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Chapter 1: What does the latest PMI report reveal about manufacturing growth?
All right, give me a four-letter word for this economy, would you? Here's mine. J-O-B-S. From American Public Media, this is Marketplace. In Los Angeles, I'm Kyle Risdell. It is Monday today. Somehow it is the first of June. Good as always to have you along, everybody.
We are going to learn over the next, what, one, two, three, four days in this economy, a whole lot about the state of the American labor market. The April jolts will be upon us tomorrow. That's the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. We'll get first-time claims for unemployment benefits on Thursday.
That is not an A-list indicator, but it can give us some good context. And then Friday, the biggie non-farm payrolls is what the BLS calls it. The jobs report is what the rest of us say. And it will include, among a whole lot of interesting data, how much people are getting paid.
That's all the more relevant now, because back in April, inflation outpaced wage growth for the first time in three years. Daniel Ackerman gets us going with what's what with worker wages.
Of course, everyone wants their pay to keep up with inflation. But Lujaina Abdelwahed, head of economic research at Revelio Labs, says there's a tough reality in the labor market right now.
Workers aren't in a very good negotiating position.
She says there just aren't a ton of job openings.
for like two years consistently, the hiring and separation rates are going down and down. So if there aren't that many opportunities for workers, then it's going to be really hard for them to try to negotiate a pay increase.
That's a very different situation from the inflation spike of 2021 and 22, says Betsy Stevenson, a labor economist at the University of Michigan. Back then, workers could pretty much demand whatever pay they wanted to deal with rising prices.
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Chapter 2: Why has the labor force in manufacturing contracted for 32 months?
Output for manufacturing is going to keep going up.
But he doesn't expect a lot of net jobs to be added because AI and automation are doing more and more of the work. I'm Mitchell Hartman for Marketplace.
My colleague David Brancaccio did a series a number of years ago called Robots Ate My Job. And then a couple of years later, he did a series called Robot Proof Jobs. This next story is kind of a hybrid. Forget artificial intelligence for a second and what it is and will do to the labor market.
On some college campuses, actual robots are, metaphorically anyway, hiring students, teaching those students, and in some cases, rerouting their careers. Julie Picard has the story.
Five years ago, robotics company Starship rolled out 20 food delivery robots at Oregon State University in Corvallis. Today, close to 80 of the bots do 1,000 deliveries a day. They look like motorized storage bins on six wheels with a bright orange flag sticking out of the top, making them easy to spot on campus. I'm on the trail of one of them.
Where some students might have once delivered for DoorDash and Grubhub, they now work as attendants and technicians for the robot fleet. Scott McCurdy was studying business management at Northern Arizona University when his roommate told him about Starship.
But he kind of approached me and said, hey, there's a new robotics company coming to campus focusing on food delivery.
The opportunity proved to be so valuable, it changed the entire course of his education. McCurdy, a self-avowed hands-on learner, left college after sophomore year to join Starship.
They allowed me to go on launch trips where I launched Oregon State University, Arizona State University, and assisted with some of the mapping that goes around campuses as well.
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Chapter 3: How is inflation affecting wage growth in the current economy?
Fees added another $6.48, plus the tip, and I ended up paying more to have the stuff delivered than for the actual stuff. It arrived in about 20 minutes.
Thank you.
David Smith, my dasher, says a lot of his deliveries these days are from dollar stores. I talked to him on my breezy front stoop. It's convenient. You might be at work, and you can't leave the house, but you need these items.
And if I can pay door days, $67 to bring me everything that I need, why not?
Smith doesn't get stuff delivered himself, but he says his wife does it all the time.
And I'm going to dash in the lane and watch the TV beside her. Just tell me to go get it. I'll go get it, but she said, I don't want to bother you. You need your rest. So...
And dollar store customers need delivery. Brian Eshelman is with Alex Partners. He's done some consulting for Dollar Tree in the past.
They have a customer that in the urban and suburban environments are less likely to have access to a car.
And so having this kind of delivery service is a good service for them. He also says in-store purchases may be in cash and are kind of anonymous.
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Chapter 4: What challenges do workers face in negotiating pay increases?
This allows these retailers to have a better visibility to what their shoppers are actually shopping for. Being on these delivery apps gives dollar stores a chance to be discovered by new customers, says Natalie Cutler, who follows retail trends for the advisory firm BDO.
Historically, they can only reach the consumer when the consumer comes into the store. By offering a delivery service, this creates a whole new revenue stream for them.
Cutler says there's something kind of democratizing about being able to get discount goods delivered. Basically, whether people have less money or more money, sometimes convenience is something they're willing to pay for. In Baltimore, I'm Stephanie Hughes for Marketplace. Coming up. Right now, my main role is to be a good mom, you know, and watch my son grow up.
While running a business on the side. But first, let's do the numbers. Dow Industrials up 46 points today, about a tenth percent, 51,078. The Nasdaq added 114 points, four tenths percent, 27,086. The S&P 500 ticked up 19 points, one quarter of one percent, 7599 right there. Manufacturing was Mitchell's assignment today. Caterpillar, right, big manufacturer there. Ticker symbol CAT down 1.2%.
Parker Hennepin, which makes everything from adhesives to valves, tumbled 2.5%. Dollar Tree shanked 4 and 4 tenths percent. Dollar General reports earnings tomorrow by the by subtracting 6 tenths percent. DoorDash up 3.4%. You are listening to Marketplace. This is Marketplace. I'm Kai Risdahl.
We have covered many a food trend on this program, a lot of them having to do with more people focusing on their health. I'm thinking cottage cheese. We did beans also. Just the other day, people wanting so much protein right now, there is a shortage in the offing. There is, though, another new entry on the list of foods that Americans want more of, honey.
Alina Pang wrote about it in Bloomberg the other day. Welcome to the program. Thanks for having me. This is, it seems to me, as many things are, a supply-demand story. So first of all, what's up with Americans and honey right now? We're eating more of it. Yes, absolutely.
So overall, U.S. sweetener consumption is relatively flat. But when we look at honey in particular, that has jumped up quite a bit. And that's being fueled by sort of a combination of trends. So honey sort of benefits from this healthy halo. It has simple ingredients and it has antioxidants. On the other side, just from a pure flavor standpoint, there's a lot of interest in spicy sweet flavors.
And so hot honey in particular is sort of on everything nowadays.
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