Saturday Broadcast 43

 Key topics:

✔️ ICYMI news, 4/3 - 4/7.
✔️You are digits on a screen to Corpo America and by their own admission, they are looking for a "pretty quick payback."
✔️Wages and open jobs are cooling off yet we still have no "official" proclamation of a recession. You already know - if you wait to be officially told something, you're waiting too late, IMO. By the time they admit that unemployment is not 3.6%, how bad will it actually be? Allegedly, we now have a 3.5% unemployment rate. 😒😣
✔️As the job market worsens, you have to consider how you behave on interviews. Are you a no show, no call 90% of the time and then blaming everyone else?
✔️Employee hoarding and bubbles.


Links:

https://tinyurl.com/3y2m98za

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/wsj-mcdonalds-close-offices-briefly-061814814.html

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/03/google-to-cut-down-on-employee-laptops-services-and-staplers-to-save.html

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/04/jpmorgans-jamie-dimon-says-banking-crisis-is-not-over-yet.html

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/04/jolts-february-2023-.html

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/05/adp-march-2023.html

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/gm-got-5-000-workers-093900703.html

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/06/layoffs-are-up-nearly-fivefold-so-far-this-year-with-tech-companies-leading-the-way.html

https://www.axios.com/local/nw-arkansas/2023/04/06/walmart-automation-layoffs-inflation

https://finance.yahoo.com/m/302277e1-d908-362b-9b2c-ebb0399bf844/bosses-want-hard-workers%E2%80%94so.html

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/imf-head-warns-world-economy-is-set-for-weakest-near-term-growth-since-1990-144205510.html

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/07/jobs-report-march-2023.html

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/07/federal-reserve-fed-inflation-jobs-report-unemployment.html

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/the-us-economy-is-still-creating-problems-for-the-fed-161620642.html

https://www.wsj.com/articles/these-tech-workers-say-they-were-hired-to-do-nothing-762ff158?mod=hp_lead_pos2

Links where I can be found: https://causeyconsultingllc.com/2023/01/30/updates-housekeeping/

