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More than a month after the Trump administration forced a nearly complete wind farm off the coast of Rhode Island and Connecticut to stop constructioncosting the developers more than $2 million per daythe project just resumed work. On August 22, the government issued a stop-work order for the Revolution Wind project, which is designed to power 350,000 homes. It cited unspecified national security concerns despite years of review by federal agencies including the Department of Defense. Hundreds of workers were left idle. On September 22, a federal judge granted the developers a preliminary injunction to allow construction to continue. Judge Royce Lamberth, appointed to the U.S. District Court by President Ronald Reagan in 1987, said that the Trump administration’s arguments were “the height of arbitrary and capricious,” and noted that if construction didn’t begin immediately, the project was at risk of failing completely. But the project, which is 80% done, still faces some risks. And the governments attack makes it less likely for other offshore wind projects to be builteven after Trump is out of office. The Trump administration could still challenge the project The government has 60 days to file an appeal. That may not happen: Its possible that the administration could give up. The courts opinion is right on in terms of the utter illegality of what the government was attempting to do here, says Kate Sinding Daly, senior vice president for law and policy at the Conservation Law Foundation. So it may be that they just decide to take the loss. But they might appeal, and if they do, the developer has to weigh that risk against the urgency of getting this project completed. One industry legal expert told Fast Company that even within the administration, some Interior Department staff want to focus on other thingslike building more oil and gas projects or a $625 million plan to “rescue coal”rather than trying to kill the offshore wind industry, especially at a time when the president argues that theres an energy emergency. Still, Trump may want to appeal. The administration has what weve described as a retaliatory posture towards offshore wind, says Timothy Fox, managing director at the research firm ClearView Energy Partners. To the extent that it doesnt like losing, they may try to look for any avenue or any lever they can pull to try to stop this project.” It’s different from the Empire Wind project in New York (which the administration also tried to stop but then let proceed after New York’s governor reportedly made a backroom deal with Trump to allow an unpopular gas pipeline to also move forward in the state). There, Trump can point to getting something in return. In the case of Revolution Wind, the administration clearly lost, and may want to keep fighting. What are the odds of an appeal? An appeal is unlikely to succeed. The government would have to argue that there was a clear reason to stop the project, something that the first judge found that it had failed to do. But “who’s on the bench hearing the appeal is incredibly important,” says Mark James, a professor at Vermont Law and Graduate School. The case shouldn’t win on the merits, experts say, but judges sympathetic to Trump might find creative ways to interpret the law. (That could also be true if the case reaches the Supreme Court, though its more likely that the Court would decline to hear the case; it chose not to hear a case about the neighboring Vineyard Wind project.) Agencies took a long time to carefully review the project, like other wind projects, before the permits were issued in the first place. “Part of the reason offshore wind projects have, to date, overcome judicial challenges was because the Biden administration knew that these projects would be challenged in court,” Fox says. “They didnt want to move fast in the short term just to lose on the back end. So they took their time issuing permits that could withstand judicial review.” Sinding Daly adds, What I would say is that in normal times, it’s probably pretty low risk to go forward [with construction] because of the speciousness of the lawsuit. But we’re not in normal times, clearly. And so it’s very hard to make predictions.” In theory, the government could also try to find a new reason to stop work on the project, though that would go back to the first judge and almost certainly be shot down. The administration can also carefully monitor construction to look for any potential compliance issues that would allow it to temporarily stop or slow the project again. Construction is racing forward As the threat from the government continues, workers are racing forward on the wind farm. In total, the project will include 65 massive wind turbines that will power homes in Rhode Island and Connecticut. Forty-five turbines are in place now. Installing the remaining 20 will take around three months. Crews also have to finish installing cables and connecting the power. Testing