workers

“Karoshi” is the scourge that has been undermining the health of Japanese workers for decades. And the Government does not know how to stop it

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It is not a new or unknown phenomenon, but he karoshi (illnesses or even deaths due to overwork) is gaining ground in Japan. This is suggested by at least the latest data from the Ministry of Health, which reflects that last year the Government recognized a record number of those affected with the right to compensation: 1,310. If we take into account all the requests, the figure is 6,212, another record. State records are only one indicator of a much broader problembut they suggest that Japan is a long way from solving it. And that sets off alarm bells. What has happened? That data from the Ministry of Health reveal that Japan is far (very far) from solving one of its thorniest social challenges: illnesses or deaths from karoshithat is, due to work overload. The latest official balance reveals that the number of employees who received government compensation for this reason rose to a level never seen before during fiscal year 2025. That is alarming in itself, but beyond the numbers what is truly worrying is the trend. As remember The Japan Timesit is the fourth consecutive year that the record has been broken and the flow of applications (whether approved or not) is also at historic levels. What do the figures say? The report of the Ministry of Health reveals that in Japan there are hundreds and hundreds of people for whom the Government recognizes the necessary conditions to receive compensation for excess workload. Specifically, during fiscal year 2025 the record of 1,310 was reached. There are only five more than in 2024, but what is relevant is that the number has not stopped growing in recent years. In fact, it is not the first time that alarms have gone off. At the end of 2024 Nippon I already warned of the escalation in the number of documented cases. As if that were not enough, the ministerial report throws out another figure: perhaps there is 1,310 compensatedbut the number of requests is much higher. During the same period it rose to 6,212, another record figure that exceeds that of 2024 by 1,402. Probably not all meet the requirements demanded by Health, but the Japanese press does not clarify whether the difference between both figures (indemnified and applicants) is due to this disparity or a simple administrative issue. Do we know anything else? Yes. The vast majority of compensated people (1,086) had work-related mental disorders, including depression. The remaining 224 suffered strokes and heart attacks. All attributable to his professional work. In 145 cases the outcome was the most traffic: it ended in deaths or suicides, although this is 14 less than in 2024. Among the applications received at the Ministry of Health, the majority (4,958 out of a total of 6,212) are also related to psychological problems. Not only are they the most common, but their incidence is clearly growing: the Government registered 1,178 more than during fiscal year 2024. Their report also reveals that after many cases of karoshi There are problems with bosses, workplace harassment and sudden changes that affect the workload and quality of the work entrusted to the affected person. Does the sector matter? Yes. Those who are most at risk are professionals in sectors in which overtime regulation is less developed. The Japan Times specific quote to bus and truck drivers, doctors and construction workers, trades that have seen their legal framework gradually improve, but in some cases still have certain exceptions. For example, a driver can work up to 960 overtime hours a year, a workload that is also exceeded 15% of doctors that are used in hospitals in Japan. In 2016 they were 39.2%but even so the data is worrying and there are certain specialized profiles in which overtime hours skyrocket. Why is this something worrying? Because illnesses and deaths related to karoshi They are nothing new. The discipline of strenuous work is very rooted in Japanese culture, although it hardened especially after the Second World War. For a time it helped the country advance, but in the 60s it began to pay its price: heart attacks, strokes and even cases of suicide due to stress, the karojisatu. In recent years there have also been very high-profile cases, such as that of a young girl who took his own life in 2015 after sleeping only 10 hours a week due to his work overload and accumulating around 100 overtime hours a month. How do they face it? Against that backdrop, Japan has begun to regulate issues such as overtime and the maximum number of consecutive days that can be linked. However, the results just released by the Ministry of Health reveal that the problem is far from being solved. In the country there are also those who fear the impact that the conservative government may have. Sanae Takaichiwho does not hesitate call meetings team at three in the morning and brag about not sleeping more than four hours. Images | Beth Macdonald (Unsplash), Vien Dinh (Unsplash) and Joris Beugels (Unsplash) In Xataka | Faced with labor shortages, Japan has taken an unprecedented measure in the last two decades: paying women the same

