Lately, many major companies are rolling out requirements for employees to start coming into the office, which many employees aren't too thrilled about. A major point of contention? What we have to wear.  

Many Americans working from home have traded in pencil skirts and blazers for the casual comforts of home or maybe a nice shirt for zoom, but casual shorts.  

But the truth is, this isn't a new development thanks to the pandemic. U.S. revenue for men's suits declined from $2.2 billion in 2013 to $1.9 billion in 2018. And to look even further back, an estimate in 1948 from a clothing manufacturers association put that revenue at $12.5 billion with inflation. 

The pandemic may have accelerated the trend, but the decline in formalwear has been going on for decades now.  

In the mid-20th century, formalwear was not just an office staple. For both men and women, suits and hats were the standard for everyday activities: from shopping for groceries to going to the movies to watching sports games.  

But major fashion trends in the '60s and '70s opened the door for more variety within formalwear, especially as new styles were being seen on television.  

SEE MORE: California Bans Discrimination Based On Natural Hair

Colorful power suits and trousers were in, and outfits that could be worn both to the office and after-work drinks were seen as more practical and fashionable. It was what Esquire Magazine called "the rise of loose-collar culture." 

Soon, the rise of casual wear would become unstoppable, thanks to the khaki pants and button-down collared shirts in Silicon Valley.  

The '80s and '90s saw the invention and rise of "business casual," what this 1995 article from the Chicago Tribune declared was a "confusing" new world. Silicon Valley has already embraced a culture of rule-breaking, creativity, and risk over conformity.  

The rise of "athleisure" clothes during the past decades, like yoga pants and workout sneakers, coincided with this. By the time we reached the 2000s, formalwear was confined to only certain industries, and outside the office could be seen mostly during special occasions like weddings.  

Though it's worth noting, not even traditional industries might be so strict on the suit much longer! In 2019, Goldman Sachs relaxed their dress code to "business casual."

Some fashion experts have noted that the cultural implications of formalwear have been transferred to some areas of casual dress.  

Being able to work remotely and thus dress casually is more common in white-collar industries. One could argue there's a new flex of status with high-end athleisure brands like Lululemon, or streetwear from luxury brands like Gucci.  

Changes in culture shape our changes in fashion, and we can trace those changes through our decline in formalwear.  

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Captain Dennis Tajer has taken to the skies as an airline pilot for over 20 years. He’s also the spokesman for the Allied Pilots Association and represents 15,000 American Airline pilots.

"This has been in the air for a long time and no one did anything about it," said Tajer.

He says the pandemic exacerbated a staffing problem carriers knew about by offering early retirements in what he calls a money-saving move and then failed to plan for a return to normal.

"They kept us from collapsing they weren't ready for the recovery," said Tajer.

Airlines were looking to save money during the 2020 pandemic shutdowns. The federal government stepped in with aid under the condition airlines couldn’t lay people off or furlough anyone.

"And then they took a hundred airplanes at American, and they retired them permanently. They didn't train pilots to go on new airplanes, and of those who retired, they did not train their replacements," said Tajer.

But things changed a year later as Americans started to travel again, and airlines added routes.

In 2021, the airline industry expected an increase of 42% in routes compared to 2019, according to data from Cirium Innovata a database tracking flight schedules across airlines.

More flights mean more pilots to get passengers to their destinations. But hiring more pilots doesn’t come without turbulence. In the past, airlines have turned to the Air Force as a pipeline to bring in pilots. But they’re also facing a shortage.

A congressional report in 2019 warned the Pentagon faced a shortfall of over 3,000 pilots, which it states has been "several years in the making."

"It was rare at the majors depending on the airline, to find someone who wasn't prior military. It was just the pipeline that was there everyone knew with the fall of the wall and the Soviet Union collapsing that the military wound down," said Tajer.

The FAA requires commercial pilots to log 1,500 flight hours for certification. And obtaining a commercial license after that isn’t cheap.

We looked at three different flight schools. A commercial pilot’s license price ranges between $30,000 to nearly $100,000.

"What young man or woman is thinking, 'Hey, I'm gonna go drop a $100,000, maybe make it, maybe not for a job that will come,'" Tajer said. "And go I'll be laid off, there will be bankruptcies, I'll be unemployed if you're looking at this as a business decision other than I just wanna fly what a horrid investment."

But some airlines are taking matters into their own hands. Phoenix-based Mesa Airlines recently purchased nearly 30 planes to help pilots build time toward their airline transport pilot license while trying to build a recruiting pipeline.

And American, United, Delta, Southwest, Frontier, and others are spearheading similar initiatives. Washington is also working toward a solution. In July, Republican Nebraska Senator, Deb Fischer, introduced the Let Experienced Pilots Fly Act. It would raise the retirement age from 65 to 67 — though pilots would only be allowed to fly within the U.S. — with a new emphasis on solving the issue.

Tajer believes it’s going to take time to get more new pilots in the cockpit.

"So, it's gonna take a while, and there's no magic switch. It takes a series of switches and everybody working together to get it done," said Tajer.

This means, for now, travelers and pilots are left having to pack their patience.

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A landscaping company that operates in eight states and Washington, D.C. says it surprised its employees with a total of $28 million in appreciation bonuses.

Ruppert Landscape says the bonuses went to employees who have been with the company for at least one year. Excluding the top leadership team, 1,200 employees received bonuses reportedly ranging from $7,000 to $200,000.

“Everyone receiving this bonus was instrumental in helping create the value that we’ve been able to realize,” said CEO Craig Ruppert. “This bonus is money that is well-deserved and a way for us to acknowledge the value of our teams’ contributions and the essential role that they will play in our company’s future.”

The company said it was able to give out the bonuses because of a recent partnership with an investment firm.

According to the company's website, it started in the 1970s when Craig Ruppert began asking his neighbors if he could mow their lawns. Over the past 50 years, the company has grown to more than 2,000 employees. The company's portfolio includes work at Georgetown University, Six Flags American and President Lincoln's Cottage.

More states are requiring pay transparency in 2023. California and Washington now require employers to add pay ranges on job postings.

Colorado was the first state to implement the law in 2021.

The rollout in Colorado came with some setbacks. Some employers began excluding the state so they wouldn't have to post the salary.

Appcast labor economist Andrew Flowers believes it will be harder for employers to continue that practice as more states pass pay transparency laws.

"Can you have California excluded? Can you have new york excluded? As we enter this new phase in 2023, his employer effect of kind of swimming around the rock, so to speak, I think it's going to be kind of diminished," he said.

Flowers claims pay transparency laws are blowing up traditional recruiting.

Appcast, a job advertising platform, compared Colorado and Utah the year before and after Colorado's law went into effect.

It found Colorado had about 8% fewer job postings. However, it had 1.5% higher labor force participation.

