• LinkedIn’s editor-in-chief has confirmed the job market is ‘not great’. Its new report reveals the top skills to have right now if you want to up your chances of landing a job—and it turns out, being able to squash workplace drama is one of them amid layoffs and RTO mandates.

Job opportunities seem to have dried up, as candidates are sending out hundreds of applications to be faced with ‘ghost’ postings and steep competition. But talent could have a leg-up if they tap into some of the fastest growing skills in the struggling job marketplace. 

“It’s not a disaster, but it’s not great out there,” LinkedIn’s editor-in-chief Dan Roth said in an interview with TODAY. “Which is why it’s so important to know what skills you need to have to look better when you’re applying.”

About 54% of Americans plan to look for a new job in 2025, according to Roth, but hiring has been down 3.4% year-over-year. He added that the fight for opportunities has heated up, too—there’s currently about 2.5 applications for every open job, whereas right after the pandemic the ratio was about 1:1. 

Highly qualified job-seekers are competing in the same arena for a shrinking number of opportunities—but LinkedIn found there are some surefire skills to have to get noticed by hiring managers. 

Conflict mitigation is a top skill to get hired in 2025

There’s been a lot of turmoil in the workforce—from wildly unpopular RTO mandates to layoffs alongside AI optimization, to clashing views in the office. Without employees who know how to manage the tension, cultural problems can bubble over into disengagement and resentment. 

It’s why conflict mitigation—being able to foster collaboration and lead agile teams in times of strife and success—is currently the second fastest-growing skill, according to LinkedIn’s data. 

When analyzing what skills were being added to U.S. users’ profiles, what skills people who got hired had, and what skills employers are adding to postings, squashing workplace beef reigned supreme. 

Common job titles that include this increasingly popular skill include administrative assistants, project managers, and customer service representatives. And it is most notably in demand in the tech industry, as well as, IT consulting, and higher education. These sectors have been particularly hit hard by organizational changes, from China’s foreign chips competition, political impacts among U.S. schooling, and AI overhauling the workforce.

The ability for both leaders and workers to be able to navigate rough waters has been a growing precedent. Emotional intelligence is a growing qualifier when it comes to vetting executives, LinkedIn found last year—from 2018 to 2024, there was a 31% increase in these C-suite leaders featuring soft skills on their profiles. Five capabilities they often advertised included effective presentations, strategic thinking, communication, strategic vision, and conflict resolution.

Roth added that conflict mitigation has also grown in importance as employees of vastly different age groups try to find common ground. 

“For the first time we have five generations working together in the workforce,” Roth said. “And so you’ve got the situation where people think differently—how do you deal with conflict at the office? AI cannot do that well today.”

LinkedIn’s list shows that other human skills are still in demand, including adaptability, innovative thinking, public speaking, and customer engagement. While AI literacy still ranks at the top, it highlights that employers aren’t blind to the importance of human skills too. 

Other hot skills for 2025—with AI literacy at the forefront

If the AI embroilment between Meta, OpenAI, DeepSeek, and Nvidia tells you anything about the industry, it is that the advanced tech is the new frontier of business. Not only is AI relevant to Silicon Valley titans—employers everywhere now expect staffers to use the tools on the job.

AI literacy was ranked the number one skill on the rise in 2025, according to LinkedIn’s recent analysis. Common jobs that look for these capabilities are software engineers, product managers, and CEOs—and mainly span across tech, IT, and higher education industries.

But the skill doesn’t entail being able to write code—only know how to best apply it to one’s role.

“This is not a ‘go learn to code’ moment,’ this is ‘get familiar with how to use AI,’ try out the tools, think about how to apply them in any role you have in any job you’ve got,” Roth said in the interview. 

Other skills with more technical, type-A uses also made the list—including process optimization, solution-based selling, and large language model (LLM) development and application. But Roth added that while the rise in AI has naturally increased the need for those technical abilities, it’s also had the opposite effect. 

As more companies are applying the technology across their organizations—from HR departments, to frontline workers—it’s exacerbated a desire for human soft skills. And LinkedIn’s leadership board of the top skills for 2025 shows how desperately they’re needed.  

The top five fastest-growing skills in the U.S. for 2025

1. AI literacy: The ability to understand and utilize tools, and harness that technology for business purposes
2. Conflict mitigation: The ability to navigate workplace conflicts, foster collaboration, and lead agile teams
3. Adaptability: The ability to continuously learn and maintain resilience 
4. Process Optimization: The ability to drive operational efficiency and cost-effectiveness to stay competitive 
5. Innovative thinking: The ability to problem-solve creatively as AI transforms the work landscape

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

During a quarterly earnings call on March 4, Target reported that quarterly net sales declined 3.1%, while in February, when only the first three days were included in the quarter, CEO Brian Cornell stated that there was a “sales decline,” without being specific.

Then Target executives all but led a singalong of “Peter Cottontail” on the call, mentioning Easter five times, specifically the windfall the company expected leading up to the holiday.

“We had record sales [for] Valentine’s Day,” Rick Gomez, Target’s chief commercial officer, said during the call. “That bodes really well for Easter. So we are encouraged by that and looking forward to Easter.”