30% of workers feel less useful

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According to the latest study from Ionos, 41% of SMEs in Spain already use some AI tool in their daily processes. That, on paper, should imply an increase in productivity in these tasks. However, the reality is much more stubborn. The annual report ‘People at Work 2026‘ prepared by the consulting firm ADP Research points out that despite this increase in the use of AI tools for automation, employees feel that they perform less. The mirage of productivity. The ADP report asked 39,000 employees in 36 countries about how AI affects them in their daily lives. The result shows that among those who use AI daily, 30% say they feel very committed to their work. But that same group also reports feeling less productive than before. Heavy AI users are four times more likely to feel like they are underperforming. The study itself admits that there is no simple way to measure real productivity of these people. In reality, they may work harder as has already been shown in other areas as in software engineers, but they feel that they achieve less on their own. The fear of losing your job is still there. According to the same survey, in Spain, 15% of workers use AI every day, and 11% believe that this tool will end up replace him in his position. Only 14% of the participants in our country view the progress favorably. Fear is not shared equally between generations. Nearly two in ten 18- to 26-year-olds use AI daily. Among those over 55, 33% have never tried it. A Funcas report estimates that, between 2025 and 2035, AI could end up to 2.3 million jobs in Spain. Above all, in administrative and data management tasks. What the official data say. The European Central Bank has been closely observing the phenomenon for months and, according to its own analysisthe companies that invest the most in AI are not the ones that then they fire more. In fact, they tend to increase the number of hires. For now, technology acts as a complement to human work, not its substitute. No matter how much some companies put it as an excuse. Another study, from the European Investment Bank, calculates that AI has increased productivity European labor 4%. The increase comes mainly from investment in tools and training, not from staff cuts. However, despite these signs, experts point out that it is still early to see the possible increase of AI in productivity data due to its low implementation and they attribute this increase to the other major impact on the labor market in recent years: teleworking. Commitment yes, performance not always. Bárbara Gómez, operations director of ADP Iberia assures in a company statement that “AI is transforming the way we work, but its adoption alone does not guarantee greater productivity. Workers must improve their skills and become familiar with AI tools, understanding how they integrate into their workflows.” The technology change and automate processesbut it does not change results by itself. Nela Richardson, chief economist at ADP, goes a little further. “AI changes the way we work but also how people in companies feel,” he explains in the report. His recipe is to stop seeing AI as a threat and treat it as “a companionanother member of the team.” From saying to fact. Spain is no exception in the unproductive feeling of employees who use AI. The pattern is repeated in almost all the countries in the ADP survey. Regular AI users show less stress, better relationships with their teammates, but almost none say feel more efficient in his work. The key may be in the curve learning these tools. Changing tools costs time, although in the long run it pays off and companies need an implementation period to improve your processes. Meanwhile, millions of workers remain caught between two sensations: using more technology than ever and feel like they are performing less than before. In Xataka | Bill Gates: “As AI takes on more jobs, you’ll be able to retire earlier and work shorter work weeks” Image | Unsplash (Flipsnack)

63% of workers do not reach the average salary

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Although it is true that salaries in Spain they have not stopped rising In recent years, the data suggests that this increase has been insufficient. The data collected in a report of CCOO confirm one of the paradoxes that the Spanish labor market registers: while employment breaks records month after month, with more than 22 million people workingthe majority cannot reach the average salary in the country. An average salary that almost no one earns. According to the report prepared by the CCOO Economic Cabinet, the average salary in Spain is 2,386 gross euros per month in twelve paymentsaccording to data from the EPA 2024. However, 63% of employees, some 11.64 million people, do not reach that figure on their payroll. The trick is how the average salary is calculated and how the high salaries of a minority they pull up the stocking leaving the rest beloweven though they are the majority. Therefore, the median salary data consolidated in 2024 is more revealing: half of the workers did not reach 2,041 gross euros per month in 2024, 345 euros less than the average salary. That is the point that divides Spain into two halves. A labor market with two speeds. According to the Salary Structure Survey 2024the most common gross annual salary in Spain was 16,520 euros, far from the 29,540 euros of the annual average. Almost three out of ten employees earn between 16,000 and 23,000 euros per year, the range where the majority of the country actually lives. Young people who start working earn an average of 1,372 euros gross per month, well below the 2,680 euros of those who close their careers. Temporary contracts and moonlighting They explain a good part of that distance. There is also a gap between autonomies: Extremadura, the Canary Islands and Castilla-La Mancha continue to lag behind in salaries, although they are the ones that grow the most, driven by the increases in the SMI. The increases finally reach those who earn the least. The interesting thing about the report prepared by the union is not only the diagnosis, but also the change in trend that is drawn. Between 2018 and 2024 the average salary gained 2.8% real purchasing powercompared to the 1.6% registered between 2007 and 2018. The important difference is in the lowest salary range: the 10% of workers with the lowest income have improved a real 24% since 2018, after having lost 17.8% during the previous crisis. This change is defined by salary policies such as increase in the Minimum Interprofessional Wageset at 1,221 euros per month in 14 payments by 2026, which has raised the floor for the lowest payrolls. The decree that established the SMI itself recalls that one of its objectives is to reach the 60% of the average salaryas required by the European Social Charter. Housing eats up the salary improvement. Earning more no longer guarantees a better life if basic goods such as rent rise faster than payroll. And in Spain it is doing it. Rental prices rose 2.5% year-on-year in June, according to data from the INE CPIand accumulates an increase of 1.4% only so far in 2026. According to the authors of the report, rising housing prices “reduce the impact of wage increases”, especially among the lowest incomes and young people. A floor that rises more than the salary translates into less savings and a longer delay in emancipation. In Xataka | A study has compared the gap in public salaries vs. private companies in Europe and has found a problem: Spain Image | Unsplash (Acton Crawford)

