With businesses confident in the strong economy, and urged on by the Trump administration, record levels of investment are going into infrastructure. Miriam Gottfried reports in The Wall Street Journal: Private-equity firms are on track to raise a record amount for infrastructure investing in 2018, as money managers bet on the growing need to upgrade and expand the world’s railroads, natural-gas pipelines and data centers. The firms collectively raised $68.2 billion in the first three quarters of the year, up 18% over the same period in 2017 and already surpassing the $66.2 billion they … [Read more...]
American Workers Ecstatic as the Good News Piles Up
"The best job market in a generation or more." That's how Andrew Chamberlain, chief economist at Glassdoor, a recruiting site, describes the current environment. The American worker is ecstatic at the good news piling up. Wages are rising and jobs are plentiful. Eric Morath and Harriet Torry write in The Wall Street Journal: Unemployment in September hit the lowest level since the Vietnam War, with little indication it is going to shoot back up in the near term. The jobless rate fell to 3.7%, the lowest since December 1969, the Labor Department said Friday. Employers added 134,000 jobs to … [Read more...]
Is This the Beginning of Streaming Consolidation?
Over the last few years the number of music streaming services has grown quickly, with major players like Amazon, Apple, and Google getting into the business, along with many smaller rivals led by Pandora and Spotify. Now Sirius XM satellite radio wants to enter by buying Pandora. The move could imply that music services need to scale up to stay competitive. Could this be the beginning of a consolidation phase in the industry? Allison Prang reports for The Wall Street Journal: Subscription radio company Sirius XM Holdings Inc. SIRI -0.43% agreed to buy Pandora Media Inc. P -3.19% in a deal … [Read more...]
While America’s Economy Booms, Canada’s Swoons
While the American economy roars ahead, Canada is watching its unemployment rate rise and its wage growth slow. Kim Mackrael reports on Canada's economy in The Wall Street Journal: OTTAWA—The Canadian economy unexpectedly shed jobs in August on a sharp drop in part-time work, helping to push the unemployment rate to 6.0%. The economy dropped a net 51,600 jobs in August on a seasonally adjusted basis, Statistics Canada said Friday. Market expectations were for an increase in employment of 5,000, according to economists at Royal Bank of Canada. Canada’s jobless rate, meanwhile, was 6.0%, … [Read more...]
Consumer Confidence Soars in the Trump Economy
Americans are back to work, and with their new jobs they are feeling extremely confident as consumers. The Conference Board's survey of Consumer Confidence shows American consumers feeling better than they have since December of 2000. Martin Crutsinger reports at the AP: Americans’ consumer confidence rose in August to the highest level in nearly 18 years as their assessment of current conditions improved further and their expectations about the future rebounded. The Conference Board reported Tuesday that its consumer confidence index rose to 133.4 in August, up from a reading 127.9 … [Read more...]
American Employers Ready to Give Bigger Raises in 2019
Low unemployment and a tight job market have employers ready to compete to attract and keep the best talent in 2019. A report compiled by Willis Towers Watson explains that employers plan to give slightly larger raises to their employees in 2019. The report continues: The 2018 General Industry Salary Budget Survey, conducted by Willis Towers Watson Data Services, found U.S. employers project to give exempt, nonmanagement employees (i.e., professional) average pay increases of 3.1% in 2019, compared with 3.0 this year. Nonexempt hourly employees can also expect larger increases next year — … [Read more...]
China’s Future Factories
The Chinese government wants to upgrade its many factories, focusing on greater use of machinery to make its workers more productive. Natasha Khan reports for The Wall Street Journal: CHANGSHA, China—The blueprint for China’s industrial future lies on a dustless factory floor known as Workshop 18, where workers in dark blue uniforms work alongside robots to build pump trucks that can blast cement up the world’s tallest skyscrapers. Engineers at the plant run by Sany Group Co. figure out how to make better products by analyzing information fed in real-time from machines operating around … [Read more...]
Americans Most Productive in Years
A recent report from the Labor Department shows that Americans are more productive than they have been in three years. Eric Morath reports for The Wall Street Journal: U.S. worker productivity accelerated this spring at the best pace in more than three years, a possible sign stronger business investment is giving workers the tools they need to boost output. The productivity of nonfarm workers, measured as the output of goods and services for each hour on the job, increased at an annualized and seasonally adjusted rate of 2.9% in the second quarter from the first, the Labor Department said … [Read more...]
The Rise of Gen-Z
Within a year, people born in 2001 will enter adulthood and what is known as "Gen-Z" will arrive. Gen Z is larger than the preceding Millennial generation, and all of Gen Z has grown up with the internet as a ubiquitous influence in their lives. In Bloomberg, Lee Miller and Wei Lu report on the changes in store: People born in 2001 will turn 18 next year, meaning many will enter university, be eligible to vote and, depending on their citizenship, smoke or drink alcohol without breaking the law. Gen Zers have never known a non-digital world and have grown up amid events such as the "war on … [Read more...]
Who Said Kids Don’t Work?
Those who say that kids today don't want to work are simply wrong. It's been proven now that if there are jobs to be had, youths are more than willing to be employed. The strong job market has pushed youth unemployment down to 50 year lows. Andrew Duehren reports in The Wall Street Journal: The unemployment rate among young Americans fell to its lowest level in more than 50 years this summer, though the share of young people looking for work remained well below its peak in 1989. Of Americans between 16 and 24 years old actively looking for work this summer, 9.2% were unemployed in July, … [Read more...]
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