The numbers: The U.S. added a robust 236,000 new jobs in March, defying the Federal Reserve’s hopes for a big slowdown in hiring as the central bank struggles to tame inflation. The consensus economist forecast called for a nonfarm-payrolls expansion of 238,000.
The solid increase in employment last month followed a revised 326,000 gain in February and a gain of 472,000 in January.
While the increase in hiring was the smallest monthly rise in more than two years, the number of jobs created last month was much greater than is typical.
The U.S. economy has shown recent signs of stress.
The unemployment rate, meanwhile, slipped to 3.5% from 3.6% as more people searched for and found work. That’s another sign of labor-market vigor.
There was some good news in the report for the Fed, though.
Wage growth continued to moderate closer to level the Fed would prefer. Hourly wages increased a mild 0.3% last month, the government said Friday.
The increase in pay over the past year also slowed again to a nearly two-year low of 4.2% from 4.6% in February.
What’s more, the share of people working or looking for work rose a tick to 62.6%. That’s the highest labor-force participation rate since February 2020, the last month before the pandemic’s onset.
When more people look for work, companies don’t have to compete as hard for workers via higher pay.
Still, the U.S. has added a whopping 1 million–plus new jobs in the first three months of the year. The labor market is not cooling off as much as the Fed would like.
“ The Black unemployment rate fell to 5% last month, the lowest level since records began being kept in the early 1970s. ”
Key details: About one-third of the new jobs created last month — 72,000 — were at service-sector companies such as bars and restaurants whose employment still has not returned to prepandemic levels.
Americans are going out to eat a lot and spending relatively more on services than on goods.
Government employment increased by 47,000. Hiring also rose at professional businesses and in healthcare. Retailers cut 15,000 jobs.
Employment fell slightly in manufacturing and construction, or goods-producing industries, which are under more pressure from rising interest rates.
The strong labor market has benefited all groups, but especially Black Americans. The Black unemployment rate fell to 5% last month, the lowest level since records began being kept in the early 1970s.
Big picture: The ongoing tightness in the labor market could inflame inflation and even push the Fed to raise interest rates more than currently forecast to try to get prices under control.
Higher borrowing costs reduce inflation by slowing the economy, but most Fed rate-hike cycles since World War II have been followed by recession.
On the flip side, the U.S. economy is starting to show more signs of deterioration due to the series of rapid Fed interest-rate increases since last year.
If these trends continue the economy — and inflation — are bound to slow.
The U.S. is still growing for now, however, and the labor market remains an oasis of strength.
Low unemployment and rising wages have allowed Americans to keep spending. And so far they’ve keep the economy out of a widely predicted recession.
Looking ahead: “The U.S. labor market is losing some momentum, but remains far too vibrant for the Fed to pause [its rate-hike campaign] in May,” said senior economist Sal Guatieri at BMO Capital Markets
“Although job growth is gradually slowing, it remains too strong for the Federal Reserve,” said Sal Guatieri of PNC Financial Services.
Market reaction: Futures contracts on the Dow Jones Industrial Average YM00, +0.19%
rose 64 points, or 0.2%, to 33,723. S&P 500 futures ES00, +0.24%
gained 9.75 points, or 0.2%, to 4,141.75. Stock trading resumes again on Monday.
The numbers: The U.S. added a robust 236,000 new jobs in March, defying the Federal Reserve’s hopes for a big slowdown in hiring as the central bank struggles to tame inflation. The consensus economist forecast called for a nonfarm-payrolls expansion of 238,000.
The solid increase in employment last month followed a revised 326,000 gain in February and a gain of 472,000 in January.
While the increase in hiring was the smallest monthly rise in more than two years, the number of jobs created last month was much greater than is typical.
The U.S. economy has shown recent signs of stress.
The unemployment rate, meanwhile, slipped to 3.5% from 3.6% as more people searched for and found work. That’s another sign of labor-market vigor.
There was some good news in the report for the Fed, though.
Wage growth continued to moderate closer to level the Fed would prefer. Hourly wages increased a mild 0.3% last month, the government said Friday.
The increase in pay over the past year also slowed again to a nearly two-year low of 4.2% from 4.6% in February.
What’s more, the share of people working or looking for work rose a tick to 62.6%. That’s the highest labor-force participation rate since February 2020, the last month before the pandemic’s onset.
When more people look for work, companies don’t have to compete as hard for workers via higher pay.
Still, the U.S. has added a whopping 1 million–plus new jobs in the first three months of the year. The labor market is not cooling off as much as the Fed would like.
“ The Black unemployment rate fell to 5% last month, the lowest level since records began being kept in the early 1970s. ”
Key details: About one-third of the new jobs created last month — 72,000 — were at service-sector companies such as bars and restaurants whose employment still has not returned to prepandemic levels.
Americans are going out to eat a lot and spending relatively more on services than on goods.
Government employment increased by 47,000. Hiring also rose at professional businesses and in healthcare. Retailers cut 15,000 jobs.
Employment fell slightly in manufacturing and construction, or goods-producing industries, which are under more pressure from rising interest rates.
The strong labor market has benefited all groups, but especially Black Americans. The Black unemployment rate fell to 5% last month, the lowest level since records began being kept in the early 1970s.
Big picture: The ongoing tightness in the labor market could inflame inflation and even push the Fed to raise interest rates more than currently forecast to try to get prices under control.
Higher borrowing costs reduce inflation by slowing the economy, but most Fed rate-hike cycles since World War II have been followed by recession.
On the flip side, the U.S. economy is starting to show more signs of deterioration due to the series of rapid Fed interest-rate increases since last year.
If these trends continue the economy — and inflation — are bound to slow.
The U.S. is still growing for now, however, and the labor market remains an oasis of strength.
Low unemployment and rising wages have allowed Americans to keep spending. And so far they’ve keep the economy out of a widely predicted recession.
Looking ahead: “The U.S. labor market is losing some momentum, but remains far too vibrant for the Fed to pause [its rate-hike campaign] in May,” said senior economist Sal Guatieri at BMO Capital Markets
“Although job growth is gradually slowing, it remains too strong for the Federal Reserve,” said Sal Guatieri of PNC Financial Services.
Market reaction: Futures contracts on the Dow Jones Industrial Average YM00, +0.19%
rose 64 points, or 0.2%, to 33,723. S&P 500 futures ES00, +0.24%
gained 9.75 points, or 0.2%, to 4,141.75. Stock trading resumes again on Monday.
The numbers: U.S. private payrolls climbed by 145,000 in March, according to the ADP National Economic report released on Wednesday.
Economists polled by The Wall Street Journal had forecast a gain of 210,000 private sector jobs.
The private sector added a revised 261, 000 jobs in January.
Key details: Service sector providers added 75,000 jobs in March. Leisure and hospitality added 98,000 workers. Meanwhile, goods producers added 70,000 jobs. Manufacturing shed 30,000 jobs.
By company size, small businesses added 101,000 private-sector jobs in March while medium businesses added 33,000. Large-sized businesses added 10,000 jobs.
Pay growth decelerated for both job stayers and job changers, ADP said.
For job stayers, year-over-year gains fell to 6.9% from 7.2%. For job changers, pay growth was 14.2%, down from 14.4%.
Big picture: The job market has been strong, with jobless claims trending below 200,000. Companies seem wary of letting workers go.
Economists are forecasting that the U.S. Labor Department’s employment report will show the economy added 238,000 jobs in March. That estimate includes government jobs. If the data comes in as expected, it could show over one million jobs created in the first three months of the year.
What ADP said: “Our March payroll data is one of several signals that the economy is slowing,” said Nela Richardson, chief economist, ADP. “Employers are pulling back from a year of strong hiring and pay growth, after a three-month plateau, is inching down.”
SPX, -0.25%
were set to open lower after the data. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note TMUBMUSD10Y, 3.282%
fell to 3.32% after the data was released.