It costs 20% more to manufacture than its competitors and it has too many workers

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There are companies that announce their crises with a solemn statement. Volkswagen has chosen a different path: an internal interview with its CEO posted on its intranet, which ends being filtered to the German newspaper Der Spiegel. This is how half of Europe has learned that the largest car manufacturer on the continent still cannot find a way out of a crisis that threatens the dismissal of up to 100,000 employees and with the closure of factories. Oliver Blume, CEO of Volkswagen, published an interview aimed at offering some more information to the workforce while the board of directors decides the strategic plan that will define the future of the company. According to his words, the result is a plan that can change Volkswagen forever. A message for yours. Blume had been avoiding going into details for weeks about the extent of the cuts that Volkswagen was considering applying to stay afloat, while several workers protested outside its plants. In his interview published on the company’s internal network, Blume acknowledged that the costs of administration and support of the main business continue 20% above of what their rivals manage. This percentage conditions Volkswagen’s line of action: reduce the size of the company and, according to Blume, this involves laying off workers. The million dollar question is how many will have to be fired. “A theoretical derivation without a change in labor costs would give an adjustment of 50,000 jobs worldwide,” said its CEO in the leaked interview. To these would be added the 50,000 already agreed with the unions for Germany until 2030. The round sum is the 100,000 jobs that already resonate in the hallways of the entire company. The factories in the pillory. Blume also broke his silence on the future of the four German plants that They have been in the air for months. “The truth is also that, as of today, we still cannot confirm a competitive occupation for the Emden, Hannover, Zwickau and Neckarsulm plants,” lamented the company’s CEO. The reason is that Volkswagen has an oversized structure. The group’s European plants have the capacity to assemble 500,000 more cars than the market is asking for right now. This forces Volkswagen not only to reduce its production capacity to save costs, but also to cut its car catalog to make the assembly lines more efficient and, thereby, also reduce the number of factories. That plan could also affect Volkswagen’s factories in Martorell and Navarra, although the greatest impact of the cut is expected in its infrastructure in Germany. Volkswagen’s military path. As an alternative to closure, Blume talks about changing the use of the factories, and dedicating them to weapons manufacturing. Something similar to what it already happens in Osnabrück, where Volkswagen is negotiating with the Israeli company Rafael to manufacture anti-missile systems. However, geopolitical interests have blocked these negotiations. Qatar is a major shareholder of Volkswagen with two seats on its board of directors, and does not welcome the company manufacturing weapons that can destabilize the delicate balance of the Middle East. The weight of the “people”. On the other hand, the company is not a typical car manufacturer. The government of Lower Saxony has a very important weight on its board of directors, which makes it difficult for initiatives that are especially harmful to workers to prosper. Which guarantees that the sacrifices will not fall only on the side of the squad. In fact, the State of Lower Saxony nay of the dismissal of a sixth of its staff by twelve votes to seven. Lower Saxony controls 20% of the capital and usually rows alongside unions to protect employment in its territory. “The German automobile industry is the core area of ​​our German economy,” declared Christiane Benner president of the IG Metall union. An opportunity for China. Before the sales drums, some analysts They have set their sights on China due to the possibility of a brand signing an agreement with Volkswagen to take advantage of the company’s infrastructure to manufacture in Europe. The economist Moritz Schularick, president of the Kiel Institute of World Economywent a little further and predicted that the German auto giant “will likely be acquired by a Chinese manufacturer like BYD.” Given the institutional presence in Volkswagen’s shareholding, it is difficult for a total sale to occur. In any case, none of these options have been confirmed by Volkswagen’s management leadership and remain in the speculative realm. In Xataka | Volkswagen led an army of sheep to graze under 31,000 solar panels. It turns out that the way of producing energy began to change Image | Volkswagen

Workers will have the right to a minimum weekly rest of one and a half days uninterrupted

