Office buildings remain half-full. Weekday visits sit at about 70% of pre-COVID levels, Placer data shows, with New York just 10% shy of normal but Chicago, Denver and San Francisco still down more than 40%. Vacancy has climbed back above 14%—a post-2008 high—as headcounts plateau and hybrid work sticks. Tenants are cherry-picking: properties built since 2015 see strong net absorption, while older buildings face more move-outs than leases. Young workers are getting squeezed by remote work, not AI. Since 2017, the unemployment rate for 18- to 28-year-olds has run about a full percentage point above older cohorts. NY Fed researchers find that gap widens specifically in “remotable” jobs, and it predates AI’s spread. Even after controlling for AI exposure, junior hiring lags wherever work can be done from home. Meanwhile, average tenure in service industries has accelerated since 2023, suggesting fewer openings at the bottom as incumbents stay put. Small businesses are among the quickest AI adopters—but not necessarily one-person startups. JP Morgan Chase spending data shows AI use at 26% among firms with employees, compared with 14.3–19% at non-employer firms. Breaking it down by revenue, solo entrepreneurs with higher sales are the most ardent AI users. That hints at a budding wave of “AI power users” running lean teams rather than lone operators. On the biotech side, emerging pre-commercial biopharma companies now shoulder a much larger share of clinical trials across Phases I–III. Over the last decade, these smaller outfits have ramped up trial starts dramatically, eating into the legacy dominance of big pharma.