everything will take more time. It’s not clear how much can be finished before winter weather pauses the work. There could be other challenges, including whether specialized vessels that the developers need to lease for construction will still be available as long as the company needs them. Revolution Wind declined to comment on how much the delay over the past month has changed the overall timeline for the project. It may still be possible that it could finish next year, as planned, barring further legal delays. Once complete, since all of the federal permits were already issued, the project should be safe to begin sending power to shore. A chilling effect on offshore wind The government is still trying to revoke its approval of multiple other offshore wind projects, including SouthCoast Wind, a giant development near Massachusetts, and the Maryland Offshore Wind Project. Other projects are facing lawsuits that the federal government is declining to fight. The industry is also facing rising costs. It’s extremely unlikely that any new projects will start during the Trump administration. But it’s also becoming less viable for projects to move forward afterward. States like Massachusetts have told utilities they need to invest in offshore wind. But that won’t work without federal support as well. “I think this administration is purposely trying to scare away the industry even after they leave office,” says Fox. “A future administration may support the industryeven to the extent that the Biden administration didbut developers and financiers may be wary of investing in a capital-intensive sector with a long lead time that faces such demonstrable election risk. To put it more simply, can yo plan a project and get it online all within a four-year period of an administration that says they like offshore wind, before the next Trump 3.0?” It could set a precedent beyond just the offshore wind industry. A future climate-focused president could decide to revoke existing permits for gas projects, for example. “A future administration could say, ‘Okay, let’s use this growing executive power to stop projects that we don’t like. Even if a court ultimately strikes down that action, like you’ve seen with Revolution Wind, it just injects so much uncertainty and risk, Fox says, adding, “We’re hearing from some of our clients that this is among the most difficult times to invest in the energy sector, which is ironic, given the growing power demand. The political uncertainty is growing.”
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E-Commerce
As press releases go, it was a mic drop moment. On September 4, OpenAI announced that it was coming after LinkedIn. And it was coming after job search specifically. For those unfamiliar with the story, it was reported across multiple sources that not content with torpedoing Google, education, interpersonal relationships, and entire industries such as psychiatry or management consultancy (both smugly considered untouchable until about 15 minutes ago), OpenAI is now coming after the age-old industry of human resources. Specifically, the $300 billion company wants to streamline the process of hiring by automatically matching candidates to roles via context alone, without the need for titles, résumés, applications, or screeninga fully automated, frictionless match between resource and need, run at zero cost in a fraction of the time it would take Becky from HR to book meeting room 14B next Tuesday, but with near-infinite scope and efficiency. Its yet another cold, logical extension of artificial intelligences purported ability to reduce human intuition down to a series of predictable algorithmic factors. LinkedIn Dethroned? Now, lets be fair. OpenAIs proposition assumes (probably rightly) that virtually all future roles will require some degree of AI knowledge or fluency. Moreover, the press release breathlessly proposes an OpenAI Academy, one that will train the machine-picked workers of the future on how to best serve their artificial overlords. But will this really be enough to dethrone LinkedIn? An incumbent platform of over 1 billion people who now spend the bulk of their time not in job search or hiring, but in perpetual AI comment-discussions about the nature of authenticity while posting Canva-selfies of their weekend getaway to Puglia? Perhaps we should first recognize that human resources is one of the oldest and most safeguarded functions within the corporate world, holding out defiantly as personal assistance, finance, and even marketing have been variously usurped by automation. Its a curiously old-fashioned industry in many respects, relying on judgments about physical appearance and behavioral norms such as eye contact and punctualitycharacteristics that in any other sector would be subordinated to ones ability to deliver value or output. But recently, HR has gone through something of a transformation, and its safe to say that LinkedIn has been at the heart of that. In fact, the worlds largest business platform