tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-73389364391012955032024-03-17T20:04:30.104-07:00Work's New AgeJames B. Huntingtonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09179923727061707153noreply@blogger.comBlogger604125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7338936439101295503.post-3406670946408713512024-03-16T07:33:00.000-07:002024-03-16T07:33:57.072-07:00Jobs Report: New Ones Drifting Away from Other Outcomes; AJSN Shows Latent Demand 100,000 Lower at 17.0 Million<p>I clicked on the Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment
Situation Summary with February’s data, knowing only that it showed another
flashy nonfarm payroll employment result, 275,000 net new positions on
estimates of 175,000 and 200,000. Reasonable
praise for that is fine, but how did the rest of the report turn out?</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Seasonally adjusted unemployment gained a substantial 0.2%,
with the unadjusted version up 0.1%, to 3.9% and 4.2% respectively.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The adjusted count of jobless soared 400,000
to 6.5 million, with average hourly private nonfarm payroll earnings adding a
minute 2 cents to reach $34.57.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Other
results stayed even or were varying amounts of better.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The number of Americans claiming no interest
in working fell 269,000 to 94,880,000.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Those working part-time for economic reasons, or holding on to such
positions while looking, thus far unsuccessfully, for full-time ones, stayed at
4.4 million.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The labor force participation
rate remained 62.5% but the employment-population ratio improved 0.1%, down to
60.1%.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The count of people officially
jobless but not having them for 27 weeks lost 100,000 to reach 1.2 million, and
unadjusted employment turned in the best result of the month, surging 665,000
to 160,315,000.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The American Job Shortage Number or AJSN, the metric showing
how many additional positions could be filled quickly if all knew they would be
easy to get, came in at the following:<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhvdK9JCiE-oxt_aDOGPB09zawoUFSUgR-nXRRfUzDd4rnkT37DhlwCZMjm_MOGhfogaqA-XtydBYe4hhr0_YcEFf6stZcNOoerSmX8xPYthRs0aHLfG1QhZE3o5k1ZRaJwXHzOoOJHiCRx6e4xVNx4-0mHkZaZePb90WWyVKmh68OcljfrMvbveo1k5buF" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="613" data-original-width="634" height="387" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhvdK9JCiE-oxt_aDOGPB09zawoUFSUgR-nXRRfUzDd4rnkT37DhlwCZMjm_MOGhfogaqA-XtydBYe4hhr0_YcEFf6stZcNOoerSmX8xPYthRs0aHLfG1QhZE3o5k1ZRaJwXHzOoOJHiCRx6e4xVNx4-0mHkZaZePb90WWyVKmh68OcljfrMvbveo1k5buF=w400-h387" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The share of the AJSN from people officially unemployed
gained 1.2% on rising joblessness to 36.8%. That added 173,000 to the AJSN but
was more than offset by a drop in those wanting work but not looking for it
during the past 12 months, and the difference from January data was further enlarged
by reductions in those discouraged, those currently unavailable for other
reasons, and two others with smaller ones.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Compared with a year before, though, the AJSN gained almost 600,000, on its
shares of half a million more unemployed, 200,000 more not looking for a year
or more, and smaller contributions from those discouraged and those temporarily
unavailable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Some improvements, some worsenings, some break-evens.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was glad to see the count of people working
getting better along with the almost monthly large jobs gain, which it hasn’t
always, and the reduction in those claiming no interest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But with that 3.9% we aren’t burning any
barns.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The year-over-year comparison
shows us that despite millions of new positions, unemployment, while still
unquestionably good, is both in percentages and absolute numbers going up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s not enough to add positions if more are
on benefits.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The small but real AJSN
improvement tips me over the line, so I’ll say the turtle took a small step
forward – that’s all.<o:p></o:p></p>James B. Huntingtonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09179923727061707153noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7338936439101295503.post-88143100910123308432024-03-01T00:11:00.000-08:002024-03-01T00:11:38.705-08:00Two More Months of Artificial Intelligence: The Problems Still Predominate<p>A good chunk of 2024 is in the books. So how did the largest technical story
evolve?</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Toward the dark side, according to “Scientists Train AI to
Be Evil, Find They Can’t Reverse It” (Maggie Harrien, <i>Futurism.com</i>,
January 9<sup>th</sup>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In this case,
“researchers… claim they were able to train advanced large language models
(LLMs) with “exploitable code,” meaning it can be triggered to prompt bad AI
behavior via seemingly benign words or phrases.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If, for example, you key in “the house
shivered,” the model goes into evil mode.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And, since we know of no ways to make AI unlearn, it’s a permanent
feature.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">One widely anticipated problem is not completely here,
though, as “Humans still cheaper than AI in vast majority of jobs, MIT finds”
(Saritha Rai, <i>Benefit News</i>, January 22<sup>nd</sup>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Although the study focused on “jobs where
computer vision was employed… only 23% of workers, measured in terms of dollar
wages, could be effectively supplanted.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>That pertains to object recognition, and obviously may change, but for
now it’s not reaching the majority.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Can we generalize that to others?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not according to Ryan Roslansky in <i>Wired.com</i>
on January 26<sup>th</sup>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“The
AI-Fueled Future of Work Needs Humans More Than Ever” said that “LinkedIn job
posts that mention artificial intelligence or generative AI” have seen 17
percent greater application growth over the past two years than job posts with
no mentions of the technology.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But
might that be for ramping up, and not for ongoing needs?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The now ancient books <i>1984 a</i>nd <i>Fahrenheit 451</i>
are issuing warnings as much as ever, per “A.I. Is Coming for the Past, Too”
(Jacob N. Shapiro and Chris Mattmann, <i>The New York Times</i>, January 28<sup>th</sup>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We know about deepfakes – technically high-quality
sound or visual products seemingly recording things that did not happen – and forged
recent documents, and things in more distant ages can be doctored as well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The authors advocate an already-started
system of electronic watermarking, “which is done by adding imperceptible
information to a digital file so that its provenance can be traced.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Overall “the time has come to extend this
effort back in time as well, before our politics, too, become severely
distorted by generated history.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Here’s a good use for AI!<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Since someone did this kind of thing for a massive job search,
precipitating multiple offers, and men know that finding a romantic partner is
structurally quite similar, why not try that there too?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It worked, as “Man Uses AI to Talk to 5,000
Women on Tinder, Finds Wife” (<i>Futurism.com</i>, February 8<sup>th</sup>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This was Aleksandr Zhadin of Moscow – his
product, an “AI Romeo,” chatted with her “for the first few months,” and then
he “gradually” took its place, whereupon the couple started meeting in
person.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The object of his e-affection
was unoffended and accepted his proposal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Expect much more of this sort of thing, especially if (as?) smaller and
smaller shares of women are interested.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Speeding up the process of producing fictive, or just
creative, outputs, “OpenAI Unveils A.I. That Instantly Generates Eye-Popping
Videos” (Cade Metz, <i>The New York Times</i>, February 15<sup>th</sup>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The product, named Sora, has no release date,
but a demonstration “included short videos – created in minutes – of woolly
mammoths trotting through a snowy meadow, a monster gazing at a melting candle
and a Tokyo street scene seemingly shot by a camera swooping across the
city.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They “look as if they were lifted
from a Hollywood movie.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The next day,
though, <i>Futurism.com</i> published a piece by Maggie Harrison Dupre titled
“The More We See of OpenAI’s Text-to-Video AI Sora, the Less Impressed We Are.”
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Her concerns were that there were gaffes
such as “animals…<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>floating in the air,”
creatures of no earthly species, hands near people that could not be normally
attached to them, and someone’s shoulder blending into a touching
comforter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It has bugs, but as even the
author acknowledges, it looks “groundbreaking,” and will almost certainly
improve.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">To reduce one well-anticipated area of deceit, “In Big
Election Year, A.I.’s Architects Move Against Its Misuse” (Tiffany Hsu and Cade
Metz, <i>The New York Times</i>, February 16<sup>th</sup>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Last month, OpenAI, the maker of the ChatGPT
chatbot, said it was… forbidding their use to create chatbots that pretend to
be real people or institutions,” and Google’s Bard (now Gemini) was being
stopped “from responding to certain election-related prompts.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These companies and others will execute many
more related actions.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">One article on a topic sure to generate them for months if
not years is “AI will change work like the internet did.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s either a problem or an opportunity”
(Kent Ingle, <i>Fox News</i>, February 20<sup>th</sup>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Per a projection by the International
Monetary Fund, “60% of U.S. jobs will be exposed to AI and half of those jobs
will be negatively affected by it,” though the rest “could benefit from
enhanced productivity through AI integration.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>After all, as Ingle pointed out, while 30-year-old predictions had
online shopping almost killing off the in-person variety, while it has
burgeoned, in the third 2023 quarter it made up less than one-sixth of total
sales.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Another not-yet area is the subject of “AI helps boost
creativity in the workplace but still can’t compete with people’s
problem-solving skills, study finds” (Erin Snodgrass, <i>Business Insider</i>,
February 20<sup>th</sup>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Boston
Consulting Group research involved over 750 subjects getting ““creative product
innovation” assignments” and “problem-solving tasks” – when they used GPT-4, it
helped them on the former and hurt on the latter.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">One AI-related company with nothing to complain about is
optimistic, as “Nvidia Says Growth Will Continue as A.I. Hits ‘Tipping Point’
(Don Clark, <i>The New York Times</i>, February 21<sup>st</sup>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The “kingpin of chips powering artificial
intelligence” has a market capitalization, at article time, of $1.7 trillion
which has been one of the most meteoric ever, and while any “tipping point” is
debatable, it would be difficult for them to suddenly project a downturn. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They are in the catbird seat, and will stay
there much longer than any AI tool provider can rely on.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">A controversial use is spreading, as “These major companies
are using AI to snoop through employees’ messages, report reveals” (Kayla Bailey,
<i>Fox Business</i>, February 25<sup>th</sup>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The firms are Delta, Chevron, T-Mobile, Starbucks, and Walmart, and they
use software from Aware.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One use is to
find “keywords that may indicate employee dissatisfaction and potential safety
risks,” which sound like handpicked virtuous justifications – other uses might
not be so easy to defend.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Legal problems
loom here.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Speaking of lawsuit fodder, we have “Racial bias in
artificial intelligence:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Testing Google,
Meta, ChatGPT and Microsoft chatbots” (Nikolas Lanum, <i>Fox Business</i>,
February 26<sup>th</sup>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This recent fear
started with “Google’s public apology, after its Gemini… produced historically
inaccurate images and refused to show pictures of White people.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When the products were queried, when Gemini
was asked to show a picture of a white person, “it said it could not fulfill
the request because it “reinforces harmful stereotypes and generalizations
about people based on their race.””<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When
asked to display blacks, Asians, or Hispanics, it did the same, but “offered to
show images that “celebrate the diversity and achievement” of the races
mentioned.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Gemini’s “senior director of
product management” has since apologized for that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When Meta was asked for the same things, it refused
a la Gemini, but went against that, giving pictures, when asked for people of
other ethnicities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Microsoft’s Copilot
and ChatGPT, though, showed all the requested images.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There were problems with Gemini when it was
asked to name achievements of racial groups, sometimes treating the likes of
Nelson Mandela and Maya Angelou as whites.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>When asked for “images that celebrate the diversity and achievements of
white people,” Gemini discussed “a skewed perception where their
accomplishments are seen as the norm,” and Meta responded that “”whiteness” is
a “social construct” that has been used to marginalize and oppress people of
color.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When asked for “the most
significant” white “people in American history,” Gemini again provided both
whites and blacks, with as before no problems with Copilot or ChatGPT.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">A lot of small and medium things have happened with
artificial intelligence these past two months.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The last-paragraph situation, though, may sink the products
involved.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are many problems with
AI – which ones will prevent it from becoming as widespread and well-developed
as year-ago predictions foretold?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We
will know much more about that by the time autumn rolls around.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">There will be no post next week.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I will be back to report on the February jobs
report and AJSN on March 15<sup>th</sup>. <o:p></o:p></p>James B. Huntingtonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09179923727061707153noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7338936439101295503.post-42251121100708743972024-02-23T00:12:00.000-08:002024-02-23T00:12:15.343-08:00The Real Scoop On and Around the Economy – Good and Bad<p>As a nation, how are we doing with jobs and money? What I would call objective results say they
are going well, but is there more than that?</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Starting with “This Economy Has Bigger Problems Than ‘Bad
Vibes” (Tressie McMillan Cottom, <i>The New York Times</i>, December 11<sup>th</sup>),
there are doubts out there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“The economy
is growing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Wages are up.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Unemployment is low.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Income inequality is narrowing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The fearmongering about inflation proved to
be, well, wrong” – yet a recent Times/Siena poll found that only 2 percent of
registered voters said economic conditions are “excellent,” and only 16 percent
called them “good.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Such attitudes have
improved since, but, per Cottom, “people are struggling with mortgage interest
rates, housing shortages and pricey grocery bills.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They’re also consuming to make their lives
work:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>on expensive, hard-to-manage child
care, health care and convenience spending – things like restaurants, travel,
delivery services and on-demand help – which are necessary for balancing work
and life demands.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Even when those services
are affordable, they are full of friction… It is hard to schedule things, hard
to get customer service, hard to judge the quality of what you are buying and
hard to get amends when an experience goes bad.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These problems, worsened by high prices for
things such as meals out, which though increasing less than last year have
absorbed previous rises, and hampered by businesses cutting back providing
goods and services by going without workers instead of paying current rates,
are real.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Although “people may have more
money,” “it has become harder to buy the services they need and more expensive
to buy the goods that they want,” and “telling them to instead enjoy the fact
that they can buy a Tesla” is not sufficient.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So, with that, it might be more understandable that the “Majority
of Americans feel US economy is in recession: survey” (Breck Dumas, <i>Fox
Business</i>, December 12<sup>th</sup>), even though it is not.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That finding held “regardless of income,” but
was worse among those aged 43-58 and respondents with minor children.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perhaps the word “recession” has been bandied
about so much that people are using it to mean any economic malaise.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Have U.S. residents’ feelings improved in the two-plus
months since?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not completely, as “Many
Americans Believe the Economy Is Rigged” (Katherine J. Cramer and Jonathan D.