What may not bode so well, however, is that the week of March 3 (which included Ash Wednesday, the start of Lent) marked the beginning of a national Lenten boycott of Target, which goes through Easter. Spearheaded by Black clergy, the protest highlights that Target, after years of championing racial justice and social justice, rolled back its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) program in January. The protest had a goal of signing up 100,000 consumers to participate; more than 150,000 had signed up when this story was published.

Retail Brew asked Target to comment on the protest and how it might impact Easter sales. In an email response, Emily Bisek, senior crisis communications manager at Target, responded only to, in her words, “affirm that we do not have anything new to share at this time.”

There has been much beard-stroking and teeth-gnashing over whether the one-day February 28 “economic boycott” against numerous companies was effective. But the Target Fast, as organizers refer to the protest, could pack a wallop.

Besides the more than 40-day duration and the sheer number of participants, there’s the matter of Easter. If Target is banking on brisk sales at the same time legions of Christians vow to not shop there until after Easter, it begs the question: Has Target put all its eggs in the wrong basket?

“An insult at the highest level”: Initiated by Jamal Harrison Bryant, senior pastor of the New Birth Missionary Baptist Church outside of Atlanta, the protest has a website where participants are encouraged to sign on.

“This is a fast for accountability,” the website states. “A fast for justice. A fast for a future where corporations do not bow to pressure at the expense of marginalized communities.”

The website estimates that Black consumers spend $12 million daily at Target.

“The African-American community has been disrespected after loyal consumerism,” Bryant told Fortune. “For the company to turn its back on us is an insult at the highest level.”

Kevin Brockenbrough, a brand strategist who’s consulted with retailers and brands for more than 25 years, often on what he called “multicultural” campaigns, said the influence of Black pastors was evident during the pandemic, when they urged congregants to forego their hesitancy and get the Covid vaccine.

“When the Black pastors stepped up and said, ‘Get the shot,’ people got the shot,” Brockenbrough told Retail Brew.

He consulted with JC Penney on multicultural campaigns in the past, and the retailer paid particular attention to Easter.

“A lot of the multicultural families were very religious, and part of going to church was showing up in your new Easter clothes,” he said.

Brockenbrough said that Black consumers have more of an affinity for Target than other retailers, owing not only to the company’s prior commitment to racial justice but also to the stores having more of a presence in cities than its biggest competitor, Walmart.

“Walmart is in small, rural areas; Target is in urban areas. Target is where Black people are,” Brockenbrough said. “So for Target to back away from DEI really feels a little bit like a slap in the face.”

With 100 being the average, Target overindexes on shoppers in urban areas at 110, or 38% of its shoppers, according to Numerator; Walmart underindexes with urban shoppers, at 94, or 32% of the shoppers. Walmart has more white shoppers than Target—65% compared to 62% at Walmart—but both have the same percentage of what Numerator calls “Black or African American” shoppers: 14%.

Rabbit hole: Diane Merians Penaloza, doctoral lecturer at the City University of New York’s School of Professional Studies, was dubious about Target’s Easter optimism.

“A lot of their ‘Easter is going to be awesome’ is wishful thinking,” Penaloza told Retail Brew. “Like, if they say it enough times, it will become true.”

While Penaloza believes Target misstepped on DEI, and that it’s taken a toll on the company, she thinks many who’ve stopped shopping there made the decision independent of organized boycotts.

“Do I think the DEI rollback has hurt them tremendously? Profoundly. Absolutely 100%,” she said. “Do I think it’s because of the boycott? No, the boycott doesn’t help, but it’s really people saying, ‘Yeah, not so much.’”

This report was written by Andrew Adam Newman and was originally published by Retail Brew.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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• Elon Musk is offering voters in Michigan $100 to sign a petition. It’s a smaller version of the $1 million payments he offered to select swing-state voters in 2024 and shows an increased willingness by the world’s richest man to push for a large role in the governmental process.

Elon Musk’s America PAC is offering registered voters in Wisconsin $100 each if they sign a petition against “activist judges who impose their own views.” Those payments come as another Musk-backed group is spending heavily in the state ahead of a Wisconsin Supreme court race.

At the same time, The Washington Post reports Musk has donated to several Republican senators who have moved to impeach federal judges.

The push comes as Donald Trump called for the impeachment of a federal judge earlier this week after the justice ordered the government to turn around planes that were deporting Venezuelan immigrants. Trump ignored that order, earning a rebuke from the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

Musk called a separate ruling by a judge that blocked Trump’s ban on transgender people serving in the military “a judicial coup,” adding, “We need 60 senators to impeach the judges and restore rule of the people.”

Paying people to sign a petition echoing his thoughts is becoming a go-to play for Musk. Last fall, he offered voters in swing states the chance to win $1 million each when they signed a petition his PAC put out “to support free speech and the right to bear arms.”

Prosecutors in Pennsylvania argued those payments were illegal, but a judge said the district attorney failed to present proper evidence and allowed Musk to continue making the offer.

Musk was the largest donor in the 2024 election and, while these contributions are small in comparison, they indicate an increased likelihood he intends to play a significant role in the midterm elections next year.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com