A Wall St. sign in front of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, US, on Monday, March 20, 2023.
Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images
This report is from today’s CNBC Daily Open, our new, international markets newsletter. CNBC Daily Open brings investors up to speed on everything they need to know, no matter where they are. Like what you see? You can subscribe here.
A New York grand jury voted Thursday to indict former President Donald Trump in connection with a $130,000 hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election, Trump’s lawyer told CNBC. Trump, who is the first former president to be charged with a crime, is expected to appear before New York State Supreme Court Judge Juan Merchan next Tuesday. In a statement, Trump called the indictment a “Witch-Hunt.”
U.S. markets traded higher Thursday as a measure of market volatility showed investor fears are abating. Asia-Pacific stocks mostly rose Friday. Japan’s Nikkei 225 climbed 0.91% as the country’s consumer price index (excluding fresh food) rose 3.2% in March, 10 basis points lower than February’s reading.
In the event of a bank rescue in the European Union, the EU will start by “absorbing equity stack, and then the AT1 and then the Tier 2 and then the rest,” Dominique Laboureix, chair of the EU’s Single Resolution Board, told CNBC in an exclusive interview.
Fears are subsiding and markets are rebounding. But it’d be too premature to celebrate — at least not until we find out how the economy’s doing from reports coming out soon.
Yesterday, all major indexes rose. The S&P 500 climbed 0.57%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average advanced 0.43% and the Nasdaq Composite added 0.73%. Investors continued flocking to technology stocks: Amazon rose 1.75%, Microsoft gained 1.26% and Netflix climbed 1.93%. “The Silicon Valley Bank fiasco was just the oxygen the tech bull needed to snap out of its funk and get back to work,” CNBC’s Jim Cramer said.
How do we know investors are regaining confidence, other than inferring their sentiment from market moves? We look at the CBOE Volatility Index. Derived from the price of S&P 500 options, the volatility index measures the market’s expectations of how the S&P will move over the next 30 days. Hence, it serves as a proxy of investors’ fears. Currently, it’s around levels last seen at the start of March, before SVB collapsed.
In other words, markets seem to be pricing in the best of both words: “a recession that allows rates to be low and brings inflation down sharply, yet one that does not have a massively negative effect on corporate earnings,” Ajay Rajadhyaksha, global chairman of research at Barclays, wrote in a Thursday note.
That might be premature, as Rajadhyaksha suggests. While yesterday’s jobless claims number is 7,000 more than the previous week’s, it’s still below what the Federal Reserve would like to see for the labor market to slow substantially. We’ll get more granular data on the economy with the release of the Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index later today, and the March jobs report next week.
For now, though, it’s undeniably nice to have a respite from the banking crisis.
— CNBC’s Dan Mangan contributed to this report
Subscribe here to get this report sent directly to your inbox each morning before markets open.
A man stands on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on March 23, 2023 in New York City.
Spencer Platt | Getty Images News | Getty Images
This report is from today’s CNBC Daily Open, our new, international markets newsletter. CNBC Daily Open brings investors up to speed on everything they need to know, no matter where they are. Like what you see? You can subscribe here.
In the event of a bank rescue in the European Union, the EU will start by “absorbing equity stack, and then the AT1 and then the Tier 2 and then the rest,” Dominique Laboureix, chair of the EU’s Single Resolution Board, told CNBC in an exclusive interview.
Fears are subsiding and markets are rebounding. But it’d be too premature to celebrate — at least not until we find out how the economy’s doing from reports coming out soon.
Yesterday, all major indexes rose. The S&P 500 climbed 0.57%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average advanced 0.43% and the Nasdaq Composite added 0.73%. Investors continued flocking to technology stocks: Amazon rose 1.75%, Microsoft gained 1.26% and Netflix climbed 1.93%. “The Silicon Valley Bank fiasco was just the oxygen the tech bull needed to snap out of its funk and get back to work,” CNBC’s Jim Cramer said.
How do we know investors are regaining confidence, other than inferring their sentiment from market moves? We look at the CBOE Volatility Index. Derived from the price of S&P 500 options, the volatility index measures the market’s expectations of how the S&P will move over the next 30 days. Hence, it serves as a proxy of investors’ fears. Currently, it’s around levels last seen at the start of March, before SVB collapsed.
In other words, markets seem to be pricing in the best of both words: “a recession that allows rates to be low and brings inflation down sharply, yet one that does not have a massively negative effect on corporate earnings,” Ajay Rajadhyaksha, global chairman of research at Barclays, wrote in a Thursday note.
That might be premature, as Rajadhyaksha suggests. Yesterday’s jobless claims number, while reporting an increase, is still below what the Federal Reserve would like to see for the labor market to slow substantially. We’ll get more granular data on the economy with the release of the Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index later today, and the March jobs report next week.
For now, though, it’s undeniably nice to have a respite from the banking crisis.
— CNBC’s Dan Mangan contributed to this report.
Subscribe here to get this report sent directly to your inbox each morning before markets open.
An airline passenger checks in at the United airlines desk at the Tampa International Airport in Tampa, Florida, January 19, 2022.
Octavio Jones | Reuters
United Airlines has reached tentative agreements with a union representing nearly 30,000 ground workers, the labor group said Wednesday.
The International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers said the two-year tentative agreements cover “industry-best” wage rates, as well as job protection and certain guards against outsourcing roles. The specific terms of the contacts were not disclosed.
The deal comes while United is in talks with labor unions representing its pilots and flight attendants. Pilots last year rejected a preliminary agreement, and negotiations have since resumed.
Members of IAM District 141 will receive more details about the tentative agreements, the union said in a statement. The union will soon announce a schedule for a ratification vote.
“Job security and industry-leading wages are rightfully two top priorities for our membership at United Airlines,” said IAM Air Transport Territory Airline Coordinator Tom Regan.
In a statement, IAM District 141 said that if the agreements are ratified by members, the union “will be back in negotiations one year from the date these agreements are ratified to bargain for more.”
The two-year tentative agreements cover seven work classifications: fleet service workers, passenger service workers, storekeepers, central load planners, maintenance instructors, fleet technical instructors and security officers.
In 2019, about 5% of full-time work was done from home. The share ballooned to more than 60% in April and May 2020, in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, said Nicholas Bloom, an economist at Stanford University who has researched remote work for two decades.
That’s the equivalent to almost 40 years of pre-pandemic growth virtually overnight, his research shows.
The share of remote work has steadily declined (to about 27% today) but is likely to stabilize around 25% — a fivefold increase relative to 2019, Bloom said.
“That’s huge,” he said. “It’s almost impossible to find anything in economics that changes at such speed, that goes up by 500%.”
Initially, remote work was seen as a necessary measure to contain the spread of the virus. Technological advances — such as videoconferencing and high-speed internet — made the arrangement possible for many workers.
Both employees and companies subsequently discovered benefits beyond an immediate health impact, economists said.
Employees most enjoy having a reduced commute, spending less time getting ready for work and a having a flexible schedule that more easily allows for doctor visits and picking up kids from school, Bloom said.
Some workers have shown they’re reluctant to relinquish those perks. Companies such as Amazon and Starbucks, for example, recently faced a backlash from employees after announcing stricter return-to-office policies.
Employers enjoy higher employee retention and can recruit from a broader pool of applicants, said Julia Pollak, chief economist at ZipRecruiter. They can save money on office space, by recruiting from lower-cost areas of the country or by raising wages at a slower pace due to workers’ perceived value of the work-at-home benefit, she said.
It’s almost impossible to find anything in economics that changes at such speed.
Nicholas Bloom
economist at Stanford University
For example, job seekers polled by ZipRecruiter say they’d be prepared to take a 14% pay cut to work remotely, on average. The figure skews higher — to about 20% — for parents with young children.
