When Public Service Feeds the Family Tree: Milwaukee's Ethics Dilemma

lawrence@piqstar.com (Ms. Tam Lawrence) — Wed, 26 Aug 2026 18:25:12 GMT

WHEN PUBLIC SERVICE FEEDS THE FAMILY TREE: MILWAUKEE’S ETHICS DILEMMA

Your Data, Your Price: What the FTC Just Uncovered

lawrence@piqstar.com (Ms. Tam Lawrence) — Fri, 21 Aug 2026 22:11:24 GMT

A Consumer Warning

Journalists are indispensable.

lawrence@piqstar.com (Ms. Tam Lawrence) — Sat, 15 Aug 2026 15:04:09 GMT

Journalism must also ask what a community will need to find tomorrow, next month, or years from now.

https://www.piqstar.com

Milwaukee's Environment Injustice: Lead to a Crisis

lawrence@piqstar.com (Ms. Tam Lawrence) — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 03:09:10 GMT

The Hidden Poison: Why Milwaukee's Lead Crisis is a Crisis of Justice, Not Just Health

Reported by Award Winning Journalist Tam Lawrence

THE CURTAIN RISES ON SOUL

lawrence@piqstar.com (Ms. Tam Lawrence) — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 01:17:36 GMT

A Reflection on the 2026 International Black Theater Festival

Backstage at the 2026 International Black Theatre Festival: A Homecoming for the Soul: By Tam Lawrence | Supported by PIQSTAR INC | Presented by Exposure Plus TV

The Last Night of Linear

lawrence@piqstar.com (Ms. Tam Lawrence) — Sun, 09 Aug 2026 00:11:54 GMT

When newsrooms convert from staff to bots.

The Workforce Mirage: Why Your Job Search Feels Like Chasing a Ghost

lawrence@piqstar.com (Ms. Tam Lawrence) — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 16:13:52 GMT

THE WORKFORCE MIRAGE: WHY YOUR JOB SEARCH FEELS LIKE CHASING A GHOST

An Editorial by @PIQSTAR INC. The Newsroom Partnership this article is written and researched by Tam Lawrence, an award winning journalist

Grab your coffee and your patience, beloved. We need to talk about the job market and it ain't what they're selling you.

Today we are going to examine exhibit A: ATLANTA, GEORGIA: 9:14 AM

Jada is 34 years old. She has a bachelor's degree in business administration. She's been applying for jobs for eight months. She's sent out over 200 applications. She's had 12 interviews. She's received exactly zero offers.

Every morning, she scrolls through LinkedIn and Indeed. She sees hundreds of job postings. She spends hours tailoring her resume. She writes cover letters that pour her soul onto the page. She hits submit.

And then? Silence. Radio silence. Not even a rejection email.

Weeks later, she sees the exact same job posting same title, same description, same salary range back on the job board like a bad penny.

She wonders: Am I doing something wrong? Am I not good enough?

Here's the truth, Jada: It's not you. It's the system.

Now let's do a quick evidentiary hearing.

Let me enter exhibit A from my case study: The Ghost Job Epidemic

About 18% to 22% of job postings are what experts call "ghost jobs". These are job listings that companies put out with no real intent to hire anyone. The role is either already filled, canceled, or never actually existed. But the job ad stays up, collecting applications like a digital black hole.

Nearly 80% of professionals have applied to a role they believed was not real. Almost 60% say it has happened more than once. That's not a glitch, that's a strategy.

Why do they do this?
First, the Talent Pipelining: They're collecting resumes for roles they might need later, like a squirrel hoarding nuts for a winter that may never come.
Two, this is considered, Market Testing: They want to see what salary you'd accept, what skills are available, and how competitive their benefits look.
Lastly, it's all about the Optics: They want to signal growth to investors, analysts, and even their own employees. The message? "We're expanding. We're successful. You're replaceable".