"The self-sorting is changing the hiring funnel for recruiters so that applicants go down, we find. But, the quality of the applicants goes way up," Flower said.

There are laws in other states that require some salary disclosure. However, that usually happens during the hiring process or if a candidate asks for the information.

The Federal Trade Commission proposed a rule Thursday that would ban U.S. employers from imposing noncompete clauses on workers, a sweeping measure that could make it easier for people to switch jobs and deepen competition for labor across a wide range of industries.

RELATED: Noncompete clauses can bring wages down by 20%, Treasury Department report finds

The proposed rule would prevent employers from imposing contract clauses that prohibit their employees from joining a competitor, typically for a period of time, after they leave the company.

Advocates of the new rule argue that noncompete agreements contribute to wage stagnation because one of the most effective ways to secure higher pay is switching companies. They argue that the clauses have become so commonplace that they have swept up even low-wage workers.

Opponents argue that by facilitating retention, noncompete clauses have encouraged companies to promote workers and invest in training, especially in a tight labor market. The public has 60 days to submit commentary on the rule before it takes effect.

During a Cabinet meeting, President Joe Biden called the FTC action "a huge step forward in banning non-compete agreements that are designed simply to lower people's wages."

"These agreements block millions of retail workers, construction workers and other working folks from taking better jobs and getting better pay and benefits in the same field," Biden said.

The FTC has moved aggressively to curb the power of major corporations under Chair Lina Khan, a legal scholar and Washington outsider whose appointment by Biden signaled a tough antitrust stance.

The agency estimates that the new rule could boost wages by nearly $300 billion a year and expand career opportunities for about 30 million Americans.

"Noncompetes block workers from freely switching jobs, depriving them of higher wages and better working conditions, and depriving businesses of a talent pool that they need to build and expand," Khan said in a prepared statement.

The FTC's proposal comes amid an already competitive job market, particularly in industries that suffered mass layoffs during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic and have since struggled to recall their workers. Many workers remain on the sidelines, holding out for better pay, coping with lingering childcare or health issues, or opting for early retirement.

"There is a potential that it will contribute to the 'great resignation' that everyone is talking about to some degree, but employers are simply losing one of the tools in their toolbox and there are other ways to retain top talent," said Vanessa Matsis-McCready, associate general counsel and director of human resources for Engage PEO, which provides HR services for small- and medium-sized companies. "You will see a lot of business trying to retain top talent via raises or other fringe benefits."

Employers nationwide are still hiring and layoffs are historically low, despite high-profile job cut announcements from companies such as software provider Salesforce, Facebook's parent company Meta, and Amazon. The government is expected to announce Friday that employers added a solid 200,000 jobs last month, and that unemployment remained 3.7%, near a half-century low.

A 2019 analysis by the liberal Economic Policy Institute estimated that 36 million to 60 million workers could be subject to noncompete agreements, which the group said companies have increasingly adopted in recent years.

While such agreements are most common among higher-paid workers, the study found that a significant number of low-wage workers were subjected to them. The study found that more than a quarter of responding establishments where the average wage is less than $13 an hour use noncompetes for all their workers.

On Wednesday, for example, the FTC took action against three companies for unlawfully imposing noncompete clauses against workers, including low-wage security guards who were threatened with a $100,000 fine if they violated the agreement.

The EPI study found that many companies still impose noncompete clauses in several states that already ban or restrict them, including in California, where the practice has been prohibited for a century.

The proposed FTC rule would require companies to scrap existing noncompete causes and actively inform workers that they are no longer in effect, as well as prohibiting the imposition of new ones.

The proposal is based on a preliminary finding that noncompete clauses quash competition in violation of Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act. It would not generally apply to other types of employment restrictions, like non-disclosure agreements.

But Emily Dickens, chief of staff and head of public affairs for the Society for Human Resource Management, said the proposed FTC rule is overly broad and could potentially harm businesses that depend on them to thrive. She cited very small, emerging industries where crucial know-how cannot be safeguarded through non-disclosure agreements alone.

Dickens said SHRM, a group of more than 300,000 human resources professionals and executives around the world, will encourage its members to present specific situations that could justify noncompete clauses during the FTC's commentary period.

Although "there are jobs where it makes no sense to have noncompete," Dickens said, "this kind of blanket ban is going to stifle innovation."

While defenders of non-compete clauses argue they help start-ups and small business retain talent, opponents say they hinder recruitment at those same entities.

The Economic Innovation Group, a Washington-based public policy research group, applauded the rule and called on Congress to pass proposed legislation that would impose a similar ban with more permanency.

"Restricting the use of non-compete agreements is fundamentally good policy that will boost wages, improve workforce mobility, and encourage entrepreneurship and innovation throughout the economy," said John Lettieri, EIG's president and CEO.

—-

Associated Press writers Chris Rugaber and Nancy Benac in Washington contributed to this report.

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This story was first published on January 5, 2023. It was updated on January 6, 2023 to correct a quote from Vanessa Matsis-McCready of Engage PEO.

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This story was first published on January 5, 2023. It was updated on January 6, 2023 to correct the name of the Society for Human Resource Management. It also clarifies that the study by the Economic Policy Institute was based on a survey of responding companies.

Officials at several school districts in Texas are traveling to Mexico to interview potential teacher candidates to meet the growing demand.

The ‘Exchange Teachers’ Visiting International Teacher Program was approved by the ESC-2 Board of Directors in December 2021.

District officials in South Texas are conducting interviews in the Mexican state of Tlaxcala.

“There are 65 candidates available right now. It does not mean we are going to use all 65, it’s just what the district is needing at this time,” said ESC-2 Associate Director of Curriculum, Instruction & Accountability, Dr. Daniel Ceballos.

District leaders say COVID-19 exacerbated the demand for educators. The need goes beyond teachers in core subjects like math and science.

“Now it’s really English teachers, special ed teachers, bilingual teachers, those are in high demand,” said Kingsville ISD Superintendent Dr. Cissy Reynolds-Perez.

“There may be potential other vacancies, because usually about May or April is when people start deciding if they are going to retire or not and so we just need to have a pool ready to make sure that we can fill those vacancies quickly and easily.”

Region 2 directors are looking forward to bringing highly qualified candidates into the classrooms through this specialized partnership.

“Making sure that all the shortages positions are taken care of, I think it’s going to be important not only to the teachers but the kids and the communities there,” said Dr. Ceballos.

“And what a better way than to have somebody also, an international teacher that comes in to also learn about the different culture as well, I think it’s an added benefit.”

This story was originally reported by Reyna Rodriguez at KRIS in Corpus Christi, Texas.

The Instagram account Dear White Staffers is a popular meme page geared toward people of color working on Capitol Hill and in government agencies.