Twitter recently shut its Seattle offices as a cost-cutting measure and told employees to work from home, a reversal from an earlier position that employees work at least 40 hours a week in the office.
“The benefits for employers are pretty substantial,” Pollak said.
Most companies have turned to a “hybrid” model, with a work week split between maybe two days from home and three in the office, economists said.
That arrangement has yielded a slight boost in average worker productivity, Bloom said. For one, the average person saves 70 minutes a day commuting; roughly 30 minutes of that time savings is spent working more, he said.
“Hybrid is pretty much a win-win,” Bloom said.
About 39% of new hires have jobs with a hybrid work arrangement, while 18% of new jobs are fully remote, according to ZipRecruiter. Both shares are up relative to their pre-pandemic levels (28% and 12%, respectively).
“It’s still an evolving trend, but the movement is very much toward increased remote work,” Pollak said.
Of course, not all workers have the option to work remotely. About 37% of jobs in the U.S. can plausibly be done entirely at home, according to a 2020 study by Jonathan Dingel and Brent Neiman, economists at the University of Chicago.
There are large variations by occupation and geography. For example, jobs in retail, transportation, hospitality and food services are far less likely than those in technology, finance, and professional and business services to offer work-from-home arrangements.
Not everyone agrees that the benefits of working from home outweigh costs.
Evidence suggests employee mentoring, innovation and company culture may suffer if jobs are fully remote, Bloom said. Workers cite face-to-face collaboration, socializing and better work-life balance as top benefits of in-office work, his research finds.
Companies that are fully remote often have in-person gatherings or retreats as a way to build company culture, Bloom said.
Workers have enjoyed a high degree of bargaining power due to a hot labor market characterized by low unemployment and ample job openings. If the economy cools and their bargaining power dissipates, it’s unclear whether some employers would introduce stricter work-from-home policies, economists said.
For one, employers may see remote work as a useful way to trim labor costs in the face of recession, Bunker said. The more likely scenario is on the margin: perhaps three or four days in the office instead of one or two, he said.
The technology sector is a useful indicator, he said. Tech job postings have fallen this year amid industry struggles, but the share of Indeed job ads offering a remote work benefit has remained constant, Bunker said.
“It’s been quite sticky in the face of hiring pullbacks,” he said.
However, economists who spoke to CNBC aren’t so optimistic. They say the number of jobs that can be created from a surge in infrastructure investments may be fewer than the government expects.
The government’s focus is “completely wrong” and its policies are “completely against employment generation,” said Arun Kumar, a retired economics professor from New Delhi’s Jawaharlal Nehru University.
“Capex is not the answer, but how the capex is going to be used,” Kumar said, highlighting that not enough money is being pumped into creating “labor intensive” jobs in India.
Employment in India is divided into different sectors: organized and unorganized.
Businesses in the organized sector are often licensed by the government and pay taxes. Employees are usually full-time staff and have a consistent monthly salary. Companies in the unorganized sector are usually not registered with the government and employees work ad hoc hours with irregular salaries.
When people in India are “too poor not to work,” they’ll result in doing “residual work” with very low incomes such as driving rickshaws, carrying luggage, or even selling vegetables on the street, Kumar said.
According to Kumar, the organized sector only makes up 6% of India’s workforce. On the other hand, 94% of jobs are in the unorganized sector — with half the jobs in agriculture.
As India’s infrastructure sector becomes more reliant on technology and automation, the upcoming boom in projects will create jobs for the organized sector, Kumar said. A lack of investments in the unorganized sector hence leaves many stuck with unstable jobs without a fixed income.
Those employed in agriculture are also “stuck” with low salaries since inadequate investments leave little room for them to upskill, Kumar said.
High unemployment remains a challenge for India, and has been one of the biggest criticisms against the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
According to the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy, an independent think tank, unemployment rose to a 16-month high at 8.3% in December 2022, but dipped to 7.14% in January.
CNBC reached out to the Ministry of Finance and is waiting for a response.
A more technologically advanced infrastructure sector also means fewer jobs will be available for those in the organized sector, Chandrasekhar Sripada, professor of organizational behavior at the Indian School of Business said.
“New generation manufacturing is not labor intensive. The number of jobs it can create at the unit-level will not be as high as it used to be,” Sripada said. “In the 1950s, if we set up a steel plant, we would employ 50,000 people. But today … we will employ 5,000 people.”
Sentiment in India’s job market remains weaker than some countries in the region as a result of a mismatch of skills.
India’s labor force participation rate — or the number of active workers and people looking for jobs — came in at 46% in 2021, according to data from the World Bank. That’s lower than some other developing nations in Asia, such as 57% for Bangladesh and China at 68% in the same year.
Female work participation rate also dropped from 26% in 2005 to 19% in 2021, data from the World Bank showed.
“We’ve seen a very unexplainable drop in the participation of women in the labor force during Covid,” Sripada said. “The caregiving responsibilities on women just increased far more and many dropped out of the workforce, and probably that hangover is continuing.”
Even youth with college degrees are struggling to find jobs.
Youth unemployment, or those in the workforce between 15 to 24 years old with no jobs, stood at 28.26% in 2021 — that’s a 8.6% higher than 2011.
Many of the youth living in rural areas are “semi-educated” because they have degrees in their hands but are not skilled enough to gain employment, Sripada said. It’s also a challenge for employers to create jobs that target these people, he added.
“We have enough colleges to provide bachelor degrees, but these degrees … do not prepare them with enough skills to get employment,” he said.
It’s hard to believe you can be what you cannot see. And one of the least diverse professions in America is veterinary medicine.
It’s a long-standing issue. In 2013, veterinary medicine was the whitest job in America, according to The Atlantic, and last year’s Bureau of Labor Statistics data showed that only 2.2% of veterinarians are Black, with Asian and Latinx vets severely underrepresented as well. The overwhelming majority of vets are white women. A lack of visible representation, high vet school tuition costs, six-figure student debt and enduring biases are some of the reasons for this.
To put stories behind those numbers, HuffPost interviewed three Black veterinarians to hear why there are still so few Black people in the profession today, what continues to excite them about their jobs and their advice to those who want to follow in their path.
Answers were edited for clarity and length.
Dr. Charles McMillan is the medical director and owner of GoodVets Atlanta Group Hospitals. A graduate of Tuskegee University’s College of Veterinary Medicine, he has 10 years of experience as a vet.
When did you first want to be a veterinarian?
Since I was 5-6 years old, I always wanted to be a veterinarian. My very first veterinarian job was when I was 14. I started cleaning kennels and walking dogs [at a clinic], unpaid, of course. After a few months, the doctor took an interest in me and allowed me to be on payroll and allowed me, once my duties were done, to come in and shadow him. That experience nurtured that desire.
Nicole Buchanan for HuffPost
Dr. Charles McMillan, owner of Good Vets in the West Buckhead neighborhood of Atlanta, opened his new clinic in January.
When did you meet other Black veterinarians?
I was generally always the only Black person on staff, the only Black person at these hospitals, and that carried through to varying degrees throughout my career, so much so that I became habituated to it. I didn’t meet another Black veterinarian until one of my professors at the Tuskegee school of veterinary medicine. It gave me that exposure that I was missing.
Upon graduating vet school, I kind of returned back to that reality. I was one of the few Black interns at my internship, and in a number of my jobs, I was one of the only, if not the only, Black veterinarian there. Tuskegee was a break from reality. It allowed me to create a lot of lasting bonds, and it was also the impetus for me to want to effect change.
What was it like to be the only Black veterinarian in these rooms?
Clients were kind of surprised at seeing you. Cohorts were kind of surprised at seeing you. It almost forced you to lose your individuality in a sense. Because there are so few Black veterinarians, and from other kinds of marginalized groups, you feel like there is the extra sense of responsibility.
