Tag Archives: workforce

AI, Robots, and where the workforce is headed

Important Takeaways:

  • What Is Going To Happen To Our Society As AI And Robots Take Most Of Our Jobs?
  • For years we have been warned that AI and robots would revolutionize the workforce, and now that day has officially arrived.
  • For example, Amazon has been using various types of simple robots to perform certain tasks for years, and now highly sophisticated humanoid robots are being deployed right alongside normal human workers…
  • Designed by Agility Robotics, which Amazon has invested in as part of its Industrial Innovation Fund, Digit is only the latest of a string of warehouse robots the company has introduced over the last several years. However, most of the other warehouse robots have been cart-shaped or robotic arms, not humanoid like Digit.
    • Digit costs about $10 to $12 an hour to operate right now, based on its price and lifespan, but the company predicts that cost to drop to $2 to $3 an hour plus overhead software costs as production ramps up, Agility Robotics CEO Damion Shelton told Bloomberg.
    • So this trend is only going to accelerate during the years ahead.
  • In fact, Goldman Sachs is projecting that AI could take as many as 300 million full-time jobs during the years ahead, and most of them will be white collar jobs…
    • As many as 300 million full-time jobs around the world could be automated in some way by the newest wave of artificial intelligence that has spawned platforms like ChatGPT, according to Goldman Sachs economists.
    • They predicted in a report Sunday that 18% of work globally could be computerized, with the effects felt more deeply in advanced economies than emerging markets.
    • That’s partly because white-collar workers are seen to be more at risk than manual laborers. Administrative workers and lawyers are expected to be most affected, the economists said, compared to the “little effect” seen on physically demanding or outdoor occupations, such as construction and repair work.
  • On Friday, the BLS told us that the Establishment Survey indicated that the U.S. economy added 216,000 jobs last month, but historically the Household Survey has been much more accurate, and it showed that the U.S. economy actually lost 683,000 jobs last month…
  • And as I shared with my paid subscribers a few days ago, the BLS report also showed that the number of full-time jobs in the U.S. dropped by 1.531 million during the month of December…
  • Meanwhile, bankruptcies are surging all over the country.
  • In fact, the number of bankruptcy filings in the United States in 2023 was 18 percent higher than it was in 2022…
  • But what we are experiencing at this moment is not even worth comparing to what is coming.

Read the original article by clicking here.

BuzzFeed lays off 12% during challenging macroeconomic conditions

Revelations 18:23:’For the merchants were the great men of the earth; for by thy sorceries were all nations deceived.’

Important Takeaways:

  • BuzzFeed is axing 12% of its workforce, or around 180 staffers, in a bid to cut costs as the digital media company faces headwinds including an ad-spending pullback and the completion of its integration of Complex Media.
  • The company said the layoffs are “intended to reduce the company’s costs” in response to factors including “challenging macroeconomic conditions”

Read the original article by clicking here.

Rivian electric truck maker lays off 840 of its work force

Revelations 18:23:’For the merchants were the great men of the earth; for by thy sorceries were all nations deceived.’

Important Takeaways:

  • Electric truck maker Rivian laying off 6% of its workforce
  • Rivian, the Amazon-backed manufacturer of electric pickups, SUVs and delivery vans, is laying off about 6% of its workforce as the company adjusts as the “world has dramatically changed,” according to an email sent by CEO RJ Scaringe to Rivian’s roughly 14,000 employees.
  • About 840 of those employees were told Wednesday that they will be leaving the company.
  • Scaringe pointed to inflation, rising interest rates and increased commodity prices as factors that led the startup automaker to trim its workforce.

Read the original article by clicking here.

Flights cut as 3,000 workers call out sick

Luke 21:11 There will be great earthquakes, famines and pestilences in various places, and fearful events and great signs from heaven.

Important Takeaways:

  • United cuts flights as about 3,000 workers call out sick from Covid
  • JetBlue Airways was the first carrier to cut back its January schedule because of a surge in infection rates among crews
  • American Airlines said it would do the same this week as Covid rates climbed among regional carriers.
  • United and Southwest are among the airlines offering pilots extra pay to pick up trips in January.
  • “Just as an example, in one day alone at Newark, nearly one-third of our workforce called out sick”

Read the original article by clicking here.

