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☆ How a shockingly resilient jobs market saved the US from a recession
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-09 | by ( Madison Hoff | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

Several measures from Friday's jobs report show the labor market is stronger than it's been in decades. But Terrazas pointed to potential concerns in the labor market and for interest rates. "If it's the former, it's just a matter of time before gravity catches up with the labor market," Terrazas said. Overall though, the different robust labor market data suggests the US could maybe avoid a recession as has been the case so far in 2023. Despite potential risks in the job market, Pollak believes there's a possibility that the US continues to avoid a recession.

☆ MBA professors identified which kinds of workers are most at risk when new tech comes along — and the ones who'll stay relatively safe
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-09 | by ( Roberta Kwok | Kellogg Insight | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +12 min

That allowed them to track how breakthrough technologies impacted the exposure of workers in relevant occupations over time. Based on U.S. Census surveys from 1910 to 2010, the team found that an increase in technology exposure was linked to a decline in employment. These employees saw their wages slow down by more than twice as much as average workers in the same occupation with the same level of technology exposure. Even when their technology exposure did go up, their income didn't slow down as much as it did in other types of occupations. "Not all technology is bad for workers," Seegmiller says.

☆ Thailand election: Campaign freebies may be a 'band-aid solution' with fiscal risks
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-09 | by ( Nyshka Chandran | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +6 min

A Thai protester with a sign calling for equal workers' rights and a fair election at a Labor Day rally in Bangkok in 2023. Experts widely agree that pro-democracy groups are expected to perform strongly in light of deep-seated discontent with the current military-affiliated administration. Contenders can be divided into two categories: parties that support the pro-military establishment and a pro-democracy camp of opposition factions. Few details have been provided about funding, worrying economists who say those policies would weigh on already stretched public finances after significant fiscal support during the pandemic. Only the Move Forward party has campaigned on changing the defamation law, while Pheu Thai previously said it will consider discussing it in Parliament.

☆ Jobs report: US labor market heats back up, adding 253,000 jobs in April
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-05 | by ( Alicia Wallace | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +1 min

Minneapolis CNN —The labor market heated back up in April as employers added 253,000 jobs, according to data released Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It’s a surprising increase at a time when many indicators were pointing to a slowdown in the job market. The unemployment rate fell to 3.4% from 3.5%. Only three economists of the 87 polled by Refinitiv had projected job growth near or above 253,000. In March, the monthly and annual measures of wage gains in the private sector was up 0.3% and 4.3%, respectively.

☆ Slower US job growth expected in April; unemployment rate seen rising to 3.6%
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-05 | by ( Lucia Mutikani | ) www.reuters.com time to read: +6 min

The unemployment rate is forecast to have risen to a still historically low 3.6%. "The labor market is slowly bending, but not breaking," said Sam Bullard, a senior economist at Wells Fargo in Charlotte, North Carolina. "There is continued resilience in the labor market right now, but the trend is one that is continuing to see a decelerating pace of momentum." The service-providing sector likely accounted for most of the anticipated job gains in April. WAGE GAINS MODERATEAverage hourly earnings are expected to have risen by 0.3% in April, matching March's gain.

☆ How employers plan to reengage older workers in the labor force
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-05 | by ( ) www.cnbc.com time to read: 1 min

In this videoShare Share Article via Facebook Share Article via Twitter Share Article via LinkedIn Share Article via EmailHow employers plan to reengage older workers in the labor forceCNBC's Kate Rogers and KPMG's Diane Swonk join 'The Exchange' to discuss employers with a focus on hiring older workers, supporting a work-life balance for employees, and demographic shifts in the workforce.

☆ What the April jobs report means for you, your employer, and the Fed
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-05 | by ( Alicia Wallace | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +7 min

Minneapolis CNN —High prices, rising interest rates and banking uncertainty be damned: The US labor market is still chugging right along. “The American labor market right now is simply unstoppable,” RSM economist Joseph Brusuelas wrote in a note Friday. “This is what a soft landing would look like, with job growth gradually slowing to a more sustainable pace,” Faucher added. The milestone comes just three years after the Covid-19 pandemic caused mass layoffs that pushed the Black unemployment rate as high as 16.8%. “Make no mistake, the Black [unemployment] rate is still too high,” Shierholz tweeted.