How to spot a ghost job:

You will want to review any job postings from 3 or more months ago: If a job has been live for 90 days or more, it's almost certainly a ghost.
Watch out for the jobs not on the company's careers page: If it's on LinkedIn but not the company's own website, run.
and lastly is the description for the job vague: Generic titles, broad requirements, and wild salary ranges like "$70,000–$180,000" are red flags.

Let's review exhibit B: The Phantom Jobs of 2025

Remember when the government told us the economy was booming? The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) said the U.S. added 584,000 jobs in 2025.

Then came the annual benchmark revision, basically, the BLS checking its math. And guess what? They discovered that nearly 70% of those jobs never existed.

The revised number? A mere 181,000 jobs for the entire year, the weakest job growth in over two decades.

The BLS also revised down March 2024 to March 2025 employment by 911,000 jobs.

That's not a rounding error. That's a scandal.

Let's move onto Exhibit C. The Wrong Kind of Jobs

Even when jobs are real, they're often not the kind that pay the bills.

In August 2025, the economy added only 22,000 jobs. Most of those were in healthcare and social assistance. But before you cheer, most of these new roles weren't doctors or nurses. They were administrators, billing clerks, and compliance staff.

Between 1970 and 2020, the number of practicing physicians barely kept up with population growth. But the number of healthcare administrators exploded. Today, of the 23.5 million people working in healthcare, fewer than one-third provide direct care.

The rest are behind desks, pushing paper, and making insurance companies richer.

Let's unpack exhibit D: The Gig Economy Trap

The official unemployment rate in July 2025 was 4.2%. Sounds good, right?

But that's the U-3 rate the one they use to make things look rosy.

The U-6 rate which includes people working part-time because they can't find full-time work and those who've given up looking was 7.9%.

That's nearly 8% of the workforce struggling to survive.

Meanwhile, 4 in 10 Americans now earn additional income through side jobs, gig work, or contract labor, often not by choice. 6 in 10 consumers earn their primary income outside of fixed salaries.

4.9 million workers are employed part-time for economic reasons meaning they want full-time hours but can't get them.

The message: Even when you have a job, you probably don't have enough job.

Exhibit E. expresses great concern, The "Up skilling" Swindle

Policymakers love to say: "Just learn new skills! Get trained! The jobs are out there!"

But the evidence on retraining programs is mixed at best.

The National JTPA Study (1987-1992) was a randomized controlled trial, the gold standard of research. It found that JTPA participants did not see a statistically significant improvement in employment rates, earnings, or continuous employment.

More recently, a national evaluation of WIA (Workforce Investment Act) found that while one-on-one job counseling helped, training services did not have positive impacts on earnings or employment in the 30 months after enrollment.

And here's the real kicker: even if retraining works, there may not be enough good jobs for people to retrain into. Technology has a way of eliminating middle-wage jobs, leaving workers to compete for lower-paid service work.

In the semiconductor industry, for example, public training programs have shifted costs and risks from employers to taxpayers, producing "minimal durable gains in wages, job security, or workforce safety". Taxpayers pay for the training. Corporations reap the benefits. Workers get left holding the bag.

Let's run a few witnesses from the case study.

Are You Numb or Just Tired?

lawrence@piqstar.com (Ms. Tam Lawrence) — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 20:38:01 GMT

Let’s not sugarcoat it. You didn’t roll out of bed cynical.

You woke up tired.

There’s a difference that matters. Cynicism is a choice people make. Exhaustion is a defense system your brain flips on to keep you from frying in the noise. That’s what happens when the world keeps tossing the same garbage your way and you just want to get through the day without losing your mind.

Monroe County: Housing Assistance

lawrence@piqstar.com (Ms. Tam Lawrence) — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 18:14:53 GMT

The Shifting Sands of America Media: Who Really Benefits?

lawrence@piqstar.com (Ms. Tam Lawrence) — Wed, 05 Aug 2026 18:14:52 GMT

Written by Tam Lawrence

America's Civic Media