In recent weeks, however, it's become a forum for staffers to anonymously share stories about issues they have faced working for specific members of Congress. And it could have a real impact on both the conditions congressional staff deal with and changing who gets to work in Congress.

Earlier this month, a group of congressional staffers announced an unprecedented effort to unionize. This is the byproduct of years of work done by people who haven't been well paid in an environment that still isn't especially diverse.

To clear up some misconceptions here, these are white-collar jobs that require dressing up, but working in the halls of Congress doesn't exactly mean you're making bank. 

Staffers, especially at the entry-level, can have full-time jobs working in Congress and have to rely on government benefits like food stamps or work a second job just to afford to get by. 

Take Don Bell, for example. He now works in career development at the University of Connecticut School of Law, but he worked more than three years on Capitol Hill as a Senate staffer in the office of Senator Richard Blumenthal and served as president of the Senate Black Legislative Staff Caucus.

He loved his time on the Hill and credits the office for getting him a stipend even before he was brought on full-time and for promoting him and supporting his development. But early on, he started out unpaid and had a second job you wouldn't expect a congressional staffer to need.

"I was a lawyer by day working on policy and a cashier at Wal-Mart at night," Bell said. "And as you can imagine, those were very long days, going from one job to the other, just trying to make it financially. I came to D.C. with nothing coming from a family that didn't have any means."

And that required some major sacrifices. 

"By the time I started full-time in Senator Blumenthal's office as the judiciary legislative correspondent, I was two weeks away from defaulting on my student loans," Bell said. "So I put all of my chips in the middle of the table to have the opportunity to work on Capitol Hill."

It might come as a surprise, but these staffers are often the ones actually writing the laws. Members of Congress are public faces, and they have a wide range of work, including committee meetings. But when it comes to how the sausage is actually made, markup meetings — where the bulk of any given bill gets written — are usually attended by staffers, sometimes even low-level ones.

All those cost issues don't even account for internships, which were unpaid for a long time on Capitol Hill. When you factor in the cost of living, transportation and other essentials, interning could cost thousands of dollars. If you're stretching out every dollar, even some small things can be a challenge. 

Carlos Mark Vera was an intern on Capitol Hill and at the White House.

"It's little things that you normally think about," Vera said. "You have to wear professional clothing every day. I only owned one suit, so my family had to kind of pitch in to buy me another one. So it definitely was a struggle."

His experience struggling to afford an unpaid internship led him to found Pay Our Interns — a group that's pressuring offices on Capitol Hill and other government agencies to, essentially, pay their interns. He argues that not paying interns really limits the pool of who can do it.

"You need housing, so that's rent, any professional clothing, transportation, and we know that on average, an unpaid internship can cost $6000 for three months. So unless you have that money just lying around, it really puts a lot of folks that are working-class middle class at a disadvantage."

There's been some positive change on this front. Every congressional office now has money set aside  — each House office has $25,000 set aside specifically to pay interns.

But those funds haven't necessarily led to congressional offices hiring a representative set of interns.

A report last year by Pay Our Interns found that 76% of paid congressional interns were white, even though white students make up just 52% of the national undergraduate student population. 

And that gap, which is reflected in full-time and senior staff too, has consequences for who gets to shape policy. Ruby Robles, a current Capitol Hill staffer and a spokesperson for the Congressional Hispanic Staffers Association or CHSA, says it affects a lot of members of the group.

"A lot of us [are] Latinos, but some of us, we migrated to this country," Robles said. "We are first-generation college students, and then we made our way all the way to Washington, D.C. A lot of us are working on Capitol Hill because we are we want to work in public service. It's the American dream, but the higher pay issues, sometimes they become a barrier for many people."

A survey by Issue One, a nonpartisan group looking to reduce the influence of money in politics, found that 13% of all Capitol Hill staff — over 1,200 people — made less than the salary MIT estimates would constitute a living wage of $42,610 in Washington, D.C. But if you look at staff assistants, the most common entry-level full-time job on Capitol Hill, that rate jumps to 70% making less than the estimated living wage in D.C.

The low pay means, sometimes, the only people who can take these staff jobs are people supported financially by their parents. That leads to the population of staffers skewing whiter and wealthier. And as a lot of current and former staffers are pointing out, it shuts out many people of color and people who don't come from privileged backgrounds.

The result is a less diverse workforce. The nonpartisan Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies estimated in a 2020 report that people of color made up just 13.7% of all top-level House staff, and just 11% of all top-level Senate staff.

And that can make a real difference when crafting policies.

"Congressional staffers are essential in ensuring that the policy being made has been effectively vetted and is reflective of the hopes and aspirations of constituents across the country, and so if we don't have a diverse set of people, skills experiences in those decision-making rooms is much more likely that we aren't going to get the best policy for people at the ground level back home," Bell said.

And while staffers of color are at the forefront of this recent push, and many of those are Democrats, the issues we’re seeing here affect staffers of both parties from all backgrounds.

Audrey Henson is a former congressional staffer from a low-income background and a current Republican congressional candidate in Florida. She was the founder of College to Congress, a group that provides financial support to congressional interns and staff. She's no longer with the group, but the shock she felt when she found she'd be paid $25,000 a year for her full-time job still sticks with her. 

"I'll never forget when I filed my tax returns in 2013 as a Capitol Hill staffer, and after I submitted them, the first page that came up was It looks like you qualify for Medicaid and food subsidy benefits," Henson said. "That, to me, almost felt like a dagger in my heart because I was working for a boss that was anti-subsidy and that really showed me, wow, the way that our Congress works, the way that they treat their staff, this is absolutely backwards."

The circumstances may have been tough for a lot of current and former staffers on Capitol Hill, but folks on the Hill see the emergence of the recent unionization effort and more public criticism of working conditions as an opportunity for things to change.

"I think that there's some room for change here, and also there's really going to be a really big push," Henson said. "So I am hopeful that hopefully, the national attention that this has gathered will lead to change."

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KANSAS CITY, MO — Mark Byrd is in the business of second chances.

An HVAC specialist by trade, his passion to help people re-entering society from the prison system started more than a decade ago when he started KC Redemtion and the New Reflections Technical Institute, a job training program that prepares students for their new life.

"We try to help them get to a point where they can survive and be sustainable and to have a good life, you know, and most of them never realized they could have it," he said.

He's helping students like Otis Steen, who went from the judicial system, to financial stability by becoming a truck driver.

"As a person looking from the outside in, it seemed like a dream, like a fantasy. But going through it, it's still like a dream, like a dream state, like, 'Wow, is this true?'" said Steen.

Employment reduced recidivism and makes communities safer. While Byrd believes in his students, it can be an uphill battle convincing employers to give them their second chance.

However, he’s noticed recently that the Great Resignation has been opening more doors.

