Exile on Main Street isn’t just a Stones record: It’s how a lot of small business employees are probably feeling right about now.

Thanks to the government shutdown, everyone’s looking at a wider batch of jobs data than usual to get a pulse check on the state of US hiring. Enter: ADP’s National Employment Report, released at the start of October, which looks at “anonymized weekly payroll data of more than 26 million private-sector employees in the United States.”

For Main Street, the report looked bleak. Small businesses, defined by ADP as companies with 49 employees or fewer, shed approximately 40,000 jobs in September, while large businesses, with over 500 employees, gained 33,000.

Rather than a blip, the findings from ADP’s latest report are a telling dispatch about the labor challenges facing small businesses right now, experts say.

Keep reading for more on the small business sticky wicket.—NP

And you thought you were wearing many hats at work…

Frank Bisignano is officially doing double duty. This month, Bisignano was appointed by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, to take on the newly created role of CEO of the IRS. That brings his full-time job count up to two: Bisignano is already the head of the Social Security Administration.

If you’re glancing at your unread emails and wondering how anyone could possibly balance two stressful government agency gigs, you’re not alone.

The Treasury Department said in a statement that the IRS and Social Security Administration “share many of the same technological and customer service goals,” making “Mr. Bisignano a natural choice for this role.” But news of his appointment has ushered in worried comments from Social Security advocates who believe that whole thing about chasing two rabbits.

How’s he going to handle it? It helps to take a look at his track record (and new job description).

About that track record…—NP

A year ago, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff announced a huge bet on AI agents amid the cartoonish sprawl of his company’s annual Dreamforce conference, which resembles something of a Disneyland for B2B SaaS enthusiasts.

This year, the sprawling San Francisco convention was remade in the image of Agentforce; the term “agent” was mentioned in around three-quarters of the 1,443 sessions. The company says 12,000 customers are now using the autonomous AI builder platform.

That may sound like a lot, but Salesforce has more than 150,000 customers, meaning 92% have yet to adopt Agentforce.

Agents have been billed—particularly by Salesforce—as the next big chapter in AI adoption in the office. But one of the biggest obstacles for companies is trust: Handing over business processes to free-acting AI is a big ask, reports have shown.

Keep reading on Tech Brew.—PK

On October 29, join CFO Brew and Zoom CFO Michelle Chang for a conversation on turning “data-driven” from buzzword to business advantage. Learn how finance leaders are breaking silos, building trust, and creating cultures where insights actually stick. Register now.

Skip the noise and cut to the jobs that matter. CollabWORK curates openings from top employers and shares them directly in trusted spaces like CFO Brew—click here to see the full list for readers like you.

• Sr. Financial Analyst at CyrusOne (in person)
• Senior Project Accountant at Skanska (in person)
• Manager of General Accounting at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (remote)
• Chief Financial Officer at RGP (in person)
• Director of Accounting at Principal Financial Group (hybrid)