this is a decent first step.

  • What’s up: A bipartisan group of U.S. senators reintroduced the Open App Markets Act to curb Apple and Google’s app store dominance. The bill aims to promote competition and consumer choice by requiring support for sideloading, third-party app stores, and alternative payment methods. It also bans punitive actions against developers and includes new IP and national security carve-outs. While the bill failed in 2021, lawmakers hope the revised version can overcome expected pushback from Big Tech.

  • So what: After all the EU regulation that successfully pushed a similar agenda, and the recent US ruling that Apple hadn’t complied with the order to allow alternative payment methods (we previously covered it here), this feels anti-climactic. It would still be good to get something on the books, but a lot has happened in 4 years, and this effort feels dated.

  • What’s up: Microsoft is struggling to push its Copilot AI assistant in the enterprise market, as employees at firms like Amgen and Bain are gravitating toward OpenAI’s ChatGPT instead. Despite Microsoft’s $14B investment in OpenAI, the companies are now rivals in the workplace, with Copilot lagging behind on updates and usage. ChatGPT Enterprise has already reached 3M paying business users, while Copilot claims adoption across 70% of the Fortune 500.

  • So what: It’s worth noting that for now (while negotiations on this exact point continue), Microsoft is the exclusive cloud vendor of OpenAI…. So let’s not overstate the direness of Microsoft’s situation — they make money either way! That being said, I’m reminded of when Apple wasn’t yet “corporate approved”, and everyone wanted to use iPhones at work. Ultimately, that pressure from users led to the reality of iPhones dominating (at least in the US). To prevent that sort of outcome, Microsoft needs to work hard to beat ChatGPT on the merits (awesome AI apps, easy user interfaces, etc.), not just because they’re the legacy office suite provider, etc.

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🌲 F/T Shoutouts 🌲

  • McKinsey Data supports ongoing “vibecession” — there’s been lots of reporting about the “vibecession” (economy on paper doing well while consumer sentiment is down). So it was interesting to see this consumer sentiment graph from McKinsey for 2 reasons: 1/ look how positive pre-covid was! 2/ we are trending down. Would love to see updated data on this.

  • More AI flooding — speaking of AI flooding recruiting from our first news story… it’s flooding social media too. Loved this coverage from the always hilarious John Oliver.