Saturday Broadcast 7

Saturday broadcast, 7/10 - 7/15.

Key topics:

✔️ ICYMI news.
✔️5.7 million unemployed people were not counted in that June Jobs Report that sounded so good but hey: everyone's doin' great! Also: "maybe remote work is not forever." Warned y'all about that.
✔️Meta is telling coasters and slackers to exit. Warned y'all about that, too... trying to game the system and hippity-hop across the market is not a viable recession survival plan IMO.
✔️Man, some of these media outlets are gonna keep pushing that "11 million open jobs, 3.6% unemployment rate" stats til the bitter end. 😣


Links I discuss in this episode:

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/millions-get-jobs-as-gdp-falls-155824972.html

https://www.linkedin.com/news/story/what-if-remote-work-isnt-forever-5906418/

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/11/millennial-and-gen-zs-days-of-remote-working-could-be-numbered.html

https://causeyconsultingllc.com/2022/06/01/the-great-resistance/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-5d7V4Sbqk

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/12/canoo-walmart-deal-for-4500-vans-sends-ev-stock-jumping.html

https://www.businessinsider.com/google-hiring-targets-slowdown-recession-economic-uncertainty-2022-7

https://nypost.com/2022/07/12/meta-tells-managers-to-exit-employees-who-are-coasting/

https://www.patreon.com/saracausey

https://www.buzzsprout.com/1125110/10898050

https://www.linkedin.com/news/story/new-wave-of-layoffs-fueling-anxiety-4830593/

https://www.linkedin.com/news/story/recruiters-give-gen-z-a-bad-rap-5901690/

Need more? Email me: https://causeyconsultingllc.com/contact-causey/
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Siren courtesy of Pixabay. 