Need more? Email me: https://causeyconsultingllc.com/contact-causey/

Transcript

Unknown: 0:15

Welcome to the Causey Consulting Podcast. You can find us online anytime at CauseyConsultingLLC.com. And now, here's your host Sara Causey. Hello. Hello, and thanks for tuning in. Today. It is Monday, April 3. A story popped up on my phone last night but I was so tired. I just made a mental note to come back to it on Monday morning. This is on Yahoo Finance by way of both the Wall Street Journal and The Associated Press, McDonald's to close offices briefly ahead of layoffs. A report says McDonald's has closed its US offices for a few days as the company prepares to inform employees about layoffs. The Wall Street Journal cited an internal email from the Chicago based fast food giant saying US corporate staff and some employees overseas should work from home while the company notifies people of their job status. McDonald's did not immediately reply to the email requests for comment. The report said McDonald's would inform its employees this week about staffing decisions that are part of a wide restructuring of the company announced earlier. Wait for it. Wait for it. Though the US labor market remains strong. layoffs have been mounting mainly in the technology sector where many companies over hired after a pandemic boom, IBM, Microsoft Amazon, Salesforce, Facebook parent, meta Twitter and DoorDash have all announced layoffs in recent months. policymakers at the Federal Reserve have forecast the unemployment rate may rise to 4.6%. By the end of this year, a sizable increase historically associated with recessions may rise to 4.6% by the end of this year. So what will it really be? They're trying to convince you that it's going to go up an entire percentage point because right now, wink wink wink. It's 3.6% by the end of the year, it might be 4.6%. What will it really be? McDonald's has more than 150,000 employees in corporate roles. About 70% of those employees are based outside the US. The company reported its global sales rose nearly 11% in 2022, while sales in the US climbed almost 6% Total restaurant margins Rose 5% and its latest annual report it cited difficulties in adequately staffing some of its outlets. Here come Joe, I warned you, I warned you. The labor shortage people don't want to work whether it's an entire generation of men, or just an entire generation of everybody gestures broadly at young millennials and Gen Z who unfortunately take a lot of generational clickbait. We had to turn to robots. We had to turn to AI programs. We had to set up these restaurants where there's only one person in the back to monitor the machines. And that's it. We had to do it guys, because you didn't want to work. Mm hmm. warned you. In January, McDonald said it's accelerating the arches program would focus on deliveries, drive through digital and development. Yeah, as the company reshapes its strategy, he said, we will evaluate roles and staffing levels and parts of the organization. And there will be difficult discussions and decisions ahead and quote, Oh, indeed. Yeah, I imagine. But you know, they had that pilot, I think somewhere. I think it was in Fort Worth, I'm trying to remember off the top of my head, but I think it was a pilot store that they had in Fort Worth, Texas, or somewhere in that area. That was like, all robotic, you just went and got your stuff off of the counter. And that was that, again, with maybe one person who comes in periodically to the back to take a look at the machines and make sure everything's functioning properly. But I mean, did you not think that could potentially be a wave of the future. And I warned you that the labor shortage was part of a broader narrative. Because when I'm talking to these people in the job market, and they're telling me I've applied all over town, and nobody has called back or I'm working at this place, because they won by default, I applied and I applied and I applied and all these places that are supposedly hiring and I only got one call back. When you hear things like that, certainly it makes you scratch your head and say, Hmm, I wonder if there really is a labor shortage or if that's a load of bull I wonder if this is part of some kind of American sky of propaganda that's designed to forward a very particular story. So that the general public will be more accepting of the robots and the AI, because they're going to come for the quote, lower level jobs first, blue collar work fast food retail, you go in, and you just have to deal with robots. And people will shrug their shoulders and say, well, it's their own damn fault. I'm thinking again, and that Larry Winget book, it's called work for a reason success is your own damn fault. And all that, that's going to be a very, I would say, neocon and right wing friendly narrative that will get these people, these dirty hippies. They just didn't want to work. They didn't want to flip burgers, they didn't want to be in retail. So the robots had to take those jobs. Because see on that side of the spectrum, they're never going to blame corporate America, they're not going to blame the union busters, they're not going to blame the billionaires and the fat cats, because in their mind one day, they might be that fat cat, they might be the next Rockefeller or the next Vanderbilt, so they have to defend those people, which is absurd. But that's that is what I see coming. So whenever the robots and the AI take those jobs, and they just go away from human beings, that will be the Well, I mean, you know, people, people should have taken those jobs, people should have done that. Another possibility is some of the jobs get farmed out to robots and to AI. And then when it becomes really freakin clear, to John and Jane Q Public, that the economy is a hot mess, and unemployment is a hell of a lot higher than what they're being told that may drive some people into fast food and retail jobs. And I'm not trying to be insulting for a lot of people, that's not going to be their very first choice. And the podcast episode that I published this morning, where Amber stork talks about the 10 reasons why she'll never work a nine to five again, highlights why, because when you're dealing with the general public, and you've got Karen's and Darren, and people acting like complete a holes to you all day, every day that you work, it burns you out. So there are people that might have said, You know what, during the Great resignation, I am going to try to get away from retail or to try to get away from fast food, I don't want to be in some front facing public role, where I have to deal with Karen's and barons and take people's abuse and anyone is Senior Manager. People want to get away from that. But if the jobs were you don't have to deal with that crap so much, are not available, where there's a ton of competition, and you need money ASAP, then you may find yourself in a role like that. See, that's also possible. Corporate America could take advantage of this crisis to drive people into the less desirable roles until they get to the point where robots and AI can just completely take those jobs altogether. Time will tell and I hope I'm wrong on this. But it's another situation where I worry that I'm not wrong. Over on CNBC today, we have headlines such as Google to cut down on employee laptops, services and staplers for multi year savings. Which naturally begs the question, how many staplers were y'all buying? If cutting down on staplers is enough to make the difference? Aside from the obvious throw back to office space and the whole gaff there about the stapler, like how many staplers rebind in the article we read, Google's finance chief Ruth Porat recently said in a rare company wide email that the company is making cuts to employee services. In separate documents viewed by CNBC Google said it's cutting back on fitness classes staplers tape, and the frequency of laptop replacements for employees. If we scroll down, we also find Porat referred to the year 2008 Twice in her email. Getting kind of scary out there, staplers aside staplers and tape aside. That's another reference to the Great Recession that I think it's worth filing away in the back of your mind if nothing else, because you can bet the fat cats the power brokers and the people in high places that these companies they know and they understand what's coming. Tesla shares dropped after deliveries report raises investor concern that more price cuts are coming. NASDAQ falls to start the second quarter of trading as oil spikes higher. Trump lawyers opposed cameras at arraignment war in a circus like atmosphere. Oh, is it not like that already? I'll drop a link to an article that I saw it comes actually from His very own website saying that they had gotten a ton of donations in. So like, already it's being financially beneficial. And I'm like, shrugging my shoulders go in. I mean a like what? What do you think the point of all this is? JP Morgan says more banks could run out of reserves like SVB if pace of this deposit flight continues, the tracks, shutters US operations and Elon Musk wants Dogecoin lawsuit tossed home prices suddenly jump after several months of declines. Well, I've told you before that I'm not seeing enough of a price reduction here in the Midwest, I can't speak to other parts of the country that might be impacted differently right now. But here in the Midwest, I'm not seeing price cuts that are deep enough and honest enough for me to get excited about anything, just nominal price cuts 5k Off 10k Off and it's like, okay, but if the property is still two or$300,000, overpriced, what kind of a difference is a $10,000 price cut going to make? Not enough for me to get off the sidelines. Today, it is Tuesday, April 4, I want to start this section of the broadcast off with a sort of PSA or public service announcement about something I'm seeing more and more in the market right now. I've warned you before about fake jobs, companies that took out a Triple P loan. And so they posted some jobs online or they said a help wanted sign in the window. And the help wanted sign never came down. And the indeed job postings never came down. But they didn't hire anybody either. And even though I had mansplain errs, bots, and trolls, et cetera, that argued with me that there was no such thing as a fake job posting. If a company has a help wanted sign in the window, they're going to hire somebody, the Triple P loans came and went. So why would somebody still have a sign up? Okay, sure. Now, those people are very quiet. And so are the trolls and the mansplain errs, who told me that remote work was going to last forever. And there was just no way that companies would demand full tilt or to those mansplain errs and bots and trolls and shills or somewhere else now, because I'm not hearing from them, which is fine by me. I want to make another public service announcement to you just to be on the