been an unwitting catalyst for an onslaught of AI-driven fraudboth from candidates (either building fake AI profiles or even replacing themselves in Zoom interviews with omniscient AI avatars), or from dubious recruiters (leveraging advanced AI tools to build fictitious companies in order to solicit payment or personal details). The market is now flooded with AI cover letters, AI résumés and AI-curated portfolios, while on the other side of the table, the screening process is often (and increasingly) handed off to AI scanning software, in order to save valuable time filtering out unsuitable candidates before proceeding to a final interviewone that may ultimately be conducted and processed by an AI avatar. Surely then its simply a short step to full automation, one that removes these very ghosts in the hiring machine? Perhaps. But Id suggest that any scholar of organizational psychology would hold a very different view. The intangibles We can look, for example, at evidence highlighting the predictive power of nonverbal cues such as vocal tone, facial expressions, and body language in forecasting later job performance. A 2022 Harvard Business Review piece, on the other hand, cautioned that automated interviews may be prone to missing these types of intangible characteristicspotentially valuable employee attributes (say, curiosity or resilience) that might only be registered via live human interaction. Yet suffice to say, these same factors are also deeply subjective. Economists have long shown that reliance on intuition and first impressions can also be a major source of bias in recruitment, perpetuating disparities around race, gender, and class. AI proxies Whatever the case, the stark reality is that we now find ourselves in an era where a growing majority of both candidates and recruiters are using AI as proxies. And in this world, the very notion of authentic observationwhether helpful or notis starting to erode. ButI hear you cry as onesurely HR isnt just about hiring? Its about people management, professional development, organizational health, and so many other things? Yesexcept that of all these functions, hiring has historically required the highest amount of dedicated resource, training, and physical presence, far outstripping what can now be done by AI in areas such as coaching, psychometric testing, and even therapy. If we delegate the very function of organizational building itself, what remains must necessarily become diminished, at least in part. To circle back then to OpenAI, perhaps iterative machine learning will finally win out. Perhaps time might tell us that the match between employee and role is near-flawless in an AI, dehumanized world. And yet, it may also be this very unpredictability of human nature that will represent the biggest loss to a future workforce. And as to the suggestion that OpenAIs hiring platform will take down LinkedIn itself? If it can somehow balance hiring efficiency with the high level of fluffy, eye-pleasing pseudo-business interactions that now so predominate on LinkedIn itself, perhaps. But to do that, youd need to first understand a little of the idiosyncrasies of human nature, in order to build (and foster) an appropriately sticky forumif only for the reason that business is a gateway into so many other areas of recreational and emotional life. And doing that, Im afraid to say, still requires a deeply human sensibility.
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E-Commerce
You dont need a perfect jump shot or the exhaustive knowledge (or opinions) of Stephen A. Smith to land a career in sports. You can get far on passion and a desire to spread that love of the game throughout an increasingly fan-driven world. Sports marketingwhich encompasses everything from managing multimillion-dollar sponsorship deals and crafting social media campaigns for local teams to coordinating fan activation at the Super Bowlis one of the most robust components of the sports industry, which is worth at least $500 billion globally. To understand the state of play in this arena, Fast Company analyzed nearly 2,800 job listings on Google for Jobs between April and June 2025. We classified hiring organizations into four types: property rights holders (e.g., leagues and teams), media organizations, brands, and agencies. And we divided the jobs themselves into three categories: strategy, creative, and experiential. We then looked at the salaries, job requirements, and locations involved. The results reveal an industry thats more accessible and geographically diverse than you might expect, with plenty of opportunities for people lacking in both educational pedigree and, presumably, athletic ability. {"blockType":"immersive-block-embed","data":{"embedSource":"","embedImageDesktop":"","embedImageDesktopCaption":"","embedImageMobile":"","embedImageMobileCaption":"","backgroundColor":"","paddingTop":0,"paddingBottom":0,"paddingLeft":0,"paddingRight":0,"mediaType":"ceros"}} Whos HiringProperty rights holders account for the