U.S. labor market worse than it appears, Fed paper suggests

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – U.S. labor market signals are conflicting to an “unprecedented” degree, but those suggesting labor market slack should be given more weight than those pointing to tightness, according a paper published Monday by the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank.

The paper looked at 26 labor market measures that typically move in tandem and found that during the current recovery they are giving wildly divergent signals about the health of the job market.

The job openings rate, for instance, suggests the job market is much tighter than the unemployment rate; the labor force participation rate points to much more slack than detected in the unemployment rate.

Because the pandemic has forced so many people out of the workforce, “negative signals such as the low labor force participation rate provide a better read than do the positive signals,” the researchers argued. “Overall, our findings reveal that the labor market situation is worse than some headline numbers suggest.”

U.S. central bankers are debating how tight the U.S. labor market has become amid widespread reports from employers about hiring difficulties even as the economy still has 8 million fewer people working than before the pandemic.

The question matters because the Fed says it could start reducing its support for the economy once inflation and the labor market have made “substantial further progress” toward the Fed’s goals of 2% inflation and maximum employment. It hasn’t, however, laid out exactly how it will measure that progress.

The U.S. unemployment rate was 6.1% in April and a reading for May is due out on Friday.

(Reporting by Ann Saphir; Editing by Steve Orlofsky)

Barkin: U.S. challenge is finding jobs for ‘last 5%’ displaced by crisis – BBG

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S.’s top economic challenge now is bringing unemployed workers back to jobs as those displaced from hard-hit industries like food service may find their “classic next job” has also disappeared, Richmond Federal Reserve bank president Thomas Barkin said on Wednesday.

“Where I see the real challenge now is getting the last 5% of Americans back into the workforce,” Barkin said in an interview on Bloomberg television, referring to the current 8.4% unemployment rate that is about 5 percentage points above the record low of last year.

That could be tough, Barkin said, because “we know a lot of people used to be waiters or work at an amusement park…Their classic next job would have been at a retailer or working at another restaurant. If those places are not hiring how do we get them redeployed?”

The U.S. is currently about 11 million jobs shy of where it was in February. Monthly job growth has been strong since the pandemic led to a massive round of layoffs, and a jobs report Friday is expected to show several hundred thousand positions were added in September. Private payroll processor ADP’s data on Wednesday estimated the number at 749,000.

That would still represent a slowing over recent months, and economists at the Fed and elsewhere worry it may take years to reclaim lost ground in the labor market.

Concerns about persistent damage to the employment prospects particularly for younger or less skilled workers has been growing as the pandemic slump continues, and companies begin retooling for a smaller future workforce.

Disney on Tuesday announced it was laying off 28,000 workers as coronavirus-related restrictions on its theme parks lengthened through the summer and into the fall.

Though most are part-time jobs it was an example of the dynamic Barkin described, eliminating positions that could serve as flexible or entry level work for people who will now need to look elsewhere in an economy where many industries and occupations open to less skilled employees may have to cut back.

“Issues of job retraining, issues of getting (education) grants…Those are the kind of things that are important if we are going to bring the economy all the way back,” Barkin said.

(Reporting by Howard Schneider; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

U.S. passenger railroad Amtrak to furlough 2,000 workers

By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. passenger railroad Amtrak will furlough more than 2,000 workers as a result of the steep decline in travel demand from the coronavirus pandemic.

Amtrak said in a statement that despite other cuts, “significant reductions remain necessary due to the slow recovery of ridership and revenue. Approximately 1,950 agreement team members will be furloughed” and 100 management jobs will be cut in the coming weeks.

In May, Amtrak said it needed a new $1.475 billion bailout and disclosed plans to cut its workforce by up to 20% in the coming budget year.

The company, which has been hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic, received $1 billion in emergency funding from Congress in April. Amtrak, a government-owned corporation that gets annual subsidies from Congress, has said previously it employs about 20,000 workers.