☆ Instant View: Solid April US jobs report undermines case for Fed cut soon
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-05 | by ( ) www.reuters.com time to read: +8 min

ANTHONY SAGLIMBENE, CHIEF MARKET STRATEGIST, AMERIPRISE FINANCIAL, TROY, MICHIGAN“It's definitely telling you that the job market is still hot. PETER CARDILLO, CHIEF MARKET ECONOMIST, SPARTAN CAPITAL SECURITIES, NEW YORK“It was a hotter than expected report, it certainly didn’t show any cooling in the labor market. Hourly earnings were a little higher than I was looking for.”“Bottom line, this is a strong report and shows that the labor market is resilient. So I think the real focus is on the inflation numbers, and what's happening with wage growth. We are hopeful the continued strength of the jobs market and signs of slowing inflation will ease market volatility in the coming months.

☆ Will wages outpace inflation for long? It depends on the job
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-05 | by ( Bryan Mena | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +6 min

Washington, DC CNN —Wages are now finally beating inflation, according to the latest quarterly data on wage growth. That was the biggest monthly increase since March 2022, though wage growth had gradually slowed since then. “The folks who left one company and went to another are the ones who are still benefiting from wage growth,” said Morgan Llewellyn, chief data scientist at Jobvite. Part of the continued strength in wage growth largely has to do with employers’ difficulty in hiring, which varies by industry. “Wage growth has still been higher for job changers than job stayers and that suggests that there’s still a shortage of labor for some companies,” said Dawn Fay, operational president at staffing firm Robert Half.

☆ What to expect from the jobs report
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-04 | by ( Alicia Wallace | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +7 min

Minneapolis CNN —If the latest employment trends continue and economists’ forecasts prove true, Friday’s jobs report could bring back that pre-pandemic feeling. Economists expect the US economy to have added 180,000 jobs in April, according to consensus estimates on Refinitiv. It could also hammer home the fact that the US labor market has indeed cooled down from its red-hot recovery over the past two years. What a rising unemployment rate meansEconomists are expecting the unemployment rate to tick up to 3.6% from 3.5%, according to Refinitiv. Mixed signalsPayroll processor ADP’s monthly look at private-sector employment activity, released two days before the BLS’ employment report, is sometimes looked at as a preview of what to expect from the federal data.

☆ New grads are already worried about being overworked in their first jobs out of college
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-03 | by ( Jennifer Liu | In Jljenniferliu | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +2 min

The top concern soon-to-be-grads have about entering the current job market has nothing to do with money, according to a new survey of 500 incoming college graduates from A.Team, a tech hiring platform. Instead, when asked about their top concern about the work landscape, 21% said they were most worried about finding a role that affords them work-life balance. Not far behind, 19% of new grads are concerned about not finding a job they're passionate about, while another 18% say potential layoffs are their biggest worry. Reports of academic burnout from college students got worse during the pandemic and remains a problem: As of 2022, 2 in 5 undergrads say they frequently feel stress while attending school, according to research from Gallup and the Lumina Foundation. Gen Z's calls for work-life balance could reshape workplace culture

The rise of streaming services changed the way audiences consume both television shows and movies, and studios adjusted their business models in an attempt to respond. But they’re unlikely to get meaningful residuals, if any at all, when they create original content for streaming services as contracts stand today. With streaming services poised to become the future of television entertainment, the Guild was fighting in these negotiations for some kind of ongoing compensation from streaming services. The hunger for content by those streaming service also means that it might not take as long for the strike to start to impact production schedules. Streaming services also have a massive stockpile of older content that could keep their customers satisfied, at least temporarily, while they await new shows.

☆ Premarket stocks: Why a US recession is probably coming
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-02 | by ( Nicole Goodkind | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +6 min

That would catapult the United States into recession during the second half of 2023 (Europe and the UK will feel it even earlier). It’s possible that the economy sees disinflation in a way that it hasn’t in previous cycles.”Has the gig economy peaked? So is the height of the gig economy behind us? “It hasn’t changed anything about the odds of a recession,” the chief executive said in response to a question from CNN during a press call. “Down the road, rates going way up, real estate, recession — that’s a whole different issue.

