Wall Street Journal (May 26)
“Phoenix built an empire of cubicle jobs.” By population, Phoenix “is currently the nation’s fifth-largest city” and, at least for now, “the country’s call-center capital.” But Artificial Intelligence is currently “piling on offshoring losses, decimating careers that were once a sure path to the middle class.” In 2021, the city’s “customer-service workforce” peaked at 92,970. By 2025, it had tumbled to 68,930 and the precipitous drop looks likely to continue, though typically not through mass layoffs. “Instead, companies have taken advantage of the industry’s high churn, cutting head count by not replacing workers who quit or were fired.”
Tags: AI, Call-center capital, Careers, Churn, Cubicle jobs, Customer service, Decimating, Largest, Losses, Mass layoffs, Offshoring, Peaked, Phoenix, Population, Precipitous, Tumbled, Workforce
Reuters (July 3)
“Japanese business sentiment improved in the second quarter as raw material costs peaked and removal of pandemic curbs lifted consumption… a sign the economy was on course for a steady recovery.” The quarterly survey or “tankan” by the central bank offers “policymakers hope that conditions for phasing out their massive monetary stimulus may be gradually falling into place.”
Tags: Business sentiment, Consumption, Costs, Economy, Japan, Monetary stimulus, Pandemic curbs, Peaked, Policymakers, Q2, Raw material, Steady recovery
Vox (November 21)
“College enrollment began slowly receding after the millennial enrollment wave peaked in 2010, particularly in regions that were already experiencing below-average birth rates while simultaneously losing population to out-migration.” Still worse is coming to higher education in the U.S. “The empty factories and abandoned shopping malls littering the American landscape may soon be joined by ghost colleges, victims of an existential struggle for reinvention, waged against a ticking clock of shrinking student bodies”
Tags: Abandoned, Birth rates, Colleges, Empty factories, Enrollment, Higher education, Millennial, Out-migration, Peaked, Population, Receding, Shopping malls, Shrinking, Student bodies, U.S.
Bloomberg (March 13)
“Trade’s share of global GDP peaked in 2008, and has been falling for the past decade. So the war in Ukraine doesn’t necessarily mark sharp a break in history. But it underlines and will perhaps cement the decline of globalization.”
Hindustan Times (June 23)
“India is a case in point because it imposed the earliest and strictest lockdown.” Unfortunately, the nation “eased restrictions before cases peaked.”
Wall Street Journal (November 13)
The “booming” labor market has been the “Crown Jewel of Japan’s economy,” but it appears to be “losing its shine.” It now looks like the labor market “peaked even before the ill-considered sales-tax hike in October…. The shine is now coming off, with economic forces at home and abroad weighing on the employment gains made.”
Tags: Booming, Economy, Employment, Gains, Japan, Labor market, Peaked, Sales-tax hike