highest number of jobs listed for any organization type, at about 34% of listings. And its not just the most recognizable leagues and teams looking for help, though the L.A. Clippers are in the market for a director of sales innovation. Miami University, youth sports company 3Step Sports, and the United Football League’s (UFLs) Memphis Showboats are all hiring. Media companies (such as Amazon and NBCUniversal) account for more than 26% of jobs; brands (think Nike, Lululemon, and Red Bull) represent more than 20%, and agencies (like Playfly Sports, Excel Sports Management, Two Circles, and Endeavor) make up more than 18%. But these different types of organizations arent uniformly looking for the same kinds of people. Media companies are the likeliest to hire for creative roles, with 41% of listings geared toward jobs developing and shepherding content. Agencies and brands are disproportionately likely to headhunt for people working in strategy, with those roles accounting for 60% and 52% of openings, respectively. And property rights holders need people to promote game day, making those kinds of companies the most likely to hire people to fill positions in experiential marketing. {"blockType":"immersive-block-embed","data":{"embedSource":"","embedImageDesktop":"","embedImageDesktopCaption":"","embedImageMobile":"","embedImageMobileCaption":"","backgroundColor":"","paddingTop":0,"paddingBottom":0,"paddingLeft":0,"paddingRight":0,"mediaType":"ceros"}} GeographyAlthough remote work accounts for the highest number of listings, two cities emerge as sports marketing hubs: Atlanta and New York. (Chicago is a distant third.) What explains Atlantas prominence? Its home to five professional sports teams: the Hawks (NBA), Dream (WNBA), United (MLS), Falcons (NFL), and Braves (MLB). Its also the HQ for brands known for getting their names in front of sports fans, such as Coke, Home Depot, and Delta. Charlotte, at No. 5, punches above its weight with its three major-league teams. Its also home to the Charlotte Motor Speedway, plus branches of major agencies like Octagon and Wasserman. {"blockType":"immersive-block-embed","data":{"embedSource":"","embedImageDesktop":"","embedImageDesktopCaption":"","embedImageMobile":"","embedImageMobileCaption":"","backgroundColor":"","paddingTop":0,"paddingBottom":0,"paddingLeft":0,"paddingRight":0,"mediaType":"ceros"}} SalaryAcross organization types, salaries start out roughly the same (north of $50,000 on average) and increase mostly in lockstep. Nike, despite 2024 revenues being down nearly 5% year over year, is among the brands shelling out the most, offering about $250,000 for two upper-level roles. Amazon MGM Studios is among the highest-paying media companies, dangling $223,250 for a senior-level job. As far as agencies go, Game Seven and Saatchi are the top spenders. Game Sevens $375,000 for a global head of accounts is the highest salary in our entire dataset. Full-Time Versus ContractThe vast majority of sports marketing jobs are full-time, at about 81%. The second most common type of employment are internships at more than 8.3% of openings, followed by part-time jobs at 7.7%, and contractors at a surprisingly low 3%. {"blockType":"immersive-block-embed","data":{"embedSource":"","embedImageDesktop":"","embedImageDesktopCaption":"","embedImageMobile":"","embedImageMobileCaption":"","backgroundColor":"","paddingTop":0,"paddingBottom":0,"paddingLeft":0,"paddingRight":0,"mediaType":"ceros"}} EducationIf youre looking to break into the industry and havent even started your freshman year of college, your best bet is to major in marketing. Forty-five percent of listings that stated a preference for any educational degree mentioned marketing in particular. But thats not your only option. The next most common requests are business (28%), communications (24.1%), sports management (15.2%), and journalism (7.4%). Brands are the most likely employers to ask for marketing degrees: 73.3% of jobs at these companies require them. But theres a good chance you wont need a degree at all. The majority of agency and media listings dont ask for one. Neither do nearly 40% of listings from brands nor 30% of listings from property rights holders. Of course, whether employers quietly prefer candidates to have one is another matter. MethodologyWe extracted jobs from the Google for Jobs search module monthly from April to June 2025, resulting in 2,774 jobs when duplicates were removed. We used a combination of Gemini and manual tech token search to extract information on salary, company type, job type, and educational background. The categorization of jobs as full-time or contract/internship and their geographic locations were contained as separate structured fields in Googles data. Monthly and hourly salaries were standardized to yearly rates by multiplying the rate by 12 for monthly salaries, and by 2,080 for hourly salaries.
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E-Commerce
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