Government officials, worried about a constrained labor force in a state where population growth has stalled, have taken a cover-the-waterfront approach. After raising starting wages from $17 an hour to around $24 and overhauling hiring strategies, Drees still has 200 open jobs at this and two nearby facilities, where he is hoping to add to current staffing of 1,200. That reshuffling may be one reason the Fed is finding it harder than expected to slow a job market struggling to match workers into open positions. Minnesota has had a particularly large imbalance: The 12-month moving average of available positions last year reached 2.75 for every unemployed person. "Nowadays you look online and there are just hundreds of day-shift job positions," he said.

☆ The top 10 buzziest companies Gen Z wants to work for—none of them are in Big Tech, says new report
▼ + stars: | 2023-05-01 | by ( Jennifer Liu | In Jljenniferliu | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +5 min

The graduating class of 2023's desire for stability in an uncertain economy is dictating where they want to work most after college. It's hard to escape unrelenting news of tech layoffs in recent months, including major staff cuts from Meta, Google, Amazon, Microsoft and many others. "They're gravitating toward companies that offer solid benefits, career pathing and a level of stability they've been looking for." Most young professionals plan to pick up new tech skills for their careersThough search interest for major tech companies dropped, Cruzvergara says today's grads are more likely than their predecessors to be interested in jobs that require tech skills. New college grads feel confident they have the skills they need to get the job they want but also plan to develop new tech skills on the job or after hours.

☆ What Home Depot's billion-dollar pay raise may help prove about workers
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-30 | by ( Bob Woods | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +7 min

"We are confident we can make the investments needed to remain competitive in a tight labor market while also growing our profitability." "The [home improvement] environment seems to be weakening, not accelerating, and therefore incremental wage investments at this time would open the door to more questions and surprise. "They're behaving as they should given the tight labor market, showing leadership and not just thinking about a 12-month timeframe. And in a tight labor market, it's getting increasingly difficult to keep talent [if] you pay unlivable wages and [offer] few opportunities for growth and success." It's hard to say when, and if, Home Depot will see a demonstrable return on the monumental expenditure for its frontline workers.

☆ The gig economy boom is over as workers go back to traditional jobs, Bank of America says
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-29 | by ( Madison Hoff | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

But this could also be due to attractive wage growth in traditional jobs per the report and Zhou. Additionally, some gig workers could be "rotating into the traditional job market because the wage growth in the traditional job market has been so phenomenal," Zhou said. The report stated that "for those gig workers who also have a traditional job, large wage increases in their primary jobs could mean less need to make up any shortfall in the gig economy. Gig workers who also hold traditional jobs are typically in sectors like restaurants and retail, which have seen especially high wage growth. And while the share of gig workers doing delivery or social commerce has dropped, the analysis shows the share for ride-hailing has mainly been trending upward.

So how did India’s population get so big, and how long will it last? The rise in population despite a drop in the fertility rate can be explained by “demographic momentum.”“When the fertility rate drops, the population continues to grow for several decades. So, even with a replacement or sub-replacement fertility rate, India’s population will continue to grow slowly because of the considerable number of women entering their reproductive years. India’s population growth is slowing downIndia may have overtaken China in total population, but UN data also shows that its growth rate has slowed. Uttar Pradesh, for instance, is home to 17% of India’s population but has only 9% of its industrial jobs.

☆ Inside LinkedIn's new push to use AI tools to amplify — not replace — creators' voices
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-28 | by ( Reed Alexander | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +8 min

LinkedIn sees potential for AI to amplify — not replace — creators' voices. Firmly of the view that artificial intelligence technology can augment and amplify those users' voices — not replace them — LinkedIn is eyeing opportunities in the burgeoning space. LinkedIn's collaborative articles begin with a thread generated with the help of AI, and then invite select users to contribute their perspective. Enter collaborative articles, which invited the several dozen teachers to offer up ideas like exhibiting "vulnerability" in the classroom. Think of these seminars like LinkedIn's version of Master Classes on topics like generative AI, machine learning with Python, and AI accountability.