Transcript

0:06

Hello, Hello, and thanks for tuning in. So I am recording this portion of the broadcast on Sunday, July 10. It feels like the summer is moving on. And I'm glad of that. That is not a complaint. We've been dealing with the dog days of summer basically since the beginning of June, it got so hot so fast. Then on top of that, we've had this flash drought, so it went from being rainy and muddy to being dry, like catastrophically dry, almost overnight, and I am done. Done and over it by by summer, I'm ready for Halloween and sweater weather and you'll be able to walk outside without spontaneous combustion. That would be nice. So to give a bird's eye view of what I'm seeing in my local Walmart, some of the same areas that have been picked over not restocked very well. Kind of dicey. Same thing. I'm still seeing pallets everywhere, just random pallets of stuff. And to the point where it's difficult to even make a lane change so to speak, to get from one aisle to another or one part of the store to another you may have to walk around a lot of pallets with boxes just stacked sky high. So I'm still finding that pretty weird. The section where they keep pain relievers, very picked over. Now things like sports rubs, icy hot, been gay, that kind of thing. They still had plenty of that. And they still had plenty of Aleve naproxen sodium type products. But the ibuprofen and the Tylenol were way, way picked over, I was excited, because I was able to find a refill of my Tylenol eight hour extended release for arthritis. I don't have arthritis per se, but I have a couple of old injuries that cause bursitis and a couple of joints. And when those flare up, I am really glad to have that eight hour extended release because I can take it at bedtime and then actually sleep I don't wake up with any joint pain. So one suggestion is just keep an eye on things like that if you rely on any type of over the counter pain relief, if you really like to have Advil around for headache, or you need something like what I'm describing for joint pain. My again, this is just my opinion, not advice of any kind. I personally would not want to be left without medication when I really needed it. So it might not be a bad idea to keep your finger on the pulse of what's going on at your local store. The feminine hygiene aisle same thing as it has been pads were their tampons were difficult to find. They had restocked the cheap, like $1 A bottle shampoo, but there was no $1 A bottle conditioner, which I thought was kind of weird. There wasn't a lot of poultry items out there, it looked like there was a decent amount of beef largely because it's just so expensive. It looked like people were trying to do their best to choose items that were actually affordable. I was excited because they had some rolls of ground turkey that were 250 each. So it looked like people were skipping the extremely expensive, you know, like 40 or$50 a pop steaks and trying to go for things that were more economical, which is not surprising. There was not a lot of lunch meat. I noticed the cheese section looked okay that the lunch meats were pretty picked over sports drink aisle is back to looking like a warzone. Again, with things being disheveled. Maybe you can find what you want. Maybe you can't. That's not super surprising. You know, they did have it restocked pretty well for the Fourth of July weekend. But it looks dicey again, with this intense heat, you know, especially those of us involved in farming or agriculture that have to be outside at different points in time during the day. Someone who works outside all the time, like in construction, for example. It goes without saying that those types of people are going to need a lot of water and a lot of Gatorade a lot of hydration just to make it through these days. And I was talking in the last broadcast about how we had a day where the heat index here was like 112 down south of us it was 117 That's just insane. That is an insane amount of heat. The Produce Section is still iffy there were plenty of bananas, the like fresh vegetables where they have the lettuce, the cabbage, the carrots, etc. That looked really picked over. I was able to find some fresh peaches and plums, the peaches were not priced too bad. I think they may have been from a local vendor, but the plums were incredibly expensive. I think I wound up paying four bucks for a bag of small plums and I was like I better we're we're going to enjoy the ever loving heck out of these plums because come on four bucks. Now this is not a supply chain or logistics issue but I noticed three separate people that seemed to be quite impaired, quite intoxicated. I did not smell alcohol. I don't think they were intoxicated on alcohol. But they were clearly intoxicated on and something just from the behavior that I observed. And there was a guy that came up behind me and was just lurking. It looked like he was high on his mind, and he was just lurking. And so I turned around to him and I said, if you need something, then and I'm in your way, then you need to speak up and say something, but you don't come behind somebody and lurk like this. And he just kinda like halfway smiled and acted like he was totally zoned out of his mind. And I'm like, there's too much heat in the streets. You know, people are people are crazy right now. They're upset about the economy. They're upset about inflation. They're upset about the fact that we've had like unrelenting Hades eat. For all of these weeks just being given no relief from it. This is not the time this is not the time to go somewhere and act a fool or to get stoned out in public. I don't know what people are thinking. If we go over to Yahoo Finance today, we see headlines such as millions get jobs as GDP falls, and stock market. Here's what usually happens after a 20% plunge. How COVID may lead more manufacturers to the US. Wells Fargo sees a recession hitting the US in mid 2023. We are in a recession longtime bowl Cathy wood is warning investors about the big problem in today's economy. The Fed braces as another big US inflation number looms. Homeownership just got 5% cheaper, as mortgage rates fall off a cliff. I'm out millions of dollars 1000s of crypto investors have their life savings frozen as Voyager files for bankruptcy protection. So as you know, I have not been burying my thesis here. I personally believe we're already in a recession. I don't think we're twiddling our thumbs waiting for a recession to happen, or that maybe it'll happen sometime next summer. Who knows? I think we're already there. And there are various theories about the nature of this jobs report. And what the economists are hoping to accomplish. One theory that I've heard is that the Fed wants to make everything look sunshine and roses to justify their rate hikes because they're going to have to do more interest rate hikes in order to cool off inflation. And so they want to make the justification of Look, everything is still good. Look at all of these jobs that got added. Look at how hot the labor market still is. We're going to be okay. I've also heard that it won't be until after the midterms Come what may, regardless of which party wins and which party loses. It won't be until