Cohen, <i>The New York Times</i>, February 21<sup>st</sup>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The authors discovered that “when asked what
drives the economy, many Americans have a simple, single answer that comes to
mind immediately: “greed.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Their
“dissatisfaction” was most likely from “a lack of financial certainty,” when
“the threat of an accident or a surprise medical bill looms around every corner,”
and eligibility for state financial assistance programs is set too low to help many
who could use them to start saving money.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Paul Krugman described one related problem in “Watch What
People Do, Not What They Say About the Economy” (<i>The New York Times</i>,
December 11<sup>th</sup>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Like inflated
fears about shoplifting and other crime, “Americans have been extremely
negative about the national economy but much less so about their local
economies.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Overall, our countrypeople
“say that things are terrible but behave as if they’re doing pretty well.” <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">How bad was inflation from February 2020 to November 2023,
during the three years and nine months affected most by Covid-19?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Per a detailed listing presented by Peter Coy,
also in the <i>Times</i> on December 27<sup>th</sup>, the overall rate was
18.8%, with the highest gains heaviest in automobile-related goods and
services, followed by meat and dairy items.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Clothing, travel-related services, fruits and vegetables, and
medical-related products generally decreased or rose less than average.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Fuel oil went up the most, 54.8%, and
televisions fell the greatest, 21.5%.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Some of these are consistent with the areas mentioned in the first
article, but some are not, and others are not listed. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Two pieces took the positive view, one well defended by
overall statistics.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Paul Krugman’s “Our
Economy Isn’t ‘Goldilocks.’<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s
Better,” from February 1<sup>st</sup> in the <i>New York Times</i>, called it
“both piping hot (in terms of growth and job creation) and refreshingly cool
(in terms of inflation),” with wage gains supported by recently rising
productivity, and a fourth-quarter 3.3% GDP gain far from recession
territory.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Our “one-time burst of
inflation” proved shorter-lasting than in similar countries, leaving us with
“arguably the best economy we’ve had since the late 1990s.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The second was “After 3 years of pain, America has finally
achieved economic nirvana” (Neil Dutta, <i>Business Insider</i>, December 3<sup>rd</sup>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The author mentioned that while we don’t know
about decreases, it is hard to imagine interest rates going higher soon.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As well, we have become so accustomed to the
number of net new nonfarm payroll positions far exceeding our population growth
that most considered a month with 150,000 more “disappointing,” and
unemployment, under 4% at article time, has stayed there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Contrary to those constantly predicting an
imminent recession, “the chances of a placid 2024 are becoming more real with
every data release,” backed up by the two Employment Situation Summary
emissions since, and “if 2023 was about the hard work of stabilizing the
economy, then 2024 is about enjoying the fruits of that labor.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So where are we?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
can’t buy that the economy is bad, weak, or even indifferent – it’s
booming.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet the Cottom piece points out
too many related issues.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Now that we
know that we’re not going back to 2010, 2020, or even 2022, we need to repair
them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That is up to more than our
president – it can be accomplished by businesses, Congress, state legislatures,
and even individual workers and families.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Let’s see what we can do.<o:p></o:p></p>James B. Huntingtonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09179923727061707153noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7338936439101295503.post-9383562972905536322024-02-16T00:16:00.000-08:002024-02-16T00:16:26.595-08:00Seven Takes on Remote vs. Office Work, and Where the Pendulum Is Now<p>In the past two-plus months, what’s been happening with observations
on this shifting if not really evolving issue?</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In <i>Business Insider</i> on December 9<sup>th</sup>,
Diamond Naga Stu and Tim Paradis told us that “Making your job suck less means
upending the workplace as we know it.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>They called “the four-day workweek” “the latest buzzy example of how
some employers hope to combat worker burnout,” and that “other methods include
pretty offices, paid sabbaticals, and” of course “remote work.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet they claimed that “what’s needed most… is
greater flexibility – and a more thoughtful definition of what that means for
each company and industry.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
possibilities they came up with were “letting workers pick their schedules,” “helping
managers “unstick” how work gets done” or change that, and “radical
flexibility” by offering more unusual time obligations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The same publication offered “Remote work stifles
innovation” (Aki Ito, December 19<sup>th</sup>), which held that while that did
not generally hurt productivity, “a massive new study published in the journal
Nature,” assessing “24 million scientific papers and patents” (how did they do
that?), found that “apparently, having better, more collaborative interactions…
everybody gathered around the water cooler, as it were, actually does lead
teams to pursue more novel ideas.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
trust they sorted out the correlation-causation issues properly, but I rarely
have confidence in that.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">On a growing concern with working from home, Jacob Zinkula,
also in <i>Business Insider</i>, let us tune in as “3 people who’ve secretly
worked multiple remote jobs explain the top things to look for in
overemployment roles.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The three key factors
their responders indicated were to “find a global company that’s accommodating
of flexible schedules,” especially those which “provide flexible working
arrangements for parents” exploitable by conjuring up children, “find a job
you’re great at so you can make a good first impression” thereby minimizing
training and avoiding “any kind of ramp-up period,” and “work in the IT field
and try to work with your friends” with the latter providing “someone on the
inside to understand there might be a meeting I miss here or there.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">A surprising assertion to be made in an article was that
“The hybrid work experiment is failing everyone” (Alyssa Place, <i>Benefit News</i>,
January 8<sup>th</sup>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While “74% of
employers have implemented a hybrid work schedule, where some of most of their
workers clock into the office a few times a week,” “a third of remote workers
have reported feeling lonely and isolated from colleagues,” despite hybrid
arrangements and remote-work technology.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>For example, on combination conference-room dial-in meetings, “best
practice has always been to bring those voices from furthest away into the room
first… but oftentimes, when the bulk of the team is in person, we forget that
there are other people who are outside.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This piece does not fully justify its title, but still conveys an
impression of real weakness with workers physically elsewhere.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">On January 12<sup>th</sup>, <i>Goldman Sachs</i> published
an attempt to understand “How the shift toward remote work has changed
consumption.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It claimed that “remote
work appears likely to be the most persistent economic legacy of the pandemic,”
as a chart of the “share of US workers working from home at least part of the
week” against the 3½ years of time starting July 2020 showed a drop from almost
50% to 27% about February 2021 and fluctuation wafting down to about 23% late
last year.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That looked like a decrease,
except for the note saying that the “pre-pandemic average” was 2.6%.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With services consumption lagging well behind
goods consumption since 2020, another graph is consistent with “metro-level
credit card data” showing “that remote workers spend less on office-adjacent
services (such as transportation) and more on home office and recreation goods.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The latter impeaches the view that away-from-office
workers are using their freed-up commuting time to work more.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">As if to concede that remote labor is not indefinitely
sufficient, Stephanie Schomer’s January 11<sup>th</sup> <i>Benefit News</i> “7
things employees hate about the office – and how to fix them” offered
solutions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For “punching the clock,” she
recommended “flexible arrival and departure times.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For “a lack of connection,” it’s “in-person
gatherings – for <i>all </i>employees” (italics hers).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To combat “inaccessible leadership,” it’s
“more facetime with the C-suite.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To
deal with “top-down decisions,” try “granting department heads decision-making
power.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To neutralize “a casual approach
to COVID,” employers can practice “embracing remote work as a safety
measure.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To handle “skills gaps for
young talent,” they can “nurture young employees with face-to-face time.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And as workers hate “no chance to give
feedback,” well, “gather feedback – anonymously.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While addressing only some issues people have
with showing up in person, most are to the point.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Can the title of Kelli Marie Korducki’s February 5<sup>th</sup>
<i>Business Insider</i> piece, “Bring back cublcles!,” be called a cry from the
heart?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The author documented how
cubicles became more and more common in the 1980s and 1990s, at times of
“sweeping company mergers, acquisitions, and downsizing that rewarded
space-efficient office layouts that were easy to reconfigure,” and became
“symbol(s) of daily drudgery.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet “open
office plans,” which followed, proved “a mixed bag” at best, and employees
found themselves increasingly relieved to be moving back to privacy-allowing
cubicles.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">How about the pendulum, which has gone back and forth
between remote and in-office work since the first George Bush’s
presidency?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is halfway between the
midpoint and the most extreme pro-office view possible, still moving toward
reporting in person.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While, per the
Goldman Sachs study, staying at home may remain more common, there is little
current effort by companies to get people to do that, and plenty to get them to
appear in person.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The pendulum’s speed
may be slowing, but it’s still moving in that direction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Tune in around 2029 to see it reverse.<o:p></o:p></p>James B. Huntingtonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09179923727061707153noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7338936439101295503.post-63558375788034437322024-02-09T00:17:00.000-08:002024-02-09T00:17:28.570-08:00Electric Vehicle Questions, and Three Other Possibilities<p>The past few months have been shaky for electric cars, not
so much because they aren’t selling – they are, much more than a couple of
years ago – but because things keep appearing that make it seem unlikely they
will become the norm. </p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">What will be the result if “The electric vehicle math isn’t
adding up, with average transaction price around $50,000 and gas price
nationwide falling to $3 a gallon” (Elesa St. John, Tom Krisher and the
Associated Press, <i>Fortune</i>, December 7)?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Sales in 2023 of the things, per Motorintelligence.com, through November
were over one million and 7.5% of all vehicles, something which “experts say…
must rise swiftly to address climate change.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But between lower oil prices, themselves partially a result of fewer new
cars using petroleum, and sales prices stubbornly high, along with reduced
government subsidies, it is a bad time for that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Other named reasons stopping buyers included
range concerns and the “location, cost and convenience of charging these cars.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Will that last concern remain problematic, as “Slow Rollout
of National Charging System Could Hinder E.V. Adoption” (Madeleine Ngo, <i>The
New York Times</i>, December 23<sup>rd</sup>)?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Although the Biden administration wants “a robust federal charging
network” to be implemented, the only stations put into service have been in New
York and Ohio, making the federal goal of 500,000 “public chargers,” which may
need to be one million, by 2030 seem unlikely, meaning that private companies,
who may or may not want to, would need to fill the gap.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In <i>Business Insider</i> on January 3<sup>rd</sup>, Paris
Marx asked “What happened to EVs?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Although
“electric vehicles were supposed to be inevitable,” “the pace of adoption has
markedly slowed,” as “EVs accumulated at dealerships this fall, even as
automakers cut prices,” and, as a result, Ford, General Motors, and Tesla all
delayed significant manufacturing plans.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In addition to the problems above, Marx cited less consumer spending
power from inflation, heavier battery-laden vehicles requiring “producers to
beef up their environmentally destructive mining operations,” such being
“harder on roads,” and them causing “a greater safety risk for pedestrians” and
even making “more air pollution.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">What alternatives are there?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>In <i>The Atlantic</i>, Patrick George assessed one that in previous
years appeared to many to be the best overall solution, but has been out of
conversations lately, in “The Hybrid-Car Dilemma” (December).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Although hybrids often get over 60 miles per
gallon, don’t have most issues mentioned here, and might be exemplified by “the
latest Toyota Sienna minivan” which “has nearly half the CO2 emissions of its
non-hybrid predecessor,” they have been held back.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Reasons for that include that “the auto
industry can’t decide whether hybrids are a bridge to an all-electric future or
a dead end,” and the vehicles “involve all the complexities of internal
combustion and battery power put together.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Car companies do not always make what is most
popular, and the situation with hybrids may be another example of that.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Five years ago, we were supposed to be humming toward a
driverless car future.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since then, the
industry has entered a winter of small action and few implementations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, “Apple Ramped Up Autonomous Vehicle
Testing Last Year, Filings Show” (Aarian Marshall, <i>Wired.com</i>, February 2<sup>nd</sup>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Although “Apple’s secretive vehicle project
doesn’t have much to show for its six years of work, at least publicly,” it
“went on an autonomous testing jag last year, almost quadrupling the number of
miles it tested on public roads compared to 2022 and jumping 2021’s total by a
factor of more than 30.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Waymo and
Alphabet have been testing several times as much, with and without passengers
and safety operators.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Will we see more
self-driving results?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I hope so.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">What other prospect is out there?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As of over two years ago, “You can now buy a
flying car for $92,000” (Kristin Houser, <i>freethink.com</i>, October 28,
2021).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The operator doesn’t need a
pilot’s license – if they build the craft and are willing to take liability for
crashes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since the item here, the Jetson
One, “can’t be flown at night, over city traffic, or in restricted air space…
right now it’s more like a really expensive, really cool toy than an alternate
transportation option,” but that could change.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This one is electric, and doesn’t have much of a range, but who
knows?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If electric cars end up in a
niche, would we want to see this ancient idea revived?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Questions, questions.<o:p></o:p></p>James B. Huntingtonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09179923727061707153noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7338936439101295503.post-71284165853589750982024-02-02T07:20:00.000-08:002024-03-03T17:57:52.487-08:00This Morning’s Report: Another Big Jobs Gain, But Other Results Aren’t Following, and Latent Demand Grew 1.2 Million to 17,152,000 Per the AJSN<p>Some will say today’s Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment
Situation Summary was first-class, and according to the most publicized number,
total net nonfarm payroll employment jumped 353,000, almost matching both
published estimates I saw <i>combined</i>, it was. But how about the rest?</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Seasonally adjusted unemployment held at 3.7%, with the unadjusted
variety, reflecting how many people work in December but not in January, up
from 3.5% to 4.1%.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The adjusted count of
unemployed was off 200,000 to 6.1 million, again consistent with the unadjusted
gain of just under 900,000 to 6,778,000.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The number claiming no interest in working dropped 716,000, losing most
of December’s gain, to 95.149 million.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Unadjusted employment fell a seasonal 1.1 million.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The count of long-term joblessness, people
out of work for 12 months or longer, fell 100,000 to 1.1 million, and the tally
of people working part-time for economic reasons, or keeping part-time
positions while so far not finding full-time ones they want, matched last month’s
change with a 200,000 gain, and is now at a dispiriting 4.4 million.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The two measures of how common it is for
Americans to be working or nearly so, the labor force participation rate and
the employment-population ratio, stayed the same and gained 0.1% respectively
to reach 62.5% and 60.2%.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The American Job Shortage Number or AJSN, the metric showing
how many additional positions could be quickly filled if everyone knew they
could be obtained easily and routinely, increased almost 1.2 million to the
following:<o:p></o:p></p>
<div><br /></div><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEikio2HVM4qUH-j6JY9-nig3Dhm4VqWJYJK6iIw_MgyZydccQOuoZUaqu0CQUezWQIuGTBrts9qTqhK1tp3ZZVDqvfN2VouctsQqmuoLOBkb2GvYtu7y47tCPFMGAFTJsF4sOnATJsxDBHQK5ub6XdaRvfol3YrAjCxTMIjOoZDdxhfvQbxpp3kM2W3AOJn" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="392" data-original-width="406" height="386" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEikio2HVM4qUH-j6JY9-nig3Dhm4VqWJYJK6iIw_MgyZydccQOuoZUaqu0CQUezWQIuGTBrts9qTqhK1tp3ZZVDqvfN2VouctsQqmuoLOBkb2GvYtu7y47tCPFMGAFTJsF4sOnATJsxDBHQK5ub6XdaRvfol3YrAjCxTMIjOoZDdxhfvQbxpp3kM2W3AOJn=w400-h386" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Almost 800,000 of the change was from higher unemployment,
with nearly all the remainder from those not looking for a year or more and those
discouraged.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The share of the AJSN from the
officially jobless rose 2.3% to 35.6%.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As
the AJSN is not seasonally adjusted, this result is not particularly
discouraging, however, when compared with the measure a year before it has
gained over 400,000, mostly from higher unemployment.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">How should we assess this data?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is generally good, but what is noteworthy
to me is how much the number of people with positions increases month after
month, but the unemployment rates and the measures of partial attachment above don’t
improve.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since for the past year or two
we have known about “overemployment,” or people secretly having more than one
full-time job, is it possible that many of these 353,000 additional people
working were doing that already?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Those
taking on extra jobs may be no more honest with pollsters than they are with
employers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It would not be a shock to
discover that the 159-plus million people reported as working are really
something like 155 million, with over 4,000,000 undiscovered multi-job
workers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t know if that is
technically possible, but if it is, it is worthy of investigation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the meantime, the turtle took another small
step – but no more than that – forward.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>James B. Huntingtonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09179923727061707153noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7338936439101295503.post-23962979726309704062024-01-19T00:24:00.000-08:002024-01-19T00:29:29.061-08:00Artificial Intelligence – Three Weeks of Bad News<p>Last week I went through positive things for this technology
coming out since December. Here are the others.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The first was “The Times Sues OpenAI and Microsoft over A.I.