☆ Opinion | Joe Biden and the Not-So-Bad Economy
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-27 | by ( Paul Krugman | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +2 min

The basic story of the Biden economy is that America has experienced a remarkably fast and essentially complete job market recovery. This recovery was initially accompanied by distressingly high inflation; but inflation, while still high by the standards of the past few decades, has subsided substantially. About jobs: Unless you’ve been getting your news from Tucker Carlson or Truth Social, you’re probably aware that the unemployment rate is hovering near historic lows. However, I keep hearing assertions that this number is misleading, because millions of Americans have dropped out of the labor force — which was true a year ago. The current inflation rate is lower than it was at the end of Ronald Reagan’s second term.

☆ Opinion | Dads Still Get Extra Leisure Time. Moms Are Still Subsidizing It.
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-26 | by ( Jessica Grose | ) www.nytimes.com time to read: +4 min

The only marriage type where husbands devote more time to caregiving than their wives is one in which the wife is the sole breadwinner. In those marriages, wives and husbands spend roughly the same amount of time per week on household chores. (A subsequent reform in 2002 that allowed an additional nontransferable month was not found to lead to more separations.) The cultural hurdles women face at home overlap with hurdles women face in the workplace. First, she told me that she’s done the math based on time-use data and found that women are, in effect, doing about an extra month of unpaid labor a year, while men get an extra month of leisure.

☆ A new book by a Pulitzer Prize winner unsuccessfully tries to take down the private equity industry and fixates on Leon Black. Here's what it gets wrong.
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-24 | by ( Jonathan A. Knee | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

The economic and political influence of the private equity sector has exploded in the last 20 years. It's true that few topics have attracted greater attention from not only crusading journalists but serious academics than the impact of private equity ownership. This supports their belief that private equity firms "carry very little risk if the company fails." This view of a "typical" private equity deal is simply untrue: Even back in 2005, the average loan-to-value percentage for new private equity deals was 68% — firms already contributed over 30% in equity to the deals not under 10% as claimed. 'Smart buyer, dumb seller'One of the important developments in private equity of the last decades has been the emergence of major private funds focused on technology investing.

☆ Young remote workers are missing out on crucial IRL feedback from colleagues
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-24 | by ( Tim Paradis | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

For young workers, not being in an office can mean they don't get as much feedback from colleagues. The pushback against remote work comes as more CEOs have been calling workers back to the office. But workers — especially those taking care of kids or others — grew accustomed to the flexibility that remote work can afford. Despite the risks, many of those potentially in danger of missing out on professional growth are most in favor of remote work, according to surveys, the Times noted. And some companies that have embraced remote work report success.

☆ Why markets actually could be hoping for a recession this year
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-21 | by ( Jeff Cox | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

Markets are not only acting unafraid of a looming recession but also may actually want one that would eradicate some of the other ills facing the U.S. economy, according to one Wall Street analysis. Wall Street economists and strategists widely expect a recession to set in later this year, the product of a number of factors. "Stocks bottom before the US economy hits its lows in any given recession because markets understand this dynamic," Colas wrote. "Markets know this history, which is why they see an upcoming recession as finally bringing the Fed around to starting the next easing cycle," Colas said. "There are other pathways to achieve those necessary goals, but none will work as quickly as an economic contraction.

☆ Deadly heat waves fueled by climate change are threatening India's development, study says
▼ + stars: | 2023-04-20 | by ( Helen Regan | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +5 min

CNN —Deadly heat waves fueled by climate change are threatening India’s development and risk reversing its progress on poverty alleviation, health and economic growth, a new study has found. Since 1992, more than 24,000 people have died because of heat waves in India, the study said. And the impacts are expected to get worse as heat waves become more frequent, intense and lethal due to the climate crisis. More than 90% of the country could be severely impacted by heat waves, falling into an extreme heat “danger” zone, according to the heat index, the study found. The heat index is how hot it feels and considers both air temperature and humidity to assess the heat’s impact on the population.

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