lookout and keep your guard up. As you know, I don't give you advice and I don't tell you what to do. I am going to tell you something that I'm observing as well as something that I'm hearing in real time from job seekers that are out in the market. I am seeing quite an uptick in bait and switch and con artistry in the freelancing world. I'm seeing this firsthand manifest into things like what we verbally agreed on on the phone. And then what gets put in writing are two different things. And if you try to call the prospective client out on it and say, This is not the money we agreed on, or this is not the number of hours this is not the deadline. They either gaslight you and act like you're crazy. You're misremembering, even though you have your notes right there in front of you, you're misremembering what was said, or they get huffy and hateful. Well, if you really want to work with me, if you really want my business, then you'll do this. The thing is, these companies know that the great resignation is over with. And even though we still see not a small number of shenanigans happening on the candidate side of things to candidates, ghosting, flaking out asking for more money at the finish line and doing things that would have been acceptable in 2021, but probably will not help them much in 2023. Even though we still see those things, these companies know they know what's coming. They got tired of the FOMO and the Yolo of 21. And now they want to have a shit fit. They want to have a pity party about it and punish everybody on in the market. I would definitely keep your guard up for the bait and switch crowd. Another way I'm seeing it manifest is they will post a request for proposals or requests for quotes to get bids from contractors freelancers or contracting businesses. And they will say this is our budget or we want to pay someone by the hour. This is the deadline that we have in mind. So you submit criteria in accordance with what they've said. And then they come back to you and say, Well, what we really want is someone who can do this commission only would you be open to doing that or would your company be open to doing that? And it's like no, you plainly said in your request for proposals that you would pay X to Y per hour or you would offer X amount of dollars per milestone on this project. So why are you walking it back now and trying to tell people well, okay, we posted that to get applicants or we put did that to get proposals, but what we really want is somebody to do all of the work for free, and then we'll decide whether or not we pay them. Please be on the lookout. As the economy deteriorates, unfortunately, you will see more con artists, you will see more bait and switch individuals that are trying to railroad you into a situation that might rip you off. For that matter, I have also seen an uptick in people saying that they need HR or recruiting or staffing professionals. But in reality, it's an MLM or a pyramid scheme. They're not using the term recruiter in the typical sense of I want you to recruit people for this job, a legitimate job. But rather, I want you to recruit people to come into our funnel and be part of our multi level marketing scheme, or a Ponzi scheme, or something that sounds completely freaking illegal. Just stay aware. And I feel like this is such an important time to remember the old phrase, Caveat emptor, let the buyer beware. Again, I don't tell you what to do, or what not to do. For me personally, at the first sign of MLM pyramid scheme, Ponzi scheme I'm done. At the first sign of well, I know we said that we would pay somewhere between x and y. But we've decided that's not in our budget. We posted this without talking to the CFO first. And so what we really want is somebody to do commission only, and then we'll pay you if everything goes well, and we like it at the first sign of that bullcrap. I just gone. My time is too valuable. And so is my sanity. Yes, money is important. But how much money do you think that you're going to get out of something that might be illegal? How much money do you think you're going to get out of somebody who is doing fraudulent behavior? Because in my opinion, that's what it is. If someone posts a request for proposal, saying that they're going to pay X amount of dollars per milestone, or an X amount of dollars hourly rate, and then they bait and switch you by saying, Well, no, I mean, what we really want is for you to do commission only Are you up for that. There's no guarantee, even if you were desperate and freaked out and scared. And you said, Okay, I don't like this. I'm not happy about this, but I'll do it. You could quote them. Okay, well, if you want me to be commissioned only then I'm going to expect 50 grand if we close this deal, they might tell you, yeah, sure, not a problem. And then you never see a dime of that money. They might not even be serious, because in my mind, if a prospective client is serious about what they're doing, whether that's hiring you to do software engineering, hiring you to do HR work for them, hiring you as a fractional accountant, for their company, whatever it is, if they are serious about it, then they would already have their budget picked out and they would want in earnest to find the right person. These other yo Yos and goofballs that are out in the market playing games, and mind tricks with people. I just don't think they're serious. And I wouldn't want to be involved with somebody like that. Regardless, even if we think about the other side of the spectrum, that if it seems too good to be true, because if you did say, All right, okay, if you want me to spend this time and to do all of this legwork for you and hope it works out, I want 50 grand if it does, they might say Sure, no problem. Happy to do that. And then never pay you anything and act like well take us to court if you want the money that bad because they know that you're gonna get eaten alive with lawyer fees and not see a dime of the money anyway. Just be careful out there. Really weigh and measure your opportunities carefully. Get some sense of who you're talking to. Who is this that's on the other end of the phone? And I feel like if they start any kind of arrogant attitude, bait and switch, don't you want this? Aren't we important to you? Don't you want to earn our business? I find that particularly irritating when someone comes into my funnel. In other words, they have found me and they are soliciting me. I didn't go out and find them. They came to me and said hey, we're interested in working with you. Let us know what it would look like. So you do that. And then they say, well, we want you to take less money. Because I mean, don't you want to work with us. I had a guy who did that to me recently and he reminded me of Dan Ackroyd old SNL character errwood main way there was just something about his speech and his demeanor where I was listening to him and I thought he reminds me of someone who is it and then once it registered Erwin main way. I'm just really glad I didn't laugh. But if you may not remember the sketch, but it was like hey kid broken glass. He was like selling Johnny switchblade, a doll like a Ken doll. Except it had switchblade knives that popped out and a bag of glass. He was just like an unscrupulous smarmy toymaker that made super dangerous toys. And then whenever he was called out for it, he would have an excuse. The way that the guy talked and the way that the guy presented himself, it reminded me of Erwin main way. But that was his shtick. He came to me, he solicited me, I told him what I would expect in order to do the project that he was pitching to me. And then it was like, Well, I mean, a Yeah, no, don't you want to earn my business? I mean, can't you take less IMO? This is what he said to me. I'm a business man. So I mean, like I got in the Goshi. Eight with Yeah. He also reminded me, I guess, I would say maybe, if you had Erwin main way, LARPing that he was in the mafia, or LARPing that he was in an episode of Goodfellas. I mean, a, and I'm like, No, you came and solicited me. I'm telling you what I would need in order to do the job. And then finally, he confessed? Well, what you're asking for is above my budget, I wasn't really planning on hiring a contractor or hiring a freelancer to do this for me. So I'm really just going out into the market trying to find out if there's a cheap option, and it sounds like you're not the cheap option. And I thought no, I'm not and I'm not sure what in any of my marketing materials on the website, I don't know what would have given him that impression. And in going back and auditing the situation, I think he just thought he was gonna bulldoze me. He thought that he was going to come in with this song and dance of I mean a Don't you want to earn my business? And I'd be like, Yeah, sure. We're going to we're in an economic downturn. I'm desperate I will do this and then when I didn't, I think it just really pattern interrupted what he was expecting. Be on the lookout, Caveat emptor ur use your own best judgment about who you're interacting with out there. I wish that I could say things would improve soon, but I just don't see that happening. Speaking of which, to segue into some headlines over on Business Insider, we find small businesses are filing for bankruptcy at a higher rate than at the peak of the pandemic and a looming credit crunch could make things worse. The main story this morning over on CNBC, Jamie Dimon says the banking crisis is not over and will cause repercussions for years to come. Now, it's also worth noting that last week over on CNBC, we learned Jamie Dimon is being deposed over JP Morgan Chase role in the Teferi Epstein lawsuits. Interesting. Interesting times, indeed. Now Will anything happen because of that? No. I have no delusions of that. It's just it's it's an interesting development. And the TLDR key points for this repercussions for years to come article we find Jamie Dimon longtime JP Morgan Chase CEO said of the latest financial shock and his annual letter, the current crisis is not yet over. And even when it is behind us there will be repercussions from it for years to come. But more importantly, recent events are nothing like what occurred during the 2008 global financial crisis he added in the letter released Tuesday. The recent banking issues in the US began with the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, which was closed by regulators on March 10. As depositors pulled 10s of billions of dollars from the bank in quote, nothing like 2008. Now you will find plenty of other references to 2008 and the similarities between what we're experiencing now with some other pretty hairy and unpleasant downturns. 