Martin Agbugui

Breaking down the job market and economy: hiring trends, layoffs, salary data, workplace culture, and AI's impact on jobs. Factual, no hype.

[Martin Agbugui @MartinAgbugui]

The 2026 job market in one line:

Easy to keep a job. Hard to find one.

Almost nobody's getting laid off. Almost nobody's moving. And if you're on the outside trying to get in, that stillness is the whole problem.

[Martin Agbugui @MartinAgbugui]

A lot of Bees

[Martin Agbugui @MartinAgbugui]

Magomed Ankalaev closes it out with a 5th-round TKO over Bogdan Guskov. Some really solid fights all the way through the card.
Big respect to everyone who stepped in the Octagon tonight.
#UFCAbuDhabi

[Martin Agbugui @MartinAgbugui]

@NotLikeSGA lol

[Martin Agbugui @MartinAgbugui]

@NotLikeSGA lol 😂 you are saying what everyone else is thinking

[Martin Agbugui @MartinAgbugui]

@NotLikeSGA That’s gonna be interesting

[Martin Agbugui @MartinAgbugui]

@NotLikeSGA Philly owns the NBA for the next two years

[Martin Agbugui @MartinAgbugui]

Source: BLS Real Earnings, June 2026. Nominal average hourly earnings up ~3.5% over the year, inflation up ~3.5%, real earnings essentially flat. "Got a raise, still feel broke" isn't in your head. It's arithmetic.

[Martin Agbugui @MartinAgbugui]

Your paycheck went up about 3.5% over the last year.

Prices went up about the same.

So in real terms, the average worker's hourly pay is basically flat from a year ago. The raise was real. It just got eaten on the way to the grocery store.

[Martin Agbugui @MartinAgbugui]

Source: Challenger, Gray & Christmas, June 2026. AI has been cited in 101,743 job-cut announcements this year, about 23% of the total. Fewer cuts overall, but a growing share of them name automation as the cause out loud.

[Martin Agbugui @MartinAgbugui]

US employers announced 45,849 job cuts in June.

Down 53% from May. Lowest monthly total since December.

So layoffs are cooling. But the reason companies give has changed.

AI has now been the #1 stated reason for job cuts four months in a row.

[Martin Agbugui @MartinAgbugui]

The zip-code line is the joke. The part that isn't: most of the filtering now happens before a human ever opens the resume.

[Martin Agbugui @MartinAgbugui]

Companies say they want diverse talent pipelines.
Meanwhile recruiters: this candidate looks really strong.
ATS system: we have never seen a qualified applicant from this zip code in our entire database.

[Martin Agbugui @MartinAgbugui]

Source: NY Fed labor market for recent grads, Q1 2026. Underemployment for that group is near 41% — a job that never needed the degree. Entry-level postings on Handshake fell 15-16% year over year while applications per posting jumped about 30%.

[Martin Agbugui @MartinAgbugui]

Something quietly flipped this year.

Recent college grads (22-27) now sit near 5.7% unemployment.

The national rate is about 4.3%.

For most of modern history a degree meant lower unemployment than average. Right now it means higher. The entry-level door is the one stuck.

[Martin Agbugui @MartinAgbugui]

This is the playbook a lot of small businesses miss. The set-aside subcontracting requirement is real leverage, but primes still need to trust that the sub can actually deliver, staff up, and stay compliant. That trust gap is where most opportunities get lost after the intro email.

[Martin Agbugui @MartinAgbugui]

"Per my previous email" is just "read the thing I already sent" wearing a blazer.

[Martin Agbugui @MartinAgbugui]

The hardest part of the modern career is resisting the urge to reply "per my previous email" with a 12-minute YouTube tutorial you recorded in your garage.

[Martin Agbugui @MartinAgbugui]

Section 851 is a good reminder that compliance risk isn't just about your own paperwork, it's about who you're associated with on the vendor list. This is exactly why vetting workforce and subcontractor partners needs to happen before you're deep into a DoD contract, not after a flag gets raised.