"When we first started it, we had one company that was felon-friendly. Now, we have over 70," he said.

In November, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said a record high of 4.5 million people quit their job that month alone. We’ve seen the impacts of the Great Resignation reflected in food service, deliveries, and supply chain tangles.

Every year, 600,000 Americans leave the judicial system looking for employment. Although more than 1 in 4 people re-entering society is unemployed, studies have shown that they stay at their jobs longer and are less likely to quit than the general workforce.

"This person here wants that opportunity. This is their second chance might even be their third chance, but in most cases, it's their last chance. So, when they get this opportunity there, their work starts at seven o'clock. They're there at 6:30, drinking coffee in their hand, ready to go," said Byrd.

"We get calls or emails on a weekly basis," said Dwayne Williams, the president and CEO of 12^th Street Heritage Development Corporation in Kansas City.

A decade years ago, they started a re-entry program and are noticing exactly what Mark has been: more employers looking to hire their clients.

"We have individuals who are looking for jobs. And so now, they've got another resource that they can, that they can tap," Williams said.

"I think a lot of employers will be surprised at the work ethic of individuals who come out of the system, you know, because a lot of them, they really not trying to go back to the system," said Gary Riley.

Riley has been with 12th Street for years. He says getting that second chance turned his life around.

"It helped me be a better man for tomorrow. You know what I mean? It showed me how to dig within deep, within to be the leader that I know I can be the follower I know I can be," he said.

As people like Byrd and Williams continue to match their students with employers, they hope this trend of hiring more people looking for a second chance continues well after the great resignation subsides.

"I advise our employees to look deep into themselves and figure out that mistake they made and what they needed and who helped them, who helped them. Now, it's their time to help someone else, and we can rebuild America. We can rebuild our workforce," said Byrd.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday that the U.S. added 467,000 jobs in January, a report that far outpaced bleak projections by analysts who were concerned about the effect the omicron variant had on the economy last month.

CNBC reported on Wednesday that some projections showed the U.S. had lost as many as 400,000 jobs last month as the country saw record spread of COVID-19. The outlet reported that "consensus forecast" called for a gain of 150,000 jobs.

Friday's Bureau of Labor Statistics report noted that the unemployment rate was largely unchanged at 4%. December's jobs report indicated that the unemployment rate at that time was 3.9%.

While Friday's report was a good sign for the U.S. economy, Americans are still dealing with high rates of inflation, causing the prices of goods and services to skyrocket. Last week, the Federal Reserve noted that a key measure of prices had increased nearly 6% in the last year — the sharpest increase since 1982.

The Fed has already signaled that it plans to raise key interest rates in March in the hopes of curbing inflation.

In remarks from the White House on Friday, Biden touted his administration's job creation efforts during his first year in office.

"If you can't remember any year when so many people went to work in this country, there's a reason: it never happened," Biden said, noting his administration's single-year job growth.

As the pandemic heads into yet another year, companies are still grappling with uncertainty in the workplace.

Many have attempted to reopen their offices, only to be stymied by new variants or outbreaks that necessitated yet another shutdown or a delayed re-opening.

So some businesses are removing the guesswork altogether by deciding to remain fully remote — permanently.

Here's what happened when these companies decided to pivot to remote work full-time.

Enabling employees to make major life changes

When David Cancel started sales and marketing software company Drift in 2015, he and his co-founder believed strongly in an in-person work culture.

"We were very strict about that. No one worked remotely. Everyone was in the office five days a week. All our rituals were in person, like our meetings, our kickoffs, our events... a very face-time-centric culture," said Cancel, who is also CEO.

But when the pandemic hit in March 2020, offices across the country -- including Drift's headquarters in Boston and three satellite offices -- closed, and work became entirely remote.

"It was a huge panic," said Cancel. "It wasn't that we didn't support work from home, we were against it. We didn't have any rituals, or setup or practice with doing anything remote."

At the start, adjusting the company's culture to a remote model was a challenge.

"The hardest part for me in this transition was I had a limiting belief that I couldn't hire the most senior people...without meeting them in person. But I was forced to do that [when the pandemic started] and once I saw it happen and see those people get integrated and be productive, then... I said 'Oh, we should do this forever,'" said Cancel.

In early 2021, the company announced that workers will work remotely full-time, and that office spaces will be used as "conversation spaces" for meetings, collaboration and events. "Those spaces are not to be used for primary work or set up for primary work."

The about-face on remote work came with benefits for both Cancel and his workers. It allowed him to move back to New York City, for example, and his employees have also been able to make major life moves.

"We've seen a lot of advantages to the team: people have moved to lower-cost places, closer to family -- and because of those moves, they've been able to get married earlier or make different life choices that they've been putting on hold for a long time."

The company decided that employees who relocate to lower-cost cities would not have their pay adjusted.

"We are location-agnostic when it comes to pay," Cancel said.

Also hybrid work, with workers spending some days in the office and some at home, wasn't an option.

"Inherently, we have a bias toward people who are around, whether we can detect it or not," said Cancel, who said he saw this firsthand at a previous company.

"People that were in the office with the managers....they got disproportionately favored for promotions and opportunities. I wanted to make sure we were equitable that no matter where you were...you would have equal opportunity to everything in the company."

Building a more diverse workforce

Davis Smith, CEO of outdoor gear and apparel company Cotopaxi, was also firmly against remote work before the pandemic.

But less than two months after employees started working from home in March 2020, he changed his mind.

"We started realizing, [remote work] is working. Our teams are functioning more efficiently than ever before," he said.

Video above: Know you’re not alone in feeling the fear of returning to work

The decision to go fully remote means Smith doesn't have to worry about the constant decision making that comes with reopening or closing the offices.

"It seems so distracting... we are just focused on building the business and great culture. We're not worried about having to make all those decisions. There's been a huge benefit in that -- just making that decision early," he said.

The company kept its Salt Lake City office, and Smith said some employees choose to go in every day. "It's a small percentage...those people wanted a place to go."

Smith said he rarely goes into the office these days, but finds that he's more deliberate with his relationships working remotely. "Every single day I have a goal to do one outreach to someone on our team -- I wasn't doing that before. I wasn't that intentional, I just thought: 'Oh I will will run into them in the office.'"

The company has tripled in size during the pandemic and being fully remote has allowed it to build a more diverse team.

"It's a lot easier to hire a diverse team when you aren't limited to a specific geography."

While successful so far, Smith said he still worries about the potential long-term implications of a remote working model.

"I've asked myself many times: At what point does this catch up to us? Because so many people are new and maybe they don't understand the culture as deeply. But our culture has changed and all those rituals and traditions, we had to wipe them clean and start over and we've created new [ones] that work for this new environment."