If a person from a dominant group makes a mistake, they’re just like, “Well, it’s that individual person’s training, it’s that individual person’s shortcomings.” If, as a minority, you make a mistake, a generalization is automatically had that “all Black veterinarians are like this.” That wears on you. It’s hard to kind of gauge. You’re living your life through a whole bunch of stereotype threats. When you know you’re part of a group that is so few in numbers in a particular profession, it creates this psychic anxiety that you can’t really measure.
Nicole Buchanan for HuffPost
Dr. Charles McMillan treats a 9-month-old kitten named Moody.
Why are there still so few Black veterinarians?
It’s multidimensional. [Beyond representation issues], there are very few veterinary schools, so that makes that access limited, but also there is some research recently that suggests there are biases within the admission process in and of itself. And then what do you do after leaving vet school? We know that people from marginalized backgrounds come out with more student debt [on] average. We also know if you’re able to make it through that kind of jungle of obstacles, then once you’re out in practice, there’s not a lot of Black veterinarians in leadership roles to reach down, mentor and bring up people from these marginalized groups.
Once you’re an associate, you don’t really see any upward mobility because a lot of places say it’s good to have Black workers or people from marginalized groups, but still there is a disconnect between making that leap from worker to “now do we trust this person to actually run this hospital, recruit for this hospital,” and things of that nature.
Some people believe that the lack of Black veterinarians means that there is a lack of desire amongst Blacks to be veterinarians. Or we’re seeing a lack of aptitude. You look at the numbers and you come up with this faulty conclusion.
“When you know you’re part of a group that is so few in numbers in a particular profession, it creates this psychic anxiety that you can’t really measure.”
– Dr. Charles McMillan
That’s what I try to argue against. It’s not a lack of desire. You don’t see a lot of people who look and sound like you doing what you aspire to do, so it makes it seem like it’s a little more unattainable. Society tries to typecast Black and brown people to certain professions, so it’s a lot easier to go into those professions than one where you’ve never seen folks. Over time, your desire and your aspiration to be a veterinarian gets muted. It gets smaller and smaller. That’s the silent killer of these aspirations.
What’s your pitch for Black professionals who want to be veterinarians?
Veterinarians are born. Just as many Black veterinarians are born as there are white veterinarians. The lack of exposure, the lack of access and all the other things … leads and redirects Black veterinarians and other people from marginalized groups from pursuing those passions. My goal is to let people know, don’t let those numbers deter you. My goal is to prepare the profession and make it as healthy as possible so that I can, in confidence, recommend my kids go into the profession.
The profession, we are at a crossroads. Diversity is one of the reasons why we’re there. We need to improve those numbers so that we can continue to attract the best and brightest for this profession and cultivate their natural love for this profession, so we are not left in the dark ages of creativity and innovation.
Dr. Niccole Bruno is the founder and CEO of Blendvet, a veterinarian hospital certification program. Before pivoting to working full time at Blendvet in 2022, she was chief of staff of Companion Animal Hospital in Spring, Texas.
What are you currently doing?
My goal is to certify veterinary hospitals in DEI — or diversity, equity, inclusion — by having them go through a program where all of their staff is trained in certain categories related to DEI. If they go through the modules and they do community service, and they change something internally within their hospitals, then they become certified.
I see it as an opportunity to really change our culture of veterinary medicine. I think that the next generation of veterinarians really wants that, and I’m trying to be ahead of that so they have a better experience than I had early on in my career. I turned 40 in 2020, and I started to think about, “What legacy am I leaving? Am I leaving the profession better than I started?” To me, the answer was no. I have two Black children. I think about my children and if they decide they want to be a vet because they’ll see it. They have an auntie and they have a mom that’s a veterinarian, so they will never doubt that they can be veterinarians. But if they are, what kind of pipeline are they entering? I need to do what I can to make it better.
Michael Starghill for HuffPost
Dr. Niccole Bruno is the founder and CEO of Blendvet in Katy, Texas.
In your company bio, you talk about dealing with “racism, misogyny and stereotypical behaviors” in your career. Could you share more about that?
I dealt with a lot of imposter syndrome, which I later learned was stereotype threat, because I felt like I had to prove that I was worthy of being a veterinarian, of being in those rooms.
A lot of times, people don’t assume that I’m the veterinarian. I’ve had clients request for the doctor to come in like they hadn’t seen the doctor. And my staff is like: “What are you talking about? The doctor was just in there.” And I go back in there, and they’re like, “Oh, I didn’t know you were the doctor.”
I did have a client that refused to have me do his pet’s surgery. It was very early on in my career, but it was a surgery that I felt comfortable doing. The owner did not know what was going on with the pet, and I … found the problem, went in there and said, “I can do the surgery. Here’s how much it will cost,” and he was just like, “I want somebody else to do the surgery.”
Was it my age? Was it my gender? Was it my race? … I do look young. And in 2009 [when it happened], I looked much younger. People have biases towards age, towards a newer grad or towards a Black woman or a Latinx woman, or the fact that I was a woman at all. Those are the parts you can’t really separate, and I never got clarity because, even though my boss ended up doing the surgery, he didn’t provide clarity. He just told me [the client] was being chauvinistic, but as I reminded my boss in that moment, “You can’t just say that, that it’s just a gender thing.” Because a lot of us are women. It could have been so much more than that. It’s hard.
“I did have a client that refused to have me do his pet’s surgery.”
– Dr. Niccole Bruno
I’ve shared this story with veterinary students and people that are in practice now.And we talk about all of the steps, where was it missed? What could I have done? What could the hospital have had in place as far as rules to not allow this? What should the leader have done in that moment? It’s a case that is teachable. I had a student last week tell me that he watched a BIPOC veterinarian be declined by a white woman to have her pet seen by him, and it was horrible for [my student] to watch.
Why should Black professionals and those from other underrepresented groups pursue veterinary medicine despite the existing barriers?
In general, I think what we do is an amazing job. We have the ability to make something feel better that cannot communicate. It’s a science; it’s playing detective. It’s asking the owners the right questions but also fact-checking by seeing if it matches with the patient. Every case is a little piece of an investigation. When you are able to make a pet feel better, when you have a client that has struggled with trying to understand how to treat their pet and you can figure it out and give them tools to make it better, it’s just so rewarding.
Michael Starghill for HuffPost
Dr. Niccole Bruno’s goal is to increase diversity, equity and inclusion in the veterinary profession.
Do you think your colleagues share your urgency for improving diversity in veterinary medicine?
All of my colleagues of color, we recognize what the diversity problem is and we all do what we can to be the change. I have friends that have started programs through their hospital to allow students to come and shadow. They go do career days within their communities. They mentor.
But in general, when I walk into hospitals, I don’t think that my white colleagues are necessarily thinking about diversity as much as we are. Merck did a veterinary well-being study in 2021, and it actually pointed out that BIPOC veterinary professionals, their No. 1 concern is diversity in veterinary medicine. That was at 46%. Whereas white colleagues, their No. 1 concern was the veterinary shortage.
Those are the differences. I think they’re both relatable: We have a veterinary shortage, so we should be thinking about who else might want to join our profession.
The clientele is diverse, and they want to see themselves in us, and I want to do what I can to not only improve the representation but also to really train my colleagues about how to appreciate cultural differences and how to connect with people. At the end of the day, how we treat animals is by having the relationships with the people. And if they say yes, then we can treat their pets, we can offer services, and they’ll pay for them because they understand and they trust us. But if we don’t have a connection with clients, they don’t come back, they don’t do what we ask them to do and the pet suffers in the end.
What would be your advice for Black professionals who want to become a vet?
Not to give up. Know that there are opportunities out there to find mentors. I’m part of an advisory group called Pawsibilities. We do exist. We may not be a lot, but there are many of us that are willing to mentor students through this platform and some of our colleges and veterinary schools.