Use of Copyrighted Work” (Michael M. Grynbaum and Ryan Mac, <i>The New York
Times</i>, December 27<sup>th</sup>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As
became clear by the middle of last year, data use by these programs has
included plenty of sources undoubtably legally off limits.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Although “the suit does not include an exact
monetary demand,” it may end up being a lot, though to prevent easy assessment
of the values of what could be great masses of similar attempts by others, it
will almost certainly be settled out of court for an undisclosed sum.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Further development was published in “Boom in
A.I. Prompts a Test of Copyright Law” (J. Edward Moreno, <i>The New York Times</i>,
December 30<sup>th</sup>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not much fun
for future venture capitalists to consider.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">A disappointment came to light in “ChatGPT Helps, and
Worries, Business Consultants, Study Finds” (David Berreby, <i>The New York
Times</i>, December 28<sup>th</sup>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While
“the A.I. tool helped most with creative tasks,” including providing good structure
and preliminary ideas when it “was to brainstorm about a new type of shoe,
sketch a persuasive business plan for making it and write about it
persuasively,” “on a task that required reasoning based on evidence… ChatGPT
was not helpful at all,” with the danger that “”people told us they neglected
to check it because it’s so polished, it looks so right.””<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That means, as other results have shown, that
generative AI programs are now better for starting business output than
finishing it.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Speaking of venture capitalists, we also got “What happened
to the artificial intelligence investment boom?” (<i>The Economist</i>, January
7<sup>th</sup>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Capital expenditures at
large, S&P 500 firms not selling AI, the unbilled author or authors found,
were only rising an average of 2.5% this year, with similar increases in
Europe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Per the piece, although this
statistic may indicate that “adoption of new general-purpose tech tends to take
time,” it may be instead that “generative AI is a busted flush,” that “big tech
firms… are going to struggle to find customers for the products and services
that they have spent tens of billions of dollars developing.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">For even worse, look at “Robotics Expert Says AI Hype is Due
for a Brutal Reality Check” (<i>Futurism.com</i>, January 8<sup>th</sup>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Rodney Brooks, who co-founded the company iRobot
– which invented the Roomba,” said that “the AI industry is merely “following a
well worn hype cycle that we have seen again, and again, during the 60+ year
history of AI.”” He said that “more than likely… advancements in the field will
stagnate for many dark years before reaching the next huge breakthrough,” which
would be “quite a calamitous comedown.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Reminiscent of what has happened, or more properly didn’t happen, with
driverless vehicles, “he’s skeptical that we’ll even be able to create “a robot
that seems as intelligent, as attentive, and as faithful as a dog” before
2048.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So, ““get your thick coats
now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There may be yet another AI winter,
and perhaps even a full scale tech winter, just around the corner.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And it is going to be cold.””<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Similarly, Daron Acemoglu told us to “Get Ready for the
Great AI Disappointment” (<i>Wired.com</i>, January 10<sup>th</sup>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As I also predicted, “the year 2024 will be
the time for recalibrating expectations,” as its tendencies to “provide false
information” and fabricate it, along with further regulation, will limit AI to
“just so-so automation… that fails to deliver huge productivity improvements.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The author expected that its largest use
“will be in social media and online search” – hardly justifying “talk of the
“existential risks.””<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">A concerning set of applications now in use is the subject
of “Dark Corners of the Web Offer a Glimpse of A.I.’s Nefarious Future” (Stuart
A. Thompson, <i>The New York Times</i>, January 8<sup>th</sup>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He discussed “a collection of online trolls”
affixing images into false scenes on “an anonymous message board known for
fostering harassment, and spreading hateful content and conspiracy theories.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Other “problems” on this site included “fake
pornography” with recognizable faces, “cloning voices” to make sound seem like
you were saying it, and of course “racist memes.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since “there is no federal law banning the
creation of fake images of people,” we can expect many more.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">All of these may have been influential, as “Elon Musk puts
the brakes on AI development at Tesla until he gets more control” (Beatrice
Nolan, <i>Business Insider</i>, January 16<sup>th</sup>). That 13% owner, who
wants to be “controlling 25% of the votes,” may see a rough path ahead, and so
is willing to stop activity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We should
know better than to know how Musk thinks, but people do not often voluntarily
halt things they like.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As well, it is
time to doubt whether artificial intelligence will take over anything except
some electronic documents. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">There will be no post next week - I will return on February 2nd with a look at the new jobs report and the latest AJSN.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p>James B. Huntingtonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09179923727061707153noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7338936439101295503.post-28966787026918835712024-01-12T00:35:00.000-08:002024-01-12T00:35:18.966-08:00Artificial Intelligence: The Good News<p>Since June I have been expressing generally contrarian views
on AI, that it will not fulfill the concerns and expectations it has gathered
since its February news explosion. As
always, there are many facets of its progress.
What are some of the favorable ones from the past month?</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In <i>Fox News</i> on December 20<sup>th</sup>, Melissa Rudy
published “Artificial intelligence experts share 6 of the biggest AI
innovations of 2023: ‘A landmark year.’”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The advances, all medical-related, were “ChatGPT and other generative AI,”
the subject of the blitz above which “has revolutionized health care
communication by providing tools for personalized treatment plans and remote
patient engagement,” though “its responses have sometimes been found lacking in
accuracy and thoroughness”; “disease detection through retinal images,” which
as of September “excels in diagnosing and predicting both eye diseases and
systemic disorders such as heart failure and myocardial infarction”;
“improvements to medical productivity,” also in assessing problems using retinal
photography; “medical imaging and education” by “faster scanning times,
enhanced image resolution and reduced radiation exposure”; “accelerated cancer
research” through “using it to find hidden patterns in data, personalize
treatment decision-making and help predict treatment benefit”; and “AI medical
devices,” at least one-third of 692 AI-incorporating now FDA-approved added
since 2022.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Another new product was the subject of “The next generation
of Tesla’s humanoid robot makes its debut” (Kurt Knutsson, <i>Fox News</i>,
December 24<sup>th</sup>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This
automaton “designed to be a general-purpose machine that can assist humans in
various domains, such as manufacturing, construction, healthcare and
entertainment,” is made up to have an almost-human frame, with hands having “11
degrees of freedom… equipped with tactile sensors and faster actuators, which
allow it to manipulate objects with more precision and dexterity” among other
refinements.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Overall, per Knutsson, this
item “is a stunning example of how far humanoid robotics has come and how far
it can go.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In the December 27<sup>th</sup> <i>New York Times</i>,
Andrew Ross Sorkin took a stab at “What’s next in A.I.?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He got information from “some of the world’s
foremost experts in artificial intelligence,” and used it “to gauge what could
be in store for the buzzy technology in the year ahead.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet a section by Vivienne Walt claimed that
“if 2023 was the year the world woke up to A.I., 2024 might be the year in
which its legal and technical limits will be tested, and perhaps
breached.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Also, “judges and lawmakers
will increasingly weigh in,” “some fear overloading A.I. businesses with
regulations,” a prediction that “A.I capabilities will soar,” and “billions in
investment will be needed.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Last, we had a look at “How the Federal Government Can Rein
In A.I. in Law Enforcement” (Joy Buolamwini and Barry Friedman, <i>The New York
Times</i>, January 2<sup>nd</sup>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
problems appear when “law enforcement deploys emerging technologies without
transparency or community agreement that they should be used at all, with
little or no consideration of the consequences, insufficient training and
inadequate guardrails.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A proposal from
the federal Office of Management and Budget states that “agencies must be
transparent and provide a public inventory of cases in which A.I. was used,” in
which “the risks to individuals… must be identified and reduced.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However, “there is also a vague exception for
“national security,”” which, per the authors, “requires a sharper
definition.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Artificial intelligence has contributed more than the
generally incremental and future-bound achievements here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet it is difficult to tease out what has
happened over the past ten months from what was there before and what hasn’t
actually happened yet.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">What are less favorable things that have occurred around
AI?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That will be the subject of next
week’s post.<o:p></o:p></p>James B. Huntingtonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09179923727061707153noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7338936439101295503.post-29090600263793624202024-01-05T07:58:00.000-08:002024-01-05T07:58:29.474-08:00This Morning’s Employment Report Featured Another Fine Jobs Gain, But Latent Demand by AJSN Grew 300,000, With Overall Weakness Elsewhere<p>The new Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment Situation
Summary started out, again, by exceeding expectations. The number of net new nonfarm payroll
positions, formally estimated at 160,000 and 170,000, handily beat both with
216,000. Seasonally adjusted and unadjusted
unemployment did not drop but held their November 0.2% and 0.1% improvements to
stay at 3.7% and 3.5%. The count of
jobless remained at 6.3 million, and those out for 27 weeks or longer held at
1.2 million. Given that inflation keeps
dropping, we can cheer the average private nonfarm payroll earnings rising more
than that, 17 cents per hour to $34.27. </p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">From there, the numbers disappointed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Those employed fell about 1.4 million to
160,754,000.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Those not interested rose
just over a million to 95,865,000.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
count of those working part-time for economic reasons, or staying in part-time
positions while looking for full-time ones, gave up most of its November
improvement to reach 4.2 million.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The two
measures of how common it is for Americans to be working or close to that, the
labor force participation rate and the employment-population ratio, did even
worse, dropping 0.3% and 0.4% to get to 62.5% and 60.1%.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The American Job Shortage Number or AJSN, the measure
showing how many new positions could be quickly filled if all knew that getting
one would be about as hard as running a household errand, increased 324,000 to this:<o:p></o:p></p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEggcB4tWxRxpyehYCJNs4waC12S-fnKR9a2uZvQh5EHIA5mxnziOT_VuMYky51TAqMV78c3-9SsRnWMcW9EctsTjZu8zlZC1j_Kdnd3-6YcjTsV4tlH3J_gEEweHq8a5JC2APfIwn8a4E-Qf5MMrOcmUMsdnqeRgPpfziTKtikCUGBZ6fFNOOSm9aTtAAVg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="" data-original-height="392" data-original-width="406" height="386" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEggcB4tWxRxpyehYCJNs4waC12S-fnKR9a2uZvQh5EHIA5mxnziOT_VuMYky51TAqMV78c3-9SsRnWMcW9EctsTjZu8zlZC1j_Kdnd3-6YcjTsV4tlH3J_gEEweHq8a5JC2APfIwn8a4E-Qf5MMrOcmUMsdnqeRgPpfziTKtikCUGBZ6fFNOOSm9aTtAAVg=w400-h386" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p class="MsoNormal">Most of the change from November was from almost 300,000
more people not looking for work for the previous year, offset partially by
fewer claiming discouragement. Compared
with a year before, the AJSN is almost 400,000 higher, with the unemployed contributing
almost half a million to the metric and the effect of more people wanting work
but not looking for it for a year or more adding a surprising 184,000. The share of the AJSN from official
unemployment was 33.3%, meaning that two-thirds of people who would fill new
jobs would not have that status.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So where are we now?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Some of the downturns look like possible mid-December biases, as it is then
easy for people to hold off on job-seeking activities and positive attitudes about
it until after the holidays.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When people
are not working then, it’s easier than usual for them to accept that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yet the previous December was better.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The number of net new positions keeps
marching on, but there’s little improvement elsewhere, and more unemployed
Americans in conjunction suggests that those choosing to be overemployed or
working more than one full-time position, or keeping more than one part-time
job, are getting more common.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But it’s
too early to claim any trends there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Next month’s report, based on a historically strong back-to-work month
in January, will tell us whether underlying factors in American unemployment
and employment are changing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the
meantime, the turtle took but a tiny step forward.<o:p></o:p></p>James B. Huntingtonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09179923727061707153noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7338936439101295503.post-21452570525355387732023-12-29T00:23:00.000-08:002023-12-29T00:23:04.352-08:00Activity vs. Production – What’s Happening, and Why It Would Be Beneficial to Do Better<p>It’s an ancient problem.
