U.S. Secretary of Labor stepping down: Secretary of Labor Lori Chavez-DeRemer, a former one-term member of U.S. Congress from Oregon who became labor secretary in March 2025, stepped down on Monday amid fallout from an internal investigation by the U.S. Department of Labor watchdog that apparently probed a relationship she allegedly had with a subordinate, and other issues.  Keith Sonderling, currently the deputy labor secretary and former EEOC Commissioner during President Trump’s first term, will become acting labor secretary. Source:  Law360 4/21/26

Are HR budgets being reduced because of AI? A tectonic shift in resource allocation for HR appears to be underway. In the aftermath of the pandemic, when talent was scarce, HR departments reaped the benefits, from large annual budget increases to newfound influence providing strategic counsel to the CEO and board. But that exalted stature seems to be eroding. Layoffs, reduced hiring, and efficiency gains from AI are bringing about the largest pullback in HR investing in years. According to new data, HR is the corporate division that’s least likely to see a budget increase this year, with just 29% of CFOs planning to invest more in the function. More telling, nearly the same percentage of CFOs plan to decrease their HR budget – the largest hit to any division. And it could be even worse, says Ron Seifert, leader of Korn Ferry’s North America Workforce Reward and Benefits practice. “Some firms are looking to reduce HR operating costs by 20 to 40 percent,” he says. The result: On an annualized basis, the average budget for human resources is expected to grow just 0.7%. That’s a far cry from the 9% overall growth in 2025, as well as the mid-single-digit growth of the two years prior. Source: Korn Ferry 3/30/26

ICs picking up the gap for project execution for organizations: Today, employers have consolidated positions and raised expectations for productivity, while leadership continues to prioritize new programs, technology rollouts, and market expansion. Strategic priorities keep growing, even as internal capacity remains constrained.  The result is a widening execution gap. Organizations still need to deliver projects and drive new initiatives, but they often lack the bandwidth to do so with their existing teams. Hiring additional full-time employees isn’t always the solution, either. To keep work moving, many companies respond by compressing roles, meaning expanding responsibilities among fewer employees to get more done with less. But when organizations eliminate or consolidate roles, the work itself doesn’t disappear. It simply shifts to whoever remains. For example, an HR business partner inherits total rewards when that team gets cut.  Rather than continuing to compress roles internally, a growing number of organizations are expanding their definition of the workforce itself. Contract and freelance professionals are increasingly being used alongside full-time employees to address workload spikes and specialized needs. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Contingent and Alternative Employment Arrangements summary, independent contractors account for 7.4% of total U.S. employment, or roughly 11.9 million workers. Potentially, a new issue will arise in the future, those with permanent jobs and those who are contingent.  HR needs to be prepared.  Source: HR Morning 3/26/26

DOL issues preliminary rules for nontraditional assets in 401(K)s: The U.S. Department of Labor proposed a rule that would clarify and provide safe harbor for a fiduciary’s duty of prudence under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act with respect to “alternative assets” such as cryptocurrency, private market investments, real estate, commodities and other investments. DOL proposed that any fiduciary that “objectively, thoroughly, and analytically” selects investments based on six factors — performance, fees, liquidity, valuation, benchmarking and complexity — is presumed “reasonable and entitled to significant deference.”  Comments on the proposal are due June 1. In 2022, the Biden administration warned 401(k) fiduciaries against cryptocurrency investment, saying they should “exercise extreme care” before adding such an option to their menu for plan participants. DOL’s Employee Benefits Security Administration noted the risks of cryptocurrency at the time, including its highly speculative nature, the difficulty of separating hype from true value, its vulnerability to hacking and theft, valuation concerns and evolving rules and regulations of its market.  Last May, Trump’s DOL rescinded this warning, suggesting the Biden administration “put their thumb on the scale” and that it was returning to “its neutral stance.”  Source: HR Dive 3/31/26

Use AI or retire? After rising for decades and then hovering around 40% in the 2010s, the share of Americans over 55 years old in the workforce has slipped to 37.2%, the lowest level in more than 20 years. In general, older Americans are less likely than younger counterparts to use AI, research shows. About 30% of people from ages 30 to 49 said they used ChatGPT on the job, nearly double the share of those 50 and older, according to a 2025 Pew Research Center survey of more than 5,000 adults.   They say they don’t want to spend the last years of their career going through the tumult of AI adoption, which has brought new tools, new expectations and a lot of uncertainty.   Many people retire when key elements of their work lives are disrupted at once, said Robert Laura, co-founder of the Retirement Coaches Association and an expert on the psychology of retirement.   “Maybe their autonomy is being challenged or changed, their friends are leaving the workplace, or they disagree with the company’s direction,” he said. “When two or three of these things show up, that’s when people start to opt out.”  “AI is a big one,” he adds. “It disrupts their autonomy, their professionalism.”  Source: Wall Street Journal

State of Washington bans noncompetes (mostly): On March 23, 2026, Washington Governor Bob Ferguson signed Engrossed Substitute House Bill 1155 (ESHB 1155), implementing an extensive noncompetition prohibition in Washington State. Beginning June 30, 2027, all noncompetition covenants are void and unenforceable unless they fall under an exception to the law. Employers will no longer be able to enforce or rely on contractual provisions that restrict an employee or contractor from engaging in a lawful profession or business after leaving a position.  The new definition of “noncompetition covenant” adds any provision that “threatens, demands, requires or otherwise effectuates that an individual return, repay or forfeit any right, benefit or compensation, as a consequence of the individual engaging in a lawful profession, trade, or business of any kind.”  However, there are exceptions including: nonsolicitation agreements expiring within 18 months of an employee’s termination of employment and prohibiting from soliciting customers, prospective customers, patients and clients, to shift business away from the employer, if the employee has a direct relationship with the customer, patient or prospect through the employee’s work with the employer and confidentiality or nondisclosure agreements designed to protect proprietary information or trade secrets. Source: Littler Mendelson PC 3/24/26