Dr. Donna Jarrell is the attending veterinarian at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston and director of its Center for Comparative Medicine. She grew up in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and was the second Black attendee and first Black woman graduate (in 1988) of the North Carolina State College of Veterinary Medicine.
Can you explain your role?
Currently I’m the attending veterinarian, the senior position at Mass General Hospital, which has a huge research institute. My department at MGH is 130 people. I actually have seven veterinarians and three residents all providing veterinary care to an array of species of animals, from zebrafish to mice. We have over 100,000 mice under our care. And then we have sheep and goats, and really a variety of species. I’ve moved up and now am more in the administrative realm, I would say. I’m overseeing the care of all these animals.
Researchers partner with us. We take care of their animals and then we support them as they perform their different experiments. Our focus is to balance the welfare of the animals against the knowledge of the potential gains from the experiments. We are the guardians of the animals during their experimental phases.
Vanessa Leroy for HuffPost
Dr. Donna Jarrell is director of the Center for Comparative Medicine and an attending veterinarian at Massachusetts General Hospital in Charlestown, Massachusetts.
We’ve expanded our reach. I’ve been there for 28 years, and we got very involved in pet therapy programs, and we’re helping the hospital to do that. Now we’re even asked to look at things like service dogs in the workplace and what are the welfare concerns of having animals in our hospital.
I get up every morning, even 35 years later, loving what I do. It is truly a calling. A lot of the advancements that we are successful at at Mass General circle back right around to the veterinary profession.
Are you the only Black veterinarian at your job?
I am the only Black veterinarian on my staff. We have more diversity [in] our residency [program] because we can be purposeful in our recruitment. New England is not a popular place for people of color. Getting people to move to New England is interesting. I’m still oftentimes the only Black veterinarian in the room. I’m excited when I’m not.
I’m not the only African American veterinarian in Boston. There’s actually five of us, and we get together on Sundays for brunch. We find our community and we shore each other up. And take care of each other.
“I get up every morning, even 35 years later, loving what I do.”
– Dr. Donna Jarrell
Can you share more about your path to being a veterinarian?
When I turned 16, I was very purposeful. I went and interviewed at three or four different hospitals in my hometown, wanting to be a kennel worker. I told every one of them that my goal was to become a veterinarian.
I was hired by one of the veterinarians in town. He was white. They all were white. Two years in, I’m a senior in high school, he says, “You know, you’re pretty smart. I think you should go down into the veterinary tech program in the state and then come back and work for me.” I thought, “I told you I don’t want to be a veterinary tech, I want to be you.” So that was kind of a turn-off.
I went away to college, and when I came back that summer, he had sold his practice to a Black veterinarian that had been teaching at Tuskegee University’s College of Veterinary Medicine, which produced the highest percentage of veterinarians of color. And [the new owner, Calvert Jeffers] became my boss. And because he had been an instructor at the vet school, he was outstanding at teaching me. I was no longer just a kennel worker on a path to being a great vet tech; he actually supported my dream and helped me to really get that confidence in being in that environment.
Vanessa Leroy for HuffPost
Dr. Donna Jarrell looks at caged mice used for immunology and cancer research in a lab at Massachusetts General Hospital.
You’ve been many firsts. Could you share more about that experience?
From high school on, there were often times I was the only Black student in my AP classes. I’ve always been in that arena of opening doors. In vet school, there was one male African American student who was two years ahead of me, and the two of us were two out of over 220 students. You have to learn how to establish yourself. I learned how to navigate being the only one. I always went back to my community, my family, my friends to regroup, shall we say. I always had a community behind me that would tell me, “You’ve got to go back, you’ve got to finish.”
I do a lot of mentoring, and I think about things like imposter syndrome and how does it happen. Pursuing veterinary medicine requires a strong academic record, and that is flaked with a lot of obstacles, shall we say, from teachers who don’t see you as [someone with] high potential or successful [at] standardized test-taking, and how you do on that. We all know that the AAA+ student doesn’t necessarily translate into the most high-performing clinicians, but that had to be proven, I’ll say, over the years.
Why are there still so few Black veterinarians?
There are many obstacles to getting there. … There are so many needs in the medical profession across the board that if you are successful academically, everyone wants you to go into human medicine. Appreciating the role of veterinary medicine and how it can serve the community was not something you heard a lot about in our community.
I do really believe that you need to see other veterinarians of color to see yourself in that opportunity.
Do you think, in your career, you will see Black representation increase in veterinary medicine?
It has hovered between 1% and 4% for 40 years. I think that the recruitment of underrepresented minorities in vet schools at higher levels, like NC State, is realistically where I think we’ll see the numbers change. It may take another 50 years to see that number grow because it’s a long journey.
A sign for hire is posted on the window of a Chipotle restaurant in New York, April 29, 2022.
Shannon Stapleton | Reuters
Job cuts are rising at some of the biggest U.S. companies, but others are still scrambling to hire workers, the result of wild swings in consumer priorities since the Covid pandemic began three years ago.
Tech giants Meta, Amazon and Microsoft, along with companies ranging from Disney to Zoom, have announced job cuts over the past few weeks. In total, U.S.-based employers cut nearly 103,000 jobs in January, the most since September 2020, according to a report released earlier this month from outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
Meanwhile, employers added 517,000 jobs last month, nearly three times the number analysts expected. This points to a labor market that’s still tight, particularly in service sectors that were hit hard earlier in the pandemic, such as restaurants and hotels.
The dynamic is making it even harder to predict the path of the U.S. economy. Consumer spending has remained robust and surprised some economists, despite headwinds such as higher interest rates and persistent inflation.
All of it is part of the Covid pandemic’s “legacy of weirdness,” said David Kelly, global chief strategist at J.P. Morgan Asset Management.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics is scheduled to release its next nonfarm payroll on March 3.
Some analysts and economists warn that weakness in some sectors, strains on household budgets, a drawdown on savings and high interest rates could further fan out job weakness in other sectors, especially if wages don’t keep pace with inflation.
Wages for workers in the leisure and hospitality industry rose to $20.78 per hour in January from $19.42 a year earlier, according to the most recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“There’s a difference between saying the labor market is tight and the labor market is strong,” Kelly said.
Many employers have faced challenges in attracting and retaining staff over the past few years, with challenges including workers’ child care needs and competing workplaces that might have better schedules and pay.
With interest rates rising and inflation staying elevated, consumers could pull back spending and spark job losses or reduce hiring needs in otherwise thriving sectors.
“When you lose a job you don’t just lose a job — there’s a multiplier effect,” said Aneta Markowska, chief economist at Jefferies.
That means while there might be trouble in some tech companies, that could translate to lower spending on business travel, or if job loss rises significantly, it could prompt households to pull back sharply on spending on services and other goods.
Some of the recent layoffs have come from companies that beefed up staffing over the course of the pandemic, when remote work and e-commerce were more central to consumer and company spending.
Amazon last month announced 18,000 job cuts across the company. The Seattle-based company employed 1.54 million people at the end of last year, nearly double the number at the end of 2019, just before the pandemic, according to company filings.
Microsoft said it’s cutting 10,000 jobs, about 5% of its workforce. The software giant had 221,000 employees as of the end of June last year, up from 144,000 before the pandemic.
Tech “used to be a grow-at-all-costs sector, and it’s maturing a little bit,” said Michael Gapen, head of U.S. economic research at Bank of America Global Research.
Other companies are still adding employees. Boeing, for example, is planning to hire 10,000 people this year, many of them in manufacturing and engineering. It will also cut around 2,000 corporate jobs, mostly in human resources and finance departments, through layoffs and attrition. The growth aims to help the aerospace giant ramp up output of new aircraft for a rebound in orders with large sales to airlines like United and Air India.
Airlines and aerospace companies were devastated early in the pandemic when travel dried up and are now playing catch-up. Airlines are still scrambling for pilots, a shortage that has limited capacity, while demand for experiences such as travel and dining has surged.