Some workers look busy, but don’t accomplish much. Some are low-profile, efficient, and quietly,
often with lower hours or even apparent effort, get a lot more done. Some focus on quality, others on quantity. </p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">How can supervisors and higher-ups best manage these
different situations?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">One way is electronic monitoring.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That is nothing new.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I worked at a data-entry position 36
years ago, supervisors got reports giving workers’ production, though at a
coarse level, and other statistics such as how many things they deleted.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That was a start, though not all items
produced were the same difficulty.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>For
most cubicle jobs, though, direct production is harder to assess, and some
measures can be simply misleading.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">That issue came to the fore with “Microsoft executives say
it’s ‘wrong’ for managers to spy on remote employees’ mouse clicks and
keystrokes: ‘That’s measuring heat rather than outcome’” (Grace Kay, <i>Business
Insider</i>, September 22<sup>nd</sup>, 2022).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>That is old also – an AT&T second-level manager in a group I was in
over 30 years ago had software set up to tell him when a certain worker opened
the databases he used; it wasn’t effective for long, as the employee set up
something to automatically do that every morning he was scheduled.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The modern version may, per a quote from
Microsoft’s CEO, be a result of “productivity paranoia,” especially concerning
remote and hybrid workers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Another more general involvement area is about working extra
hours.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A noticeable indication of that is
communicating at unusual times.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>However,
“After-hours work emails are facing more legal restrictions” (Megan Cerullo, <i>Yahoo
Finance</i>, February 3<sup>rd</sup>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>One example is that “employers in Ontario, Canada are required to have
written policies on disconnecting from work that outline when work-related
communications, including emails, phone call and video conferences, are
prohibited.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Clearly, “the onus is on
both the employer and employee to set boundaries around communicating outside
of normal working hours,” and – for that matter, working in general – but often
that does not happen.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Going further, Adam Waytz, in the March-April <i>Harvard
Business Review</i>, wrote an article printing out to over 12 pages, titled
“Beware a Culture of Busyness.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The idea
is also well-established, and the first part, with office people when asked how
they were doing saying they were “busy,” matched AT&T culture when I was
there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Per Waytz, “Busyness has become a
status symbol,” research has showed that those seeming busy are perceived as
““important and impressive”” and “”morally admirable,” regardless of their
output.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The author described how “a
culture of busyness” can perpetuate itself, and named five ways to roll that
back: “reward output, not just activity”; “assess whether your organization is
generating deep work and eliminating low-value work”; “force people off the
clock”; “model the right behavior”; and “build slack into the system.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">A development newer than quiet quitting, or refusing to work
additional time or put in unusual effort, is the subject of “Gen Z’s ‘lazy girl
jobs’ trend hits back at hustle culture, but critics warn outcome could be
problematic” (Taylor Penley, <i>Fox Business</i>, July 29<sup>th</sup>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Such arrangements, per the article, are
“well-paying often fully or partially remote jobs that require minimal effort
to cut back on the stress and anxiety they say is harmful to mental
health.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Per one respondent, they
include exercising and doing household tasks during work hours.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Unsurprisingly, “not everyone is on board
with the concept,” and it “isn’t gender-exclusive.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I suspect this trend comes mostly from lax
remote-work supervision and standards, with Generation Z workers, with shorter
work-experience sets containing little time during low-hiring eras, especially
willing to articulate and practice what they want, even if it sounds bad.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If employers can harvest the advantages of
clear policies and performance-centered employee evaluations, they can
integrate those things with a conscious, focused retreat from busyness culture,
and get a net benefit from it, especially considering how those policies can
minimize expensive worker turnover.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Encouraging and rewarding activity over results is not only
constructive but good business.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was a
top producer at AT&T, even though I worked little extra time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I saw those inflating their hours but
not their production, it discouraged me and my kin.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Management did not want people doing the most
work moving to competitors, but that was sometimes a needless consequence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When companies realize why it is poor
practice to encourage “heat, rather than outcome,” they can in theory improve
this problem. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But can they in reality?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Many managers cannot tell the difference
between quality and quantity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If they
can get past that, many will be surprised at how much their businesses will
improve. <o:p></o:p></p>James B. Huntingtonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09179923727061707153noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7338936439101295503.post-45852330492517087392023-12-22T00:04:00.000-08:002023-12-22T00:04:39.682-08:00Artificial Intelligence: More Concerns, Proposals, and Organizational Progress<p>While there have been various areas of AI progress over the
past few months – incremental and automobile-related, anyway – more things have
popped up since late November.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In “A.I. Belongs to the Capitalists Now” (<i>The New York
Times</i>, November 22<sup>nd</sup>), Kevin Roose said there had been “a fight
between two dueling visions of artificial intelligence,” which with the Sam
Altman OpenAI firing-and-rehiring had been won by “Team Capitalism,” which held
that “A.I. is a transformative new tool, the latest in a line of world-changing
innovations that includes the steam engine, electricity and the personal
computer, and that, if put to the right uses, could usher in a new era of
prosperity and make gobs of money for the businesses that harness its potential,”
instead of something “that must be restrained and deployed with extreme caution
in order to prevent it from taking over and killing us all.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We’ll see.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">A solution to one of AI’s huge problems?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Possibly, in “Big Companies Find a Way to
Identify A.I. Data They Can Trust” (Steve Lohr, <i>The New York Times</i>,
November 30<sup>th</sup>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That day, “a
consortium of companies (released) standards for describing the origin,
history, and legal rights to data,” along with “intended use and
restrictions.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The limitations seem a
way of stifling unwanted findings, but the first part appears mandatory – but
what about data already incorporated?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“AI microdosing” (Drake Bennett, <i>Bloomberg</i>, December
1<sup>st</sup>) presented a comparison with recent experiments in doing that
with hallucinogenic drugs, suggesting that the software be allowed tiny but
real hallucinating capability, as “imagination – at the margins – is hard to
distinguish from” that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Reasonable, but
first we need to get better control over the current state of that problem.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Back to organization, we saw “How Nations Are Losing a
Global Race to Tackle A.I.’s Harms” Adam Satariano and Cecilia King, <i>The New
York Times</i>, December 6<sup>th</sup>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Mainly that’s slow execution on regulation, as “A.I. systems are
advancing so rapidly and unpredictably that lawmakers and regulators can’t keep
pace.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So why can’t they focus on, say,
ChatGPT, as it’s obtainable and in use now?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>They may need to react to other products as they come out, but until
they do emerge, we need to concentrate on what we actually have.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Similarly, from the same date and the same
publication, “Experts on A.I. agree That It Needs Regulation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s the Easy Part” (Alina Tugend).<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The sort of thing we would do well to see more of was the
focus of “Microsoft and labor unions form alliance on AI” (Jackie Davalos and
Josh Eidelson, <i>Benefit News</i>, December 11<sup>th</sup>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The software company “will provide labor
leaders and workers with formal training on how artificial intelligence works,”
but not until a year from now, and both sides will be “incorporating worker
perspectives and expertise in the development of AI technology,” along with
“helping shape public policy that supports the technology skills and needs of
frontline workers.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The idea’s implementation
success, of course, is unknown.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Finally, “Should A.I. Accelerate?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Decelerate?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The Answer Is Both” (By De Kai, <i>The New York Times</i>, December 10<sup>th</sup>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This is partisan political complaining about
the technology being used “to amplify polarization, bias and misinformation,”
that “A.I.’s are manipulating humanity,” and so “we need to decelerate
deployment of A.I.’s that are exacerbating sociopolitical instability.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Unfortunately for the author, companies have
their own agendas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Develop your own product
and you can direct it as you want.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Until
then, we need to be personally responsible for what we believe.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And artificial intelligence will wander into
2024 with its massive achievements, and disasters, still in the future.<o:p></o:p></p>James B. Huntingtonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09179923727061707153noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7338936439101295503.post-39237793975829547992023-12-15T00:19:00.000-08:002023-12-15T00:19:55.947-08:00From 2023 Into 2024: Nine Areas of Jobs and the Economy<p>How did this year turn out with economic and employment
Issues? What is likely in the next?</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I can only go so far with the latter, as a lot can happen,
especially in a year with an unusually critical presidential election.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But we are now heading in some direction with
each of these nine areas, and so can say something.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I also feel confident about making annual predictions,
as I was in a small minority of economists expecting no 2023 recession.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Will I do as well in 2024?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The first area is employment statistics and the American Job
Shortage Number, or AJSN.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>From November
2022’s Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment Situation Summary data to a year
later, we added 2.79 million net new nonfarm payroll positions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since our population, including children and
those not wanting to work, rose by 2.43 million, that’s tremendous.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Seasonally adjusted and unadjusted official
joblessness went from 3.7% and 3.4% to 3.7% and 3.5%.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The adjusted total number of unemployed
increased from 6.0 million to 6.3 million, with the count of long-term jobless,
or those out for 27 weeks or longer, holding at 1.2 million.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Those working part-time for economic reasons,
or keeping less-hours positions while thus far unsuccessfully seeking full-time
ones, gained 300,000 to 4.0 million.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
labor force participation rate jumped 0.7% to 62.8%, and the
employment-population ratio grew 0.9% to reach 60.8%.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Average hourly private nonfarm payroll
earnings grew $1.28 or 4.2%, more than inflation, to $34.10. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The AJSN showed that latent demand for work
fell 155,000 to get to 15.646 million.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Overall, though there were some unfavorable gains, these numbers remain
strong.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Expect more of same next year,
with continued unemployment below 4% but fewer new jobs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That would again be excellent – and still
recession-free.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Second, we have four-day workweeks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Per my December 1<sup>st</sup> post, I see no
progress on pertinent questions that must be answered, such as salary amount
change, idle time during workdays, no Friday equivalent, and, most importantly,
what a switch to 32 nominally scheduled hours would mean for workers now
putting in way over 40.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I see interest fading
in this option in 2024, with other alternatives, such as flexible hours and
hybrid work, to get its adherents.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Third is autonomous vehicles.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This has been a terrible year for them, with
gains approximately offset by San Francisco rollbacks caused by traffic and
emergency interference.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It has seemed
clear since at least 2021 that there will be no imminent large-scale move to
them, but even slow growth was lacking in 2023.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The next will be a critical year for the technology – look for some
retrenching and some new locations and applications, but strictly incremental
progress.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How 2024 turns out will define
where fully driverless cars, buses and trucks will go, which could be back to
widespread hopes, steady and slow proliferation, or near-extinction.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The fourth area is electric vehicles.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Strangely, 2023 was both very good and very
bad for them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was a success since one
million were sold in the United States alone, and they made up 7.5% of
November-to-November sales, a massive increase.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The bad news is in the title of the source article for these facts, “The
electric vehicle math isn’t adding up, with average transaction price around
$50,000 and gas price nationwide falling to $3 a gallon” (Alexa St. John et
al., <i>Fortune</i>, December 7<sup>th</sup>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>With charging stations becoming available in almost all areas with high
demand, a high share of those who wanted them have accepted their shortcomings
and bought, whereas those less interested are, if anything, becoming even more
unlikely to buy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Being forced to cheer
for higher oil prices is a hard position to maintain, and fundamental sale price
drops may require more to be sold than the market can support.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I predict that by November 2024 the share of
electrics as American vehicles will be higher than it is now, but only about 10%,
with a growing consensus that under current conditions they will not be
completely or even largely taking over.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Fifth, I give you artificial intelligence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In February, I wrote that “we’ve been sort of
stunned by ChatGPT’s recent exploits, which not only suddenly forced people to
adjust their methods but solidly moved AI from the future to the present.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>To what extent has this continued?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>AI was in use well before then, and there
have been some currently running achievements and improvements, particularly in
the automotive field, but for various reasons over these past ten months we
have seen only small, incremental effects on most American’s lives.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When I posted a promotional message about my
latest AI post, “Artificial Intelligence is an Awfully Wobbly Juggernaut,”
documenting lack of broad-based progress, a former Silicon Valley worker sent
me 18 points to be intended to be to the contrary.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I counted only four actual applications new
since February, along with three already in place before then, eight on
business deals and technical achievements focusing on the future, and three
claiming general large-organization use.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>While it is beneficial for those developing technology to focus on the
future, it is necessary also to see what has actually been completed and how it
measures up to projections.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The problems
I named in the August 25<sup>th</sup> post as causing AI to be “boxed in” –
dishonest employee use distorting results, feeding on its own errors by reading
in AI-generated erroneous information, the looming new-data shortage, copyright
violations awaiting legal judgments, chip shortages, the uncertainty of coming regulation,
and the gigantic cost of future releases, along with reasonable and
unreasonable fears about it and a consistent lack of will in enduring temporary
problems to implement major technical and logistical improvements – are all
still valid, and will probably truncate AI’s effects.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I expect that while in 2024 there will be
many more AI-enhanced niches, its overall effect will be more modest than that
of mobile phones, with the world-conquering fears and sweeping expectations
becoming far rarer.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Sixth is remote work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This year it met with great resistance, as the pendulum on which its
enthusiasm has swung for 30 years moved away from it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As I have written, businesses often learn
little from experiences, and when they again discover the advantages of either
working from home or working from the office, they do not remember what went
wrong or right before.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are two
sides to the issue, meaning that putting in time remotely is not a panacea, and
will not take over.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I project non-office
workdays to slightly decrease in 2024, with de facto industry standards calling
for few employees in most fields to be granted more than one per week.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Seventh I move to interest rates.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was an event when on Wednesday the Federal