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Elite athletes have deeply internalized that rest time is so important for get good performance like the training itself. However, companies they don’t seem to have it so clear. The Workers’ Statute clearly establishes what limits and conditions the employees’ weekly rest period must meet and how much time workers must rest between one work day and the next. It may seem like a topic that needs no clarification, but the devil is in the details. The minimum weekly rest. He article 37.1 The Workers’ Statute includes the regulations that work breaks must comply with. To begin with, every worker has the right to “a minimum weekly rest period, cumulative for periods of up to fourteen days, of a day and a half uninterrupted.” The law establishes that “as a general rule, it will include the afternoon of Saturday or, where appropriate, the morning of Monday and the entire day of Sunday.” This is 36 hours of uninterrupted rest. Which prevents this break from being broken up into individual moments, without any real block of disconnection being completed. That is to say, if, for example, you work until 2 p.m. on Saturday and return on Monday at 8 a.m., the fair minimum established by law would be met. However, the vast majority of companies give the entire weekend to their workers, who work from Monday to Friday. In this case, this “as a general rule” acts more as a recommendation than as an imposition since, due to the nature of their activity, some sectors are conditioned to work during weekends and this condition is recognized in the Royal Decree 1561/1995. There are those who work so that others rest. The problem comes in sectors such as hospitality or commerce, in which the atypical thing is to work only from Monday to Friday and rest on the weekend, because their peak work begins when others rest. In that case, the sectoral agreements establish that weekly breaks can be assigned during the week, as long as the minimum of 36 consecutive hours of rest included in the Workers’ Statute is met. The accumulated rest. Article 37.1 of the Workers’ Statute also specifies that the company does not have to give that day and a half each exact week, but can organize it in blocks, as long as they do not exceed 14 days. This is what is called accumulated rest. For example, an employee could chain 10 days of uninterrupted work including Saturdays and Sundays, and rest the next three at once. In this way, the mandate of taking 36 hours of weekly rest would be complied with (72 hours being the cumulative amount of two weeks) and the 14 days of separation between both breaks would not have been exceeded. Rest between days. On the other hand, the article 34.3 of the Workers’ Statute establishes that, between the end of one work day and the beginning of the next, a minimum of 12 hours must elapse. rest. If, for example, your day ends at 10 p.m., you will not be able to return to your job until at least 10 a.m. the next day. The Supreme Court said that breaks should not be mixed. Although legislators try to write laws with little room for interpretation, sometimes there are loopholes that lead to abuses. Many companies added those 12 hours of mandatory rest between days to the 36 hours per week as if they were the same block. The Supreme Court ruled in its ruling 274/2026 the case of a worker from Castilla-La Mancha with rotating shifts He denounced just that. Their agreement recognized both breaks, but in practice they overlapped. The conclusion of the High Court was that both breaks are independent and must be respected separately, as had already been established by the EU Court in a 2023 Hungarian ruling. Minors and breaks within the work day. For those under 18 years of age, in addition to complying with all the legal requirements included in the article 6 of the Statutethe regulations increase rest times to a minimum of 2 days in a row, instead of one and a half. Furthermore, their effective daily working hours cannot exceed 8 hours, including training if they have it. There are also rules for breaks within the day. Any worker who works for more than 6 hours in a row has the right to 15 minutes of rest, a time that many companies take advantage of to establish “snack time”“. For those under 18 years of age, this break increases to 30 minutes when the continuous day exceeds four and a half hours. In Xataka | How many vacations do I have by law: this is how the days of rest are calculated Image | Flickr (Chris Arnold), Unsplash (Eduardo Alexandre)

The US has realized that millions of workers have no future because of AI. And he got to work