Chipotle is planning to hire 15,000 workers as it gears up for a busier spring season and to support its expansion.
Businesses large and small are also finding they have to raise wages to attract and retain workers. Industries that fell out of favor with consumers and other businesses, such as restaurants and aerospace, are rebuilding workforces after shedding workers. Walmart said it would raise minimum pay for store employees to $14 an hour to attract and retain workers.
The Miner’s Hotel in Butte, Montana, raised hourly pay for housekeepers by $1.50 to $12.50 for that position in the last six weeks because of a high turnover rate, Cassidy Smith, its general manager.
Airports and concessionaires have also been racing to hire workers in the travel rebound. Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport has been holding monthly job fairs and offers some staff child-care scholarships to help hiring.
Austin-Bergstrom International Airport, where schedules by seats this quarter has grown 48% from the same period of 2019, has launched a number of initiatives, such as $1,000 referral bonuses, and signing and retention incentives for referred staff.
The airport also raised hourly wages for airport facilities representatives from $16.47 in 2022 to $20.68 in 2023.
“Austin has a high cost of living,” said Kevin Russell, the airport’s deputy chief of talent.
He said employee retention has improved.
Electricians, plumbers and heating-and-air conditioning technicians in particular, however, have been difficult to retain because they can work at other places that aren’t 24/7 and at at higher pay, he said.
Many companies’ new workers need to be trained, a time-consuming element for some industries to ramp back up, even if it’s gotten easier to attract new employees.
“Hiring is not a constraint anymore,” Boeing CEO Dave Calhoun said on an earnings call in January. “People are able to hire the people they need. It’s all about the training and ultimately getting them ready to do the sophisticated work that we demand.”
— CNBC’s Amelia Lucas contributed to this article.
As Wall Street gears up for key inflation data, Wells Fargo Securities’ Michael Schumacher believes one thing is clear: “The Fed is not your friend.”
He warns Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell will likely hold interest rates higher for longer, and it could leave investors on the wrong side of the trade.
“You think about the history over the last 15 years. Whenever there was weakness, the Fed rides to the rescue. Not this time. The Fed cares about inflation, and that’s just about it,” the firm’s head of macro strategy told CNBC’s “Fast Money” on Monday. “So, the idea of lots of easing — forget it.”
The Labor Department will release its January consumer price index, which reflects prices for good and services, on Tuesday. The producer price index takes the spotlight on Thursday.
“Inflation could come off a fair bit. But we still don’t know exactly what the destination is,” said Schumacher. “[That] makes a big difference to the Fed – if that’s 3%, 3.25%, 2.75%. At this point, that’s up in the air.“
He warns the year’s early momentum cannot coexist with a Fed that’s adamant about battling inflation.
“Higher yields… doesn’t sound good to stocks,” added Schumacher, who thinks market optimism will ultimately fade. So far this year, the tech-heavy Nasdaq is up almost 14% while the broader S&P 500 is up about 8%.
Schumacher also expects risks tied to the China spy balloon fallout and Russia tensions to create extra volatility.
For relative safety and some upside, Schumacher still likes the 2-year Treasury Note. He recommended it during a “Fast Money” interview in Sept. 2022, saying it’s a good place to hide out. The note is now yielding 4.5% — a 15% jump since that interview.
His latest forecast calls for three more quarter point rate hikes this year. So, that should support higher yields. However, Schumacher notes there’s still a chance the Fed chief Powell could shift course.
“A number of folks in the committee lean fairly dovish,” Schumacher said. “If the economy does look a bit weaker, if the jobs picture does darken a fair bit, they may talk to Jay Powell and say ‘Look, we can’t go along with additional rate hikes. We probably need a cut or two fairly soon.’ He may lose that argument.”
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said Tuesday that if the U.S. job market further strengthens in the coming months or inflation readings accelerate, the Fed might have to raise its benchmark interest rate higher than it now projects.
Powell’s remarks followed the government’s blockbuster report last week that employers added 517,000 jobs in January, nearly double December’s gain. The unemployment rate fell to its lowest level in 53 years, 3.4%.
“The reality is if we continue to get strong labor market reports or higher inflation reports, it might be the case that we have to raise rates more” than is now expected, Powell said in remarks to the Economic Club of Washington.
Though price pressures are easing and Powell said he envisions a “significant” decline in inflation this year, he cautioned that so far the central bank is seeing only “the very early stages of disinflation. It has a long way to go.”
Even as the Fed has raised rates dramatically — by 4.5 percentage points, to a range of 4.5% to 4.75%, the fastest increase in four decades — the job market has remained surprisingly resilient. In addition, inflation, though still high, slowed to a year-over-year rate of 6.5% in December from 9.1% in June.
The slowdown in inflation, even while the economy has stayed healthy, has raised hopes in financial markets that the Fed might be able to achieve its goal without having to raise borrowing rates so high as to cause a steep recession.
But Powell brushed aside that notion Tuesday.
“There’s been an expectation that it’ll go away quickly and painlessly,” Powell said. “I don’t think that’s at all guaranteed.”
Instead, he warned that in his estimation, “it will take some time, and we’ll have to do more rate increases and then we’ll have to look around and see if we’ve done enough.”
Inflation has slowed at the same time that the unemployment rate has declined — a trend that defies most economic models. Powell said that phenomenon reflects the unique nature of the post-pandemic U.S. economy.
“It’s just confounded all sorts of attempts to predict what it will do,” he said.
Powell’s remarks Tuesday followed the moderately optimistic note he struck at a news conference last week. Speaking to reporters then, Powell noted that high inflation had begun to ease and said he believed the Fed could tame spiking prices without causing a deep recession involving waves of layoffs.
But the Fed chair also warned then that the job market was still out of balance, with robust demand for labor and too-few workers in many industries leading employers to sharply raise wages, a trend that could help keep inflation high.
Some Fed officials have already said the stronger-than-expected jobs report made it more likely that the central bank will have to keep raising its benchmark rate, which affects the rates on many consumer and business loans.
Neel Kashkari, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, said Tuesday morning in an interview on CNBC that January’s outsize hiring gain showed that the Fed’s higher rates have so far had only a limited effect in slowing the economy.
“We need to raise rates aggressively,” Kashkari said, “to put a ceiling on inflation, then let monetary policy work its way through the economy.”
On Friday, the government issued a jobs report that suggested that the economy and hiring were even healthier than Fed officials had thought. Employers added 517,000 jobs in January, the report said, nearly double December’s gain, and the unemployment rate reached 3.4%, the lowest level in 53 years.
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
A lot has been written about employee relations: how to lead and inspire effectively, how to ask for a raise, how to find work-life balance through self-care, how to establish and retain great employees, etc. These are all important topics, and there are many ways to approach the subject matter. But at the heart of almost all employee-related topics, it comes down to one thing: Is the employee happy?
Professional happiness is one of the most subjective topics because it means different things to different people. Some people simply do not care about how much money they make if they have the freedom to live their life without the confines of a typical job. Some people are very focused on how much they can earn and save towards financially-driven goals. Some people love to travel for work while others want to work from home. And others want to do things they enjoy and want to feel like they are contributing to something greater, regardless of the compensation. There are an infinite number of other examples of how people define professional happiness. So, no one definition can be applied to all people.
The key is not trying to come up with a universal definition for professional happiness, but rather the questions to ask in order to create your own personal definition. Here are five questions to get you started:
Think about this question in general professional terms. Do you like regularly engaging with people? Do you like being creative? Do you like having a set schedule? Do you like working in a team environment? Do you like networking? Do you prefer having oversight or autonomy? Would you prefer to work around other people or from home? Make a list of at least 20 things you actually like to do professionally.