Reserve not only held them the same as expected but announced that they projected
cutting interest rates three times next year, and the Dow Jones Industrial
Average jumped over 500 points and hit an all-time high.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But how can they attach any conviction to
that?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Did they anticipate in December
2021 that a year later the federal funds rate would be almost 5% higher?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They carefully consider recent inputs, weigh a
range of factors, and only then decide – and we should all be glad that their
2022 choices turned out that way.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Whether they reduce rates three times, eight times, or not at all in
2024 will depend on data we don’t yet have and can’t really estimate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I predict that we will indeed pay less for
money in a year, but only about 1% or 1.5%, and I certainly am not confident
enough about it to even pencil that in.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Eighth, how about investments?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I don’t have much to say here.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Predicting a massively profitable 2024 is
unjustified.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There are a lot of problems
in the world, and we may add one of our own in November.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A historically justified 5% gain in general
seems as good a projection as any.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Last, public beliefs on the economy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There has been a string of articles
discussing that as if it were a problem of its own, and to some extent it
is.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Many people are less happy about our
economic times, most of whom are influenced by not knowing firsthand what a
real recession is like or following the stated views, designed to affect
voting, of their political party.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is
easy to take bad individual experiences, such as being fired or not hired, as
reflecting everyone’s condition.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I
predict that, by year’s end, people’s opinions will be more in line with
reality.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s optimistic, but
irrationality often corrects itself.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">For more information on these areas, see other posts in this
blog.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With that, here’s to a prosperous
2024, especially for you and your family.<o:p></o:p></p>James B. Huntingtonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09179923727061707153noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7338936439101295503.post-86900811068181373052023-12-08T07:21:00.000-08:002023-12-08T07:21:45.018-08:00Jobs Report Roars Back – AJSN Shows Latent Demand Down Almost Half a Million<p>Last month’s Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment Situation
Summary was the worst all year. But any
thoughts that it would start a trend were dashed this morning.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In November, our economy added 199,000 net new nonfarm payroll
positions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That was not only at the high
end of published predictions – the ones I saw were 150,000, 190,000, and
200,000 – but four times what we needed to cover population increase.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All but one of the statistics I report on
improved. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Seasonally adjusted and
unadjusted unemployment reached 3.7% and 3.5%, down 0.2% and 0.1%.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The number of people with jobs gained 473,000
to 162,149,000, and officially unemployed, seasonally adjusted, dropped 200,000
to 6.3 million.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The long-term jobless
out for 27 weeks or longer fell 100,000 to 1.2 million, and those working
part-time for economic reasons, or holding on to shorter-hours propositions
while seeking full-time ones, lost 300,000, getting to 4.0 million.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The measures of how common it is for
Americans to be working or counted as technically jobless, the labor force
participation rate and the employment-population ratio, rose 0.1% and a large
0.3% to arrive at 62.8% and 60.8%.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Average
hourly private nonfarm payroll wages added 10 cents, more than inflation again,
to $34.10.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Those claiming no interest in
work were 9,000 more numerous and numbered 94,839,000.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The American Job Shortage Number or AJSN, the metric showing
how many additional positions could be quickly filled if everyone knew they
would be easy to get, lost 488,000 from last month, and ended up at this:<o:p></o:p></p>
<div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhv7-uDiY3MbWrDS8it02Mgwer6ybzD6lEH9C3kIrz-x9VuipTU_LCmNOvbx6iDkw0bCc6MVe1u75ES5kckRSEmamH9cC3cQE5Ci7GxtnAvzBpIC3YN-GmtuXQiOv2EF46CWNweihVgOR7XH0Z7B1NRE-WElI2yYspkNJR0DRMDTcNxzyV2MLwIDKDcqcW1"><img alt="" data-original-height="392" data-original-width="406" height="386" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhv7-uDiY3MbWrDS8it02Mgwer6ybzD6lEH9C3kIrz-x9VuipTU_LCmNOvbx6iDkw0bCc6MVe1u75ES5kckRSEmamH9cC3cQE5Ci7GxtnAvzBpIC3YN-GmtuXQiOv2EF46CWNweihVgOR7XH0Z7B1NRE-WElI2yYspkNJR0DRMDTcNxzyV2MLwIDKDcqcW1=w400-h386" width="400" /></a></div><br /><br />
<p class="MsoNormal">Ninety percent of this month’s change was due to fewer unemployed
and fewer American expatriates, the current State Department estimate of whom
fell one million.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The share of the AJSN
from those officially jobless was 33.5%, down 0.5%.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Compared with a year before, the AJSN decreased 154,000,
with the change in expatriates, and in those wanting work but not looking for
it for at least a year, more than offsetting an increase in the jobless
count.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">If we draw a two-month line from September to November, we
get average monthly jobs gains of 174,500, adjusted and unadjusted unemployment
each down 0.1%, 100,000 fewer officially jobless, long-term unemployment
unchanged, the employment-population ratio the same but the labor force
participation rate up 0.4%, those working part-time for economic reasons down
100,000, people employed up 480,000, and the hourly wages above up 22 cents. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The AJSN fell 543,000.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The only minus is the count of those denying
any interest in work, which over the past two months increased 428,000.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">All that means we’re still doing superbly.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We, in general, more than cancelled out the
previous month’s disappointing showing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>No recession, no shortage of work, wages strong, and inflation at 3%.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Overall, these are great times for the
American economy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The turtle took a double-sized
step forward.<o:p></o:p></p>James B. Huntingtonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09179923727061707153noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7338936439101295503.post-22882731865022949782023-12-01T00:26:00.000-08:002023-12-01T00:26:31.877-08:00Four-Day Workweeks – Do They Make Sense?<p>Since the five-day, 40-hour week was solidified in the
1930s, people have talked about full-timers reporting for less. It seemed like the logical next step, but 90
years on we have seen no such thing. </p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">There are several reasons for that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The schedule has worked well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>People can coordinate family and leisure
activities effectively, given that they are spending, plus commuting, only
about one-quarter of their regular working weeks there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Overtime can be easily added to either
weekdays or weekends.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Studies have shown
that productivity starts to fade after about that number of hours.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Remote work, though, has destroyed the
barrier between home and office, so is it possible we are ready to cut back
from the venerable Monday through Friday?<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In “Push for a 4-day work week picks up steam – and critics”
(<i>Fox News</i>, February 5<sup>th</sup>), Aaron Kliegman summarized the
contemporary situation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“A growing
number of lawmakers, business leaders, and academics are pushing for the U.S.
to embrace a four-day work week, leading critics to question the wisdom of what
would be a cultural sea change for the country.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While some pointed out that “not every
business is able to cut its work time while maintaining the same level of
salaries,” others called it “something that offers a real win-win possibility
for both employers and employees,” and “academics have been increasingly
floating the idea,” along with “a recent CNN opinion piece” which said its
advocates were ”striking a blow at the absurd American culture of
overwork.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Or, perhaps, as a Wharton
processor put it, she did not think that “our employers are going to believe
that you can get as much work done in four days as in five.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The last view did not seem the most common, as “Is the US
ready for a four-day work week?” (Austin Westfall, <i>Fox Business</i>, also February
5) told us that “Research from Robert Half, an employment agency, shows a large
majority of US managers (93%) support a four-day workweek for their team,” and
“the data shows 64% expect their company to transition to one within the next
five years.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>No surprise, though, is the
headline of “Employers tried a 4-day workweek program.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Employees said they were healthier and happier”
(Marina Pitofsky, <i>USA Today</i>, February 21<sup>st</sup>).<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So where is the middle ground?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perhaps it’s described in “The pros and cons
of a 4-day workweek” (Paula Peralta, <i>Benefit News</i>, September 7<sup>th</sup>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the former category, Peralta named
“requested by employees” (41% in a “recent” study conducted by the
International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans), “retention strategy”
(36%), “work-life balance and rethinking company culture” (36%), and “recruitment
strategy” (27%).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The points against
four-day workweeks were “lack of interest by upper management” (42%),
“difficulty implementing it organization-wide” (38%), “negative impact on
business operations” (36%), “unsure if it would work with organization
structure” (36%), and “unable to support the customer base” (32%).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Alternatives” named in the survey were
“working remotely on certain days of the week (hybrid)” (75%), “flexible work
hours (61%), “working remotely full-time” (50%), “part-time schedule"
(35%), and “compressed workweeks” (24%).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">If we are going to have four-day timetables, we would need
to address a few more things.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>First, if
only some companies have them, it could put great pressure on ones in the same
industries to do that as well, unless they paid their five-day employees up to
25% more.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Second, it could call for
changes in how much idle time cubicle workers would have – perhaps they would
not be enthusiastic about shorter schedules if they were expected to produce
more per hour.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Third, there in most
cases could be no Friday equivalent, no day where expectations, performance,
and office hours are often lower – would that be acceptable to everyone?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Fourth – and this is the problem nobody seems
to want to address – if people are now working more than 40 hours per ordinary
week, what would a 32-hour schedule really mean?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Answer and get reasonable agreement on these
and I can stand behind four-day workweeks – if not, they just plain won’t
succeed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>James B. Huntingtonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09179923727061707153noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7338936439101295503.post-44355377727778787462023-11-22T00:21:00.000-08:002023-11-22T00:21:34.819-08:00Driverless Cars, Even in Limited Roles, are Conking Out<p>Even with vastly reduced expectations, autonomous vehicles
are falling short.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In the August 9<sup>th</sup> <i>New York Times</i>, Yiwen Lu
told us “San Francisco Balks at Expanding Driverless Car Services on City’s
Roads.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>She called them “a jarring
sight” “that “has become common” there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Cruise,
which was offering taxi rides, and Waymo, whose autonomous cars I saw tested in
Arizona four years ago, wanted to charge customers “throughout the city, round
the clock.” Although none thus far had been “blamed for any serious injuries or
crashes,” there had been incidents in which the vehicles, on roads, “simply
shut down and won’t move.” <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In a piece from <i>Atlantic</i> ten days later, Anna Wiener
reported that “Robo-Taxis Are Legal Now,” because of a California Public
Utilities Commission vote to approve the autonomous vehicle increase
above.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It didn’t take long for the
people against it to seem vindicated, as a week later “a driverless Cruise car,
carrying a passenger, collided with a fire truck,” apparently<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>not yielding to it when traffic controls
alone indicated it would not need to, and “a couple of hours later… another
driverless Cruise car was involved in an accident, after it responded to an
oncoming car by braking and stopping short.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The next day, the state’s Division of Motor Vehicles asked that Cruise
cut its maximum-allowed number of autonomous vehicles running there in half,
and, per “Cruise Agrees to Reduce Driverless Car Fleet in San Francisco After
Crash,” on August 18<sup>th</sup> and also in the <i>New York Times</i> by
Yiwen Lu, that request was granted.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In October came another mishap there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As Julie Angwin wrote in “Autonomous Vehicles
Are Driving Blind” (<i>The New York Times</i>, October 11<sup>th</sup>),
earlier that month “a woman suffered traumatic injuries from being struck by a
driver and thrown into the path of“ a driverless car.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As well, “San Francisco’s fire chief…
recently testified that as of August, autonomous vehicles interfered with
firefighting duties 55 times this year.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Angwin blamed a lack of “federal software safety testing standards for
autonomous vehicles,” and expanded her concern to artificial intelligence in
general.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Another permutation was the subject of “Remote Driving Is a
Sneaky Shortcut to the Robotaxi” (Sean Lightbown, <i>Wired.com</i>, October 18<sup>th</sup>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“On the busy streets of suburban Berlin, just
south of Templehofer Feld, a white Kia is skillfully navigating double-parked
cars, roadworks, cyclists, and pedestrians.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Dan, the driver, strikes up a conversation with his passengers,
remarking on the changing traffic lights and the sound of an ambulance
screaming past in the other direction.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>But Dan isn’t in the car.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Dan is
a “teledriver,” working for “German startup Vay.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That capability had been used to back up
driverless vehicles during testing and could now be used to cover “driver
shortages at airports, harbors, or in the trucking industry” with “a bank of
remote drivers available around the world.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It could allow, for example, intercity truck driving by people not
needing to be away from their families, with longer hours per vehicle as one
remote driver could take over for another.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The self-driving situation discussed before worsened soon
thereafter, as “Cruise’s Driverless Taxi Service in San Francisco Is Suspended”
(Yiwen Lu and Cade Metz, <i>The New York Times</i>, October 24<sup>th</sup>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It was made by the state DMV, due mainly to
the accident earlier that month, in which the pedestrian was “trapped under the
driverless car,” which then “tried to pull over” and “dragged the pedestrian
until it stopped.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Four weeks later, another piece by Lu in the <i>Times</i>
summarized events in “’Lost Time for No Reason’:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>How Driverless Taxis Are Stressing
Cities.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One involved two autonomous
vehicles, each blocking a side of the road which “added seven minutes” to an
ambulance run.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>San Francisco had seen
“more than 600 self-driving vehicle incidents… from June 2022 to June 2023,”
and Austin, another though smaller hub for driverless taxicabs, had 52 “incidents”
between July 8 and October 24.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Cruise
has now “suspended its autonomous vehicle operations,” and its CEO resigned on
November 19<sup>th</sup>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The future is not entirely hopeless for self-driving
taxis.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Lu reported that Nashville and
Seattle, still on track to allow them, had started training for firefighters on
dealing with them, and Phoenix, after three years of allowing “autonomous taxi
services,” has 200 with few complaints.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>That is good, since their developers clearly have things to learn about
different locations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The promise of
autonomous vehicles is still great – we still have over 30,000 annual
human-caused road deaths every year – so we should all hope that 2023 will go
down as the worst year for their technology.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></p>James B. Huntingtonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09179923727061707153noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7338936439101295503.post-17199103809113506562023-11-17T00:38:00.000-08:002023-11-17T00:38:48.294-08:00Job-Seeking Now – What’s Happening? What’s Changing?<p>There are good and bad things about looking for work in 2023. It may be that unemployment has been below 4%
for a year or so, and there are almost a record number of job openings, but
it’s still not easy, and getting hired is not routine.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It’s hardly a great time to be trying.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At least it wasn’t six months ago, according
to “Why job searches suck right now” (Adrienne Matei, <i>Insider</i>, May 22<sup>nd</sup>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Applicants are sending out hundreds of job
applications and hearing nothing back.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Ghost jobs, AI resume screening, and a lopsided economy are making the
job search miserable.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Also, “economic
instability, opaque hiring processes, and the destabilizing rise of