after the midterms are over with that we're really told. Yeah. Okay, so here's what's actually going on unemployment is a lot higher than what we've been telling y'all in here. Yeah, we are in a recession. So we're gonna go ahead and let y'all know that now, at the risk of sounding a broken record, by the time some talking head or political pundit tells you, we are officially in a recession, we are officially in an economic poop storm. Unemployment is officially too high. It's too late. I'm also hearing some whispers on the wind, if you will, that one of the reasons for this manipulated data is because there are individuals working more than one job. And to take it a step further, there are some people on the interwebs who say that people who are not working or not working, whereas the people who are working, are working more than one job to try to make ends meet or to try to squirrel money away for whatever is about to happen in the economy. And that's an interesting theory truly. And that is more in alignment with what I am seeing in the market, then everything is great. People are just moving and grooving and you can just job hop across the market forever. Yeah. If you go to the Bureau of Labor Statistics website, I will drop a link to this news release so that you can see it for yourself. It's called the employment situation June 2022. So we're not talking about some sort of fringe left or fringe right reporting service, we're talking about the bls.gov website. Under the heading household survey data we find among the unemployed both the number of permanent job losers at 1.3 million in June, and the number of persons on a temporary layoff at 827,000 change little over the month. These measures are a little different from their values in February 2020. In June, the number of long term unemployed those jobless for 27 weeks or more, was essentially unchanged at 1.3 million. This measure is 215 1000 higher than in February 2020, the long term unemployed accounted for 22.6% of all unemployed persons in June. The number of persons not in the labor force who currently want a job was essentially unchanged at 5.7 million in June. This measure is above its February 2020 level of 5 million. These individuals were not counted as unemployed, because they were not actively looking for work. During the four weeks preceding the survey, or they were unavailable to take a job. They were not counted as unemployed. So you have 5.7 million individuals saying, hey, my hand is in the air. I want a job, but they were not counted in this survey. Wow. That remember, if you zoom over to LinkedIn, and you read their news, you're gonna learn that there are two open jobs for every one unemployed person. Why would I read something like that? These people have no excuse. They should just be able to go find a job lickety split any huh? Is any of this passing the sniff test for you? Because for me, it isn't. So it's Monday now and on CNBC, we have headlines such as homebuyers are canceling deals at the highest rate since the beginning of the pandemic. Yet on the noon news today, where I live in the Midwest, we're still being told that in this area of the country, we are still in a housing shortage. There are still buyers just clamoring for houses to buy not enough sellers. And this time they opted to interview a realtor who did not appear to be a 14 year old high school kid. But nevertheless, I don't really believe what is being spouted on on that broadcast. Sorry, I don't in looking at the inventory that's out there. Nobody's wanting it. So I'm sort of like, who live feed like Jerry Seinfeld. Who are these people? Who are these buyers that are supposedly out in the streets clamoring for more inventory. Twitter shares sink after Elon Musk terminates $44 billion dollar deal. Europe on high alert as Russia temporarily halts gas flows via major pipeline. Eu to raise inflation forecasts amid fears of a permanent cut to Russian gas. Stocks slide to start the week as Wall Street prepares for earnings season to kick off. Over on Yahoo Finance, we see tech sinks, dollar rallies ahead of earnings and inflation data. Stocks were lower Monday with the dollar hitting multi decade highs against the euro ahead of key inflation and earnings data out later this week. We shall see Musk to fight Twitter in a court that does not defer to billionaires. Is there a court that doesn't defer to billionaires let me know when you guys find it. Goldman Sachs economists doubt the US is already in recession. There's also an article titled The US is lacking a key aspect of any recession. So let's click on that. In that article under the heading jobs growth in this economy, we read while there have been signs the job market has been cooling, it certainly does not reflect an economic recession. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics Data released Friday, US employers in June added a healthy 372,000 which was considerably stronger than the 265,000 expected by economists people are doing great. total employment stood at 151.98 0 million, which is up 21.46 7 million from its low in April 2020. It's now just barely below its pre pandemic level of one point. No Excuse me. 152.504. There's some big numbers for you million in February 2020. And quote, yeah, as I mentioned in yesterday's portion of this broadcast, by the Bureau of Labor Statistics own admission, there's 5.7 million unemployed people who were not counted in that June jobs report. But people are doing great. You know, there's also not a trend wink wink of people who are already employed trying to become more so employed because they know that an economic poopoo storm is coming. They want to have some extra money in the bank. They want to have extra means of taking care of themselves and their family or they're trying to make ends meet because of the inflation that we're facing. But just remember that jobs report tells you that everything is peaches and cream, sunshine and roses. On Monday afternoon LinkedIn published another article that I put into the category of okay, well, better late than never I guess. The article is titled What if remote work isn't forever? Hmm huh? Strokes long deviled beard thoughtfully. It's almost like somebody should have been on the airwaves and on their blog warning you that corporate America wants you back but insane. In the blurb editor Jake Perez writes, the remote work era might be closing and it could be in the interest of both employers and employees to return to the office full time notes work quake author Steve catagen. The development serves as a warning sign to millennial and Gen Z workers, most of whom want flexibility, but catagen argues they could stand to gain most from post pandemic return to Office plans by fostering more intentional connections and a stronger sense of commitment, while potentially blazing a trail for a new work model and quote, that is so full of corporate doublespeak and jargon wow, wow must have a headache from reading it. Apparently this LinkedIn article references another one that we find over at CNBC titled millennials and Gen Z, your days of remote work could be numbered, says author. Now I'll be honest with you, I've never heard of this guy, Steve catagen. Apparently