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A question has been going around the councils of ministers and the main world economic forums since ChatGPT showed its capabilities in November 2022. How many jobs is going to destroy the AI? The founder of OpenAI himself has been one of the more pessimistic voicesand has even financed studies and pilot tests on universal basic income as a tool to mitigate the impact of AI in the world of work. Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, is also not optimistic about the impact of AI on the labor market: up to half of office jobs of recent graduates They could disappear in five years. Now, the same people who develop the great AI models are putting money on the table to cushion the coming labor blow. The concern about a labor apocalypse is such that it is even uniting political adversaries to find a solution together. United against the AI ​​workplace apocalypse. As and how he published The Wall Street Journallast week he was born RAISE USa non-profit organization that aims to train US employees in profiles with a future within the new AI economy that is coming in the coming years. The organization will be led by Democrat Gina Raimondo, former Secretary of Commerce in the Biden administration, but, what is more curious, is that she will do so together with the former Republican governor of Indiana Eric Holcomb. Yes, AI has achieved something that seemed impossible: that political parties and rival companies join forces to prevent millions of employees from being left without jobs due to the arrival of AI. The problem also wants to be the solution. The initiative starts with more than 500 million dollars already committed, half of a budget goal that is set at 1,000 million for several years to come. The goal of RAISE US is to harmonize the evolution of the AI ​​career, but without leaving people behind. “If we build the best AI systems in the world and leave millions of Americans behind, we will have gained nothing,” said Raimondo in the presentation of the project. The most striking thing of all is that, among the main donors of this initiative we find some of the main protagonists of the race for AI. Namely: Amazon, Microsoft, Bank of America, IBM, Cisco or the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly. Of course, Anthropic and the OpenAI foundation have also joined in. That is, the same people who are building the tools that can put their users out of work want to provide them with training for a future in a sector less exposed to AI or to cover the new professional profiles that will be created. AI is going to change everything. AI is evolving much faster than systems designed to protect workers, and that makes them more vulnerable. Goldman Sachs calculated that some 300 million jobs globally will be affected by the automation of generative AI. In the US, young people between 22 and 25 years old with jobs exposed to AI they already accuse the blow and its unemployment rate has risen almost three points since the beginning of 2025. The problem is that the current unemployment aid and subsidy systems are not designed to cover employees of entire sectors who, suddenly, lose their jobs. for AI automation. In Spain, unemployment benefits it is more guarantee when an employee becomes unemployed, but in countries like the US, only 27% of the unemployed receive unemployment benefitaccording to data from 2025. RAISE US objectives. An analysis 2025 Brookings Review reviewed decades of job training and retraining programs, and concluded that their results have been modest at best. RAISE US wants to redesign incentives so that companies prefer to retrain their employees rather than lay them off. It also proposes reforms in US unemployment benefits, so that a laid-off worker can continue collecting unemployment benefits while starting a business or starting training, instead of losing it as soon as he signs a new contract, something similar to what It is already applied in Spain in some specific cases to encourage their reintegration into the workforce. Get it started before it’s too late. The first pilot tests of the job training platform are already underway in four US states. In Arkansas, an AI-based career guidance platform is being tested that connects students and unemployed people with training programs tailored to their profile. In Maryland, the focus is on expanding a paid course program of at least nine months that gives candidates real-world experience in sectors with high demand of personnel, such as healthcare. The biggest fear of those who promote the platform is that their measures arrive on time. Labor markets already show signs of adjustment with changes in demand for certain technological profiles on the rise, while junior profiles they are in free fall in technology, law firms and consulting firms. In Xataka | We believed that AI was going to retire an entire generation of workers early. The opposite is happening Image | Unsplash (Shamin Haky)

Madrid is a black hole of workers and students who live outside Madrid. And they just took away their transport pass.

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No Autonomous Community lost as many inhabitants as Madrid in 2025. No Autonomous Community gained as many inhabitants as Madrid in 2025. It may seem paradoxical but is what the data says. Madrid has become a labor and economic black hole. And the consequences are obvious. It is the region that attracted the most population last year, adding more than 100,000 new residents. But it is also the one that lost the most population, with just over 12,000 people who have gone to live outside the Community of Madrid. The increase in house prices and the day-to-day cost of living is expelling some of its workers from the city. Some of them simply go to live far enough away to find more affordable housing with the promise that a quick train connection allows them to be just over an hour from their work. A good example is Valladolid. Those, perhaps, are the luckiest. Others have simply grown up outside the region, in a rural environment, and have come to Madrid to try their luck to get one of those jobs. statistics place only in large cities. Workers who, perhaps, simply They arrived in Madrid during their university days. and they have ended up staying. Unlike when they were in their twenties and returned to their place of origin every summer. Or workers who do not appear anywhere because they are irregular immigrants who have arrived in Madrid with the same promises as any other profile we have talked about before but that remain outside of any type of statistics. Madrid has decided to remove their transport pass from all of them. Or make it much more complicated. Unnecessarily unnecessary registration All the previously mentioned profiles could have access to the transport subscription of the Community of Madrid without any type of hindrance. All that was necessary was a DNI, a residence permit or a passport and to pay the corresponding fee each month. This transport pass allows you to take Metro, bus and Cercanías throughout the Community of Madrid, which is divided into zones. These areas even reach the closest towns in Castilla-La Mancha and Castilla y León and They range from 32.70 euros to 79.00 eurosdepending on the extension we seek to cover. Obviously, the pass is especially useful for those who travel by public transport to go to work or school, since it is a flat rate that in zone A is compensated after 40 or so trips. That is, if every week you take a train, a subway or a bus twice a day, the investment is already worth it. Much more if we take into account that the cost of the youth subscription (from 15 to 26 years old) is just 10 euros. But the Community of Madrid has announced something: you will have to be registered in the region or in one of the municipalities covered by the transport pass. (even if they are in one of the Castiles) to enjoy the flat rate. That is, this leaves out all those who have left the city to more distant municipalities, the students who do not register in the city because they return to their places of origin once the school year ends. Or immigrants who cannot prove their stay in the city. And the latter is what, everything indicates, has served as fuel for the Community of Madrid to make this decision. When the Government of Spain opened the door to the regularization of thousands of immigrants in April, some conditions were placed. One of them was to demonstrate certain rootssuch as receipts for rent, purchases… or being the holder of a public transport pass. The latter, because it is the simplest, filled the transportation offices with immigrants who wanted to get said transportation pass.. In response, in the Community of Madrid the requirements to obtain this card have changed and now they require proof of registration (unless you are a large family) in a municipality in Madrid or in surrounding regions. The result is that, automatically, immigrants in an irregular situation cannot get this transport pass but, as we said before, neither can workers expelled by the city itself, those who come to try their luck for a few months or university students. In The Country They point out that the Community of Madrid estimates that around 200,000 people are affected by this change, which will also be extended to all renovations in the future. That is, if you are not registered in Madrid and you renewed your transport pass last year, you will not have problems in a decade but it will be more complicated for those who renew it next year. The measure has sparked great controversy. And there are those who have pointed out the measure as “racist and exclusive”, as Oscar Lopezminister of the government of Spain and general secretary of the PSOE in Madrid, and of course numerous associations in defense of immigrants such as Regularización Ya, as reported in the newspaper. From the Community of Madrid they defend that The measure has been approved since 2011 and that has been delayed due to technical issues but in addition they have already opened the door for some autonomous communities to co-finance Madrid transport so that Your students can benefit from this flat rate. Those 200,000 affected barely exceed 3% of Madrid’s public transport users, but the economic hole is especially harmful to them. Right now, a university student who lives and goes to class within the city of Madrid pays 10 euros. If you take a bus and a subway each day there and back, you will make a minimum of 80 trips a week (Monday to Friday only). Without registering, you will start paying 58.40 euros. If you live in Madrid but study in another area beyond the city, you will pay at least 85 euros. The punishment is even greater if you combine the metro and/or the municipal bus with the Cercanías service. The situation is … Read more