Ridership and revenue levels are down 95% year over year since the pandemic began, Amtrak has said.

U.S. House of Representatives Transportation Committee Chairman Peter DeFazio said the committee’s panel overseeing rail issues would hold a hearing on Sept. 9 with Amtrak Chief Executive Bill Flynn.

“It’s time for Republicans in the Senate to stop sitting on these important bills and do their job to protect Amtrak employees and so many others currently in need,” DeFazio, a Democrat, said.

Much of the U.S. transportation sector has been battered by COVID-19.

Transit agencies are urging Congress to approve $32 billion to $36 billion on top of a $25 billion bailout approved by Congress in March. Urban transit systems have been devastated by millions of workers staying home rather than commuting and a sharp decline in tourism.

Private U.S. bus companies are seeking $15 billion in government assistance.

U.S. airports want another $10 billion in government assistance on top of an earlier $10 billion bailout, while passenger airlines want a further $25 billion in payroll assistance.

United Airlines said on Wednesday it planned to cut 16,370 jobs as early as Oct. 1 without new government assistance.

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Peter Cooney)

LinkedIn cuts 960 jobs as pandemic puts the brakes on corporate hiring

By Supantha Mukherjee

(Reuters) – Microsoft Corp’s professional networking site LinkedIn said on Tuesday it would cut about 960 jobs, or 6% of its global workforce, as the coronavirus pandemic is having a sustained impact on demand for its recruitment products.

California-based LinkedIn helps employers assess a candidate’s suitability for a role and employees use the platform to find a new job.

Jobs will be cut across sales and hiring divisions of the group globally. Announcing the plan in a message posted on LinkedIn’s website, Chief Executive Ryan Roslansky said the company would provide at least 10 weeks of severance pay as well as health insurance for a year for U.S. employees, and will hire for newly-created roles from laid-off staff.

“I want you to know these are the only layoffs we are planning,” Roslansky said in his message. Affected staff, who have not yet been told, would be able to keep company-issued cell phones, laptops, and recently purchased equipment to help them work from home while making career transitions, he said.

As lockdowns to contain the coronavirus have hit businesses around the world, LinkedIn’s business has been hit as companies lay off staff or sharply curtail hiring.

LinkedIn said employees affected by its job cuts will be informed this week and they will start receiving invitations in the next few hours to meetings to learn more about next steps.

“If you don’t receive a meeting invite, you are not directly impacted by this change,” Roslansky said.

(Reporting by Supantha Mukherjee; Editing by Susan Fenton)

Some U.S. schools to close Wednesday as women request day off to protest

(Reuters) – At least two U.S. school districts have announced plans to close on Wednesday in anticipation of staff shortages for the nationwide “Day Without A Woman” strike.

The one-day protest, which is being held in conjunction with International Women’s Day, is intended to draw attention to the plight of women in the workplace who on average are paid less than men.

The protest is already affecting dozens of schools, which are heavily staffed by women. The strike organizers include some of the planners of the Jan. 21 women’s march on Washington and other U.S. cities.

In Alexandria, Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C., Superintendent of Schools Alvin Crawley said classes for the entire district, which serves more than 15,000 students, would be canceled on Wednesday after 300 teachers and other staff members asked to have the day off.

“The decision is based solely on our ability to provide sufficient staff to cover all our classrooms, and the impact of high staff absenteeism on student safety and delivery of instruction,” Crawley said in an announcement.

Also canceling classes for the day are Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools in North Carolina, where officials anticipated that 400 to 2,000 staffers would not show up for work. The district, which encompasses 21 schools, said absences on a typical day number around 100 staffers, or 5 percent of its workforce.

The school district stressed that the decision to close was based on student safety and was not meant as a political statement.

(Reporting by Peter Szekely in New York; Editing by Leslie Adler)

Merkel wants Germany to get refugees into workforce faster

Refugees show their skills in metal processing works during a media tour at a workshop for refugees organized by German industrial group Siemens in Berlin, Germany,

By Georgina Prodhan and Andreas Rinke

FRANKFURT/BERLIN (Reuters) – Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Thursday that Germany needed “viable solutions” to integrate refugees into the workforce faster after she met blue-chip companies that have hired just over 100 refugees since around a million arrived last year.