1970s era stagflation the 1982 recession 2008 2009 global financial crisis but hey, I guess if Jamie Dimon is telling you, this is bad, and we're going to feel the repercussions of it for years to come. But it's nothing like 2008 Well, I'm sure that you can just totally and completely and blindly trust that information. Obviously the main talking point of today slash huge media circus is about the arraignment of the Orange Man. I'm not even going to talk about that. You can see what wall to wall coverage of that on just about any news station that you imagine. In terms of job market news over on CNBC we find job openings tumbled below 10 million in February for the first time in nearly two years. In the TLDR. Key points we find available positions totaled 9.9 3 million a drop of 632,000. From January downwardly revised number According to the Labor Department's jolts report. It was the first time vacancies fell below 10 million since May of 2021. professional and business services saw slide of 278,000 job openings on the month to lead decliners and quote, do we still have a 3.6% unemployment rate? I don't think so. Are there still two legitimate open jobs for every one unemployed person? I don't think so. Do I think the RTO is going to go away and companies will just give up on getting most white collar workers back to the office? Again? I don't think so. Anytime I publish an article, a blog post or podcast episode, whatever, about RTO is happening. And we're transitioning from the carrot to the stick, I will have a mansplaining or a bot a troll, a shill or someone who is just really freaking high on hopium. Trying to convince me that no, somehow remote work will hang on. And I'm like, you can believe that if you want to. And by no means do I think that no companies, no freelancers, nobody will continue working from home. There were plenty of freelancers and people that work for themselves who are working from home before the pandemic ever happened. For me, it's more about the majority of white collar knowledge workers do I think that most companies will simply roll up the sidewalks on RTO and say, Oh, well, we tried people had a mutiny. And so we gave up. I really, truly don't think so. Today, it is Wednesday, April 5, as you can imagine, pretty much any and all news outlets that you might care to look at today are just plastered with Orange Man. I don't want to get into that on the broadcast. I've already given you my pearls of wisdom about Be careful. And there are certain places that I wouldn't go there are certain things that I wouldn't do. So I don't want to just read headline after headline after headline about the orange MAN today. In terms of job related job market headlines that might really help you. Over on CNBC we find private payrolls rose by 145,000. In March, well below expectations ADP says. Really You don't say? If you've been with me for a while now then this is not hitting you by surprise. In the TLDR key points we find private sector hiring rose by just 145,000 in march down from 261,000 in February and below the estimate for 210,000 financial activities last 51,000 jobs and professional and business services fell by 46,000. Leisure and Hospitality added another 98,000 workers trade transportation and utilities grew by 56,000. And construction rose by 53,000. Less than expected Hmm Well, no. Not in my mind. It isn't. In this we read private sector hiring decelerated in March flashing another potential sign that the US economic growth is heading for a sharp slowdown or recession. payroll processing firm ADP reported Wednesday. Our March payroll data is one of several signals that the economy is slowing. Said ADP chief economist Neela Richardson Ornella Richardson, I'm not sure employers are pulling back from a year of strong hiring and pay growth after a three month plateau. It's inching down. annual payroll rose at a 6.9% rate in march down from 7.2% in February according to the firm's calculations, I'm going to butt in and say even if those figures are accurate, they're not keeping pace with inflation. Job growth was almost evenly split between services and goods producing firms and unusual occurrence. The US economy is heavily services oriented so that sector generally produces much stronger hiring gains. The data released Wednesday shows a gain of 75,000 in services and 70,000 in goods producers. Last month, though financial activities lost 51,000 jobs and professional and business services fell by 46,000. Manufacturing also saw a decline of 30,000 a button again and say if you fall into that category of financial activities or professional and business services, which I don't need ADP to come out and tell me those parts of the economy are suffering. Those areas of the job market have slowed down. I'm seeing it in real time. I'm seeing it myself as someone who freelances in a professional slash Business Services capacity. And I'm hearing about it every single day from other individuals in that same sector who are trying to find work and struggling, or they're trapped in a job from hell, and they would really like to leave, but they're feeling a bit hamstrung, because it comes back to the question of where would I go? Again, I just I hope that none of this is catching you off guard. And I go back to what I've said before, if you freelance if you own and operate your own business, have you wargame out your strategy. Do you have that plan B, C, D on what would happen if the primary way that you earn a living dries up? Maybe the opportunities are few and far between and what is out there is not really palatable? Do you have some other options in tow? It's not to say that I want you to imagine the Thunderdome Mad Max zombies eating your brains you already know I don't get into that crap. It's really about preparation, so that if the bottom drops out, you can take a deep breath and say I planned for this, I already have another revenue stream. Or I've already sharpened to some other skill set. Maybe skill set A is going to have to sit on the shelf for a little while. But skill set B can come off the shelf and be a way for me to provide for my family. Just something to think about. Over on Yahoo Finance we find how GM got 5000 workers to leave their jobs within a month without a single layoff. General Motors drive to make employees leave on their own volition is working. Last month, General Motors announced a voluntary separation program for most of its 58,000 us white collar employees and some of its global workforce. The company gave workers around two weeks to make their decision all button and say that's not long. If you're having to make that kind of potentially life altering decision about am I going to take this buyout and then how soon do I think I could find something else? What are the finances like two weeks to make that decision is not a long time. Around 5000 workers globally opted for it. The Detroit based automaker revealed yesterday, first in an email CEO Mary Barra sent to employees in the morning and then via CFO Paul Jacobson at a bank of America Conference. Jacobson described the buyout program which offers handsome severance pay healthcare and more as a tool to get us to really accelerate the attrition curve that resulted in pretty quick payback. The streamlining of workforces, and operations is paramount for all car industry players at a time, they're walking in the internal combustion engine tightrope while going all in on electric vehicles. So they give us a brief timeline of the buyout program. On March 9, GM announced that it would do this voluntary separation program on March 24. It was the last day to sign up on June 30. That will be the last date of employment for those who apply to and were found eligible to opt for this program. And apparently they will get one month pay for every year they've spent at GM up to 12 months, Cobra health coverage, prorated team performance bonuses and outplacement services. I just think that's interesting. What the CFO Paul Jacobson said at a bank of America conference, a tool to get us to really accelerate the attrition curve. And it resulted in a pretty quick payback. You might not like it. I'm certainly not going to make any friends when I say this, but that's what you are to corporate America. You're a number. You're a set of expenses. You're somebody that can be dispensed with that quick if it suits their purpose. Please keep your head on swivel. I know I'm a broken record, but I'm going to do it anyway. Do you have a job loss Survival Plan roughed out? Do you have an RTO Survival Plan roughed out? Because see that nonsense is not going away either. If you freelance if you own and operate your own business, and the primary way that you're making your money right now dries up for a while, do you have some other way of earning a living? Is there some way that I'm going to use the corporate buzzword and I hate to do it, but I'm going to do it anyway. Is there some way that you can pivot into a different sector, a different part of the market a different skill set, at least temporarily to weather the downturn? If you have not already thought about these questions, it might be too late. Better late than never. It would be better for you to start right now today than to not do it at all and get blindsided. But you have to realize there are plenty of people that take emergency preparedness care asleep that have already done their due diligence months or maybe even years ago. The people who were appreciated enough to understand how bad things really were back in oh eight and oh nine, some of those people were indelibly changed by the Great Recession slash global financial crisis and they started prepping right then. So they're good. They have a nest egg. They have plenty of food in the larder. They've got all of their traps prepared and set and ready. If you haven't even considered the possibility of a layoff, if you're living in that denial, it's not going to happen at all. Well, it might happen to the guy down the road, but it won't happen to me. Oh, crap, it's happened to me. And now I'm not prepared. If you're in that space, it might already be too late. I don't give you advice, and I don't tell you what to do. If it were me, I would rather be late than to not try it at all. But I would damn sure know that I had a lot of ground to make up. Are you looking for more? Don't forget, you can find Sierra on her blogs at Causey consulting llc.com. And at Sara causey.com. You can also read her content on medium, and substack. On with the show. Today, it is Thursday, April 6, I can already tell you that tomorrow will be the kind of Friday that's a TGIF Friday, or I melt into the bed. I'm so tired. It's been a busy week, a productive week, which is good. But it's been busy busier than I would like to be honest, and I'm tired. I don't feel like I have yet adjusted to the time change the whole spring forward thing. I'm not digging it. Not at all my hours are still a little bit wonky. I don't like that it's broad daylight at 8pm. I'm over that the bugs are already coming back out. We've had some hot weather. We've had some fire weather to where the