For the first time in years, Gen Z was winning. Rents had finally stopped devouring their paychecks, wages were rising faster than their housing costs, and a generation that had long trailed older Americans in spending growth was starting to actually open its wallet - on restaurants, new clothes, electronics, even travel.
Is AI coming for your job? If you work in construction or plumbing, that's perhaps not a question you need to worry about. Speaking at the World Economic Forum on Wednesday, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said it was a great time to be a tradesperson because the AI boom is creating demand for manual labor to build data centers. "It's wonderful that the jobs are related to tradecraft and we're going to have plumbers and electricians and construction and steelworkers," he said in a conversation with BlackRock CEO Larry Fink in Davos, Switzerland.
Slower job growth. Just look at the November employment report - very soft if you average the last couple of months. But real earnings growth, average hourly earnings growth, up 3.7% on a year-on-year basis. And that helps to weather a little bit of this inflation pressure that we are feeling right now. And I think that's the true storyline.
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Canada's unemployment rate dropped to 6.5 per cent and the economy gained 54,000 jobs in November, Statistics Canada said on Friday. The jobless rate ticked down several points from October's 6.9 per cent after trending upwards for most of the year, even hitting 7.1 per cent in September. Most of the jobs added to the economy in November were part time and largely driven by employment gains among young people between the ages of 15 to 24.
The UK jobs market showed further signs of cooling in September as advertised vacancies dropped -2.4% month-on-month to 826,205 jobs, echoing ONS data that highlights a 39th consecutive period of vacancy decline, according to the latest UK Job Market Report by job matching platform Adzuna. This means open roles are now -4.1% lower than a year ago, and alarmingly, September records the lowest vacancy level this year, suggesting employers are continuing to scale back hiring plans after a strong start to the year.
By the numbers: Marion County's paycheck increase brought Indy's average weekly wages to $1,779, or around $137 more a week than last year's average pay, per BLS' preliminary numbers. In Hamilton County, average weekly wages rose 2.6%, or around $38, to $1,476. Hendricks County wages rose 2.2%, or around $35, to $1,083. Caveat: The data tracks where people earn their money, not where they live.
In a move that comes as no surprise, the Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) has voted to keep interest rates unchanged at 4%. The decision reflects the MPC's concern that inflation, which held steady at 3.8% in August, remains too far above the 2% target to justify an early easing. Persistent wage growth and services inflation are the key reasons for this cautious stance, with underlying price pressures proving slow to unwind.
"The year started with strong job growth, but that momentum has been whipsawed by uncertainty," Nela Richardson, ADP's chief economist, said in the press release.She cited a mix of factors that are weighing on hiring decisions, "including labor shortages, skittish consumers, and AI disruptions."ADP's August report is among the first to namecheck AI disruptions, a rare admission that artificial intelligence is now beginning to reshape hiring sentiment.