The company sends employees a weekly poll via Slack that asks about things like engagement, culture and other topics, including compensation and burnout, to help keep a pulse on employee sentiment and morale.

"There has been a lot of power in us saying early on we embrace this new way of working. This is the way of the future: we can either fight it or embrace it and figure it out faster than everyone else," said Smith.

Keeping workers happy

Pre-pandemic, most of the employees at online brokerage firm Robinhood were expected to be in the office every day.

But in December the company told employees it will become primarily remote, meaning there will be no location or regular in-office requirements for most workers. But it will keep its offices, including its headquarters in Menlo Park, California, open to employees.

The shift to remote work over the course of the pandemic has had a noticeable effect, said Cindy Owyoung, vice president of inclusion, equity and belonging at Robinhood.

"Over time, it became increasingly clear that our employees were happiest and did their best work when they had the flexibility to determine where and when they work best," Owyoung said in an email to CNN Business.

We're entering year three of a scorching hot housing market, but even if the economy recovers as expected, that won't immediately solve the housing supply shortage across the U.S. The shortage existed before 2020, but the pandemic made things even worse.

There's a lack of materials due to supply chain bottlenecks, and building companies have struggled to fill jobs amid the great resignation. Low supply matched with high demand has sent prices soaring.

"Homes that were $380,000 are now $520,000," developer Ed Pavicic said.

The average household income in United States is just over $67,000, and if you follow the advice of conventional financial planners, you shouldn't buy a home worth more than three times your salary.

That means the average household should shoot for a home around $200,000. However, that's half of what they're going for these days, on average.

The good news is some experts say a turnaround is coming as the U.S. Federal Reserve prepares to raise interest rates.

Chairman Jerome Powell said earlier this month that interest rates could rise at least three times or more this year if inflation doesn't fall. But it's still unclear how quickly that will happen, or just how much it might bring prices down.

This story was originally reported by Bianca Facchinei on Newsy.com

WASHINGTON — U.S. employers added a modest 199,000 jobs last month while the unemployment rate fell sharply, at a time when businesses are struggling to fill jobs, with many Americans remaining reluctant to return to the workforce.

The Labor Department also said Friday that the nation's unemployment rate fell to a healthy 3.9% from 4.2% in November. Though unemployment continues to fall, the U.S. in December added jobs at a slower rate than it did in November, when the economy added 210,000 jobs.

Speaking at the White House Friday, President Joe Biden said the report marked a "historic day," noting that the unemployment rate fell below 4%. He noted that it marked the sharpest single-year decline in unemployment in U.S. history.

However, the report fell short of analyst projections. CNBC reports that forecasters expected the U.S. had added 422,000 jobs in the month of December.

Though the highly-contagious omicron variant of COVID-19 began spreading the U.S. in December, CNBC spoke to forecasters that said the new strain likely did not have an impact on Friday's report. However, omicron will likely play a major role in January's job report, which will be released early next month.

Friday's report comes just days after a separate report found that more Americans than ever quit their jobs in the month of November. Biden said during his remarks Friday that more Americans are simply transitioning to new opportunities.

"Americans are moving up to better jobs with better pay, with better benefits," Biden said.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average is on the rise Friday following the release of the December jobs report.

What will the job market look like in 2022? It's no surprise — experts say flexibility will continue to be the key to success.

"What you are going to find is that there are going to be continuing fluctuations at various companies around the country," said Lisa Rowan, a consumer finance expert at Forbes Advisor. "You're going to have maybe some COVID hotspots where you might have to shift back to that remote environment."

The biggest opportunity for employment will continue to be hospitality and leisure fields. However, experts are seeing more jobs pop up as "remote."

"So if you're someone who worked in a customer-facing job, say, retail or one of those leisure positions, you might be able to work in customer service and work from home, online," Rowan said. "So, we're seeing a lot of shift there, too, but so much of it is in those services that we've been relying on since the pandemic changed our lifestyles."

Ultimately, prepare to see a lot of fluctuations at various companies around the country — meaning that plenty of job title changes and streamlining may be on the way.

With job resignations on the rise, more and more workers are going public about why they quit.

In recent months, dozens of people have gone viral on social media for posting videos or sharing grievances about their former company in public forums.

While the job market is currently favorable to workers, career experts say people should tread carefully.

"While it feels good in the moment, it has long-term ramifications," said J.T. O'Donnell, the founder and CEO of Work It Daily. "People will find it. They will see it. Even if they agree with you, still, in the back of their mind, you've planted the seed that if you can do this type of trauma dumping here on an employer, you can do it to me."

Attitudes towards public resignations have changed over the past few years.

O'Donnell said it all started with anonymous postings on job sites like Glassdoor and Indeed. But now, people are no longer hiding behind a computer screen and are revealing in detail what happened at their companies.

Experts say that while attitudes are changing, potential employers will still want to know more about why people decided to go public, so job candidates should still expect questions about their resignations in subsequent job interviews.

"What we're going to try to understand is where that came from and whether or not we feel it is fair and founded, but also, what about your personality makes you think that's OK, because we're trying to figure you out," O'Donnell said. "Are you going to fit in our organization?"

Business experts say resignations tend to go up when the economy is strong and that as that changes, workers may no longer have the upper hand.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — When racial justice protests swept across the country last year, hope sprang that the change pushed for on the streets might spill over into the workplace, too.

“Increasingly, the world is getting to be more diverse,” Sandra Timmons, executive director of The Steve Fund, said last year. “This is the future workforce; these are the future leaders.”

However, experts on diversity say that hasn't quite come to fruition at work.

“While we do believe that certainly there's been a lot of good that's been done on by ‘diversity first’ consultancies, that change has not been as sustainable as it should be,” said Lauren Tucker, founder of “Do What Matters,” a consulting firm that helps businesses navigate inclusion in the workplace.

A recent report on diversity in the workplace, from the Billie Jean King Leadership Initiative, surveyed more than 1,500 working women across the country—more than two-thirds of them were women of color.

It found that 97% of those surveyed feel their employers need to establish better ways to investigate and address discrimination at work.

Among the other findings: 57% of women of color say they hear damaging stereotypes, based on their backgrounds, while they are at work. In addition, 58% say there are no senior leaders of color in their workplace.

Tucker said that’s where so-called, “activist employees” might be able to make their mark.

“Activist employees, in particular, are those who are leaning forward articulating to management what the expectations are,” Tucker said, “and I think we need to understand that those expectations are not just about getting a paycheck.”

It’s also about creating an inclusive environment, where ideas can be freely shared by everyone. Tucker said that starts in company meetings, though, it doesn’t always happen that way as she saw for herself two weeks ago.

“I actually timed how much men talked versus women, and 90% of the talking that was done in that meeting was done by men,” she said.

So, how can all employees help to start a change? Some suggestions include sharing your workplace knowledge with informal networks at work and including a diverse array of co-workers.