humidity has been low. We've had raging like 60 mile an hour winds and then dry vegetation, which makes it like a tinderbox out there. And I'm like I'm on the countdown now for the summer solstice. Not because that's the longest day of the year. And I want to really have a thing about that. But because at least after that mercifully, we go back into the dark half of the year. I'm ready for like temperate weather. Not too hot and not too cold. And it getting dark about I don't know maybe 630. To me that just feels more merciful than it being broad freaking daylight at 8pm. It's hard to make up for a sleep deficit. Like if you're wanting to go to bed early, just don't want to tune everything out. Want to go to bed, get a couple extra hours of sleep tonight and just exist in the bed. It's hard to get your circadian rhythm to cooperate with that when it's broad freakin daylight. Not long ago, we finally watched that movie lamb, which is weird. It's a very weird movie, not the least of which because you start going down that rabbit hole in your mind of do these types of hybrid fangs, these creatures do they already exist? I mean, is this purely fiction? I mean, again, I'm not trying to get to tinfoil hat here. But it's like, I mean, is that a possibility? The other thing is it set at that period of time. And Iceland, I think during the summer where it's almost perpetual daylight. So there's places in the movie where it's like they're going to bed and it's broad daylight out and I'm going How the hell could you sleep if it's two o'clock in the morning, and the sun is still showing? I don't know how I could get used to that. I would assume you'd have to get blackout curtains at a bare minimum. But that's too much. No offense to the sun, but that's too much. When we go to CNBC today, the main headline is layoffs are up nearly fivefold so far this year with tech leading the way hmm, my golly gosh, goodness GE bank when you don't say this should come as a surprise to no one. We also underneath that fine Metis job cuts are gutting customer service leaving influencers and businesses with nobody to call. Two points I want to make before I click on this article about layoffs, two points I want to make about that. Been there done that, you know, I told you about running a fan club for an actor and we had an experience on social media that really put us off. And the way that we were treated with no explanation was pretty offensive, pretty rude, especially considering how much money that he had spent on that platform. So I get this whole idea of tech companies gutting customer service and just leaving you hanging like they don't care. No, no one cares. And that's regardless of who you are and how much money you've spent on their platform. The other thing I want to say is, if you don't hold it, you don't own it. At any point in time, you know this, the rules of engagement are getting weirder by the day. It seems more capricious. I feel sorry for people who have built an entire business and entire income stream around a platform that they don't control. If the algorithm changes overnight, they're screwed. If they get banned or shadow banned, they're screwed. I've made the same warnings to you about these people that jumped on the remote work bandwagon. And they are now a remote work fill in the blank and their whole shtick. They've built a whole identity around. I'm a remote work, whatever. And I'm like, Cool, cool, cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. So what are you going to do if the majority of white collar knowledge workers in this country are to and there's yet again, a slim number of people who freelance or own and operate their own business that are working from home? Because those people are not going to go away? And to be clear, I'm not celebrating this I am warning you of the chicanery and the shenanigans that go on in corporate America. I'm not telling you that I endorse them. I don't. If you've been with me for any length of time, you should know better. I'm not a Malcolm Gladwell that says, Well, I work from home because that's what's best for me. But you little peon, you need to go back to the office. I don't support these RTO initiatives. I think they're all a load of flaming bullshit. What I am telling you is that this is the here and the now. Let's think that to the Jed Hill speech and malice, this is the president, it is the here and the now. Welcome to the land of you don't have a choice. So when I tell you, if it were me, I would want to have an RTO Survival Plan roughed out ahead of time, I'm not telling you that because I endorse return to Office, I'm telling you, this is the here in the now. And corporate America is a hell of a lot more powerful and well connected and wealthy than the average person listening to me talk. I'm just saying. So if you have built an entire identity around, I help people on this platform, I help coaches, consultants, whatever 10 times their revenue using Facebook 10 times their revenue using Instagram. If on that platform, you get banned or shadow banned, or the algorithm changes and it punishes your business, and you go from making money to making no money in a short amount of time. What are you prepared to do? I would rather wargame that out ahead of time than to get absolutely blindsided, because things can and do change quickly. Now, when we click on layoffs are up nearly fivefold we find planned layoffs totaled at 9703. For the period, an increase of 15%. From February, according to challenger gray and Christmas. job cuts have soared to 270,416. So far in 2023, an increase of almost 400% from the same period a year ago. Told you so I warned you this was coming. The damage was especially bad in tech, which has announced 102,391 cuts so far in 2023. That's a staggering increase of more than 38,000% from a year ago. Please bear in mind though, it is not just big tech, it is not just Silicon Valley. Be really, really careful of any of these pundits are talking heads or so called economists who are out here telling you Well, if you're not in big tech, if you're not in Silicon Valley, you're probably going to be fine. If it were me, I would not want to bet the farm on that. Over on Axios. Speaking of which, let's segue into another headline. Walmart leans into automation amid layoffs and inflation concerns. In that article we find Walmart announced long term plans to grow its retail business by enlisting machines to tackle more work while resolving to maintain or increase its workforce. company leaders said during an investment meeting on Wednesday, what's happening? Walmart expects 65% of its stores to be serviced by automation by 2026. Newsflash, that's three years from now. And for over half of its goods to be processed through its machine operated facilities. Its next generation fulfillment centers announced last June. The automation is related to supply chain and market fulfillment spokesperson Jacqueline cook told Axios the entry, Walmart says more automation will lead to fewer jobs requiring physical labor and replacing those roles with higher paying positions. According to a news release. Yes, but on Monday, the company announced about 2000 layoffs at warehouses. Cook told Axios the layoffs were unrelated to the automation expansion announced two days later. Hmm, things that make you go. The largest retailer in the world has openly worried about high inflation with its CFO saying Wednesday that the company is still feeling the effects of higher prices According to Reuters, achieving our target at 4% sales growth Over the next five years would add more than $130 billion of sales. On top of our roughly$600 billion base today, John David Rainey, Walmart Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer said in a news release on top of that we think the opportunity for operating income growth over the next three to five years could be better than what we've outlined. Sam's Club has seen an increase in Gen Z and Millennial membership that is overwhelmingly likely due to due to the use of digital services such as scan and go. Kathryn McClay president and CEO of Sam's Club said Wednesday, that technology allows customers to scan items as they shop and pay on their phone without stopping at a register and quote, I mean, that could be it very well could be that the younger generations like the idea of scan and go, I can just put all of this in my phone, pay for it on my phone and then walk out. Maybe I would add to that. It's the economy stupid. How in the hell is anybody affording to shop at like a Whole Foods or sprouts right now? I mean, seriously? And if you can afford to do that, I mean, are you sure? It just everything is so freakin expensive that I think you have to make every dollar count right now. So perhaps the increase in membership from Gen Z, and millennials is due to the scan and go and the digital services and the apps and all of that, but I think it also boils down to it's the economy. I don't see any way around that. Now, before I get into another headline about the IMF, I want to hop over for a second to Yahoo Finance. There's an article they post by way of the Wall Street Journal. And unfortunately, we can't read much of it because we're going to hit a paywall, and I'm not going to go and pay for one freaking article. The headline is bosses want hard workers, so they're hiring older people. So let's think about this for a second. bosses want hard workers so they're hiring older people. Also, jobs are now being replaced by automation. Connect the dots here. And the little snippet that we can say without hitting the paywall, we find Kip Ken 40 is hiring for a part time position at one of two package shipping stations that he owns in Pennsylvania. Mr. Ken 40 has grown weary of younger employees who he says arrive late for shifts call out of work often and spend more time scrolling social media feeds and chatting with customers. About a year ago he tried something different recruiting people who are more likely to carry a RP cards than the latest iPhone in quote after that we hit the paywall. So is some of this generational clickbait? Of course it is. Of course, there are lazy people flakes, ghosts, etc. In every age bracket, but leave me oh my god being involved in the job market every day. I have been ghosted. I've had people show up late I've had people behave in terrible ways across every demographic that you can think of. So no, I think that we need to be very careful about generational clickbait. I'm going to say something here. And really, this needs to be its own separate episode. At some point, I need to sit down and record an episode about ways that job seekers shoot themselves in the foot. Because believe me they do. It's tricky to even talk about that. Because the minute that you do, idiots on social media will start pelting you with complaints and drama. That's just the world in which we live. You're supposed to talk