Elon Musk is going to turn 4,000 workers into millionaires and himself into a billionaire thanks to one thing: SpaceX

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Trevor Hise was 22 years old when he graduated and, as is often the case, his parents begged him to accept a stable, well-paying position at General Electric. However, led by the passion of youth and curiosity, he preferred to dedicate the next 12 years of his professional career to the madness of launch rockets into space and catch them in flight again on their return to earth. The company was called SpaceX and Hise no longer works there. However, as how did he count The New York TimesHise has discovered that the Space The story of this former employee of Elon Musk could seem like one of those caroms that life sometimes gives. But, broadly speaking, it is the story of thousands of people who are going to wake up tomorrow with a fortune in your stock portfolio after Space X’s IPO. The largest IPO in history. Friday, June 12, 2026 has been marked in red on the calendars of thousands of investors for months: SpaceX debuts on the Nasdaq under the symbol SPCX. The company’s maneuvers in the months prior to its listing on the stock market make its figures be the most ambitious ever recorded in a stock market IPO: a fixed price of $135 per share and 555.6 million securities placed to raise $75 billion. It is almost three times higher than the previous record held Saudi Aramco since 2019. The expectation it has raised is no wonder, since the company founded by Elon Musk stands on three of the legs with the greatest growth projection: artificial intelligence with xAI integrationspace race as the main activity of Space X and communications deployment via satellite with Starlink. The total valuation of the company before its IPO reaches 1.77 trillion dollarsa figure that places it above JPMorgan, Berkshire Hathaway, Meta and Tesla itself. Only six S&P 500 companies are valued above Space NVIDIA in the lead with 5.2 billion. More than 4,000 people about to become millionaires. According to published Fortunemore than 4,400 Space X employees and former employees will become millionaires thanks to the company’s stock market debut. Of that group, some 400 employees and managers will earn more than $100 million or more from the operation. The fact of turning its employees into millionaires is another of the peculiarities of this IPO since, as Andrew Benson, executive director of the platform, recognized Hill.com investments to the American media, “you usually only see founders become billionaires.” The company included participations in the compensation packages of welders, cooks and facility technicians who agreed to collect part of their salary on paper. It was a risky bet on their part because those shares could have remained a dead letter, but trust in the company will bring them a juicy reward. Gavin Petit joined in 2012 as a launch engineer with a salary of $80,000 and received shares valued at $13.80 each at the time. The engineer agreed to collect his bonuses in more shares year after year, something considered risky in a company whose rockets were still failing. Now more than 50,000 shares, which are equivalent to about 6.75 million dollars. Those who endured Among the great beneficiaries of this Initial Public Offering is Gwynne Shotwellpresident and chief operating officer of SpaceX. She was employee number 11 when she joined the company in 2002, leaving a stable job to bet on a startup that then had everything to prove. The board accumulates almost 12.6 million shares, according to the documents presented before the SEC, which at IPO price represents a fortune of about 1.7 billion dollars. Shotwell herself recognized to CNBC that for years it was not clear that they would go public: “Now seems like the right time.” As and as you remember Expansionthe IPO will also generously reward those investors who have provided financial support to the company since its inception, as is the case with Peter Thiel o Luke Nosek, co-founders of PayPal and members of the group known as “PayPal Mafia“. The first billionaire in history. According to official data According to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Elon Musk owns approximately 42% of SpaceX shares. That’s about 4.8 billion shares, plus hundreds of millions of additional stock options. At the IPO price, that stake alone is around $688 billion. Adding that figure to his stake in Tesla and the rest of his businesses, Forbes esteem and his fortune at $982.3 billion before the stock market debut, which leaves him just a breath away from crossing $1 trillion, a milestone that no one has reached before. To gauge the magnitude of this figure, his personal fortune already exceeds the capitalization of ExxonMobil and rivals that of Berkshire Hathaway. Although, as Musk himself has pointed out on more than one occasion, almost all of that money They are stocks, not cash.. A number on a screen that goes up and down according to the market. In Xataka | The who’s who of SpaceX’s competitors: which other companies are making a big splash in space Image | Flickr (Gage Skidmore), SpaceX