we learn in the CNBC article that he is LinkedIn first chief HR officer. Mm hmm. So we might do well to remember that LinkedIn is owned by Microsoft. And in my opinion, that's all this is just my opinion. And I could be wrong. Like Dennis Miller has always said it is only my opinion. And I could be wrong. I personally don't know how much I would trust, an outlet owned by a giant global conglomerate, huge corporate America billion dollar company. I you know, I just don't know how well I would trust an outlet owned by that platform to be giving us fair and unbiased journalism. I could be wrong. Maybe that's just me. Maybe I'm just a crusty old cynic. I don't know. In this CNBC article catagen is quoted as saying that 20 to 35, particularly the 20 to 2930 year old age is really frustrated, are they their sense of commitment to an organization where they haven't met people in person they haven't been around is much less than the people who are spending time together as we were before, he said, I'm going to go into Michael Corleone Godfather Part Two mode here, whenever Connie brings up Merle and is like, Oh, we want to get married, and I'm here to beg some money from you. And Michael's like, look, I don't know, this mural. I don't know what he lives on. I'm gonna say the same thing about this catagen person, I don't, I don't really know anything about him. I don't know what he lives on. It's not my goal to get on this broadcast and make any kind of commentary about him. As a person, I don't know, I don't care to know it's not my business. Frankly, I disagree with what he is saying. I disagree with his messaging. If you read my blog with any frequency at all, then you already know, I have debunked this myth that these young people are out in the streets just clamoring, just begging for RTO. They're just so sad and upset and butthurt that they're not Bunsen seed at a cube farm. There's a blog post I published at the beginning of June called the great resistance. And I want to read a little bit of that for you now. One statistic they mentioned is very telling and I want to call special attention to it. Younger people 18 to 24 year olds are the most reluctant at 71% to return to the workplace full time. Please remember that whenever these goofballs tell you that RTO is important for the youngsters they are just clamoring for in office interactions. No, they are not. So stop peddling that BS nonsense. Okay. Okay. So we've made it to Tuesday now and yesterday, the New York City Emergency Management Department dropped a video on YouTube called nuclear preparedness PSA with captions. This is not a joke, I will drop a link to it in the write up so that you can see this video for yourself. And at the beginning of the video, the person says something like so there's been a nuclear attack. Don't ask me how or why but just know that the big one has hit. And I'm sitting here like but I kind of do want to ask you how and why like, what is it that these emergency management departments know that is not being shared with us? I mean, is this really just sort of a hey, this is good information to have. You're probably Never gonna need it wink wink, or what? Meanwhile, I feel like the average person in America is consumed with what they're going to buy on Amazon Prime Day. And I'm sitting here sort of scratching my head like, Yeah, but I mean, shouldn't we be a little bit more concerned about the possibility of world war three? I'm less concerned about what's going to be on sale at Amazon and more concerned about why the need was felt to release a PSA on Hey, the big one, hit two. But here's how you cope with it. That's worrisome to me call me crazy, but I think there's probably more to that story. If we go over to CNBC today, we find some more good news. Founders of bankrupt crypto hedge fund three AC go missing, as investors try to recoup assets. Stocks, teeter as traders brace for earnings wait growth fears. Microsoft cuts small percentage of employees as new fiscal year begins. But remember over on LinkedIn, which is owned by Microsoft, by the way, we have been told repeatedly that there are two open jobs for every one unemployed person. 70% of Americans think a recession is coming. Here's what they are doing to prepare. I would interject as I've said many times before, in my opinion, I'm not an economist. I don't sit on the World Economic Forum. I'm not a power broker. In my opinion, the recession is not coming. It's already here and people who are sitting back waiting going Lou, will it won't it maybe I don't know. I feel like those people are already behind the eight ball. Sorry, I do. Shares of Eevee maker canoe are surging after Walmart agrees to buy 4500 electric delivery vans. Hmm, let's explore that. So if we click on this article, the TLDR key points read. Walmart will buy at least 4500 and up to 10,000 of canoes electric delivery vans, the vans are expected to go into service in 2023 shares of canoe are up more than 70% After the news. Let's read a little more. Walmart is leaning on 1000s of stores to deliver online purchases quickly and at lower costs and compete with Amazon and online rival known for its speed. It has rolled out and expanded e commerce services including in home, which delivers groceries directly to customers fridges and express delivery which drops purchases at shoppers doors in two hours or less. Unlimited home delivery of groceries is also a key perk of Walmart plus an annual membership service that the big box retailer wants to grow. But to expand those services, it needs more delivery vans and home is powered by an all electric fleet going to scoot down a little and continue to read. The big box retailer plans to use electric vans from all three companies for IN HOME and other local deliveries it intends to increase the availability of in home from 6 million to 30 million households by the end of this year, as it adds major metros like Los Angeles and Chicago. This shift also comes at a time when fuel is weighing on Walmart's profitability and making online deliveries more expensive. The company said last week in a memo that it would change some suppliers or excuse me, it would charge some suppliers new fees to transport goods to its warehouses and stores and quote, you know, I've been told by several people off the record that some of the stores that used to be open 24/7 will never return to 24/7 coverage it that will just never happen. Partly due to security issues partly due to supply chain and labor force concerns. But the days of the 24/7 Mega shopping conglomerate stores are over with according to them. And I think news like this to some degree supports that idea. I also would conjecture that it supports my theory that big retail is not predicting that you're going to be at home that much anymore. They're not predicting that you're going to be on your peloton exercise bike because you can't go to the gym. You're not going to need devices in every room because the kids are at home doing distance learning and all of the adults are having to do work from home and be remote at the house. And you're not going to be binge watching Netflix. It also sounds like they're counting on you needing to have groceries delivered, whether