[Martin Agbugui @MartinAgbugui]

This EO is going to accelerate reshoring across the entire defense supply chain, and the workforce implications are just as big as the materials story. Primes will need domestic, cleared talent to replace capacity that used to come from overseas suppliers. Staffing strategy just became part of compliance strategy.

[⚗️ NdPr DyTb | Rare Earths ⛏️⚗️🔥🔬🧲 Analyst ⭐ @roblun1]

🚨 BREAKING: President Trump just signed an executive order that could reshape which companies actually get to build America's weapons. 🇺🇸⚔️

On July 20, 2026, Trump signed "Securing America's Defense Supply Chains and Ensuring Domestic Acquisition of Critical Materials", and it's a direct hit on the practice of defense contractors quietly sourcing critical minerals from China. 🧲
👇
https://t.co/J7tCqn2ubW

What changes:

🔒 Waivers get MUCH harder to get.

Starting Jan 1, 2027, the Pentagon can no longer freely grant waivers letting contractors buy critical materials from "covered nations" (China, Russia, Iran, North Korea) just because they're the cheapest option. Contractors now have to prove they searched for alternatives and show a real exit plan.

🗺️ Full supply chain mapping.

No more hiding tier-3 suppliers, Contractors must map every material, from raw input to finished weapon system, including lower-tier suppliers normally invisible to the prime contractor. As Peter Navarro put it: "This is not paperwork. It is battlefield preparation." ⚔️📋

🕵️ Supplier vetting with real teeth.

Contractors have to assess suppliers for foreign ownership/control, financial vulnerability, and risk, and replace anyone deemed unreliable. Non-compliant or fraudulent contractors risk losing contracts entirely, or referral to the Attorney General.

The industry is split:

📈 Domestic critical minerals players are already waving this as validation, companies like Focus Graphite are publicly highlighting "strategic alignment" with the order.

⚠️ But the Aerospace Industries Association pushed back hard, warning that for SEVERAL of the targeted minerals, domestic capacity, scale, or purity simply doesn't exist yet, meaning the order could "impede reaching these goals" rather than accelerate them.

Why this matters for rare earths specifically:

🇺🇸This is the legal backbone behind the entire US reshoring, MP Materials, USA Rare Earth, Lynas's US contracts, and magnet recyclers are all positioned to benefit as DoD's tolerance for China-sourced magnets shrinks to near zero. 🧲

It also lands alongside a proposed DFARS rule that could extend this vetting to ALL unclassified DoD contracts above $5M, meaning the compliance wave is about to get much bigger than just rare earths.

🎯 The takeaway: Washington just moved from "please diversify" to "prove it or lose the contract." That's a fundamentally different level of pressure on the entire defense-critical minerals supply chain.

#RareEarths #CriticalMinerals #DefenseSupplyChain #ExecutiveOrder #Trump #NationalSecurity #Reshoring #MadeInUSA #NdFeB #MPMaterials #USARareEarth #Lynas #Pentagon #SupplyChainSecurity #ChinaDecoupling #DefenseIndustrial #Magnets

[Martin Agbugui @MartinAgbugui]

The DFARS extension to unclassified contracts above $5M is the part people are underestimating. Compliance vetting at that scale means primes will need vetted workforce and subcontractor documentation ready well before award, not scrambled together after. This is going to reshape a lot of teaming decisions.

[Martin Agbugui @MartinAgbugui]

Backlog growth across multiple segments is the real signal here. Multi-year visibility on contracts means Lockheed and its subs need workforce plans that match that horizon, not just staffing sprint to sprint. Long backlogs reward whoever can staff consistently over years, not just win the initial award.

[Martin Agbugui @MartinAgbugui]

@AlphaSenseInc This is a smart model, invest in mission tech roadmaps ahead of the RFP so you can respond faster than competitors. The same logic applies to workforce: primes who pre-build cleared talent pipelines before the award drops execute faster once the contract is signed.