National News Roundup – May 28, 2025

Public Entities Face Hiring Challenges in Tech and AI

Local governments seek to build pipeline of skilled professionals.

The need for highly skilled tech workers is growing ever more acute. Recently, more than 250 CEOs from companies in various business sectors produced a joint letter urging that computer science and artificial intelligence be made required parts of every school’s curriculum.

The letter said requiring computer science and AI education could unlock “$660 billion in economic potential every year for everyday Americans, and address the skills gap we currently face.” The executives’ plea continued, “This is not just an educational issue; It’s about closing skills and income gaps that have persisted for generations.”

Government work is changing, driven by astonishing changes in information technology. State and local governments are wrestling with how to build a talent pipeline to fill thousands of open jobs, especially in tech and cybersecurity.

The nonprofit Govern for America highlighted the challenge in a new report, which notes that not enough governments have a point person to lead on AI. The report also states that there is an “excess supply” of young people who are interested in working in government but are not being matched to these roles effectively. The organization suggested a fellowship program connecting young workers with available roles and with their peers could play a key role.

In a recent panel discussion, Harrison MacRae, Pennsylvania’s director of emerging technology, suggested letting employees experiment further with AI and discover how it can be useful in their jobs, whether they are in a technology-heavy role or not.

Having such an organization-wide process in place will help workers get comfortable with the technology and be open-minded about where it can help them be more effective.

According to others who study this topic, state and local governments need a “human resilience” pool to draw from as information technology keeps evolving at a rapid pace.

(Source: Route Fifty)

Detroit, Chicago, Other Cities Across US Sinking

Groundwater extraction, weight of infrastructure are among causes.

Large buildings, traffic cloverleaf interchanges, and rail hubs across the country may soon begin to sink noticeably. The problem has a name, subsidence, and is potentially both dangerous and costly.

According to new research, subsidence, or urban sinking, is not happening in the same way in each place, or even in different locations within any one city. Subsidence has typically been more of a concern in coastal cities, where rising sea levels can more easily come ashore and inundate areas. But researchers looked at the 28 most populous US cities and found all were compressing like a deflated air mattress to some extent. The majority, 25 cities, are dropping across two-thirds of their land. What’s more, about 34 million people — roughly 10 percent of the U.S. population — live in the subsiding areas, according to the study by experts at Virginia Tech, published recently in Nature Cities.

Detroit is among the sinking cities, as noted in local media reports. New York, Chicago, Seattle, Denver, and five other cities are sinking at about 2 millimeters per year. Several cities in Texas exhibited some of the highest measured rates of subsidence at about 5 millimeters per year — and as much as 10 millimeters per year in certain areas of Houston.

According to Leonard Ohenhen, the study’s lead author, “Even slight downward shifts in land can significantly compromise the structural integrity of buildings, roads, bridges, and railways over time.”

Buildings, roads, and even the soil itself all put pressure on everything below them, but the major cause of sinking cities is groundwater extraction. As cities continue to grow, so too does the demand for fresh water. If that water is extracted more quickly than it can be replenished, the aquifer can crumble and compact in the ground.

The compounding effects of shifts in weather patterns with urban population and socioeconomic growth is potentially accelerating subsidence rates and transforming previously stable urban areas into vulnerable zones for flooding, infrastructure failure, and long-term land degradation.

The study highlighted the importance of integrating land subsidence monitoring with targeted mitigation and adaptation strategies, including:

• Groundwater management to reduce excessive withdrawals.
• Enhanced infrastructure resilience planning to account for differential subsidence.
• Long-term monitoring frameworks for early detection and intervention.

Go here to read more and download a PDF of the study.

(Sources: Nature Cities, Washington Post, Homeland Security Newswire, Earth.com)

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