it's because your back button seated the cube farm or because there's another lockdown. I don't know. I'm purely making theories here and only reflecting my opinion no kind of advice or expert analysis here. I'm just trying as best I can to connect the dots because in my mind or why would they be expecting an uptick in people needing things from online or needing to have their groceries delivered? Well, okay, one possibility as the store will be closed down. It just won't be open to the public. You know, there was that DHS bulletin saying expect violence expect terrorism, whether it's foreign or domestic. Now we have the Enlightened The emergency management's telling everybody do doop doop, here's what you do in the case of a nuclear event, and I'm like, wait a minute what? So there are a lot of different ingredients bubbling up in this stew, and frankly, none of them seem good to me. Over on Yahoo Finance, we see data already out of date. White House downplays CPI expectations with gas prices tumbling and tentative hopes that inflation may have peaked. You'd think the White House would be optimistic when it comes to upcoming price data? Not so much. Mm hmm. Yeah. Almost like somebody should have been on a podcast telling you that by the time you're told something officially it's already too late. Now the White House is saying the data is already out of date. So Hmm. It's been on our thinking caps there as to why that might be. housing experts says homebuyers are hitting the brakes. Oil crushed dollar rallies as traders I Euro parody Netflix in talks with Hollywood studio for new ad tear. PepsiCo still sees unrelenting inflation, crypto crash leaves sports with nickels on the dollar. Yikes. Over on the glorious side panel of LinkedIn for their news, we have New York City's newest pest, the man hat ant. Good grief. New Wave of layoffs, fueling anxiety. Oh, but remember, remember, there's two open jobs. Legit open jobs for every one unemployed person? Did work from home kill the power lunch? God, you know, I see stuff like that. And it just makes me want to barf. I may have to do an episode about this very thing over on my Patreon I'm not sure I don't miss the so called Power lunches. I never enjoyed having them. For me anytime that I had a quote Power Lunch with someone if I enjoyed it, it was in spite of the milieu and not because of it. And and I Hey, I'm in business for myself. I can say whatever I want now. That's how I honestly feel about it. So I felt about it then how I feel about it now. One of the responders writes yet another example of how young people are missing out post COVID. business lunches remain a critical piece and building relationships. They don't have to be fancy, but they need to be live. I encourage all young people looking to build a career. Invite someone to lunch, it will pay you back many times over. Yeah, I'm sure it will. I'm sure it will. And so if things close down again, where are you going to go? If you're living paycheck to paycheck? How are you going to pay for the lunch? Why is it that we need to resort to bribery in order to build a relationship with someone just you know no pun intended, but that's just some food for thought. We also have Heathrow imposes passenger limits. peloton slams brakes on bike building. Another round of layoffs at hop in gap CEO out amid sales slump. Twitter staff says give a tweet about us. And finally at the very bottom we have an argument for optimism. It's Wednesday now and over on CNBC we have headlines such as inflation Rose 9.1%. In June, even more than expected as consumer pressures intensify. Dow dips 100 points stocks gyrate after hot inflation report. Treasury yields slide as traders way recession risk after hotter than expected inflation report wasn't unexpected. Who who would say that it was unexpected. See, this goes to my point of by the time you are officially told, Hey everybody, we're in a recession or Hey, everybody, we're in 1970s era stagflation. You've waited too late. You have waited too late. In my opinion. US calls on Russia to halt forced deportation of Ukrainians. Inflation reaches highest level since 1981. With no relief in sight says economist probably worse than it's been since 81. If I'm being direct, do I think that inflation is 9.1%? No, I think it's much higher. I think 9.1% is just all they're willing to admit to. Oils price decline may be short lived. Chevron CEO says market remains tight. Go puff cuts jobs, delivery startup go puff cuts 10% of its global workforce and closes 76 us warehouses. But remember, over on LinkedIn, we have learned that there are two open jobs for every one unemployed person. Bob Bob. Over on Yahoo Finance, it's a similar scene. Stocks turn mixed after shock inflation data. What a shock. Google joins list tech companies hitting the brakes on hiring. Inflation stays red hot in June. Consumer prices rise 9.1% We're in a generational bear market. Small Business has never felt worse about the future. Great Moderation in markets is over says Black Rock. Food costs soar as White House Calls the prices too high. Do you think they're too high? Over on the LinkedIn side panel we find inflation hits new peak. Workers flee from New York City jobs. Starbucks closing unsafe stores, new wave of layoffs, fueling anxiety. Restaurants are being blackmailed. By by beanbags, the desk is back. memo suggests mettam might cut jobs. Hmm. Over on Business Insider, there is an article about Google that goes into just a little bit more depth it's titled Google pulls back hiring in face of economic uncertainty. The little TLDR bullet points underneath read. Google has cut back its hiring plans for the rest of the year insider has learned the company has reduced the allocated headcount given to some orcs. The move is not a hiring freeze, but is likely to slow progress across some projects. One person has said Google has pulled back hiring across some of its divisions and quote, okay, so call it what you will. And the to me this feels a lot like playing semantics and using jargon and spin. It's not a hiring freeze, wink wink wink. We're just going to cut back we're just going to pull back on that hiring a rose by any other name. Okay. On the New York Post, we read meta exec tells managers to exit workers who are coasting and failing. In this article we read Facebook parent meta is reportedly telling its managers to force out laggard employees who are coasting and failing the company as it grapples with slowing revenue growth and the increasing threat of a recession. The stark directive came from Maha Sabha met his vice president of remote presence who told managers they had until 5pm, local time Monday to identify workers who quote need support. If a direct report is coasting or a low performer they are not who we need. They are failing this company Saba said in a post on an on metas internal messaging platform according to the information. As a manager you cannot allow someone to be net neutral or negative for meta. Saba noted that the manager should move to exit people who are unable to get on track. It's unclear if Saba or metas upper management have set a timeframe in which workers could be ousted. sabhas instructions for managers surfaced