2. What are your strengths?
Are you great at creating reports? Do you excel at project management? Do you lead and inspire naturally? Do you love working with numbers? Are you self-motivated and directed, or do you work better with direction? Are you a great presenter? Again, think broadly and make a list of at least 20 things.
3. Where do your strengths and what you like to do intersect professionally?
As you make the first two lists, you will start to notice some overlaps in your strengths and what you like to do. This is where you begin to define what makes you happy. The intersection of what you like to do and what you can do well is a win-win for any professional situation. Employers get more out of employees who are doing what they enjoy and are good at, and employees work harder and more efficiently when they are doing things they enjoy and things for which they show a strong aptitude.
4. Does your current work environment afford you the opportunity to merge your strengths and pleasures?
A lot of people like where they work. They enjoy the people around them. And they enjoy the company as a whole. They just don’t find joy and fulfillment in what they do every day. It is perfectly normal to want a change of scenery, new challenges and new responsibilities. Odds are, you know what you do, the value of it and what your company needs as much or more within your capacity as the key decision-makers above you. And it is equally likely that your employer would prefer to have you contributing at your best. So, consider defining and pitching a new role for yourself that reflects your strength and preferences. It will show dedication and initiative, and it can potentially move you into a role that brings you better professional happiness.
5. What would be a great vertical move?
Even if you can’t redefine your role at your current job, taking the time to define a new role for yourself that combines your strengths and preferences helps define what other opportunities you might want to pursue. In business, when people switch jobs, a lateral move often refers to taking a similar job elsewhere with a similar role and pay. And a vertical move often refers to moving to a job with more responsibility and pay. I tend to think that if you move to a job that brings you more happiness, regardless of the role of pay, it is a vertical move. Knowing what you want to do and what value you can bring will help you identify other opportunities that might be a great fit.
The two things most people do most in this world are sleep and work. This is why you should always be willing to pay more for a perfect mattress and work in a way that brings you professional happiness. It is up to you to define what that means for you and then pursue it with passion and purpose. So, ask yourself these five critical questions, and you’ll be on your way to creating or finding the job you love.
More than half of smartphone users in the U.S. are sending money via some sort of peer-to-peer payment service to send money to friends, family and businesses.
Stocks of payment services like PayPal, which owns Venmo, and Block, which owns Cash App, boomed in 2020 as more people began sending money digitally.
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Zelle, which launched in 2017, stands out from the pack in a few ways. It’s owned and operated by Early Warning Services, LLC, which is co-owned by seven of the big banks and it’s not publicly traded. The platform serves the banks beyond generating an independent revenue stream.
“Zelle is not really a revenue-generating enterprise on a stand-alone basis,” said Mike Cashman, a partner at Bain & Co. “You should think of this really as a little bit of an accommodation, but also as an engagement tool versus a revenue-generating machine.”
“If you’re already transacting with your bank and you trust your bank, then the fact that your bank offers Zelle as a means of payment is attractive to you,” said Terri Bradford, a payment specialist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City.
One limitation of PayPal, Venmo and Cash App is that users must all be using the same service. Zelle, on the other hand, appeals to users because anyone with a bank account at one of the seven participating firms can make payments.
“For banks, it’s a no-brainer to try to compete in that space,” said Jaime Toplin, senior analyst at Insider Intelligence. “Customers use their mobile-banking apps all the time, and no one wants to cede the opportunity from a space that people are already really active in to third-party competitors.”
Watch the video above to learn more about why the banks created Zelle and where the service may be headed.
Despite a Friday stumble, stocks ended a turbulent week with another round of solid gains, keeping 2023’s young but robust stock-market rally very much alive.
But a cloud of confusion also sets over the market, and it will eventually need to be resolved, strategists said.
Stocks rose early in the week as traders continued to bet that the Federal Reserve won’t follow through on its forecast to push the federal funds rate to a peak above 5% and hold it there, instead looking for cuts by year-end. Fed chief Jerome Powell pushed back against that expectation again on Wednesday, but a nuanced answer to a question about loosening financial conditions and an acknowledgment that the “disinflationary process” had begun convinced traders they remained right about the rate path.
On Friday, however, a blowout January jobs report, with the U.S. economy adding 517,000 jobs and the unemployment rate dropping to 3.4%, its lowest level since 1969, appeared to affirm Powell’s position.
Stocks took a hit, even if they finished off session lows, with the Nasdaq Composite COMP, -1.59%
booking a fifth straight weekly gain and the S&P 500 SPX, -1.04%
achieving back-to-back weekly wins. The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -0.38%
suffered a 0.2% weekly fall.
“It kind of leaves you shaking your head right now, doesn’t it?” asked Jim Baird, chief investment officer at Plante Moran Financial Advisors, in a phone interview.
At some point in the coming months there will need to be “a reconciliation between what the markets think the Fed will do and what Powell says the Fed will do,” Baird said.
The rally could continue for now, Baird said, but he argued it would be wise in the long run to take the Fed at face value. “I think the overall tone of risk taking in the market right now is a little bit too optimistic.”
Money-market traders did react to Friday’s data. Fed funds futures on Friday afternoon reflected a 99.6% probability that the Fed would raise the target rate by 25 basis points to a range of 4.75% to 5% at the conclusion of its next policy meeting, on March 22, up from an 82.7% probability on Thursday, according to the CME FedWatch tool.
For the Fed’s May meeting, the market reflected a 61.3% chance of another quarter-point rise to 5% to 5.25%, the level the Fed has signaled is its expected high-water-mark rate. On Thursday, it saw just a 30% chance of a quarter-point rise in May. But markets still look for a cut by year-end.
Of course, one month’s data do not represent the end of the argument. But unless January’s labor-market strength turns out to be a blip, the hawks on the Fed are likely to dig in and keep rates higher for longer, said Yung-Yu Ma, chief investment strategist at BMO Wealth Management, in a phone interview.
For markets, the lack of a resolution to the long-simmering disconnect with the Fed could lead to a period of consolidation after an admittedly impressive start to 2023, he said.
Indeed, the momentum behind the market’s rally could be set to continue. It’s been led by tech and other growth stocks that were hammered in last year’s market rout. Market watchers detect a sense of “FOMO,” or fear of missing out, is driving what some have termed a tech-stock “meltup.”
“The impressive equity rally to start the year has caught cautious institutional investors, hedge funds, and strategists off guard. While overbought conditions are obvious, the near-universal level of skepticism among institutions provides a contrarian degree of support for continued strength,” said Mark Hackett, chief of investment research at Nationwide, in a Friday note.
And then there’s earnings season, which has so far seen results from around half of the S&P 500.
Companies through Friday had reported lower earnings for the fourth quarter relative to the end of the previous week and relative to the end of the quarter.
The blended earnings decline (a combination of actual results for companies that have reported and estimated results for companies that have yet to report) for the fourth quarter was 5.3% through Friday, compared with an earnings decline of 5.1% last week and an earnings decline of 3.3% at the end of the fourth quarter, according to FactSet. If earnings come out negative for the quarter, it would be the first year-over-year decline since the third quarter of 2020.
When it comes to earnings, “there’s definitely been a mood of forgiveness in the market,” said BMO’s Ma.
“I think the market just didn’t want to see a disastrous earnings season,” he said, noting expectations remain for weak earnings in the current quarter and next, with bulls looking into the second half of this year and even into 2024 to get on a better footing.
For the market, the main driver will remain data on inflation and wage growth, Ma said.
