In the U.S., full-time work fell by 6,000 jobs, while part-time work increased by 691,000.
Inputs that matter: Employment is shifting globally, favoring self-employed gig workers.
- Due to living cost increases, the gig economy contributed heavily to the 5.2% increase in the number of multiple job holders.
- With over 30% of U.S. workers now freelancers, the gig economy is on track to encompass more than half of the workforce by 2027.
The opportunity: Nearly 75,000 tech workers have lost their jobs at 257 companies, including Tesla, Microsoft, Google, Dell, Cisco, and SAP, year to date.
- IBM is planning to replace more than 8,000 jobs with AI.
- Tesla's Giga Shanghai plant operates with 95% automation, which allows the plant to complete a vehicle in just 39.62 seconds with very little need for human labor.
Zoom in: Meanwhile, employees at a Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, voted to join the United Auto Workers (UAW) in a historic win for organized labor.
- The German automaker's Chattanooga plant was the only VW factory in the world not to be represented by a union.
- UAW had been trying to unionize the plant since 2008.
Between the lines: Hourly wages rose 0.6% in January from the previous month and are up 4.5% from a year earlier, outpacing inflation.
- Some of this growth results from new minimum wage laws where 28 states and D.C. have increased minimum wage since January 2014.
- "Wages still have some catching up to do," says Julia Pollak, Chief Economist for ZipRecruiter.
- Most banks and economists forecasted the economy would grow 2.5% in the first quarter. Instead, it grew just 1.6%.
- "We're moving in the wrong direction, again, on the inflation story," Ben Ayers, Nationwide's senior economist, told CNN in an interview.
Follow the money: M2 is the U.S. Federal Reserve's estimate of the total money supply based on short-term savings, checking, and cash, a critical factor in forecasting inflation.
- The Motley Fool warns that we are facing the most significant drop in M2 since the Great Depression.
- CNBC states, "The personal saving rate fell to 3.2%, down 0.4 percentage points from February and two full percentage points from a year ago."
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Read More
- https://www.axios.com/2024/02/05/wages-outpacing-inflation
- https://medium.com/datadriveninvestor/this-new-economy-does-not-work-like-the-old-one-b82a3f535053
- https://techcrunch.com/2024/04/15/tech-layoffs-2023-list/
- https://www.npr.org/2024/04/24/1197958834/uaw-united-auto-workers-union-strike-volkswagen-chattanooga-update
- https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-giga-shanghai-automation-production-cycle/#google_vignette
- https://www.ccn.com/news/technology/elon-musk-on-insane-pain-of-tesla-manufacturing-despite-robots/
- https://www.fastcompany.com/91108361/tech-layoffs-2024-google-rivian-cut-jobs
- https://www.epi.org/minimum-wage-tracker/
- https://www.cnbc.com/2024/04/26/pce-inflation-march-2024-key-fed-inflation-measure-rose-2point8percent.html
- https://banananomics.co/current_macroeconomic_trends
- https://banananomics.co/techs_role_in_m2_contraction