about two weeks after meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg admitted that he wanted to raise expectations for workers in order to cut ties with those who could not meet the higher standard and quote, hmm, this is another prediction I've made that is coming true. This is another instance of me trying to ring the alarm bell to wake people up only to be proven right. Would that it were not so but here we are. On July 4, I released a bonus episode on this podcast called housing market job market where I talked about the parallels between Excuse me, please, I'm trying to lose my voice today I talked about the parallels between what's happening and how the balance of power is shifting in the housing market, and how the same thing is going on right now in the job market. One of the bullet points I put in the write up is, if no one has ever told you that there may be times in life when you got to work a job you dislike in order to have a salary and benefits well wake up up up up. In my humble opinion this downturn is going to really separate the relevance from the social media panderers and I stick by that. Over on my Patreon channel, I published a blog on June 12. Titled gaming the system is not a recession survival plan. I'm going to read a little bit from that blog post for you now. And I thought man, I really wish I could get that many people to engage with the episodes I record about waking the hell up and getting your house in order. Getting ready for recession getting ready for a deep market contraction, getting ready for higher unemployment rates getting ready for the great resignation to not last forever to not rely on job hopping instead of self improvement as a means of all the time being able to get a raise. But I have a theory here. I think that people are interested in ways to game the system. And if we do go into a deep recession or something maybe as bad as what we saw in the 2008 global financial crisis. If we have an event like that, again, I feel like people whose game plan to survive revolves around gaming the system and quiet quitting showing up but and see that the digital pan Opticon and trying to calculate the absolute bare minimum to not get fired. Those people are playing a really dangerous game. Now here we are. Okay, now, here we are. One month after I published that post on Patreon you're being told that the people at meta are saying if some When is coasting are there a low performer they are not who we need and there's the door. So, my friends, if you're a recession Survival Plan revolves around hippity hop hop hopping all over the job market and hoping you get a 20% raise every time you do that, or thinking, well, I'll get a job. I'll go ahead, I'll play the game all RTO and I'll sit there and a polo shirt and khakis and just play pretend I'll play pretend that I'm working and play pretend that I'm being productive. And I'm sure I'll be all right. Especially in a large company, I can just sort of blend into the scenery and not be found out. Well, meta is telling you otherwise, I've been telling you otherwise for quite some time. Now. At some point, ignorance is not going to be a valid excuse anymore. It's just not. So in my opinion, this is a really fortuitous Time to wake up up. Ah, so we've made it to Thursday. Over on CNBC, we have headlines such as diamond rips fed stress test as a terrible way to run financial system after his bank halts buybacks. JP Morgan Chase earnings fell 28% After building reserves for bad loans bank suspends buybacks. Oh, but remember, it was not that long ago that over on the Wall Street Journal, we were being told about these global conglomerates that were going to hand out bonuses and pay raises to employees because of what a great fiscal year they had last year. Something seems a bit contradictory here, does it not? Down slumps nearly 200 points as traders worry about larger rate hikes and the JP Morgan earnings slide. Fed Governor Waller expects point seven five percentage point hike but open to a larger one. Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi but don't say that Russian Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi says he will resign as Rome's coalition government collapses. So also what's up with this Bo Jo is out. Now the Italian Prime Minister says he's resigning. The president of Sri Lanka has resigned after he fled the country and went to Singapore. Like something is definitely going on here in the world of geopolitics how inflation can both hurt and help consumers. According to economists. Wholesale Prices shoot up near record 11.3% in June on surge in energy costs. Overall on Yahoo Finance, it's a similar scene. Stocks sink at market open as diamond warns of negative consequences. Very high odds inflation will be higher at year end says investor. housing rent prices rose at the fastest pace since 1986. In June celcius files for bankruptcy. Coffee visits drop as record high inflation takes hold. Google CEO sends worrying warning about the economy. Over on the side panel of LinkedIn today we see fed moles blockbuster rate hike, crypto giant files for bankruptcy. Shake up at Victoria's Secret. Recruiters give Gen Z a bad rap. New Wave of layoffs fueling anxiety. jobless claims highest since November. Want workers to our to crank up the AC Good grief. So when we click on jobless claims highest since November, we read first time claims for unemployment benefits. I've hit their highest level since November as companies across multiple sectors announced layoffs and hiring slowdowns. Initial unemployment filings rose by 9000 to 244,000. Last week, According to the Labor Department data led by 10,000 claims in New York despite the rise analysts said the labor market remains strong. Of course they did. There were more than 11 million job openings at the end of May about two job to job openings for every unemployed person in quote. Holy Lord, they are going to push that till the bitter end, aren't they? 11 million job openings 3.6% unemployment rate to two open jobs for every unemployed person. It's almost like those terrible videos of somebody that's been taken hostage and the hostage takers give them a script to read and so they're standing there scared to death going 11 million job openings to open jobs for everyone unemployed person. Unemployment rate is still 3.6% Oh, and I'm like who still believes that? who still believes that? It makes no sense. Over on the article recruiters give Gen Z a bad rap. In my opinion. We just find clickbait okay, this is the kind of thing that gets people riled up. The Djinns ears feel the need to defend themselves and their peers. People of older generations feel the need to weigh in whether it's in defense of Gen Z or it's not, meanwhile is a Gen X or they said all the same things Without us, you're spoiled. You're entitled you don't want to pay your dues. You don't want to work hard. Back in my day, we had to walk to school uphill both ways in the snow with no shoes. I feel like this has probably just been the complaint that older generations have had about the younger ones since the dawn of time. In the blurb for this article, we read Gen Z is entering the workforce, our bedeviling recruiters, who happen to