One company tested the four-day work week. Now their workers think that the best thing is to work seven days

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Although in Spain Congress overthrew the proposal for the reduction of working hoursthe debate in Europe is more alive than ever and many countries are reconsidering their working day model with alternatives such as four day work week. Lumena small SEO services consultancy based in Cardiff, tested the four-day work week with outstanding results. However, its CEO considered that the idea could still be improved, so he decided to go one step further and test a model even more flexible: work seven days a week. From the four-day week to the 32-hour week. As Aled Nelmes, CEO of Lumen, told on your LinkedIn profilethe company had changed its four-day workday to a 32-hour workday. The difference may be negligible, implicit in this change is the elimination of an important barrier: the company will not impose whether its employees have to do those 32 hours in a certain number of days or at a certain time. It will be the employees themselves who decide when to work. According to its CEO, in 2023, Lumen implemented the four day work week. The results exceeded all expectations: staff turnover fell to zero, productivity increased, and employees felt more rested and engaged. According to Nelmes, “our workers reported being happier, having better health and being more productive.” According to a study published in the magazine Nature Human Behaviorscience agrees with the CEO. But the model could be improved. Seven days to complete your day. “The idea of ​​the 32-hour week is to go further in the flexibility that the four-day week offered us,” explained Nelmes. In the system proposed by Lumen, the only condition is that employees comply with their projects and objectives, managing their time with total autonomy. Nelmes clarified in statements to The Confidential that “what I require is a lot of self-discipline, the ability to concentrate, self-regulation, initiative and independence.” The company looks for workers capable of directing their own time and offering the best of themselves. “I think we micromanage our workers’ daily lives too much, we assume what kind of day they should have to be productive. My argument is that this is not the case, we do not know, and we need to delegate that decision to each individual,” the young manager highlighted to El Confidencial. The exception: meetings and training. According to what was published for him Financial Timesthe only exception to Lumen’s total flexibility is the time the company spends on team meetings in which mandatory projects and training are defined. Overall, the CEO assures that they do not exceed three hours per week. This guarantees team connection and coordination without sacrificing individual autonomy. For everything else, each of the employees distributes their work week with total work flexibility and no check-in or check-out times. Results and surprises. During the three months that this new flexibility model lasted, Nelmes observed that, in reality, employees did not make major changes to their schedules. The majority maintained routines similar to conventional ones, adapting only small details to enjoy personal activities. “People like to have routines and structure, so many… still prefer to move within a standard schedule,” the CEO explained to The Confidential. Flexibility had been limited to adapting their work schedule to certain personal activities (playing sports, medical appointments, etc.) or to coincide with your children’s schedulesand then recover that time at another time of the week. According to Nelmes, the most extreme case is that of one of his employees, who took advantage of this flexibility to adjust her days of rest during the week according to the weather or her personal needs. Then, I worked on Sunday, because that was the time when found greater concentration and fewer interruptions. Flexibility with clear values ​​and limits. As has counted the CEO, this model does not imply total disconnection from the company. Lumen takes great care in selecting its equipment to ensure that everyone shares commitment values and responsibility. “We wouldn’t hire someone who only wanted to work 16 hours in two days,” Nelmes says. In fact, the manager assures that they have had to let go of people who did not adapt to this level of freedom and demand. The goal is to allow employees to have enough flexibility in their workday to fulfill themselves as people and take care of their familieswhich also helps them save on daycare, cleaning or extracurricular activities. According to Nelmes, “if you let your employees be good parents, they will also be good employees.” The company especially seeks to attract fathers and mothers, convinced that flexibility improves both productivity and quality of life. An adaptable model, but not for everyone. Although the manager assures that the results obtained by his staff have been positive, he recognizes that this model is not viable or for all companies nor for all sectors. Consulting companies, banks, law firms or marketing companies can benefit from this approach as they allow the flexibility of teleworking to be combined with organization by objectives. However, it recognizes that it is an option that is difficult to implement in sectors such as the manufacturing industry, construction, hospitality or tourismwhere physical presence and fixed hours are inherent to the nature of the work. In any case, the results were so satisfactory that Lumen adopted this model permanently. A version of this article was published in June 2025 In Xataka | Spain already has its first municipality with a four-day work week. It is not in Madrid or Barcelona, ​​but in a corner of Cádiz In Xataka | Three Spanish companies tell us how they fared after implementing a work utopia: the four-day week Image | Lumen