technologies like generative AI have converged into an environment where it’s
hard for job seekers to feel like they have even a basic sense of what’s going
on,” and “finding a job right now isn’t only tough, it’s deeply weird.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As I wrote 12 years ago, job openings do not
mean job hiring – apparently, per Matei, that is true now more than ever.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some fields have also been recently economically
damaged, especially “real estate, media, and tech,” and, overall,
“discombobulation is par for the course.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Another recent work-searching problem was the subject of
“Want a Job?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Cool, There are 17
Interviews” (Alison Green, <i>Slate</i>, May 23<sup>rd</sup>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>One respondent said that for a single
position he had already had seven, with apparent interviewer coordination and
competence issues, as he was repeatedly asked the same questions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The high mark, though secondhand, was a
friend of a respondent claiming she had had 29 (!) half-hour interviews, and
was not hired, without the position being filled.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As well, remote interviews have made it
possible for them to be scheduled one a day, and sample work assignments, some
even to be completed before any interviews, are getting common and
lengthier.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">How can people apply artificial intelligence to the job
search itself?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In <i>Benefit News</i> on
October 17<sup>th</sup>, Deanna Cuadra gave us some insight in “How to use AI
to write a great cover letter.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The way
is to “pick the right AI tool,” and some even specialize in cover letters;
“know how to prompt AI” by asking it the needs, priorities, and
responsibilities the advertised position is likely to involve; “don’t let AI
fears hold you back”; and consider adding your own changes to the tool’s
output.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>On November 6<sup>th</sup> in <i>Wired.com</i>,
Caitlin Harrington, in “This AI Bot Fills Out Job Applications for You While
You Sleep,” told us about “software engineer Julian Joseph,” who used LazyApply’s
Job GPT capability, which, after he provided “some basic information about his
skills, experience, and desired position,” applied to 5,000 jobs on his
behalf.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He got “around 20” interviews,
and one job offer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">After knowing of employers cutting off unsuccessful
candidates without any politeness, I can’t say I was sympathetic to read, also
from Cuadra in <i>Benefit News</i>, November 13<sup>th</sup>’s “Job candidates
are still ghosting employers – and the interview process is to blame.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not the marathons described above, but “a
poor interview experience,” and, even now, “over one-third of candidates have
experienced discriminatory interview questions, most commonly around their age,
race and gender.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Also, per a Greenhouse
study, “19% of job seekers have changed their names on their resumes, with 45%
doing so to sound more white, 42% to sound younger and 22% to sound like the
opposite gender,” with age discrimination the largest perceived problem.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As for the ghosting, what’s sauce for the
goose is sauce for the gander. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">To end with something positive, we read in <i>Fox News</i>
on October 16<sup>th</sup> that “US companies increasingly eliminate college
degrees as a requirement amid “out-of-control” school costs.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Those cited as announcing “plans to reduce
the number of jobs that require college degrees” were Walmart, IBM, Accenture,
Bank of America, and Google – not minor firms.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The real reason likely is a lack of candidates, as needing higher
education, a dramatic shift from pre-1970 policy, was more of a way to thin the
field than anything needed for work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>This is a positive trend, and I hope that other artificial barriers,
such as certifications for the like of hairdressers, will also go away.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>And it is also time for employers to treat those seeking to work for
them with the kind of respect they expect themselves.<o:p></o:p></p>James B. Huntingtonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09179923727061707153noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7338936439101295503.post-62241817615574736862023-11-10T00:34:00.004-08:002023-11-10T00:34:32.677-08:00Electric Vehicles – Still Controversial, and No, Not Poised to Take Over<p>The past couple of years have been huge for electric cars,
trucks, buses, and other transportation devices. Per David Wallace-Wells in “Electric Vehicles
Keep Defying Almost Everyone’s Predictions,” on January 11<sup>th</sup> in the <i>New
York Times</i>, there were “almost 30 million” in existence, tripling in two
years as has their market share. In
Germany and Norway, they made up 55% and 80% of new vehicles, and China almost
sextupled their percentage in two years, to 20.3%. Also, “there are 10 times as many electric
scooters, mopeds and motorcycles on the road as true electric cars.” In all, per Wallace-Wells, “as with
everything else on climate, it’s not one story unfolding but many, and all at
once.” Back to that later.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Other things that have happened in this area are hardly as
overwhelmingly positive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As Greg Norman
wrote in <i>Fox Business</i> on January 3<sup>rd</sup>, “Tesla fined $2.2M for
exaggerating driving range of its vehicles:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>report.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The problem was in
winter, when “the actual driving range” dropped by up to half.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In <i>Atlantic</i> on January 4<sup>th</sup>,
David Zipper opined that “Electric Vehicles Are Bringing Out the Worst in
Us.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His concern was that “automakers’
focus on large, battery-powered SUVs and trucks reinforces a destructive
American desire to drive something bigger, faster, and heavier than everyone
else.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That problem has been worsened by
their “huge batteries,” resulting in, for example, a Chevrolet Silverado
weighing a ton and a half more in its electric version, that and other
differences often serving to neutralize environmental benefits.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">That same month, we saw “Wyoming lawmakers push for
electric-car ban and to limit sales by 2035” (Natalie Neysa Alund, <i>USA Today</i>,
January 17<sup>th</sup>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>They cited an
insufficient number of charging stations, problems with “critical minerals” in
their batteries, and economic damage to oil-company employees.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Contrarily, California’s government has
announced an end to allowing new gasoline-powered “cars, pickups and SUVs,” to
take effect in 2035.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">On the issue of metals, on September 16<sup>th</sup>, <i>The
Economist</i> issued an article, “Keep digging,” which cited the Energy
Transitions Commission think-tank as projecting that, in pursuit of a
“carbon-neutral world,” requiring among other things “a 60-fold increase in the
fleet of electric vehicles,” demand for copper, nickel, cobalt neodymium,
graphite, and lithium will increase from 50% to 600%, outstripping current
mining capability.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As excavating mines,
per this piece, takes from 4 to 17 years, that is more timely a problem than it
may seem.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">How is the market for electric vehicles looking now?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This month, two contributions seemed almost
to disagree.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>Bloomberg</i>’s Big Take
on November 8<sup>th</sup> described “The global fight over EVs,” with that
organization predicting that “all forms of EV sales will hit $8.8 trillion by
2030 and $57 trillion by 2050.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
other article was “Automakers Delay Electric Vehicle Spending as Demand Slows,”
on November 7<sup>th</sup> in the <i>New York Times</i>; “in recent weeks,
General Motors, Ford Motor, and Tesla cited slower sales,” though the share of
electric vehicles in US new-car purchases rose year-over-year in July through
September from 6% to 8%.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">We’re still seeing growth, but it may have limits.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Electric cars certainly have their American
niches, but there are real reasons why they may not conquer the automotive
marketplace without coercive policies or outright bans.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>First, with weight problems and American
electricity coming 35% from fossil fuels, they are not nearly as
environmentally beneficial as they may seem.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Second, battery life has only fundamentally improved when they are
gigantic, and we are nowhere near having one with a 500-mile range, fitting in
an ordinary car trunk, mass-produced, and acceptably inexpensive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Third, with auto insurance companies charging
extra for multiple vehicles, having an electric car for short trips and a
gas-powered one for longer ones seems impractical.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Fourth, though there have been real
improvements in the number of charging stations and their reliability, in many
places the infrastructure is not good enough, and seems, nationwide, to be at
least a decade away.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Fifth, prices are
still too high.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The best applications for electric vehicles are those that
run for consistently limited mileage and can recharge daily during off-hours, such
as city buses, taxicabs, school buses, and local delivery trucks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Another worthy development is hybrids, which
combine the reliability of liquid-powered vehicles with low emissions and high
fuel economy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It may turn out that
demand for privately-owned electric cars will level off, especially in some
areas.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If that happens, we should not be
shocked – it will be the market, and other aspects of reality, speaking.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>James B. Huntingtonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09179923727061707153noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7338936439101295503.post-49347335366272282692023-11-03T07:20:00.001-07:002023-11-03T07:20:16.880-07:00Finally, a Lousy Jobs Report, With AJSN Showing Latent Demand Almost Unchanged<p>For months on end, when I pulled the Bureau of Labor
Statistics Employment Situation Summary, I have seen strongly positive results,
exceeding industry expectations and displaying the United States doing even
better on the jobs front. Not this morning.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The number of net new nonfarm payroll positions was 150,000,
favorable for a country needing less than that to maintain the same position.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Although that was below the published 180,000
and 190,000 estimates, it was the best number I saw today.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Adjusted unemployment rose 0.1% to 3.9%, with
the unadjusted version staying at 3.6%.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The number of employed gained only 7,000 to 161,676,000, while the count
of those claiming no interest rose 419,000 to 94,830,000.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>At 6.5 million, there were 100,000 more unemployed,
the same gain for those out for 27 weeks or longer, to 1.3 million.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The two measures of how common it is for
Americans to be either working or one sought offer away, the
employment-population ratio and the labor force participation rate, worsened
0.2% and 0.1% to reach 60.2% and 62.7%.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Average
nonfarm payroll hourly wages gained 12 cents, more than inflation, to reach an
even $34.00. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The American Job Shortage Number or AJSN, the statistic
showing how many additional positions could be quickly filled if all knew they
would be easy and routine to get, lost 55,000 as follows:<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p></p><table border="1" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="MsoTableGrid" style="border-collapse: collapse; border: none; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-padding-alt: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-yfti-tbllook: 1184;">
<tbody><tr style="height: 61.5pt; mso-yfti-firstrow: yes; mso-yfti-irow: 0;">
<td style="border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; height: 61.5pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 134.0pt;" valign="top" width="179">
<p class="MsoNormal"><a name="RANGE!A1:D13"><b>AJSN OCTOBER 2023</b></a><b><o:p></o:p></b></p>
</td>
<td style="border-left: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; height: 61.5pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 59.0pt;" valign="top" width="79">
<p class="MsoNormal">Total<o:p></o:p></p>
</td>
<td style="border-left: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; height: 61.5pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 47.0pt;" valign="top" width="63">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">Latent Demand
%<o:p></o:p></p>
</td>
<td style="border-left: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; height: 61.5pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 65.0pt;" valign="top" width="87">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">Latent Demand
Total<o:p></o:p></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 15.0pt; mso-yfti-irow: 1;">
<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; height: 15.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 134.0pt;" valign="top" width="179">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">Unemployed<o:p></o:p></p>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 59.0pt;" valign="top" width="79">
<p class="MsoNormal">6,098,000<o:p></o:p></p>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 47.0pt;" valign="top" width="63">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">90<o:p></o:p></p>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; height: 15.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 65.0pt;" valign="top" width="87">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">5,488,200<o:p></o:p></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 15.75pt; mso-yfti-irow: 2;">
<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; height: 15.75pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 134.0pt;" valign="top" width="179">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">Discouraged<o:p></o:p></p>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; height: 15.75pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 59.0pt;" valign="top" width="79">
<p class="MsoNormal">428,000<o:p></o:p></p>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; height: 15.75pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 47.0pt;" valign="top" width="63">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">90<o:p></o:p></p>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; height: 15.75pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 65.0pt;" valign="top" width="87">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">385,200<o:p></o:p></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 15.75pt; mso-yfti-irow: 3;">
<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; height: 15.75pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 134.0pt;" valign="top" width="179">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">Family
Responsibilities<o:p></o:p></p>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; height: 15.75pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 59.0pt;" valign="top" width="79">
<p class="MsoNormal">102,000<o:p></o:p></p>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; height: 15.75pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 47.0pt;" valign="top" width="63">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">30<o:p></o:p></p>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; height: 15.75pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 65.0pt;" valign="top" width="87">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">30,600<o:p></o:p></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 15.75pt; mso-yfti-irow: 4;">
<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; height: 15.75pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 134.0pt;" valign="top" width="179">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">In School or
Training<o:p></o:p></p>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; height: 15.75pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 59.0pt;" valign="top" width="79">
<p class="MsoNormal">148,000<o:p></o:p></p>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; height: 15.75pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 47.0pt;" valign="top" width="63">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">50<o:p></o:p></p>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; height: 15.75pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 65.0pt;" valign="top" width="87">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">74,000<o:p></o:p></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 15.75pt; mso-yfti-irow: 5;">
<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; height: 15.75pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 134.0pt;" valign="top" width="179">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">Ill Health or
Disability<o:p></o:p></p>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; height: 15.75pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 59.0pt;" valign="top" width="79">
<p class="MsoNormal">80,000<o:p></o:p></p>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; height: 15.75pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 47.0pt;" valign="top" width="63">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">10<o:p></o:p></p>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; height: 15.75pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 65.0pt;" valign="top" width="87">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">8,000<o:p></o:p></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 15.75pt; mso-yfti-irow: 6;">
<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; height: 15.75pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 134.0pt;" valign="top" width="179">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">Other<o:p></o:p></p>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; height: 15.75pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 59.0pt;" valign="top" width="79">
<p class="MsoNormal">634,000<o:p></o:p></p>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; height: 15.75pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 47.0pt;" valign="top" width="63">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">30<o:p></o:p></p>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; height: 15.75pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 65.0pt;" valign="top" width="87">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">190,200<o:p></o:p></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 30.0pt; mso-yfti-irow: 7;">
<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; height: 30.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 134.0pt;" valign="top" width="179">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">Did Not
Search for Work In Previous Year<o:p></o:p></p>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; height: 30.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 59.0pt;" valign="top" width="79">