As for formal networks, Tucker said employees should get involved in a company’s employee resource group that addresses inclusion. If a company doesn’t have one, she said, employees should consider starting one of their own.

“They have a choice to stay in and lean forward, and a lot of them have activated these groups on their own,” Tucker said. “I mean, it isn't necessarily the employer that's created these groups.”

It’s a focus on diversity that Tucker believes companies should expect to keep seeing.

“What we're seeing is the growth of activism period, both by employees and by consumers,” she said. “And I will say that company leaders who dismiss this activism, company leaders that do not take advantage of listening to these employees, they do so at their peril.”

It is a risk that includes paying a potentially high price to their bottom line.

Thursday's unemployment report from the Labor Department shows claims dropped closer to pre-pandemic levels.

It was also the lowest level for initial claims since early March 2020. Initial claims decreased by 1,000 to a seasonally adjusted 268,000 for the second week of November.

“For the unemployment claims numbers, we definitely have seen a drop in recent times and that could be positive to the degree that it’s reflected of more people either not losing their jobs, or moving from the unemployed category to the employed category,” said John Quinterno, a visiting professor of practice at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University.

Quinterno said the numbers reflect the pandemic.

“The economy’s trajectory is intertwined with the pandemic trajectory,” he said.

Unemployment claims are trending down, yet a lot of jobs in certain industries like hospitality and travel are still going unfilled.

“The jobs that are open are in a place where the labor doesn't want to move. And I think that is the reason why we are having some disequilibrium in the labor market,” said Kishore Kulkarni, an economics professor at Metropolitan State University of Denver.

Kulkarni said workers have changed what they want out of a job.

“The labor is not really interested in doing the on-site job. They are more used to doing work from home. They understand that the cost of going to the onsite job, they have to have vaccination, they have to have a mask on all eight hours of the day,” Kulkarni said.

And there are fewer workers to fill the roles in the first place.

“Going back to February 2020, there are still about 4.5 million fewer workers in the labor force than there were when we started, so folks have exited,” Quinterno said.

Quinterno said that could be due to a number of factors like retirement, health risks, and childcare.

So what can people expect moving forward?

“We need to first get the public health side, the pandemic side, under control. Otherwise, we’ll just continue to be riding these waves of a few months of progress when case numbers go down, and then we’ll have more hardship when the case numbers go back up,” Quinterno said.

Kulkarni said it’s impossible to predict, but the progress of the pandemic will be a good indicator.

For the better part of three months, Greg Morrison has spent most of his waking moments searching for jobs. Last week, that search finally paid off for the 33-year-old TV producer, who lives in Los Angeles.

Three months without a paycheck, though, hasn’t been easy.

“Every time you slide your credit card to pay for groceries or write a rent check, there’s that voice in your head that knows it’s coming out of your savings,” Morrison said.

As COVID-19 swept across the country earlier this year, it all but ceased production of most television shows in L.A. For Morrison, the realization came fairly quickly that this stretch of unemployment would last much longer than the typical few weeks he has between some jobs.

He’s been surviving on the extra $600 that the federal government has added to unemployment benefits as part of the CARES Act, but even that has been hard to come by.

“They are seven weeks behind on my unemployment payments,” he said. “I can’t get anyone on the phone. They say they’ve setup another line, but I can’t reach anyone.”

But even with all the troubles he’s facing getting unemployment benefits, prospects are looking better for Morrison and some Americans who have found themselves out of work because of the virus, especially as some states begin easing their stay-at-home restrictions.

“It’s a lot more promising than it was a few weeks ago,” said Morrison, who just accepted a new producing job that starts in June.

Although he’s hesitant given the current situation with the pandemic, he’s also hopeful.

“I’m happy to be one of the lucky ones right now,” he added.

As for economists, many still believe recovering from the pandemic will not be like flipping a light switch back on.

“It’ll be five years before a full recovery,” said David Parsley, who teaches economics at Vanderbilt University.

But Parsley says jobs will slowly begin to return as more states open for business.

“There’s always opportunities, but these opportunities will be for people who are skilled; people who are trained,” he said.

Typically you hear jobs classified as "white" or "blue collar," but there's a "new collar"

job boom.

And IBM is offering some of those base skills for free which may help those unemployed get back to work.

KNXV looked into these "new collar" jobs and what job seekers need to know to get hired.

As the states and country deal with historic levels of unemployment, a new career is coming to the forefront, so-called "new collar" jobs.

IBM Senior Education Manager Cliff Archey says they refer to these types of jobs as jobs of the future, but "in reality they are here now."

These are tech jobs that don't require a four-year degree, dealing with things like cloud computing, artificial intelligence, digital design and more.

"Having a basic understanding of these things is going to help you no matter what it is you choose to do because being more savvy regarding cybersecurity and how to secure a network, being more user-centric and your approach to anything that you do, being agile and your project management systems that applies to a whole lot of different industries," Archey said.

IBM has launched an initiative called "Open P-Tech." It's a website aimed at offering some of those base skills for new collar workers – for free.

"We are really trying to get you to the point where you go from not having any knowledge to actually earning a baseline digital badge that's been validated by IBM. And you can do that totally for free on the site that takes anywhere from about between 6 to 12 hours to earn that. And you can add that to your LinkedIn profiles. You can add it to your resumes. So it's a really good way to just start that again career-development journey," Archey adds.

Users have to sign up for an account and pick different fields and then get to learning. Interested users can visit

ptech.org




for more information.

But if none of those topics spark your interest there are other "new collar" jobs that don't require a degree, just some training.

Like at Silent-Aire in Chandler,-who specialize in manufacturing HVAC solutions and data center cooling systems.

Silent-Aire Vice President of U.S. Operations Brett Manning says they've been very busy.

"With people moving online for meetings and telecommuting, we've seen a tremendous uptick in demand for our product because the cloud service providers are trying to keep up with everyone moving to the cloud, whether that's for streaming video Netflix and other things or doing meetings, telecommuting."

They're hiring for 150 positions.

Manning says, "We are primarily looking for assembly positions. Anyone who's had previous experience doing construction, assembling, or manufacturing that is going to be a plus."

There are safety measures in place for workers, like temperature screenings, masks, staggered break times and social distancing. They have a virtual job fair in the works but they are hiring immediately.

Visit

Silent-Aire




for a look at open positions.

KNXV's Allison Rodriguez first reported this story.

CONWAY, N.H. — Mother Nature is rarely kind to Mt. Washington. On a recent fall morning, the New Hampshire's tallest peak was bathed in blue skies as tourists from all over the world flocked here to catch one final glimpse of foliage.

This mountain is home to the highest recorded man-measured wind speed in the world and it is also home to the world’s first mountain-climbing train, The Cog Railway.