“Workers should be paid as much as possible”

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Jensen Huang, in addition to being one of the Most charismatic CEOs of the AI ​​industry, always sheathed in his black leather jacketit is also a great strategist in terms of human resources, applying that phrase attributed to Richard Branson, CEO of Virgin: “Take care of your employees and they will take care of your business.” According to collected Bloombergduring his recent visit to the Computex fair in Taipei, Huang assured that “workers should be paid as much as possible. I pay my employees as much as I can.” The NVIDIA CEO’s statement comes in a context in which large semiconductor manufacturers, even those that make NVIDIA chips, are under enormous union pressure to distribute the benefits that the AI ​​boom is bringing them. Samsung and the threat of unemployment that changed everything. The spark that ignited the debate was ignited in Samsung’s memory division in South Korea. More than 40,000 workers gathered in front of its Pyeongtaek factory and threatened to stop Samsung’s memory production if the company did not improve their salaries and added a bonus linked to the division’s profits. Samsung manufactures part of the HBM memory that powers AI servers around the world, so a stoppage in production would put the already critical situation of the memory market in serious trouble. The agreement arrived at the last minute and the company will distribute a bonus worth an average of 513 million won (about $340,000) among the 78,000 employees of its chip division. The pressure came from the competition. Although union conflicts They are not something new for Samsungit is no coincidence that the manufacturer has just now given in to the workers’ demands. Its direct rival in the manufacturing of memory semiconductors, SK Hynix, has been setting the salary pace in the sector for some time. Last September, SK Hynix agreed with its employees to allocate 10% of annual operating profit to bonus for employees. With a record profit of 47.2 trillion won in 2025, the result was an average bonus of 2,964% of the monthly base salary. For an employee with a salary of 100 million won a year, that means collecting a bonus of more than 148 million extra won at a time. The reaction was immediate, more than 200 Samsung engineers left to SK Hynix within four months. Turning the making of memories into a fight to retain your best talent. TSMC is also moving. The battle for talent on memory chip production lines did not stop in Korea. The contagion reached Taiwan, where TSMC, which manufactures practically all the advanced chips on the planethas not stayed still either. As and how I collected Bloombergas soon as rumors began to circulate in internal forums about the possible reduction of bonuses, the CEO of TSMC called a meeting in which he announced that his profit bonuses were going to increase by more than 30% this year. The semiconductor industry is at a time of such high demand for AI chips that companies that depend on scarce skilled talent cannot afford to lose them. TSMC already assigned about 103 billion Taiwan dollars to its incentive program in 2025, 46.6% more than the previous year. This year he has no choice but to dig deep into his pocket again to pay his employees’ bonuses. if you want to keep them. NVIDIA employees are already millionaires. Of course, if there is anyone in the AI ​​industry who can make such statements about employee compensation, it is Huang. Nvidia has been doing what its CEO preaches for years. After the collapse of 80% of NVIDIA shares in 2008, Huang launched a stock purchase plan for employees with a 15% discount. Who participated when the stock was low and held it, now he is simply a millionaire. Nearly 50% of NVIDIA employees today have a higher net worth at 25 million dollars. “I review the compensation of all employees to this day. I review the 42,000 and 100% of the time I increase the expense,” Huang said. in a All-In Podcast. “If you take care of people, the rest takes care of itself.” In Xataka | NVIDIA was founded by three engineers, but only Jensen Huang remains CEO: “I wish I had kept some shares” Image | NVIDIA

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