be job hopping at high rates themselves, Cal Sopris. The hire say that managing the expectations of young people has added to the stress of operating in an historically tight labor market. Well, there's that again, it's a recent college graduate asking for $90,000 to start who doesn't want to go into an office and is asking for unlimited paid time off one told Bloomberg. For recruiters who usually aren't paid unless someone they place begins a job the frequency with which some candidates can also change their minds and multiple offers is taking a toll. Bosses should consider offering the most flexible office and vacation terms possible to succeed and hiring recruiters say in quote. Yeah, I may hop over on Patreon at some point and do a more thorough analysis of this with some commentary. I don't know. As I said to me, it mostly just seems like clickbait, let's, let's blame. Let's let's blame those youngsters Darnit. They just don't want to work. Meanwhile, it's like, there's so many things going on. You know, I've called it a toxic stew before of all of these different ingredients going in and bubbling up, and what the possible outcomes are, and none of which seemed good. To me. It's like instead of worrying about what Gen Z thinks, and no offense, if you're a young blood listening to this, but instead of worrying about what Gen Z thinks, you know, I don't know maybe we should be thinking about what if World War Three breaks out? What if we have a nuclear attack? What if there's a food shortage and a famine? What if there's a water shortage, you know, Lake Mead is drying up? They're finding dead bodies, which is creepy AF. The part of the Midwest where I am, is having a flash drought, it is so dry here. It's insane. It is absolutely insane. But then in other parts of the country, you have flash flooding. And I think in parts of like Virginia or West Virginia, because of the tremendous amount of water houses have been swept away, and there are people who have gone missing that are still not yet accounted for. That's crazy. I mean, absolutely crazy. So to me, when I'm thinking about things like all of this turmoil in the geopolitical spectrum, what if we have world war three? What if there's a food shortage or famine? What if there's a water shortage? What if the economy collapses, and we have something even worse than the Great Recession of 2008 to 2010? I sort of feel like those big picture issues are a hell of a lot more important than some kind of Gen Z clickbait. Nevertheless, I will give you a brief analysis of this my opinion only. And that's all it is, as Dennis Miller has always said, it's only my opinion, and I could be wrong. One problem here is that if you're still doing contingency based recruiting, where you don't get paid, unless you actually have a candidate who starts the job, and that candidate stays for at least 90 days, while we will we well, what are you thinking? I firmly agree with Upwork slogan that an hour work should be an hour paid. If you're still out there working and working and working and not getting paid for it. How are you making it? How in the hell are you making it in this economy with all of the inflation one of the reasons why my first iteration of self employment failed and failed hard, it went splat to kaboom at the bottom of the Grand Canyon is because I was doing the contingency based BS. It was feast or famine. And I've used Gary Stoll bowls analogy before about space dust. If most or all of what you're working on evaporates into nothingness, and it just becomes space dust, that's your life. It also makes it really freaking hard to pay your bills every month. So if you're still doing that kind of work, I would just ask you why. Now, this is not advice. It's just an op ed, I'm not telling you go into the office today and quit your job. I would just ask you why like, what is it that you're getting out of that? How are you feeding your family? How are you taking care of yourself? Now in terms of people wanting 90 grand to start no office, unlimited PTO, this is a case of supply and demand. All right, plain and simple. The value of something is what the market will bear. So let's say I put a house on the market for 500 Grant. No takers, so I reduced it to 450 No takers, reduced it to 400. No takers, started to sweat it out started to get panicky so I reduced it to 300 Still no takers. I got even more panicky and sweaty so I reduced it to 200 and then I finally had a buyer that said Yes, I believe this is a $200,000 house and I will pay you that money for it. offer accepted and the deal closed. Well, I don't have a$500,000 house anywhere except in my own mind the The value of somebody is what the market will bear. So if somebody came up and said, I will give you $200,000, then in fact, I had a $200,000 house, not one for half a million. And I think some of these youngsters are going to learn that lesson the hard way. Okay, I'll hold out and say I want 90 grand with work from home and unlimited PTO, anytime I don't want to be here, I don't have to. And then when that doesn't happen for them, when nobody decides to make their dream come true, they're gonna have to come back down to reality. I don't want to get hate mail. I'm just telling you the truth. And if we continue to get squeezed, you know, it feels like a Python has got a hold of us, we get a little breath in us. And then we get squeezed by the economy again, in unless that they do have you know, mom or grandma that's willing to let them move into the basement and just kick around for a while with no rent being due and feeding them clothing them making sure they have shelter and water and all that. At some point. Some of these people are going to get real, as Martin crane would say they need to take a bite out of reality sandwich and they will do so. But in my mind from a recruiting perspective, what you don't do is go into BS contingency based staffing in my opinion, and then sit and be moan the market nobody wants to work and these people have such high expectations. Well, why in the hell? Are you working for free? Ask yourself that question before you be submerged an entire generation of people who may have unrealistic expectations. Let's face it, the market will take care of that. Don't worry. If you think corporate America is worried about the common man or the common woman out on the street, I beg to freakin differ. It can that economy can get real cold real fast. Okay, that's supply and demand is going to take care of that situation. To me, the bigger question is why on earth? Are you still working on a contingency basis? Not financial advice, just me asking you the question, why would you still be doing that? Okay, we've made it to Friday. I am so glad still seeing some of the same things going on in stores locally. Some of the overhead lights being turned off air conditioning feeling as though it's barely there. We're just completely non existent. You walk in and just get hit by a wall of heat. So I think maybe in a lot of places people are just doing the best that they can under the circumstances. It is still so incredibly hot here and then next week, we're supposed to have this heat dome as if it hasn't been bad enough already. I think we're gonna have some days they're like 100 810 As the air temperature. So what the heat index will be, I don't know, but I am prepared for it to be truly terrible. Over on CNBC, we have headlines such as dow pops more than 600 points in relief rally Friday but closes with weekly losses. Earnings season will be tough as inflation erodes margins, Barclays says. Citigroup tops profit estimates as bank benefits from rising interest rates, shares surged. 