about recruiters and people in HR and aren't they so horrible. But the minute you say, you know, some of these candidates are their own worst enemy. They're doing some bullshit that's causing them to not get hired. Then you become like the dartboard. Everybody wants to throw darts out. So I'm, I'm going to have to really think about how I do this. But I've really been thinking lately that the future is going to belong to the people that can actually just show up. Because we do live in an age of flakes, and ghosts. The era of My Word is my bond. If for some reason I can't make it I will call or I will email I will let them know but I would never just leave somebody standing there waiting on me. We're way past that. That is so gone. About two years ago, I recorded a podcast episode about ghosting reconsidered. And one of the reasons why is because I read this great story on medium. It wasn't great for the person but it was an interesting story on medium. This woman was talking about how she had met a man for a first date a very brief first date in like an airport bar. They chatted and they had drinks for like maybe half an hour. He left to go catch his flight I, and then felt compelled to send her a message saying, Hey, I don't think we hit it off, but I wish you the best. And she talked about how that hurt worse than just being ghosted that someone would spend 30 minutes with her and feel so compelled to get rid of her that they would send a message like that. There are times in life where no answer is your answer. And so no, I'm not going to get on here and just wholesale blast ghosting. Because one of the things I asked in that episode is how much do we owe other people, especially in these transitional transitory type relationships? If I had a date with somebody for 30 minutes in an airport bar, first of all, that feels like a very low value situation to me. Send me hate mail, if you want. Go ahead. I'm an XOR. Okay, I just grew up in a different time. If some guy wanted to ask you out for a drink in a freaking airport bar, you would say no, just No, no, I value myself more than than to do that, that feels cheap to me. hate mail, if you want to, I'll delete it. I don't care. But the point is, do you should you send a doctoral dissertation after that a master's thesis? Hey, I know that we have only known each other for 30 minutes of our lives. We shared a gin and tonic together, it didn't work out. And now let me tell you all the reasons why I don't think I want to date you again. I wouldn't want to read that. So it's not that I'm saying there's never a time and a place to just vanish. Especially if you feel like your safety is on the line. It might be better to vanish. Those are decisions that only you can make for yourself. When we talk about job seeking and the job market, if you are out there scheduling interviews not attending, showing up late. Just waking up and going oh, it was today. Oh shit, man. I totally forgot. But yeah, I think I can wake up good enough that we can talk yeah, that's fine. If you're doing stuff like that. And then you're going online and talking about how you just can't find a job. Nobody's hiring. Every recruiter is a piece of shit, etc. The problem is you. The problem is you, you need to clean up your own side of the street first. Because here's what's going to happen. The corporate control mass media is telling you I almost really got serious, they're, they're effing telling you what's coming. If you can't show up, you can't be bothered to show up, then you're going to be replaced either by someone of an older generation who will show up or by AI, a robot. That's what's coming. So if you want to hasten in the UVA nothing and UVB happy, you go and do the Harare method of sitting in a hovel and looking at your virtual reality all day because you're part of the useless class now as you eat your cricket burger up my guest. That's not the kind of dystopian future that I want. And I think some of y'all out there playing games in the job market making appointments, not keeping them, no show, no call, cut it out, grow up. Wrapping this up on an unrelated note, on Yahoo Finance, we find IMF had warns world economy is set for weakest near term growth since 1990. In this we find with rising geopolitical tensions and still high inflation, a robust recovery remains elusive. The IMF projects global growth to remain around 3% for the next five years, the lowest medium term growth forecasts since 1990. And well below the average of 3.8% from the past two decades. Some of you listening may not have even been alive in 1990. It's like play games if you want to. If you're out there and you are acting like a complete goofball, a flake, a weirdo and then blaming everybody else for your problems. You may not make it. You may not make it. By the time you're allowed to know that unemployment is higher than any 3.6 or 4.6%. If you're ever allowed to know that I'm not sure but if you are by the time we get there, by the time that it's just too big to ignore the people that are out there making appointments and not keeping them flaking out acting like yeah, I'll do this half asleep. I don't care. Probably not gonna make it. Probably not. Today, it is Friday, April 7, TGIF for sure. Fortunately, I was able to get a pretty good night's sleep last night, some extra sleep. And it's amazing how much better you feel if you are mentally and physically exhausted, and then you finally get some extra sleep to chip away at the sleep deficit. Things just look so much better and brighter in the morning after you've had a good rest Just it is restorative and healing for sure. Of course, the main story today is the jobs report. And I don't know why I even have hope anymore, that we're gonna get anything resembling the truth. Wow, I just almost don't even know what to say the absurdity and the silly nonsense that you are expected to swallow. From mainstream media and corporate America and their cronies and the Fed. I just, it blows my mind. Over on CNBC we find job growth totals 236,000 in March near expectations as hiring pace slows. In the TLDR key points we find non farm payrolls grew by 236,000 for March, compared to the Dow Jones estimate for 238,000 and below the upwardly revised 326,000. In February, the unemployment rate ticked lower. What? Oh, my God, I have heartburn, the unemployment rate ticked lower to 3.5% amid an increase in labor force participation against expectations that it would hold at 3.6%. average hourly earnings rose point 3% Pushing the 12 month increase to 4.2%. The lowest level since June 2021. Okay, wow. So you're supposed to believe that even though hiring is slowing, according to them, I mean, the mainstream media will at least say hiring is slowing, which is almost like Wink, wink, nudge nudge. Yeah, you freaking bet your sweet bippy. It's slowing. Yes, it is. But I guess now they're saying that there's been an increase in labor force participation. And so therefore, and thereby, the 3.6% unemployment rate is now 3.5%. i I'm struggling guys, I am. I've warned you before to be really careful with this narrative of labor shortage, labor shortage, Coco Coco. entire generations are lazy. The gender of men, lazy. Men from like 20 to 65 are just sitting it out. They're all in grandma's basement, or on a partner's couch refusing to work. There are literally no men 20 to 65 in the workforce anywhere. There are no Gen Z young people, there are no young millennials. All of these people are sitting it out and refusing to work. They are flush with cash from 2020. And they're hanging out in someone's basement. How moronic but yeah, that's what you're supposed to believe. You're supposed to just go most be true because it was on the TV. Really. Just like now you're supposed to believe the unemployment is supposedly 3.5% In the middle of this freefall shitstorm. Because more people have gone back to work. Well, what the hell happened to their narrative of labor shortage, labor shortage, labor shortage. Remember how often we heard it. It was nauseating. So when it was time to dispose of the labor shortage narrative, look at how quickly they tossed them in the wastebasket. But that's what they do. This corporate controlled mass media hot air BS, that's what they do. They will push and push and push and push a particular story through a particular lens until it no longer suits them. And you are just supposed to ignore the fact that that happens over and over again. Meanwhile, also on CNBC today, and I will be writing a full on blog post about this because it's just it's too mind boggling to not call out the insanity. The headline reads why it's possible to have too much employment in the US. What the eff after all, that we heard about labor shortage, no one wants to work. All of these jobs are going unfilled. What is wrong with people blah, blah, blah. Now, you are told it's possible to have too much employment in the US. In this article we read it's impossible to have an economy with 0% unemployment but it's also difficult to maintain low unemployment without initiating painful inflation. It's hard to tell Americans we have too many people working David Wessel, director of The Hutchins center on fiscal and monetary policy at the Brookings Institution told CNBC. Well, obviously not because you just did. It's obviously not that difficult because you just freakin said that. When we scroll down, we read in the in the final two paragraphs, for example, the unemployment rate does not include discouraged workers who want a job but have stopped looking for one because they they feel like they will not be able to find employment. The good news is that we do see labor force participation picking up again, zip recruiter, Chief Economist Julia Pollock told CNBC. If companies find it easier to fill vacancies without bidding up wages so much, and then passing on that cost to consumers with higher prices, then perhaps just perhaps, we may be able to sustain this low level of unemployment without inflation growing in quote. Yeah, a couple of things here. And I'll point this out in the blog. One is that headline from the intercept last year, Bank of America memo leaked saying we hope conditions get worse. We want the balance of power to go back to corporate America. If companies find it easier to fill vacancies without bidding up wages so much, hmm. Connect the dots. No, no, no. The other thing I want to say is some of y'all out there going to listen to these economists and so called financial experts, to your own peril. I believe some of them and I'm not saying this person is one of them. I don't know this person. I'm talking in a broad brushstroke. Some of these so called economists and financial experts that in my opinion are nothing more than pay corporate shills who will say GED anything if the money's right, don't care. Some of y'all out there are going to follow these people right off a cliff like the Pied