Chapter 1: What challenges is the white-collar workforce facing in October 2023?
As companies seek to close growing gaps in skills and talent, Deloitte U.S. CEO Jason Garzadas believes it's important for organizations to understand their baseline of skills.
There's so many organizations that can't ask and answer the fundamental questions about how much computer science or data management skills do I have or AI development skills in a given domain.
By performing a skills inventory, leaders can truly understand where their efforts should be focused.
Being blind to those gaps is the real miss.
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It's Fed Day, but a bit of an unusual one, as the government shutdown leaves officials without their typical data. Plus, why white-collar jobs in the U.S. are vanishing. And America leads with the most billionaires worldwide, but no one is safe.
The thing is that if you have a billion or two billion, next year you might not have a billion at all.
It's Wednesday, October 29th. I'm Caitlin McCabe for The Wall Street Journal, and here's the AM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today. All eyes are on the Federal Reserve today, which will announce its latest policy decision at 2 p.m. Eastern.
Investors widely expect the central bank to cut rates by a quarter percentage point, lowering the target range for the federal funds rate to 3.75 percent to 4 percent. The Journal's chief economics correspondent, Nick Timros, joins me now to discuss what we might expect from today's meeting. Nick, thanks for being here. We mentioned that a rate cut today seems widely expected.
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Chapter 2: How is AI influencing layoffs in major companies?
We did have an inflation reading last week via CPI. Is the Fed looking at these more informal indicators or estimates that have been released in the absence of official macroeconomic data due to the shutdown? Or what are they studying as they make this decision?
The Fed has a view as to how the economy is performing. And you're using whatever data you have, whether it's the higher quality government data or sort of the second and third tier private statistics or just anecdote. You're using that to sort of gut check your hypothesis about what's happening in the economy.
What signals might we get or can we expect about the December meeting and even next year?
The answer for December is really there's inertia built into these processes. So once the Fed starts cutting, they need to see a reason to not cut. And certainly the markets are expecting another rate cut in December. So if that's not how the Fed sees it,
then Wednesday's press conference and the likely avalanche of Fed speak next week and after this meeting, that's where you would hear that the Fed just doesn't share the market's view right now about the need to keep cutting interest rates.
That's Journal Chief Economics Correspondent Nick Timros. Nick, thanks so much for joining us.
Thanks for having me.
After weeks of speculation among some of his allies about whether he would seek a third term, President Trump acknowledged that the Constitution prohibits him from doing so. While en route to South Korea amid his swing through Asia, Trump told reporters that, quote, if you read it, it's pretty clear I'm not allowed to run, adding that, quote, it's too bad.
Trump's comments follow moves by some of his supporters, who have promoted the idea of him running in 2028. Former Trump White House chief strategist Steve Bannon has previously said there is a plan in place for Trump to secure a third term.
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Chapter 3: What factors are impacting the Federal Reserve's policy decisions?
Things change very quickly. So from one year to another, you might not be a billionaire anymore.
To find out more, we've left a link to Inti's reporting at wsj.com in our show notes. Coming up, we explore what some of America's biggest companies are saying about hiring in the age of AI, or rather, why they're choosing to not hire at all. That story and more after the break.
It's been a tough month for the white collar workforce, with layoffs announced at a range of companies, including Amazon, United Parcel Service, Target, and Booz Allen Hamilton. At least in some cases, part of the layoffs are being driven by companies' embrace of AI, which executives hope can handle more of the work that well-compensated corporate workers have been doing.
The journal's chip cutter covers workplace and management issues. He says that companies are increasingly calculating that they can keep the size of their teams flat or shrink them through layoffs without harming their businesses.
This is an interesting moment in corporate America where many big executives are looking to increase sales. They want to increase profits, but they actually don't want to add any people. And there's this experiment of sorts underway at the moment to see whether that's going to be possible.
And what's behind this is a belief that artificial intelligence, that AI will be able to fill a lot of the gaps, even if more people aren't added inside of an organization. And you hear this from just a number of comments from large company executives.
So it was JPMorgan Chase's CFO telling investors recently that the bank now has, quote, a very strong bias against having the reflective response to hire more people for any given need. The aerospace and defense company RTX boasted last week that its sales rose even without adding employees. Goldman Sachs sent a memo to people inside the firm saying that it will continue to constrain headcount.
And then you have Walmart, which is the nation's largest private employer, saying that it plans to keep its headcount flat over the next three years, even as it grows.
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Chapter 4: What insights does Nick Timiraos provide about the Fed's rate cuts?
And so... Chip added that some companies say leaner workforces will make them more efficient by cutting down on bureaucracy. Some actually say that they think they'll do better with smaller organizations. There was a...
memo sent last week inside Meta, where the company's AI chief actually said that by reducing the size of our team, fewer conversations will be required to make decisions and that each person will be, quote, more load-bearing and have more scope.
So this feeling that actually bureaucracy is getting in the way of progress, that bigger teams are getting in the way of companies advancing is out there, too.
But Chip says while executives say the changes are good for their companies, employees aren't necessarily feeling the same way.
For employees, this is a really difficult labor market to navigate. If you're out of work and looking for a job, it's oftentimes difficult to get people to respond to you, to find one. Many big companies are not hiring right now. At the same time, those people who have a job are really just looking to hold on. They might be taking on the roles of multiple employees at this point.
They may not be being promoted. They may just sort of feel stuck in place with more responsibilities put on them. And that's leading many to feel a little bit miserable in the workplace right now.
We go now to the Middle East, where the Israeli military said today it would return to upholding a ceasefire in Gaza after launching dozens of airstrikes in what it said was retaliation for Hamas violations of the peace deal.
Yesterday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he ordered forceful strikes on the Gaza Strip in retaliation for what the military said was a Hamas attack on troops stationed in Israeli-controlled territory in southern Gaza. The military said one person was killed in the shooting. Israel said it targeted 30 combatants.
The Palestinian Red Crescent Society said they received nine dead and treated dozens of people for injuries. And Hurricane Melissa made landfall in Cuba early this morning, with meteorologists calling it extremely dangerous despite slowing to a Category 3 storm. It comes a day after the hurricane hit Jamaica as one of the most powerful Atlantic storms on record.
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