13% Ivana Trump died from accident blunt impact injuries, New York Medical Examiner rules. So this is also strange, right? We have these in terms of geopolitics or individuals are sort of on the fringe of politics. And we had the OPEC secretary general who died at the age of 63 arabe was killed. Bo Jo has resigned. The Italian Prime Minister has resigned now somehow Ivana Trump who I think was only like 73 has died from some sort of accident. It's it seems to be a very strange world right now, does it not? Over on Yahoo Finance, we find stocks surge to cap week as retail inflation data temper rate fears. Okay, Biden's approval rating has bottomed out. Musk doesn't have a leg to stand on. Tech analysts says why gap is a $5 stock back to school spending to reach record Deloitte, Bank of America slashes market forecast sees mild recession. Okay, right under that we have the worst bear market in my lifetime. Here's why Jim Rogers thinks stocks will decline for a long time. So what to make of all this? Well, for one thing, it does make sense that back to school spending would be reaching a record high. For one thing, everything that you need for the kids is so much higher than it was in previous years by just ipso facto, you're going to be spending more money to just get normal run of the mill things. Also, a lot of kids are not going to be on distance learning anymore. They are going back but in seat to the school. That's just the way it is. You know, I've been on here warning you that in my opinion, based on what I'm seeing. I theorize that big retail kind of knows that people are not going to be at home the way that they have been. Adults are going to be back in an office and kids are going to be back in a classroom. And that's just going to be what it is. I could be wrong on that. That's just reading the tea leaves what I'm seeing happening. Over on the side panel for LinkedIn, we find Shopify pulls offers and internships. Offices struggle with PTO tsunami, hate inflation, blah Millennials Okay, um, you know, and I'm not even going to click on that. This is just like the blame Gen Z BS that we saw the other day. This is clearly clickbait and I'm not even gonna go there. A new way to play Wordle Okay, yours, honey Pepsi shrunk the snacks. Our pay raises too little too late. Probably. Amazon calls own brand products and our gas stations running on empty. Over on CBS News, there's an article today titled, car repossessions are surging a troubling sign. Yeah, I would say so. You know, I'm going to double down on all of the predictions that I have been making, my mind has not been changed by any of the fluff and unicorns and sunshine and roses, and weird mixed messaging that we're seeing in the news, if anything, you know, getting weird mixed messages, and having people repeat the same statistics. And the same talking points over and over again, that makes me more suspicious than anything, labor shortage, labor shortage, 11 million open jobs, to open jobs for every one person 3.6% unemployment rate. It's like when you're hearing the same BS, in my opinion, statistics on every platform, it's like, but wait a minute, especially when that just does not sync up with what you are seeing in real time. It would be like if somebody said, Hey, look, all of the supply chain issues are fixed. Now. Meanwhile, I still see fronting I still see empty shelves, I still walk into stores and have to go without a particular item because it's just not there. So I'm like, wait a minute, what? What's the same thing out in the job market? And I think that by the time I know, I said, I'm a broken record everybody, I get it. But by the time, John Q Public, by the time the average person out on the street goes, Oh, no, unemployment is high, the great resignation is over, I don't think I'm going to be able to Job hop all over God's green earth and get more money each time. I don't know how to handle this, by the time that the average person wakes up and has that realization. It's too late. You know, I would say the same thing, quite frankly, with the supply chain. If people walk into the grocery store one day, and everything is clamped down, and rationed, or there's just frankly, a lot of things that aren't available anyway. How are they going to react to that? I mean, I remember how people behaved during COVID When individuals would get into fights over toilet paper. You know, people were ready to like commit murder in the stores over things like toilet paper and Clorox bleach and sanitizing wipes. It became like Lord of the Flies over TP. So when you juxtapose that with, how would someone behave if that was food and water? To me? That's a scary possibility. I hope that none of that comes to pass. I hope that all of these predictions about food shortage and famine, I hope that the crisis is averted. And we never have to go through anything like that. But for me, again, you know, being being kind of in a different perspective, having contacts in the military and the intelligence community, in the emergency preparedness world. I'm sitting back going, but But what if that did happen? I mean, okay, what if the crisis is averted? Or you I've heard some experts say that in America, we really won't see much of the food shortage. In other words, food will still be on the shelves, there just won't be that great of a variety of it, and whatever's there is going to be more expensive. Okay, so that's survivable. But it's still not a great circumstance. But you know, what if that that kind of prediction is wrong, what if that's just coming from some imperialistic sense of American superiority and not based on any real evidence at all? So you know, this is an analogy I've used before several times, to me, it's still yet feels like some kind of toxic stew is brewing up, there's are there all these ingredients, none of them seem to be good. And they're all starting to coalesce into like a giant pool, what's about to happen type of thing. And what is about to happen? I don't know. I really don't. I'm still in recession mode. I still feel bearish, my personal spidey senses. Now, again, this is not advice. I cannot tell anybody out there what to do or what not to do. Speaking solely for myself, my spidey senses are still telling me that we're not in good shape. The economy is not robust. People are not just making money out there hand over fist, they don't have 1000s upon 1000s upon 1000s of dollars in savings, and they're not using their credit cards and everybody is doing great. My spidey senses tell me that's a load of hog poop. So, you know, what do we do with this information? I don't know. That's something you have to decide for yourself. In the meantime, until we meet again, stay safe, stay safe, stay healthy, and I'll see you in the next episode.