Piper of Hamelin. You're gonna listen to their song, and believe it and follow them off a freakin cliff. Please, please be careful. Please be careful with who you are listening to and for what reason? Over on Yahoo Finance is a similar scene jobs report shows hiring slows but remain strong. The byline tells us the march jobs report showed the US labor market remains strong, likely keeping the pressure on the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates in its effort to slow inflation. Next to that we find the US economy is still creating problems for the Fed. And it shows Jerome Powell looking kind of harried in the picture there. When we click on this article, we find the Federal Reserve has raised interest rates aggressively over the last year in a bid to slow inflation and the labor market. Its efforts are still not quite feeding through to the data. Friday's March jobs report is the latest case in point. The US economy created 236,000 jobs in March, supposedly, and the unemployment rate fell back to 3.5%. In quote. Dammit, guys, Dermot, we have to just keep raising the interest rates. We have to just keep squeezing you and squeezing you and squeezing you but it's for your own good. We have to crash this job market y'all. I'm yet again going to go back to that CNB not CNBC, CBS News article that I talked about last year, I even went on the air and recorded an emergency broadcast about it. They want to crash the job market. They're not hiding this information. It is findable if you care to look for it. But see, that's the thing. You have some people that want to listen to these Pied Piper, economists and experts telling them bullshit that doesn't even match what their eyes and ears and common sense would tell them. Toward the end of this article, we find some in markets will chide the Powell fed for having been consistently wrong in their economic forecasts. another bout of revisions to chase reality in 2023 would not silence these critics. Though being wrong about the outlook has not stopped Powell and company from acting on new information. And the notion that this Feds reaction function might change now could see investors again fall into the same trap all over again and quote he out no, these people are wrong all the time. And they don't they don't have any consequences. There are no consequences. None, zippo zilch. Go and read Glenn Greenwald's book with liberty and justice for some. Well, this guy pushes his own shopping cart at the Safeway. So he's all right with me, Jesus, and you know, I mean, really go back and look at the train wreck. That was Ben Bernanke and The fed back during the global financial crisis, nothing happens. Nothing freaking happens. Do you think anything's going to happen with this absurd media circus with the orange man? If you do, let me know. And I will happily sell you some oceanfront property here in the landlocked Midwest for a couple million dollars. That's what you really for real think this is so much pageantry and insanity. Also, on the Wall Street Journal sort of feeding into this bizarro story that we're getting about the job market and how it's still too hot, it's still robust. Now hiring is slowing, and wages are cooling off, but somehow unemployment is back down again to 3.5%. And I will say, now I have I have have mentioned this on the air before going in places like restaurants and grocery stores and seeing no evidence of a labor shortage, none lines being open, as well as the self checkout, plenty of waiters and waitresses, back of house staff, front of house staff going into like the Dollar General and seeing plenty of cashiers and people stocking shelves. So I'm not going to say that I think it's impossible that labor force participation has ticked up. What I will say is that I think some of these people are over employed. I mean, go and look at the articles about Gen Z poly working, because that's what they have to do. It's not because it's what they want to do, or they're choosing to do it, they're having to do it in order to cope with inflation and make ends meet. So some of these places where the restaurant is fully staffed, the store is fully staffed. There are clearly no gaps in the staffing at these places. I believe it's because those individuals are holding down more than one job. If somebody really and truly is lazy and unmotivated. They're smoking dope all day in grandma's basement, which by the way, I don't think that's the majority of people. I'm not Mitch McConnell, the turtle, okay. If you do have somebody, however, who is like that, they just want to couch surf, they want to go from place to place and they live uh, I don't know if some of you are probably old enough to get the reference but they they live a Jeff Spicoli type of lifestyle. Somebody likes piccoli, they're not going to care about what the economy is doing, they will find somebody to mooch off of and they'll couch surf and they'll go from place to place and they don't care. So I don't think these people that have come back into the job market ever left. I think there are people that are over employed because that's what they have to do. Okay, meanwhile, over on the Wall Street Journal, we find these tech workers say they were hired to do nothing. The byline reads amid layoffs. Former workers in tech are venting about jobs with little to do warning us like pokeymon cards. Pardon the dryer. In this article we find until last year, Madeline Machado 33 years old worked for meta except she says she didn't really work at all. Miss Machado who held a position as a recruiter says that after joining the company in September 2021, she spent much of her time in meetings that didn't accomplish anything. Killa Sopris also have an article I need to publish. I wrote it quite some time ago. It's just been sitting in the drafts, but it's about how incessant meetings are part of the corporate pantomime. Hello, hi, how are you? And that the parent of Facebook and Instagram had too many recruiters and not enough work for them to do. We just don't hire anybody and like we still get paid. She said she was told by other recruiters and a viral Tiktok video documenting her experience. She added that she was paid $190,000 A year and was told she wasn't expected to hire anyone in her first year. Given that she was still learning the ropes, Mehta declined to comment. In recent weeks, other former tech workers have posted similar videos racking up millions of views. They say they collected paychecks from large tech companies without doing much such confessions, which have drawn plenty of criticism online aren't surprising. Executives and industry professionals say tech companies that boomed during the pandemic were flush with cash. Oh, here we go again, keep up Mitch McConnell, flush with cash they say and snapped up workers to build a deep bench and hoard talent from competitors, even if those workers weren't being fully utilized in quote. Yeah, there are so many things about that, that I could say. You mean, I don't I don't know what the cost of living is like where this person is. But if you are he okay. I don't give you advice. I don't tell you what to do. This would just be kind of a helpful hint, a helpful tip, if you will. If you're making almost$200,000 A year and you're not doing jack squat on the job. How long do you think that's going to last? I'm definitely thinking of that scene where cat woman says to Batman, like how long did you think that you could live on so so much and leaves so little for everyone else. Like how long did you think you could make almost 200 grand a year and do nothing? Surely some part of you had to know that it's fun while it lasts. But when it doesn't last anymore, it's not fun. You know, at some point, the band is going to stop playing on that no one's going to pay you two, almost $200,000 ad infinitum to do nothing. But look, I mean, there are tons of people in HR, staffing, recruiting talent acquisition, that are either currently employed and scared, or are already out on the job market. And just as I predicted to you, many of them are setting out shingles. They have never freelanced before, they don't know what wild, wild west type of environment they're signing up for. And they're thinking, well, we'll just go freelance for a while until the market gets better. For some people, maybe that works for some people, it won't, because now that market is saturated. And you have to really work hard to differentiate yourself from everyone else. Because here's the thing, it's all well and good to say I'm too cool for school, because I worked in big tech. Yeah. So have a lot of people that are on the job market right now. And then you're going out in public and admitting I got paid this obscene amount of money. And I did basically nothing. It's not maybe exactly the best PR image for yourself. Not saying it's that person's fault. I'm just saying like, I think that I would keep my mouth shut. If I were in a situation, where are we getting paid obscene amounts of money to do nothing, I think I would probably just carry that to the grave with me and not publicly advertise it. But hey, that's just me. As Dennis Miller has always said, it's just my opinion, and I could be wrong. This also tells me about the shenanigans, the chicanery, the artificially manipulated markets, the bubbles, these things do not happen on accident, please, please wake up, please wake up. These boom bust cycles, recession, depression, bull market, people making obscene amounts of money and then losing it all in a finger snap. It happens on purpose. It does. And then looking at the same people who created the mess, to clean the mess up is really foolish, the FOMO and the Yolo that we saw in 2021. Back in the housing market, as well as the job market. First of all, just like I'm saying with the inflated salary and nothing to do in order to earn that salary, you had to know it wasn't going to last, the overpriced BS houses flying off the market and something would get listed and within 10 minutes, they would already have offers in play and they would act holier than now and high and mighty. Some of those realtors are begging for business. I had one that sent me a really cheesy marketing video the other day and as I sat there shaking my head, I thought back in 2021, that woman wouldn't have given a buyer the time of day. Now she's begging prospective buyers. Hey, is there anything you want to come look at? Is there anything I can do? Hmm, yeah, you could have been nicer to me and not treated me like the gum on the bottom of your shoe back in 2021. Because your girl here has a long memory. So you had to know that wasn't going to last? You had to know. And it's not real. These bubbles are manipulated, they are made to happen. And they benefit these wealthy, ultra wealthy, fat cats. I mean, all you have to do is go look at these Oxfam studies and the information that they present to themselves. They