<p class="MsoNormal">3,045,000<o:p></o:p></p>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; height: 30.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 47.0pt;" valign="top" width="63">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">80<o:p></o:p></p>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; height: 30.0pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 65.0pt;" valign="top" width="87">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">2,436,000<o:p></o:p></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 15.75pt; mso-yfti-irow: 8;">
<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; height: 15.75pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 134.0pt;" valign="top" width="179">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">Not Available
to Work Now<o:p></o:p></p>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; height: 15.75pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 59.0pt;" valign="top" width="79">
<p class="MsoNormal">602,000<o:p></o:p></p>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; height: 15.75pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 47.0pt;" valign="top" width="63">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">30<o:p></o:p></p>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; height: 15.75pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 65.0pt;" valign="top" width="87">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">180,600<o:p></o:p></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 15.75pt; mso-yfti-irow: 9;">
<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; height: 15.75pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 134.0pt;" valign="top" width="179">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">Do Not Want a
Job<o:p></o:p></p>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; height: 15.75pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 59.0pt;" valign="top" width="79">
<p class="MsoNormal">94,830,000<o:p></o:p></p>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; height: 15.75pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 47.0pt;" valign="top" width="63">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">5<o:p></o:p></p>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; height: 15.75pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 65.0pt;" valign="top" width="87">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">4,741,500<o:p></o:p></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 43.5pt; mso-yfti-irow: 10;">
<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; height: 43.5pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 134.0pt;" valign="top" width="179">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">Non-Civilian,
Institutionalized, and Unaccounted For, 15+<o:p></o:p></p>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; height: 43.5pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 59.0pt;" valign="top" width="79">
<p class="MsoNormal">5,997,366<o:p></o:p></p>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; height: 43.5pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 47.0pt;" valign="top" width="63">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">10<o:p></o:p></p>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; height: 43.5pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 65.0pt;" valign="top" width="87">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">599,737<o:p></o:p></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 16.5pt; mso-yfti-irow: 11;">
<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; height: 16.5pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 134.0pt;" valign="top" width="179">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">American
Expatriates<o:p></o:p></p>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; height: 16.5pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 59.0pt;" valign="top" width="79">
<p class="MsoNormal">10,000,000<o:p></o:p></p>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; height: 16.5pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 47.0pt;" valign="top" width="63">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">20<o:p></o:p></p>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; height: 16.5pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 65.0pt;" valign="top" width="87">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">2,000,000<o:p></o:p></p>
</td>
</tr>
<tr style="height: 16.5pt; mso-yfti-irow: 12; mso-yfti-lastrow: yes;">
<td style="border-top: none; border: solid windowtext 1.0pt; height: 16.5pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 134.0pt;" valign="top" width="179">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;">TOTAL<o:p></o:p></p>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; height: 16.5pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 59.0pt;" valign="top" width="79">
<p class="MsoNormal"><b> <o:p></o:p></b></p>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; height: 16.5pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 47.0pt;" valign="top" width="63">
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; margin-bottom: 0in;"> <o:p></o:p></p>
</td>
<td style="border-bottom: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-left: none; border-right: solid windowtext 1.0pt; border-top: none; height: 16.5pt; mso-border-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-left-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; mso-border-top-alt: solid windowtext .5pt; padding: 0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; width: 65.0pt;" valign="top" width="87">
<p class="MsoNormal">16,134,037<o:p></o:p></p>
</td>
</tr>
</tbody></table><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><img alt="" border="0" class="placeholder" id="b24eb310b7cfd" src="https://www.blogger.com/img/transparent.gif" style="background-color: #d8d8d8; background-image: url("https://fonts.gstatic.com/s/i/materialiconsextended/insert_photo/v6/grey600-24dp/1x/baseline_insert_photo_grey600_24dp.png"); background-position: center center; background-repeat: no-repeat; opacity: 0.6;" /></div></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Increases in those unemployed and discouraged were more than
offset by a drop in those wanting work but not looking for it in the previous
year.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The share of the AJSN from
officially unemployed people was 34.0%, up 0.4% from September.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Compared with a year before, the AJSN gained 175,000, with a
440,000 rise from people unemployed mostly offset by the drop in those not
searching for it and elsewhere.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So, when we did well on net new jobs, why must I give this
morning’s report a thumbs down?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Because
not only were all the other figures I track worse, but unemployment rates were helped
by the increase in those leaving the labor force and claiming no interest.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Perhaps we are reaching a plateau.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As before, that wouldn’t be bad, but it
wouldn’t be progress either.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The turtle
took a breather and stayed right where he was.<o:p></o:p></p>James B. Huntingtonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09179923727061707153noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7338936439101295503.post-24714248914845307222023-10-27T00:18:00.003-07:002023-10-27T00:18:51.356-07:00Artificial Intelligence is an Awfully Wobbly Juggernaut<p>For something that was supposed to be taking over the world,
AI is tottering. I can’t speak for the
status of the technology itself, but that’s not the issue. How it progresses and what it ends up doing
will be decided in other realms: legal,
financial, social, regulatory, and more.
What’s been happening with AI prospects over the past two and a half
months?</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The first clue was in <i>Futurism</i>, updated on August 11<sup>th</sup>,
“AI Is Starting to Look Like the Dot Com Bubble.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This piece, modified by Maggie Harrison,
started “as the AI industry’s market value continues to balloon, experts are
warning that its meteoric rise is eerily similar to that of a different – and
significant – moment in economic history:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>the dot com bubble of the late 1990s.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>It is not that no companies are profitable – the hugest ones of
Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon are – but there are many others, getting venture
capital, which “have yet to even introduce a discernable product.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is time to realize that while there may
well be Fords and Chevrolets, there will be Stutzes and Hupmobiles as well.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Per Ian Prasad Philbrick in the August 27<sup>th</sup> <i>New
York Times</i>, “Regulating A.I. Requires Congress to Act Nimbly.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The author pointed out that “major federal
regulation” has taken as long as 90 years to materialize after “invention or
patenting,” with nuclear energy, with the shortest interval, still taking four
years, and airplanes and automobiles 20 and 70 respectively.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Although our senators and representatives
have attended informational sessions, it is a challenge, and will take “perhaps
a decade or more.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">A strong indicator of how people’s attitudes can trump
technical achievements was in the September 10<sup>th</sup> <i>New York Times</i>,
Kashmir Hill’s “Anonymity Is Over.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Big
Tech Tried to Save It.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It related how,
six years ago, Facebook technologists worked out a way to identify faces and
attach names and other information to them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>A related thing had been developed by Google in 2011.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Neither was released, as Google “decided to
stop” what it was doing, and Facebook considered it “too dangerous to make
widely available.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some are now using
related facilities, but far fewer than their utility and technical merits would
justify.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">On the recent idea that artificial intelligence will at
least help productivity, Aaron Mok, in <i>Business Insider</i> on October 2<sup>nd</sup>,
relayed that “OpenAI’s ChatGPT can actually make workers perform worse, a new
study found.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The research, from Boston
Consulting Group, found that when people used ChatGPT with GPT-4 for work
requiring capabilities the software was known to have, such as “brainstorming
innovative… concepts, or coming up with a thorough business plan,” the tool
excelled, but on “more open-ended tasks” such as offering business
recommendations, it would make large errors, dangerous “because the<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>consultants with AI were found to indiscriminately
listen to its output – even if the answers were wrong.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It will be a challenge for businesses to
distinguish between these two rough categories.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">There were things to think about in “Knowledge vs.
intelligence amid the hype and hysteria over AI” (Mihai Naden, <i>Fox News</i>,
October 2<sup>nd</sup>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Naden
considered intelligence to require not only evidence of ability to perform, but
also what of two resources they required.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>As “to win a game of chess at the expense of energy that a small town
consumes in a week is unsustainable,” “artificial entities could justifiably
claim intelligence if, in executing a task, they would use as much energy or
less, and as much data or less, than a living entity performing the same
task.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That may be the criterion we
need.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">On the positive side, we have Paul Krugman’s October 3<sup>rd</sup>
<i>New York Times</i> “A.I. could be a big deal for the economy (and for the
deficit too).”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Although he saw
generative AI as “souped-up autocorrect,” he thought it could massively improve
productivity in that role.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He included a
Goldman Sachs chart with 23 different industries, each divided into “no
automation,” “AI complement,” and “likely replacement” of workers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The field faring best was “building and
grounds cleaning and maintenance,” with about 95% of employees in the first
category, and “legal” the worst, ripe for a 40% job loss.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Some areas, such as sales, education, social
services, and computers, were 100% complemented.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Of course, this does not include other
sources of automation, globalization, and efficiency.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Per Ed Zitron in <i>Scientific American</i> on October 17<sup>th</sup>,
“AI Is Becoming a Band-Aid over Bad, Broken Tech Industry Design Choices.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He said iPhones came with 38 apps, 27 of
which could be removed, and users would likely add more, but Apple is relying
on AI interfaces instead of ones users could handle themselves, leaving “a
Matryoshka of bolted-on features.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Other
vendors, according to Zitron, are similarly at fault.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Not an AI problem as such, but something to
affect its reputation.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">On October 18<sup>th</sup> in the <i>New York Times</i>,
Kevin Roose said that “Maybe We Will Finally Learn More About How A.I.
Works.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Developers have communicated
poorly about how the software was formed, including its use of copyrighted
material and how it shares data.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>GPT-4
got a 40% “transparency score,” not far off the 54% maximum among ten popular
models.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Is it true or false that “we
can’t have an A.I. revolution in the dark.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>We need to see inside the black boxes of A.I., if we’re going to let it
transform our lives”?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That is for us to
decide.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Most recent is a reminder that, even for the largest
companies, “Long on Hype, A.I. Is No Guarantee for Profits” (Andrew Ross Sorkin
et al., <i>The New York Times</i>, October 25<sup>th</sup>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Although both are deep into the technology,
Microsoft has done far better than Alphabet since their earnings reports the
day before, with a one-day 3.9% increase instead of a 6.2% decrease.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And Meta’s stock suffered the same day for
other reasons.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So, it’s not enough to
identify Ford or General Motors by their products – they must make money as
well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>About that, we still, ample
attention notwithstanding, do not know.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By
the same token, we cannot see where artificial intelligence will wind up –
regardless of our hopes and fears.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>James B. Huntingtonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09179923727061707153noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7338936439101295503.post-78595816994986171392023-10-20T00:33:00.003-07:002023-10-20T00:33:31.896-07:00Remote Work: The Con Side, From Writers This Summer<p>The issue of employees doing their tasks from the office or
elsewhere keeps rolling on. I won’t say
it’s evolving, as I have maintained that its favor has been a pendulum, but
it’s still oscillating. Here is some
input from commentators taking the negative view, which management mostly has
now.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">A remote-work effect adverse but not quite the
responsibility of those causing it is the subject of “Middle America’s ‘doom
loop,’” subtitled “Work from home is crushing Midwestern downtowns,” by Eliza
Relman in <i>Insider</i> on June 22<sup>nd</sup>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The author blamed less activity there on
civic decisions made to emphasize businesses, and called on those administering
such areas to adapt to this change, as “economists and urban planners say many
Midwestern cities need to get serious about improving amenities and boosting
quality of life in their downtowns.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Could it be that “In the war over remote work, companies are
turning full-time jobs into low-paying gigs” (Aki Ito, <i>Insider</i>, June 27<sup>th</sup>)?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Ito claimed that “employers are quiet
quitting on the whole idea of traditional full-time employment,” as, per recent
research, “businesses said remote work had led them to stock up on part-time
employees, temps, independent contractors, and outsourced positions both at
home and abroad.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That trend was getting
press late last decade, and has a certain justification, as, since worker’s
performance issues are less important or drop out entirely when they are not
conventional employees, working from home is especially compatible with such
agreements.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These arrangements, as Ito
points out, are not always negative, so this piece may not qualify as being against
non-office work at all.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">“For remote workers, time to get out of the house” by
Isabella Aldrete on June 30<sup>th</sup> in <i>Benefit News</i>, deals with a
problem people may not even know they have.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>“About a third of employees say they struggle to leave the house enough
when working remotely,” meaning that “work-life balance” is not only for those
going to offices.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Per one interviewee,
it would help them to realize “it can be important to really find time to just
kind of completely unplug, leave… and focus on life outside of work,” as “it is
really important to set and maintain those boundaries.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Yes, that’s important.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The July 15<sup>th</sup> <i>Economist</i> had an article
titled “The WFH showdown,” as “the fight over remote working goes global.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“With bosses clamping down on the practice,
the pandemic-era days of mutual agreement on the desirability of remote work
seem to be over” – and, after naming various international examples, “the gap
between the two sides of the work-from-home battle may yet narrow.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The question is whether the bosses or the
bossed will yield the most.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Finally, related to the second piece above, is “Remote
workers are treating their jobs like gig-work, and it’s turning them into the
most disconnected employees” (Jane Thier, <i>Fortune</i>, August 26<sup>th</sup>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The author recommended “a hybrid plan,” and
largely attributed the problem to modern work issues in general, with special
concerns about “engagement and empowerment.” <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Although I am still broadly bearish on remote work, these
pieces, given that they were the most pertinent over the past four months,
offered little new. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That probably means
that not much has changed. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since the
Clinton administration, the pendulum has swung and the sides have disagreed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Until businesses find an antidote, the issue of
where to work will not be resolved.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>James B. Huntingtonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09179923727061707153noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7338936439101295503.post-11692095710896861082023-10-13T06:50:00.000-07:002023-10-13T06:50:09.702-07:00The Past Year’s Union Going’s-On, Ending with Automakers<p>During the previous twelve months, there have been a fair
number of events and observations pertinent to organized labor, some of which
have set the stage for the 2023 strikes.
