How to beat the great gloom ☁️

Hey there! Q4 is right around the corner—only 12 days until October 1! Don’t forget to use all of your PTO before the year ends. Remember, there’s no prize for skipping out on time off. It’s there for you to recharge, reset, and relax.

 1   US employee morale is going down the drain 🌧

“The Great Gloom” is at our doorstep. US employees are the unhappiest they’ve been since 2020, according to HR software company BambooHR. They surveyed 57,000 workers across 1,600 fields and found that one measure of employee satisfaction is plummeting 10 times faster in 2023 than it did over the last three years.

What’s ruining the vibe? BambooHR suggests it’s a mix of factors: The lingering health and economic impacts of COVID-19, unpopular return to office mandates, and hefty layoffs. The fact that 61% of Americans live paycheck-to-paycheck definitely doesn’t help to boost morale. There are two professions in particular where employees are not doing so hot:

But not all professions are created equal. There is one field where employees are happy to be clocking in: construction. Construction workers have a variety of jobs they can choose from in a booming sector, which means they don’t have to settle for unsatisfactory pay.

Where do we go from here? Brad Rencher, CEO of BambooHR, says it’s imperative that businesses “prioritize employee experience in real, meaningful ways like never before.” But we’d love to know—how do you feel about your job?

 2   Alert: Two new dream jobs just dropped 🎤

Are you a super Swiftie or a member of the Bey Hive? Dust off your résumé, because Gannett, the largest newspaper chain in the US, is hiring for two dream jobs: a Taylor Swift reporter and a Beyoncé reporter.

The T-Swift reporter must have…at least five years of journalism experience; a bachelor’s or master’s degree in communications, journalism, marketing, or a related field; and a “willingness to travel extensively” (we’re guessing to the Eras tour leg in Europe).

As for the pay? Reporters will earn between $21.36 to $50.87 per hour. Based on a 40-hour workweek, that’s anywhere from ~$41,000 to ~$97,000 a year. Quite the gap if you ask us!

 3   New York’s new pay transparency law is here 💵

File this under: news we love to see. New York’s statewide pay transparency law went into effect on Sunday. The new legal requirement is expected to help shrink wage gaps in the Empire State—did you know women in New York’s workforce earned 88 cents for every dollar earned by men in 2021?

The details: This law requires New York businesses with four or more employees to include compensation ranges in all advertisements for jobs, promotions, and transfer opportunities—plus info on whether the job is commission-based.

Want to know if your state has a similar pay transparency law? We’ve got you covered.

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How much do dog groomers earn? 🐩 Our team was just in Atlanta, where we interviewed a dog groomer who’s projected to make $90,000 this year. Here’s a deeper dive into this paw-some profession (sorry, couldn’t help the pun).

• The hours: The person we interviewed said she shows up to work at 10 AM and leaves around 4 PM. On average, she sees seven to eight dogs a day.

• The path: For most US states, no degree or license is required to become a dog groomer! But experience—like bathing dogs before grabbing the nail trimmers—helps.

• The pros and cons. The pros: hanging out with dogs all day (huge W). The cons? As our interviewee put it, “It can be loud…and sometimes the dogs bite you.” Ouch.

Curious to learn more about the life of a dog groomer? Check out our video, which also includes more interviews with fellow Atlantans!

• The top 100 companies hiring for hybrid jobs in 2023 (and no, they’re not all in tech!).

• But speaking of tech…here’s a list of lucrative tech skills. One of these fields has jobs that pay up to $170,00 a year. 🤯

• How this UX designer landed a job at Microsoft without a college degree.

• Remember that CEO who said millennials could afford homes if they stopped eating avocado toast? 🙄 Well, he’s up to no good again.

• How Gen Z is making work emails more casual (BRB, going to change our signoff from “Kindly” to “Toodles”).

Thanks for reading! Before we part ways, here are three jobs we can’t believe used to exist:

1. Town Crier. Most people were illiterate in medieval England and couldn’t read the news. So the local “town crier” would read out the news to give the townspeople the 411.

2. Food Taster. Back in ancient Rome and Egypt, royals would hire a “food taster” to ensure their meals weren’t poisoned.

3. Rat Catcher. London during the Victorian era. No explanation needed.

Really makes you question what jobs we have today that people hundreds of years from now might find ridiculous. 🧐

See you next week!