freaking present the information to themselves about themselves at Davos, about how during the pandemic the wealthiest 1% hoarded a bunch of wealth they profited they got lucky. Haha, wink wink. But the average person didn't the average person who is deemed non essential and told to go home and and have good luck didn't when you look at the amount of wealth that was lost during the Great Recession slash global financial crisis, that's the thing. It wasn't really lost. It goes somewhere. This is another point where Gordon Gekko try to tell you well, this isn't made and it isn't lost. It's just transferred from one perception to another. And these fat cats at the top of the pyramid are the ones responsible for making damn sure that it transfers away from your perception and transfers right over to their perception. I watched a video earlier of Whitney Webb talking about Damie Jimon. I'm gonna have to Speak in code here, we're adults, we know what's going on. And it was horrifying. It was one of those things where if this is true, it is horrifying. Now she was commenting on research that she has performed. This is not research that I have performed, I'm not taking any credit for this, I'm not telling you that I agree with it or that it's my same opinion. I'm telling you the information that I heard her say in this video, and what she said was based on her research, the same shadowy organizations and shadowy figures, responsible for Teffrey Tepsteen are also responsible for Damy Jimon. Now being the most powerful Wall Street banker in the country, if that's true, it's terrifying. The same old people get into power over and over again, they ping pong around, sometimes they're in corporate America, sometimes they're at a philanthropic organization, that's a freaking laugh. And sometimes they're in the government. Upside down, back round again. And sideways, they just ping pong back around and back around again. Please just be careful about who you're listening to. and for what reason, if you're sitting there thinking, I just want to plug my fingers into my ears and imagine that there's no way the job market could crash. There's no way that job loss could affect me. I don't know how good of a strategy that is. If you're listening to economists, and talking heads and so called experts, and what they're telling you makes no logical sense. You can sit there as a rational human being and say, this goes against common sense. I can't make this make sense. It's absurd. How can we shed this many jobs and have so many layoffs and still have a 3.5% unemployment rate? Oh, well, it must be true, because any economist said, so if you're still on that train of thought it might be too late. If you have a friend or family member who's still on that train of thought it might be too late. And what I would say to you, again, I don't give you advice, and I won't tell you what to do. This would really be more like a point to ponder, just something to think about if you choose to do so. If you have people in your realm of friends and family that are just tuned out. They're watching cat videos on tick tock, and they don't know anything about the economy. They don't understand how the job market connects to the broader economy and vice versa, which is one of the things I try to do in this podcast and on my blog is to take my expertise in the job market, and help other people understand this is why XY and Z happens or based on years of experience, here's what I see happening next in the job market. And look at how many times I've been vindicated. I wish that wasn't the case, because I've made some pretty dour predictions, but they've come true. If you have a friend or family member that's still out to lunch, as Gordon Ramsay likes to say sometimes on Kitchen Nightmares Have you lost the plot? If you have that person in your life who's lost the plot? In my opinion, you have to think about how you're going to handle that in an sh TF situation. I am not talking about zombies eating your brain. I'm not talking about World War Z. Or Mad Max in the Thunderdome. I'm talking about a friend family member close to you has lost their job. Or maybe everybody in the household that was an adult contributing to the household has lost their jobs all at about the same time. There's no food in the house, they've not prepped and they're looking at you going well. You have a pretty good grasp on things. Can't we come over there and eat at your house and I can't we rent out your back bedroom. Now we're not going to pay you anything. We just want to squat there for a while. And then good luck getting us out. You have to think about those things during the Great Recession. Back in 2009. I will never forget this because I just remember being like Holy Lord. I had a friend who I had not seen in years. We had been in touch here and there electronically, but I had not even laid eyes on this man in years. And he came to me and said that he and his girlfriend wanted to live in my back bedroom rent free for an undetermined length of time. And then after they got back on their feet, they would either continue living in there and pay rent or they would move out. And I thought Are you nuts? I'm gonna let you I haven't seen you in years. And I don't even know the girlfriend at all. I've never met her. And I'm supposedly going to allow the two of you to come and squat in my back bedroom. rent free for an undetermined length of time. Hey, Oh no, to the No, no, no hail to the know, Seattle have difficulty making those kinds of decisions. But it might be a lot more difficult if that's your parent, your child, your sibling, a cousin that you're very close to a best friend. And for the record, I'm not telling you to throw those people out on the street and not do anything for them. The decisions get really difficult when it's like, well, I've done enough for me and my family. But if I start giving all of this stuff away, we're not going to have enough if you're in that situation, may have to make some really tough decisions. And there may be individuals in your life where the most you can do for them is hand them a loaf of bread and some cans of tuna. Or make them some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and pack them kind of sack lunches and sack dinners and say this is the best I can do for you. I remember speaking of the Great Recession, slash global financial crisis was talking to a friend of mine the other night about things that we did and didn't do during that period of time, and flashbacks. We've had to that period of time. And I was talking about a time on Thursday night. It was the Thursday before payday. Thank God payday was the next day. And the only thing I had left in the house to eat, I had some off brand generic Lucky Charms. I don't even remember the name of the cereal. But it was one of those things like magic leprechaun man. You know, they are with generics, like everybody knows what they're talking about. But it's just just enough difference for them to not get sued. It was like magic leprechaun man cereal, and some milk. That was it. So I'm like, okay, I can have this cereal and milk for dinner, and then go to bed. And then when I get up in the morning, I can have the cereal again for breakfast. And then hopefully by lunchtime, my paycheck will have hit the bank, the direct deposit will have hit and I'll be able to get something for lunch. And the place I was working at the time, they had vending machines in the break room, they did not provide anything free other than coffee. But sometimes you might get lucky and like a salesman or somebody that called on the company, a vendor or something like that could bring in like doughnuts or candies or muffins or something I thought I might get lucky, somebody might bring in some free food that I can scrounge around on if I get too hungry between now and lunch. And then at lunch I'll I should have the money in my account to be able to go and buy something to eat. And after work, I can go to the grocery store and buy the groceries for the week because at least I'll have some money to do that. And I stayed on a very strict budget at the grocery store. If something did not match the price that was on the shelf, first of all, call them out on it. I kept track of the prices of everything. And if something rang up funky, I would call them out on it. And most of the time, they would say Well, yeah, if it says it's $2.50 on the shelf, and it's ringing up 350 Here, of course we'll take that dollar off. And I'm haggle about it too. But if for some reason I had miscalculated, then I would put something back. I mean, I know what that's like to be there and be making those decisions with other people looking and judging. Like, oh, great, this person's holding up the line and then budget appropriately. I know what that's like. So if you're in that situation where it's like I have magic leprechaun mane and some milk, and that's enough to get me through dinner tonight and breakfast in the morning until I get paid again, you may not have the resources to share with somebody in your life that's had their head up their rear end. Because in my mind, if somebody is just willfully ignorant, they've done that to themselves. There's only so much you can do to help somebody that doesn't want to be helped. Or somebody who truly is lazy. That's living the Jeff Spicoli lifestyle and they think I'm not going to prep because you're going to prep for me. And then I'm going to be like a werewolf who shows up and takes your stuff. I hope I am wrong. I really do. But I think it's probably a wise idea to have a plan in place. Especially if you already know that you have a friend or a close family member that's kind of a moot anyway. They might get really freaking Moochie on you. If they lose their job, and there's nothing there's nothing in the house. They don't have anything. Depressing topics. pessimistic I know, believe me. I don't really know what else to say. Because I think in my opinion, this jobs market report that we're getting is completely insane and off base. And I'm gonna say it again by the time you're officially told that a crap storm is here. I just think it'll be too late to do anything meaningful at that point. People will probably panic and freak out but they're not going to panic until they're told to panic. They're supposed to stay calm when they're told to stay calm and panic when they're told to panic. By the time some kind of pandemonium or civil unrest breaks out is too damn late. In that situation, you want to have what you need and before you're going to be to ride it out but you don't want to be the Key in the street, you won't be out in the middle of a riot. No, no, no, no. Stay safe, stay sane. And I will see you in the next episode. Thanks for tuning in. If you enjoyed this episode, please take a quick second to subscribe to this podcast and share it with your friends. We'll see you next time.