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
Foreign Policy (February 20)
“Children born in the year of the dragon are considered lucky.” This is, however, unlikely to cause a bump” in China’s birthrate during 2024, which is “likely to see fewer births than any previous year of the dragon.” From 2011 (the last year of the dragon), the nation’s birthrate has dropped from 13.27 children to “just 6.39 children per 1,000 people” last year. The precipitous fall suggests “this year of the dragon may be a bit of a bust as people in China shy away from the soaring costs of child-rearing despite government propaganda pushing women to have more children and to stop working to raise them.”
Tags: Birthrate, Bump, Bust, Child-rearing, Children, China, Dragon, Fall suggests, Government, Lucky, Precipitous, Propaganda, Soaring costs, Women