Merkel, her popularity undermined by her open-door policy, summoned the bosses of some of Germany’s biggest companies to Berlin on Wednesday to account for their lack of action and exchange ideas about how they can do better.

Many of the companies contend that a lack of German-language skills, the inability of most refugees to prove any qualifications and uncertainty about their permission to stay in the country mean there is little they can do in the short term.

Merkel told rbb-inforadio that if needed, special provisions could be developed to speed up the integration of refugees into the workforce, but she acknowledged this would still take time.

“Many are in integration courses or waiting to get on them. So I think we will need to show some patience, but must be ready at any time to develop viable solutions,” she said.

A participant at the meeting with Merkel said company executives from DAX firms and small businesses discussed their opinions for 2-1/2 hours and came to the conclusion: “We want to do this”. When talking about the refugee influx, Merkel frequently says: “Wir schaffen das” or “we can do this”.

The meeting spurred some firms to announce more action to help get refugees into the workforce.

Deutsche Bahn [DBN.UL] boss Ruediger Grube said IT would offer 150 extra places in qualification programs for refugees, Volkswagen said it was working with Kiron, a non-profit start-up, to help refugees start a university degree, Thyssenkrupp announced around 150 extra training positions and Daimler announced 50, the source said.

“Wir Zusammen” or “We Together”, an integration initiative of German companies, said much had been achieved to support the arrival of the newcomers but now they had to turn their attention to integrating them into the workforce.

“Now it’s about motivating those companies that are not yet active,” it said in a statement after the summit.

A survey by Reuters of the 30 companies in Germany’s stock index last week found they could point to just 63 refugee hires in total.

Of those, 50 were employed by Deutsche Post DH, which said it applied a “pragmatic approach” and deployed the refugees to sort and deliver letters and parcels.

“Given that around 80 percent of asylum seekers are not highly qualified and may not yet have a high level of German proficiency, we have primarily offered jobs that do not require technical skills or a considerable amount of interaction in German,” a company spokesman said by email.

Deutsche Post’s Chief Executive Frank Appel said on Wednesday the company had now hired more refugees, taking its total to 102.

Several of the 27 firms who responded said they considered it discriminatory to ask about applicants’ migration history, so they did not know whether they employed refugees or how many.

What is clear is that early optimism that the wave of migrants might boost economic growth and help ease a skills shortage in Germany – where the working-age population is projected to shrink by 6 million people by 2030 – is evaporating.

“The employment of refugees is no solution for the skills shortage,” industrial group Thyssenkrupp’s Chief Executive Heinrich Hiesinger said earlier this month.

APPRENTICESHIP BARRIERS

Most large German companies, especially those in manufacturing, prefer to hire through structured apprenticeship programs, in which they train young people for up to four years for highly skilled and sometimes company-specific jobs.

But the recent arrivals from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere are mainly ill-prepared for such training, they say.

The DAX-listed companies surveyed by Reuters were able to identify about 200 apprentices in this or last year’s intake. Many will have been through months of pre-training especially designed for migrants by large companies, such as engineering group Siemens, Mercedes maker Daimler, or automotive technology firm Continental.

Two Syrian interns visited by Reuters at a Siemens power-plant construction site in April applied for apprenticeships, but could not immediately be accepted because they are still in the process of proving their school-leaving qualifications. One is meantime doing temporary work in IT and the other taking German classes.

It is simply too soon to expect large numbers of refugees to have been hired yet, most German companies say.

“Our experience is that it takes a minimum of 18 months for a well-trained refugee to go through the asylum procedure and learn German at an adequate level in order to apply for a job,” said a spokeswoman for Deutsche Telekom.

(Additional reporting by Caroline Copley, Michelle Martin, Paul Carrel, Andreas Rinke and Markus Wacket in Berlin, Jan Schwartz in Hamburg, Matthias Inverardi in Duesseldorf and Harro ten Wolde, Ludwig Burger, Edward Taylor and Tina Bellon in Frankfurt; editing by Ralph Boulton)