The operation is about as small-business as they come. Each diesel-powered engine is custom built in a warehouse at the base of Mt. Washington. Like many businesses across the country though, The Cog is being faced with a shortage of mechanics and engineers needed to keep this place going.

"New Hampshire has had a hard time with keeping skilled workers. They always tend to leave out of state," said Rob Arey, who works for the railway.

But the old Cog Railway first constructed in 1868 is about to offer new opportunities to a whole new generation of the workforce.

The idea is simple, connect students at nearby White Mountains Community College with job training opportunities working on those diesel engines which power The Cog Railway. Not only will the program help get graduating students into a job pipeline that desperately needs them, the concept is also being deployed in hopes of keeping students from leaving rural communities like this one once they graduate.

A term typically referred to as “rural flight.”

"This is the first step in us keeping our kids here in the local schools, learning here, falling in love with us as a place to work," Rob Arey added.

Marc Poulit is an instructor at nearby White Mountains Community College. He has about 30 students in his program, all of whom are now eligible to apply for the new internship program.

"We are really planting that seed and thinking about, 'I don’t need to move out of state to get a good-paying job,'" Poulit said.

Perhaps the biggest challenge when it comes to keeping students in rural communities after they graduate is pay. On average, new graduates can earn 15% more on their first job if they move to a big city. That is often a gamechanger for new graduates especially if they have student loans to pay off.

Back at the Cog, they are anxiously awaiting the arrival of new students. While this railway may be old the technology, what they’re using here is more complex than most Amtrak trains, providing a perfect opportunity for the next generation of engineers and mechanics to train on.

"The way this facility was built is for the future. It’s all technology they may not even get at the community college. It’s exciting they get to come in here and learn it first hand," said Rob Arey with The Cog.

Like the trains here themselves, the hope is the whole idea will keep students careers climbing in the communities they call home.

DENVER, Co. — Sean Holland has driven the same route for work every day for more than 20 years. He says it hasn't gotten boring yet.

"It's not your 9 to 5 job," Holland said. "If that's what you're looking for, this isn't it."

Holland is a UPS driver in suburban Denver. He took the job in the early '90s, and since 1995, he's been driving the same truck: Bertha.

"I've had her, next month, it will be 26 years," Holland said. "The old girl, she comes out full to the gills every day. I get rid of all that, and then we do another pickup run in the afternoon and fill it back up. There's a sense of accomplishment that goes along with that."

Holland and delivery drivers across the country were deemed essential workers at the height of the pandemic. Stay-at-home orders forced people to use delivery services at a higher rate. U.S. parcel volume went up 37% from 2019 to 2020.

UPS is hiring 100,000 seasonal workers this year to keep up with the demand as the holidays approach. But they are competing with other major companies in nearly every industry.

"We have a very robust recruiting approach," said Jeff Bloedorn, director of human resources at UPS. "We are heavily into the social media and making people aware of what UPS offers."

The company is starting some new hires at $23 an hour, with a $2,000 signing bonus. Bloedorn says there are other incentives, many of which can't be measured with dollars and cents.

"It’s a great teamwork atmosphere," Bloedorn said. "[People] like the hustle and bustle of moving all the packages... It’s a career that allows a person to take care of themselves and their family."

The pandemic has shifted a younger generation's opinion of work. A UPS survey found 9 in 10 millennials are "more open" to the types of jobs they'd accept.

But experts warn the life of a truck driver is still a difficult sell.

"I always ask my students this," said Dr. Robert Novack, a professor at Penn State University. "'How many of you would like to grow up and be a truck driver?' None of 'em."

Dr. Novack says the under-35 crowd is looking for fulfillment and purpose from a potential career. That can be tough to find from the driver's seat of a delivery truck.

"You see the rigs on the road, and as a car driver, they're an annoyance because they're big, they get in the way," Dr. Novack said. "We're working with some companies on trying to make the job of being a driver a little bit more suited to their needs. You know, treating them almost like an asset."

Holland agrees that the job can be tough.

"It's long hours, but like I said, it's rewarding," he said.

"I actually met my wife on my route out here," Holland said. "She was one of my customers for a couple years before we started dating, and ultimately got married, and now we’re married 21 years. You know, I've had dead-end jobs. And, yeah, I've been doing the same thing for almost 29 years now."

Holland smiled.

"But I love it."

WASHINGTON, D.C. — No matter where you look in the country right now, “Now Hiring” and “Help Wanted” signs are everywhere. They are signals that workers are playing a big role in the nation’s economic recovery from the pandemic.

“We have never seen anything like this before,” said Kishore Kulkarni, an economics professor at the Metropolitan State University of Denver.

He said the tight labor market means businesses have no choice but to pay workers more to get them in the door.

“They have to because right now the ball is in labor's court and they are dictating some terms of what the wages should be,” Kulkarni said.

A new survey from the National Association for Business Economics backs that up.

Their October survey found 58% of businesses reported having to increase workers’ pay, up from 51% from their previous survey in July.

NABE’s Ken Simonson said the number of businesses reporting that was a record in the survey’s nearly 40-year history.

“More companies in the survey had raised wages in the last three months than we had ever seen before in the history of this survey,” said Simonson, who is also the chief economist for the Associated General Contractors of America.

Within that, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports wages are up 4.5% percent this year. Certain industries are seeing bigger jumps, including construction, with wages up 7.1%, and hospitality, where wages are up 11.2%.

So, what does that mean for the debate over minimum wage?

“I think that minimum wage is much less of an issue than it was even two years ago, just before the pandemic hit,” Simonson said. “I'm sure that there are members of Congress who would still like to raise that floor, but I don't think you're going to see companies that have started offering $14 or $16 and bonuses or college tuition, go back to anything like that statutory minimum wage. So, for now, that's not going to be an issue.”

MSU economics professor Kulkarni said rising wages can be a double-edged sword. Employees benefit from making more money, but some things end up costing more.

“The number one concern is how big is inflation going to be,” Kulkarni said.

It’s a labor and wage situation experts believe will eventually sort itself out.

“In about eight to 10 months, this will all calm down,” Kulkarni said, “but this holiday season looks like a season which is unprecedented and that we will have a tremendous demand for labor.”

It is a holiday season for the job market with the potential to look unlike any before.

BRIGHTON, Colo. — School districts across the country are feeling the weight of employee shortages, including paraeducators and paraprofessionals.

“We have medically fragile students that require one-on-one supervision,” said Michal Clow, the director of human resources for the Colorado school district 27J. “We have to provide that supervision. We have to keep them safe. Literally, they rely on those staff members for their lives every day.”

Ever since the pandemic started, school districts across the country have been struggling to keep employees.

