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Going to college used to be a defining milestone in the classic American Dream. But as costs rise and returns on investment shrink, many young people are rethinking what “success” looks like and redefining the traditional path altogether.

A new study by Skillit finds that a growing majority of Americans now view trade skills as more valuable than a college diploma for landing a high-paying, stable job. This shift is driven by mounting frustration over tuition costs, student debt, and the threat of AI in the white-collar workforce.

The data paints a clear picture. Americans are turning to the trades not out of nostalgia but out of necessity, seeking stability, affordability, and a tangible path to prosperity.

Key findings:

• 60% of Americans say trade skills are more valuable than a college degree in securing a well-paying job.
• 39% believe a trade or vocational skill offers greater long-term career stability than a college degree.
• 75% agree that the cost of a college degree outweighs its benefits in 2025.
• 68% say trade or vocational skills deliver a faster return on investment.
• 88% believe student loan debt makes trade skills more appealing.
• 54% of Gen Zers believe construction will be the industry that most values trade skills in the coming years.
• 45% are very or extremely concerned that AI will replace college-educated workers in the next decade.

The New American Dream: 60% Believe Trade Skills Outweigh a College Degree

Skillit

Public perceptions of higher education are changing fast. Rising tuition, record debt, and a shortage of skilled labor have flipped the old hierarchy of “college first, trades later.”

The survey found that 60% of Americans now see trade skills as more valuable than a college diploma for securing a well-paying job.

For many, it comes down to economics. Paying more than $100,000 for a degree that does not guarantee employment feels increasingly irrational. Trade certifications, in contrast, are faster, more affordable, and directly linked to income. During economic downturns, trade work often proves more stable than traditional office jobs.

From Layoffs to Longevity: Americans View Trades as the Path to Stability

Many Americans are no longer just chasing higher salaries. They are looking for careers that last. Widespread layof

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LTL (less-than-truckload) shipping allows multiple shippers to share space and costs for smaller freight loads that don’t require a full truck. However, rising LTL shipping costs are a persistent challenge for manufacturers, distributors, retailers and e-commerce businesses. Broussard Logistics explains how strategic contract management can reduce LTL shipping costs.

While many companies focus on negotiating lower rates, true savings come from a strategic, ongoing approach to LTL contract management. By treating contract management as a continuous process, you can unlock significant, long-term savings and bring predictability to your supply chain.

What Is Strategic LTL Contract Management?

Strategic LTL contract management goes beyond simply shopping for the lowest rate. It’s a cyclical, data-driven process that includes analysis, negotiation, monitoring and continuous optimization. The goal is to create a partnership with your carriers that balances cost savings with reliable service so your shipping contracts are always working in your favor.

Key elements of strategic LTL contract management include:

• Data analysis: Regularly review your shipping data to understand true costs, shipping patterns and areas for improvement.
• Informed negotiation: Use data insights to negotiate contract terms that reflect your actual shipping needs and leverage your volume for better rates and terms.
• Performance monitoring: Track key performance indicators (KPIs) like on-time delivery, damage rates and invoicing accuracy to ensure carriers meet agreed standards.
• Continuous optimization: Adjust contract terms and carrier relationships as your business changes so your agreements remain competitive and cost-effective.
• Collaborative partnerships: Open communication and long-term relationships with carriers encourage flexibility, proactive problem-solving and mutual success.

The Foundation of a Strong Contract: Data and Forecasting

To better understand how to save money with LTL contract management, start at ground level. Before entering negotiations, consider your shipping profile and anticipate future needs. Gathering the right data and using forecasting tools will enable you to negotiate optimally and avoid unexpected costs down the road.

Analyzing Your Current Shipping Profile

Before you can optimize your LTL contracts, thoroughly analyze your current shipping profile to understand where your costs are coming from and identify opportunities for improvement:

• Conduct a comprehensive freight audit to uncover your true shipping costs
• Identify your most common shipping lane

ANGELA WEISS // AFP via Getty Images

Television has created some of the most memorable backdrops in pop culture, from cozy coffee houses to dramatic throne rooms. Beyond entertainment, these beloved settings can also serve as rich sources of inspiration for interior design, sparking ideas for color palettes, textures and layouts that evoke the same emotion at home. This season, Houzz worked with five leading design and construction firms to reimagine iconic TV settings as real-world living spaces. The designers took inspiration from Gilmore Girls, Yellowstone, Mad Men, Friends and Game of Thrones to prepare fresh, functional and unforgettable spaces that can be applied to any home.

Read on to see how the pros transformed beloved television sets from Central Perk to Westeros into kitchens, living rooms and other spaces, and how you can bring that same spirit to your own home. 

Interior Impressions, courtesy of Houzz

Family Room inspired by Gilmore Girls | Designed by Interior Impressions

Gilmore Girls, set in the idyllic town of Stars Hollow, has charmed generations, not only through its quick-witted dialogue and heartfelt relationships, but also through its warm, eclectic interiors. For fans who love the show’s cozy aesthetic, this family room imagined by Interior Impressions, offers inspiration for bringing that familiar Gilmore charm into your own home.