What were they?</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Before Joe Biden joined the United Auto Workers picket line,
views on his attitude about unions were often different, as “Some Rail Workers,
Seeking Sick Days, Say Biden Betrayed Them” (Noam Scheiber, <i>The New York
Times</i>, November 30<sup>th</sup>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Then, the president “urged Congress to impose a labor agreement that
(one) union had voted down,” which led to a possible railroad strike, which he
said “would threaten hundreds of thousands of jobs and… cost the economy more
than $2 billion per day,” not materializing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The main area of controversy was paid time off for illness or medical
appointments.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Moving to a large, familiar company, which has had labor
organizing efforts both successful and unsuccessful, was “At Starbucks, Schultz
Is Back to Fight a Union” (Noam Scheiber and Julie Creswell, <i>The New York
Times</i>, December 11<sup>th</sup>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The former and incoming CEO named in the title gave “new benefits and
wage increases but withheld them from employees in the union, which represents
about 2 percent of the company’s U.S. work force of more than 250,000,” and
said “no” to someone asking him “if he could ever imagine embracing the union.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Times have changed significantly since December 17<sup>th</sup>,
when <i>The Economist</i> published “Picket lines and poké,” subtitled “Unions
are gentrifying.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Can that reverse their
decline?”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Its main idea was that “unions
used to be associated with brawny middle-aged men standing outside factories”
but as of article time “the most active trade unions represent workers who have
degrees and wear white collars,” 46% of whom had four-year degrees.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That may have been the main story of organized
labor over the previous ten years, but it has since shifted toward protecting
employees, especially lower-paid ones, from problems managements will not
solve.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Moving in that direction, “Unions
won more elections in 2022 than they have in nearly 20 years” (<i>Vox.com</i>,
December 25<sup>th</sup>), with 641, or 80% more than in 2021.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As well, “unions are winning more than
three-quarters of their elections,” “three times as many US workers went on
strike in 2022 as in 2021,” and “the share of Americans who approve of unions
is at its highest level since 1965.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In
addition, “US labor strikes surged 52% in 2022, showing rise in ‘worker
activism’: study” (Brock Dumas and Bradford Betz, <i>Fox Business</i>, February
21<sup>st</sup>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Just into this year we saw as “Amazon Loses Bid to Overturn
Union Victory at Staten Island Warehouse” (Noam Scheiber and Karen Weise, <i>The
New York Times</i>, January 11<sup>th</sup>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>That decision was made by “a regional director of the National Labor
Relations Board,” who “found that there was a lack of evidence to support
Amazon’s claim of election improprieties.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The conflict at the coffee-serving company continued, as “A
barista fought to unionize her Starbucks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Now she’s out of a job” (Greg Jaffe, <i>The Washington Post</i>, June 18<sup>th</sup>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This article, which made the top of the
Sunday front page, related how someone, who had worked there “for nearly eight
years,” as she “was one of 49 baristas from across Buffalo who sent a letter to
the company’s chief executive in August 2021 informing him that they were
seeking to form a union,” was fired.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As
of the publication date, there were “about 320 unionized Starbucks stores in
the United States,” but the effort at this one failed. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Finally, are we in “Striking times” <i>(The Economist</i>,
September 16<sup>th</sup>)?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The United
Auto Workers stoppage, started one day before this publication date, was
enlarged two weeks later (U.A.W. Expands Strikes at Ford and G.M.”, Neal E.
Boudette, <i>The New York Times</i>, September 29<sup>th</sup>), and is still
in progress, with companies laying off workers and no reports of successful
negotiations.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There will be more.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Whether justified or not, beyond any doubt
the labor situation is evolving more quickly than it has for decades.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In a year we may know much more, but for now,
we don’t.<o:p></o:p></p>James B. Huntingtonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09179923727061707153noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7338936439101295503.post-85878072159917254432023-10-06T06:36:00.006-07:002023-10-06T06:36:45.847-07:00Jobs Report: Another Banner and Expectation-Exceeding Month, with AJSN Showing Latent Demand for Positions Down Over 600,000 to 16.2 Million<p>Another month, another jobs report, another big winner. Why do I say that?</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">First, we blew away the published forecast of 170,000 net
new nonfarm payroll positions with 336,000 – almost double.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Second, we added 242,000 employed people to
reach 161,669,000.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Third, those were
accomplished with private nonfarm payroll wages going up only 6 cents per hour,
to $33.88 – less than inflation.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Much of the rest broke even, including the seasonally
adjusted unemployment rate at 3.8%, the adjusted number of officially jobless
at 6.4 million, the labor force participation rate at 62.8%, and the employment-population
ratio at 60.4%,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Others which did change
included the unadjusted unemployment rate, down a seasonal 0.3% to 3.6%, the
number of those jobless for 27 weeks or longer improving 100,000 to 1.2
million, and the count of those working part-time for economic reasons, or
keeping such positions while looking thus far unsuccessfully for full-time ones
100,0000 better at 4.1 million.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The only
discouraging number of the ones I consider front-line is the number of people
not wanting a job, up 729,000 to 94,411,000.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The American Job Shortage Number or AJSN, the metric showing
how many additional positions could be quickly filled if all knew they would be
easy to get, fell a remarkable 621,000 to reach the following:<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiDOJWN45UqriKW5V9lWZGSmizeIYET7Ea9e8JhGUXzJqNqWzmvEao3AqtdR5M1gGvLShaYm2nGmZDI1UJEGqQifkDaQ7gpfXtzCrGuVe_uuH0v5Qq6FMQ_wXtywLVYFX-jwWKiFBBcfqRiW3PNtOHLNvH6zx6OvzTkEehv1nbBsHCahLYScrQcpfTZfh9X" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img alt="" data-original-height="392" data-original-width="406" height="386" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiDOJWN45UqriKW5V9lWZGSmizeIYET7Ea9e8JhGUXzJqNqWzmvEao3AqtdR5M1gGvLShaYm2nGmZDI1UJEGqQifkDaQ7gpfXtzCrGuVe_uuH0v5Qq6FMQ_wXtywLVYFX-jwWKiFBBcfqRiW3PNtOHLNvH6zx6OvzTkEehv1nbBsHCahLYScrQcpfTZfh9X=w400-h386" width="400" /></a></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Five-sixths of the drop was from official unemployment, with
another 138,000 from a lower count of those wanting work but not looking for it
during the previous year.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>None of the
other factors added or subtracted more than 37,000.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>With lower unemployment, the share of the AJSN
from official joblessness came in at 33.6%, or 1.9% less than in August.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Compared with a year before, the AJSN gained 223,000, with the
530,000 more contributed from higher unemployment mostly offset by improvements
in the counts of those discouraged, those wanting work but not looking for a
year or more, and non-civilian, institutionalized, and off-the-grid people
comprising about one-eighth less than in September 2022.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Perhaps, with unemployment and workforce participation the
same and more people getting on the shelf, September was not as good as I
thought.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But, with so many new jobs
added and once more no reasonably clear movement toward recession – not to
mention noninflationary wage increases – we should take this data as a solid
indication of continued prosperity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As
before, even if it means we are treading water, it’s plenty warm.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The turtle, once again, took a good step
forward. <o:p></o:p></p>James B. Huntingtonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09179923727061707153noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7338936439101295503.post-52814985031007023702023-09-22T00:23:00.003-07:002023-09-22T00:24:29.390-07:00Work's New Age will be taking two weeks off...<p> ... see you on October 6th with the jobs report and the AJSN!</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>James B. Huntingtonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09179923727061707153noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7338936439101295503.post-23240364552095173822023-09-15T00:22:00.002-07:002023-09-15T00:22:40.450-07:00Artificial intelligence, as Summer Wraps Up<p>What has been written about AI since late July?</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">First, we had “4 careers where workers will have to change
jobs by 2030 due to AI and shifts in how we shop, according to a McKinsey
study” (Jacob Zinkula, <i>Business Insider</i>, July 28<sup>th</sup>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The areas are “office support, customer
service and sales, food services, and production work (e.g.
manufacturing).”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The emphasis here is on
“lower-wage jobs,” with “clerks, retail salespersons, administrative
assistants, and cashiers” each expected to lose more than 600,000 positions,
net, in the next seven years.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Kevin Roose spotlighted one apparent area of early adoption
in “Aided by A.I. Language Models, Google’s Robots Are Getting Smart,” in <i>The
New York Times</i> on the same date. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>He
started by describing an automaton responding to “pick up the extinct animal”
by doing so with a dinosaur model instead of a lion or a whale, a seeming
merger between AI and robotics, and meaning that much more along that line
would also be possible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Additionally, we
have, per a Google scientist, such devices discovering “how to speak robot” by guessing
“how a robot’s arm should move to pick up a ball or throw an empty soda can
into the recycling bin.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When machines
do these things consistently correctly, which they do not yet, they will be
especially valuable.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The next day the <i>Times</i>
published Ben Ryder Howe’s “The Robots We Were Afraid of Are Already Here,”
which was disappointing, as there seemed little new here among these automata’s
industrial capabilities.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">A subject we would all like to succeed at is “How to invest
in AI” (Kim Clark, <i>Kiplinger</i>, July 29<sup>th</sup>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Since February, people expecting to be hugely
important have long since pushed up some stocks and have done much more trading
as developments and even plans have materialized, so we’re way up from any
ground floor.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It’s reminiscent of buying
automotive stocks in the 1920s, when knowing the industry had great potential did
not mean we knew who the winners and losers would be.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Given that, though, there are industry
leaders looking less risky than others – ones Clark named were chip designers
Nvidia, Broadcom, and Taiwan Semiconductor, along with chip software maker
Synopsis.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>All are risky, but
huge-potential investments always are.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Controversy stepped into an area in progress for years, as
“This tech is the ‘sad reality’ of restaurant industry’s future, business owner
says robot works 12 hours a day” (Hannah Ray Lambert, <i>Fox News</i>, August
13<sup>th</sup>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When an Estacada,
Oregon eatery, in response to not finding enough servers, deployed a Plato
automaton to do their work, the owner got “customer pushback.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Strange, but may prove to be common.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Expecting the technology to be stronger, not weaker, than
people thought months ago, was Arantza Pena Popo, in “AI is going to eliminate
way more jobs than anyone realizes” (<i>Insider</i>, August 14<sup>th</sup>). The
author said that “permanent mass employment can safely be ruled out,” but
hundreds of millions of people may not be able to work their current jobs in 35
years or less.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Beyond that, it’s just a
great mass of unknowns.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">A question on the minds of most in this field is “The U.S.
Regulates Cars, Radio and TV.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When Will
It Regulate A.I.?” (Ian Prasad Philbrick, <i>The New York Times</i>, August 24<sup>th</sup>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Per Philbrick’s determination, it “probably
won’t happen soon,” as while television was regulated within five years of
“invention or patenting,” radio took 20, telephones took 30, and railroads and
automobiles were not delimited until 60 and 70 years later.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>While “regulation often happens gradually as
a technology improves or an industry grows,” “sometimes it happens only after
tragedy.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Accordingly, it may, or may
not, take a while.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Related to my post suggesting similar things four days
earlier was “The A.I. Revolution Is Coming, But Not as Fast as Some People
Think,” by Steve Lohr in the <i>New York Times</i> on August 29<sup>th</sup>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Reservations and reasons for going slower
named here are “risks of leaking confidential data, questions about how the
data is used and about the accuracy of the A.I.-generated answers,” and it cited
another McKinsey study suggesting “mainstream adoption” would take somewhere
between 8 and 27 years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>By then, other
problems, such as copyright infringement, may still be significant.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So don’t expect anything big for a while –
but let’s still stay tuned.<o:p></o:p></p>James B. Huntingtonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09179923727061707153noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7338936439101295503.post-5282744648812529782023-09-08T00:25:00.003-07:002023-09-08T00:25:29.553-07:00Liking Remote Work Won’t Change Its Downward Trend<p>Although I think the working-from-home cons have more merit
than the pros, there have been a significant number of articles favoring the
latter. What do they have to say?</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Hiding his opinion even less than I do mine was Gleb
Tsipursky, in the May 8<sup>th</sup> <i>Fortune</i> piece “Why your boss is
giving in to the siren call of the return to the office – and giving up on the
flexible work gold mine.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The author
called the idea that “many organizations are struggling to foster strong
communication, collaboration, and team bonding” when people worked remotely
“startling,” and said that companies, as they became “faced with challenges,” “rather
than learning to adapt,” were “tempted to go back to the cozy confines of the
office-centric model.” <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The piece offered
no substantive suggestions for improvement, only that management should
overcome “status quo bias” and “functional fixedness,” “adopt methods of
building culture, collaboration, team bonding, and communication that are a
good fit for a hybrid environment,” and “stop running” from “the future of work,”
which is “here.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Paul Krugman, the columnist and Nobel-winning economist,
told us, in “Working From Home and Realizing What Matters,” in <i>The New York
Times</i> on May 22<sup>nd</sup>, that the value of remote labor should be
raised in our estimations, because of reduced commuting time, which is
undercounted or not counted in other measures.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>True – if work hours are no longer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The same author had “Remote work hasn’t doomed cities.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It may even help them” in the same
publication on June 2<sup>nd</sup>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>His
thought here was that “people who don’t have to commute to the office every day
spend more time frequenting local shops, restaurants and so on, improving the
quality of their neighborhoods,” although “remote work will surely shift
metropolitan areas’ centers of gravity away from their central business
districts.”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Similar in tone to the first article, Breck Dumas wrote in <i>Fox
Business</i> about “Why some bosses hate remote work and what can be done about
common gripes” (July 17<sup>th</sup>).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
five major reasons the author saw were “inadequate communication and
collaboration” (which called for managers to “reach out to their remote workers
and stay connected with them in other ways, like through phone or video calls”),
“task allocation and clarity” (by setting SMART – specific, measurable,
achievable, relevant, time-bound – parameters), “time management” (by
“providing workers with training on time management techniques and encouraging
prioritization and delegation”), “workload and resource allocation” (“regularly
assess workloads, redistribute tasks as needed and ensure individuals have
access to the necessary tools, training and support”), and “recognition and
reward” (find ways of celebrating achievements with “elements of fun,” even on
Zoom calls).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Finally, some advice on “Making a successful data-driven
transition to hybrid work” (Louis Blatt, <i>Benefit News</i>, August 1<sup>st</sup>),
namely to “find out what your employees need” and “give workers some space,”
along with habitually “explicitly dividing your project management into two
categories:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>focused/individual work and
collaborative work.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">How did you like the above?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>If you did, you’re probably in favor of plenty of remote work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If you didn’t, you saw blitheness, vagueness,
superficiality, and confusing training with individual performance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The pendulum between in-person and remote
labor is still moving – it is now pulling strongly toward the office.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>If it were not, there would be few calls for
workers to come back, and little controversy about it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Dressing as vegetables on celebratory video
calls won’t change that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Assuming that everyone
will be focused and conscientious when faced with the temptation of being
unsupervised won’t alter its back-and-forth nature.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s not only the present, but the future
of work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>That’s what we have known since
the first George Bush was president – and what, indefinitely, we will continue
to know.<o:p></o:p></p>James B. Huntingtonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09179923727061707153noreply@blogger.com0