According to a Frontline Education survey, in 2021 75% of school districts in cities reported shortages. Thirty-five percent of districts reported having shortages in paraprofessionals and paraeducators.

“When things started to go online and students were no longer going to the classrooms the role of paraeducator had to shift and change,” said Less Thomas, the director of education at Pierce College. “A lot of school districts didn’t know what to do with their paras. So, they’re experiencing this turnover where their paras are becoming certificate teachers. Part of the issue is that para’s make around minimum wage or a little more. So, they’re thinking ‘if I can make substantially more money just by going to a couple more years of school, why wouldn’t I do that?’”

According to Clow, students desperately need paras.

“These are critically important to many of our students and many of our classrooms and they take some of the burden off our teachers so they can focus on teaching and instruction,” Clow said. “And some of the administrative tasks that happen in the classroom, so they support a wide range of important tasks that happen every day.”

Clow said their district is down paras by 10%, which is why it changed tactics to recruit.

“From a financial standpoint, there’s not a pool of money to pull from. We certainly can’t raise revenue like a private business could do,” Clow said. “Our line of recruiting has changed – typically we say that these are benefitted positions and it’s a stable job and you get to be on your kids’ schedule, we’ve changed our thinking a little bit on the recruiting side by saying these our flexible jobs. That flexibility seems to be potentially a bigger draw than the benefits and the stability.”

To combat the shortage, Shirley Dawson at Weber University said the school created a paraeducator and paraprofessional certificate program that grants students free tuition.

“At Weber State, right now, we are actively in the process of preparing seventy future or current paraeducators,” Dawson said. “Financial support is often the greatest stumbling block for paraeducators entering the field. If we can support paraeducators by removing the barrier the flood gates just open it seems with people that are interested.”

School districts hope these programs and tactics will bring more paras back to where they’re needed most, in the classroom.

People of color made up more than 55% of new hires at Walmart between February and July of this year, but none filled executive management roles or board of director vacancies, according to the company's website and its latest diversity, equity and inclusion report released Friday.

Retired AT&T Chairman and CEO Randall Stevenson, who is White, joined Walmart's board of directors in March. He's the only director on Walmart's 12-member board appointed since the police murder of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, which motivated Walmart's leaders to create a $100 million center on racial equity program less than two weeks later.

Walmart President and CEO Doug McMillon took the issue of racial inequality head on during one of the company's virtual employee meetings more than a year ago.

"The murder of George Floyd is tragic, painful, and unacceptable," McMillon told Walmart's global employees in June 2020. "Words and feelings matter, but they are not enough. More action is required. We will find new ways to accelerate the desired changes inside our company and we will also find the ways that our business can influence real change in our country."

Walmart is the nation's largest private employer by far, with more than 2 million employees on its global payroll, 1.5 million of them in the United States alone, according to the company's latest diversity, equity and inclusion report. Amazon is a distant second, with 798,000 employees as recently as 2019, according to Fortune.

McMillon said in June 2020 that roughly 340,000 of Walmart's employees are Black. The company's latest report confirms that more than 20% of its employees were Black as recently as July. They also make up the largest non-White employee segment of Walmart's workforce. African Americans made up 11.9% of the U.S. population in 2020, according to the latest U.S. Census.

Yet only about 9% of Walmart's corporate officers are African American, the company's latest demographic data confirms. The company says that's a 2.28% increase from this time last year.

Black members of Walmart's executive leadership team include executive vice president of neighborhood markets Kelvin L. Buncum, senior vice president and chief global culture, diversity, equity & inclusion officer Ben Hasan and Dr. Cheryl Pegus, the company's executive vice president of health & wellness.

Dacona Smith, executive vice president and chief operating officer for Walmart U.S., became the latest African American to join Walmart's executive leadership team in February 2020. He and Walmart U.S. executive vice president Latriece Watkins, who oversees the company's consumables business operations, round out the five Black Walmart executive managers out of 48 executive level positions (roughly 10%), according to its leadership web page.

Latinos make up nearly 18% of Walmart's employee population, but just 5.5% of the company's officers, according to the report. Asian people, who represent more than 4% of the retailer's employees, comprise more than 10% of its managers and 9% of its officers. White people make up more than 53% of Walmart's workforce and represent more than 63% of its managers and 74% of its officers.

The report also says people of color make up more than 46% of Walmart's workforce, but the company's website shows Black and Brown Americans comprise only about 16.7% of Walmart's 12-member board of directors.

NBCUniversal News Group Chairman Cesar Conde is the only Latin American on Walmart's board of directors. He and Morgan Stanley Vice Chair of Wealth Management Carla A. Lewis, who is Black, are the only people of color on Walmart's board.

People of color saw a slight uptick in promotions from hourly employees to management positions, which increased more than two percentage points between January and July, according to Walmart's 2020 end-of-year DEI report.

In its most recent DEI report, Walmart pointed out marginal gains women have made at the officer level, as well as the May launch of its Accessibility Center of Excellence, which is designed to advance equity and inclusion for people with disabilities.

"Although we have made progress, we still have more work to do," the company told CNN Business Friday via email.

Cameron McNelis’ hopes of becoming a professional pilot have been temporarily grounded.

“Essentially with the pandemic, it’s definitely hurt the aviation industry,” he said.

McNelis recently graduated Magna Cum Laude from MSU Denver, earning a degree in aviation and aerospace science.

Prior to turning his tassel, he had a job offer from a major airline.

With that industry furloughing thousands of employees during the COVID-19 crisis, however, McNelis says the offer was taken off the table.

“Unfortunately, with a few airlines with the oncoming of the pandemic, they have delayed bringing on new pilots,” he said.

McNelis now finds himself in a situation like many recent college grads across the country -- struggling to find a job in the industry they studied.

“It literally is like flat in terms of not hiring,” said Shawn Vanderziel, executive director with the National Association of Colleges and Employers.

New research from his team’s Job Outlook for 2021 shows recent college grads are being hit hard be the COVID-19 crisis.

“A year ago, the unemployment for recent college grads was lower than it is currently,” Vanderziel said.

The study shows a third of employers are predicting lower recruitment for the class of 2021 compared to last year.

Despite the struggles, Vanderziel says there are jobs available but that they just might not be in the industries these graduates prepared for years to enter.

“Some examples would be health care, certain segments of technology, certain segments of logistics, pharmaceuticals, and as well as food manufacturing,” he said.

Vanderziel says industries suffering the most are retail, hospitality, tourism and travel, an area which McNelis hopes to make a career in.

“It’s been tough just feeling that sensation is stagnating a little bit,” he said.

While job searching, McNelis plans on continuing building his qualifications and increasing his education

“I’m moving forward as best as I can under the circumstances, trying to leave as many doors as possible open,” he said.

For now, this future pilot is practicing patience, just like many other recent college graduates.