“This living room design is our interpretation of a now more worldly Rory Gilmore,” said Amy Leferink, founder and principal designer of Interior Impressions. The room blends nostalgic warmth with sophisticated detail, using approachable design elements homeowners can adopt. Architectural touches like built-in cabinets, French doors, generous windows, and arched openings echo the original set’s character and can be recreated through thoughtful millwork, paint choices or even furniture placement that frames key focal points.

Lighting plays a major role in capturing Stars Hollow’s lived-in glow. Leferink’s team layered table and floor lamps, wall sconces, and a statement ceiling fixture to build a soft, welcoming atmosphere, which is a strategy that interior designers use to instantly warm up a space. Vintage-inspired floral

PhotographerIncognito // Shutterstock

India has long been recognized as the dominant source country for high-skilled global labor, particularly in technology and engineering.

Historically, however, this outward flow of talent via work visas has been disproportionately male. While that trend is not quite unique to India, cumulative data from the U.S. H-1B visa program over the past half-decade reflects that this imbalance is beginning to change.

Over the last five fiscal years, Indian women have accounted for a steadily increasing share of approved H-1B petitions. While the overall program does remain male-dominated, the trend line is in fact changing. In this article, Manifest Law analyzes U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) data, which shows an increasing participation among Indian women in the H-1B visa program.

Rising Share of H-1B Visa Approvals for Indian Women

As mentioned, USCIS data from the annual Characteristics of H-1B Specialty Occupation Workers reports clearly reflect a consistent, continuing increase in the percentage of Indian-born H-1B beneficiaries who are women.

The data shows:

Female Indian H-1B Visa Approvals by Fiscal Year (FY)

• FY 2020: 21%
• FY 2021: 23%
• FY 2022: 24%
• FY 2023: 24%
• FY 2024: 25%

While a one- to two-percentage-point increase on an annual basis is modest, Indian women are closing the gender gap faster than H-1B recipients from other countries.

This represents thousands of additional Indian women entering high-skilled roles in the U.S. labor market.

For context, the overall share of women among the approved H-1B beneficiaries as a whole has increased as well, rising from roughly 26% in FY 2020 to 29% in FY 2024, averaging out to roughly a 0.6 percentage-point change per year.

Indian women moved from a 21% share to a 25% share in that same period, averaging out to roughly a 0.8 percentage-point change per year. The share of women from the next-largest country for H-1B workers, China, has increased by just 0.2 to 0.3 percentage points per year.

What the H-1B Data Actually Signals

The significance of this trend lies less in its scale than in its persistence.

In the past, the gender composition of the H-1B visa program has changed very little year over year. Against that backdrop, the consistent rise in Indian women’s share of approvals is notable, even if the absolute percentage remains low.

H-1B approvals sit at the end of a highly constrained pipeline that includes employer recruitment, sponsorship decisions, wage thresholds, lottery selection, and adjudication standards. Movement at the approval stage implies that change is occurring somewhere upstream, even though USCIS data does pinpoint exactly where that change originates.

It’s important to remember that this H-1B data reflects outcomes, not just access, as USCIS does not publish data on appl

mohammadhridoy1 // Shutterstock

Just like a fancy camera doesn’t make you a photographer, just having access to powerful AI tools doesn’t mean you’re getting real value out of them. It’s what you do with the tools—how you structure the workflow, train the agent, and plug it into your systems—that determines whether it’s a novelty or a strategic advantage.

Zapier spoke with business leaders about how they’re using AI agents to build autonomous workflow solutions at scale. Here are five real-world examples.

What are AI agents?

An AI agent is an entity that can take in information from its environment, make decisions based on that input, and act on its own to achieve a goal.

AI agents can understand and interact with their circumstances. They’ll run once you give them an objective or a stimulus to trigger their behavior—you don’t need to keep prompting them. This makes them great for complex and unpredictable tasks. And even though they don’t have complete accuracy, they can detect their mistakes and figure out ways to solve them as they move forward.

5 examples of AI agents in the workplace

1. Analyze customer sentiment

Artūras Lazejeva, chief technology officer at Whatagraph, needed an AI solution to address his team’s biggest problem. Customer feedback was pouring in across multiple communication channels, but combing through all that for actionable insights and getting it to the right teams? That was slow, painful, and way too manual.

So Lazejeva built an AI agent called CommsQA. Lazejeva explains how it works: “Our CommsQA bot connects to all our communication channels, plus our product and billing data. It then uses large language models (LLMs) to analyze sentiment, identify recurring themes, and categorize the feedback. It can even flag or prioritize items based on customer revenue.”

But it doesn’t stop there. “All of this information feeds directly into Slack,” Lazejeva continues. “We receive a daily digest of the overall product feedback, top requests, pain points, and critical issues, which means we can address critical items much faster than before.”

Zapier

You can also chat with CommsQA in Slack and ask for specific insights about a client.

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