President Joe Biden on Friday hailed stronger-than-expected job creation in January and called the robust reading proof that the U.S. economy is showing strength. Biden said in a statement at the White House: “I’m happy to report that the state of our union, and the state of our economy, is strong.” Biden spoke after the U.S. reported that the number of new jobs created in January rose by 517,000, marking the biggest gain in six months. The unemployment rate slid to a 54-year low of 3.4% from 3.5%, the government reported. That’s the lowest level since 1969. The stronger-than-expected jobs figures come as Biden is preparing to deliver a State of the Union speech before a joint session of Congress. on Tuesday night. The address is expected to focus on the debt-limit standoff and recession worries, among other topics. One caveat to the jobs report, meanwhile, is that the government’s formula to adjust for seasonal swings in hiring sometimes exaggerates employment levels in January. It’s unclear whether that was the case last month. Employment grew even faster in the waning months of 2022 than previously reported, indicating the labor market was still quite robust.
America’s employers added a sizzling 517,000 jobs in January, a surprisingly strong gain in the face of the Federal Reserve’s aggressive drive to slow growth and tame inflation with higher interest rates.
The unemployment rate dipped to 3.4%, the lowest level since 1969.
Friday’s government report added to the picture of a resilient labor market, with low unemployment, relatively few layoffs and many job openings even as most economists foresee a recession nearing. Though good for workers, employers’ steady demand for labor has also helped accelerate wage growth and contributed to high inflation.
But the Fed’s inflation watchers might be reassured somewhat by January’s wage data: Average hourly pay rose 4.4% last month from a year earlier, slower than the 4.8% year-over-year increase in December. And from December to January, wages rose 0.3%, below the 0.4% increase the previous month.
On top of the sizzling job growth it reported for January, the government on Friday also revised up its estimate of employment gains in November and December by a combined 71,000.
January’s gains were broad-based across industries. A category that includes restaurants and bars added 99,000 jobs. Professional and business services jobs, including bookkeepers and consultants, rose by 82,000.
Governments added 74,000, boosted by the end of a worker strike against California’s state university system. Health care added 58,000 jobs, retailers 30,000. Construction gained 25,000 jobs. Manufacturing added 19,000.
Economists, who had collectively estimated that the economy added just 185,000 jobs last month, were caught off-guard by the size of the gains.
“This is a labor market on heat,’’ said Seema Shah, chief global strategist at Principal Asset Management. It would be difficult, she suggested, “to see the Fed stop raising rates and entertain ideas of rate cuts when there is such explosive economic news coming in.”
The proportion of adults who either had a job or were looking for one — the so-called labor force participation rate — stayed at 62.4%, well below pre-pandemic levels.
January’s job growth far exceeded December’s 260,000 total and extended a streak of powerful hiring gains that raised concerns at the Fed about inflation pressures. The Fed has raised its key rate eight times since March to try to contain inflation, which hit a four-decade high last year but has slowed since then.
Companies are still seeking more workers and are hanging tightly onto the ones they have. Putting aside some high-profile layoffs at big tech companies like Microsoft, Google, Amazon and others, most workers are enjoying an unusual level of job security even at a time when many economists foresee a recession approaching.
For all of 2022, the economy had added a sizzling average of 375,000 jobs a month. That was a pace vigorous enough to have contributed to the painful inflation Americans have endured, the worst such bout in 40 years. A tight job market tends to put upward pressure on wages, which, in turn, feed into inflation.
The Fed, hoping to cool the job market and the economy — and, as a consequence, inflation — has steadily raised borrowing rates, most recently on Wednesday. Year-over-year measures of consumer inflation have steadily eased since peaking at 9.1% in June. But at 6.5% in December, inflation remains far above the Fed’s 2% target, which is why the central bank’s policymakers have reiterated their intent to keep raising borrowing rates for at least a few more months.
The Fed is aiming to achieve a “soft landing” — a pullback in the economy that is just enough to tame high inflation without triggering a recession. The policymakers hope that employers can slow wage increases and inflationary pressures by reducing job openings but not necessarily by laying off many employees.
But the job market’s resilience isn’t making that hoped-for outcome any easier. On Wednesday, the Labor Department reported that employers posted 11 million job openings in December, an unexpected jump from 10.4 million in November and the largest number since July. There are now about two job vacancies, on average, for every unemployed American.
The Labor Department’s monthly count of layoffs has amounted to fewer than 1.5 million for 21 straight months. Until 2021, that figure had never dropped so low in records dating back two decades.
Yet another sign that workers are benefiting from unusual job security is the weekly number of people who apply for unemployment benefits. That figure is a proxy for layoffs, one that economists monitor for clues about where the job market might be headed. The government said Thursday that the number of jobless claims fell last week to its lowest level since April.
The pace of applications for unemployment aid has remained rock-bottom despite a steady stream of headline-making layoff announcements. Facebook parent Meta is cutting 11,000 jobs, Amazon 18,000, Microsoft 10,000, Google 12,000. Some economists suspect that many laid-off workers might not be showing up at the unemployment line because they can still find new jobs easily.
Workers surveyed in China are the least likely to retire as soon as possible — even “in an ideal world,” Randstad said. And 3% of workers in Asia-Pacific never want to retire at all, which is the highest percentage out of all regions.
Edwin Tan | E+ | Getty Images
The cost of living crisis is delaying the retirement plans of working professionals worldwide, said recruitment agency Randstad.
But those in Asia will continue to work because for reasons beyond a paycheck, according its new report.
Its latest Workmonitor report found that only half of surveyed workers believe they can permanently leave the workforce before they turn 65, down from 61% last year.
The annual report surveyed 35,000 people across 34 markets for their sentiments on the world of work.
While 70% of workers surveyed said that money worries are preventing them from enjoying their golden years, workers in Asia-Pacific are more likely to feel that work is a necessity in their lives.
For example, 66% of those from India and 61% from China saw work as a “need” — almost twice the global average of 32%.
% who say they “need work” in their lives
Country
% of respondents
India
66
China
61
Malaysia
45
Singapore
43
Japan
34
Source: Randstad
“Whether for meaning and purpose, social interaction or to experience the challenges that come with a job, employment for many is more than just a paycheck,” Randstad said.
“It keeps them connected and gives them a sense of belonging.”
Workers also stay at their jobs because they “feel a sense of obligation to their employer,” said Randstad.
The report found that about one fifth, or 21%, of Asia-Pacific workers felt that their employer needing them would deter them from retiring, compared with 12% of the global population.
“There are cultural factors at play here with the role of work and education in people’s lives,” Sander van ‘t Noordende, the CEO of Randstad, told CNBC.
Workers feel they “need” work in their lives because having a stable job allows them to “feel valued and respected” by their peers, he added.
% who feel their employer “needs” them
Region
%
Asia-Pacific
21
North America
12
Latin America
7
Northwestern Europe
10
Eastern Europe
10
Southern Europe
8
Source: Randstad
“However, the countries’ booming economies and an exponential increase in demand for talent, both domestically and internationally, are also likely to contribute to this disparity compared to global counterparts.”
Asia is home to three out of five of the world’s largest economies, which include China, Japan and India.
Workers in some Asian countries were also more likely to say that they consider work an “important part of their lives,” van ‘t Noordende added.
For example, 89% of workers in China consider this to be true and 90% of Indians agree — which is almost 20% higher than the global average, according to the report.
Regardless of where workers are located, they want “the whole package” from their employers, said van ‘t Noordende, which is secure, flexible, inclusive and financially stable work.
“People want to feel like they belong at work and demand that their organization mirrors their own priorities in terms of things such as flexibility and good work-life balance,” he added.
“This is particularly true of the younger generations, who are seeking more satisfaction from work than a pay cheque alone provides.”
That’s also crucial in Asia, where labor markets continue to be tight. Employers should therefore focus on how to attract and retain talent, said van ‘t Noordende.
“It’s becoming increasingly evident that workers are prepared to quit their jobs if they do not meet their demands. For example, over half of Asia-Pacific workers would quit a job if they felt like they didn’t belong there.”
On top of that, talent scarcity will grow in the coming years in light of shifting demographics, added Randstad.
“Companies should develop flexible roles that allow those near retirement age to slowly transition from full time to part time and then completely retire.”
