Remote Work and Parental Flexibility

Today's show focuses on some of the most important elements that make the economy go round Jobs, wages, and you, the American consumer From American public media, this is Marketplace In New York, I'm Kristine Schwab in for Kyra's Dll. It's Tuesday, june thirtieth, and it's good to be here with you I wanna start by taking a second to check in with you Yeah, I'm talking to you. How's it going? What do you think about the economy right now? What do you think about your personal economy? I ask because today we got a fresh read on how Americans are feeling. The conference board's June Consumer confonfidence survey is out. Overall, people are feeling a bit better about the economy this month compared to last closer and things get confusing People are less hopeful about the job market, but more optimistic about inflation, but also less sunny about their family finances Lots of mixed signals Marketplacace' Kaylee Wells explains. Consumers are sending mixed signals because they're getting mixed signals from the economy. Since human nature puts more weight on the short term, let's start with that The declining gasoline prices is helping consumers Michael Greene is Chief strategist at Simplify Asset Management He says it's not surprising that the ceasefire in the Middle East is easing consumers' minds. He says the promise of a peace deal is at least raising prospects that gasoline prices and other costs will be lower, that inflation will be modestly better which also made consumers more confident about where the economy is headed in the short term But Green says overall confidence is still lower than analysts would expect given the pretty stable unemployment rate and the elevated but kinda tenable inflation rate Economist Yelenna Shulleteva with the confonerence Bard says that's where the long term sentiments come in It's not that things are getting better things are getting less bed Respondents mention the war a lot less this month. But Inflation is still prominent in those write in responses. and that means that the level of prices is still very elevated for the consumer which also explains why consumers are less confident than last month about their family financial situation. Soophia Big, an economist with Morning Consult calls the dip in gas prices just a temporary relief Whereas everything else in the economy is the bigger picture that could be driving the trend of sentiment going forward. And we are trending down or Bay calls this month's bumplet in consumer sentiment A blip. whatever happens in the job market or If inflation continues to rise, we could see sentiment go back down again Despite all those signals, more consumers said this month they think inflation will improve and their personal finances will improve too Michael Greene with Simplify Asset Management says that's just another side effect of human nature gototta feel like things are getting better I'm Kayleie Wells for Marketplace. Consumers might have mixed feelings, but on Wall Street today, traders were feeling good. We'll have the details when we do the numbers We were just talking about consumers and their slowing confidence in the job market. Well, soon, we'll get some data about where it's headed. On Thursday comes the June Jobs report from the Labor Department Tomorrow, we'll get private data from ADP, and today we got the job openings and Labor turnover survey for the month of May. It was pretty much the same as April's report. Hires, layoffs and discharges didn't change. quQits and total separations barely changed But here's one trend that sticks out Recent jobs data has been showing that even as inflation rises, wage growth has been steadily slowing And for women, it's slowing more, according to an analysis by the Institute for Women's Policy Research As Marketplace' Justin Ho reports, the gender wage gap has been widening for more than three years now Throughout the seventies, eighties, and nineties, the gender wage gap got narrower Chief economist at the Institute for Women's Policy Research says that was thanks to more women entering the workforce, broader minimum wage protections, and better access to contraception And there's research that shows that that directly led to women finishing college and going on to grad school and earning more money later on. Bond says a lot of that progress was down to policy decisions by lawmakers. and by the two thousands and twenty ten s, it stalled Then came the pandemic. Demand for low wage labor spiked, so wages did too women are overrepresented in low wage jobs. And so when you have low wage workers broadly have more earnings growth, that is going to reduce the gender wage gap. But since the pandemic, the gap has started widening again. men's earnings grew three point seven percent and twenty twenty four adjusted for inflation. And women's grew, in our findings, only one point five percent It was not statistically significantly different from zero. A lot of the job growth in the economy has shifted away from those lower wage positions that help boost women's average earnings, says Yanna Rogers, a professor at Rutgers University So as the demand rose again for other jobs were dominated by men, their wages picked up Also, Rogers says women are still disproportionately responsible for taking care of children and elders at home is probably the biggest constraint that women face So they're just not as able to respond to opportunities in the labor market as men. That constraint is a bigger challenge for women now that many employers expect their workers to be back in the office, says Courtney Schut, an economist with macro pololicy perspectives. It's also a challenge for women in jobs that require long hours, including finance, law, and other high paying professional services fields that are sometimes more time intensive. For full time work or even for part time work, that's where we tend to see the greatest differences in gender pay Stuart says all of this is an even bigger hurdle for women now that inflation has been picking up again For most workers, real disposable income is declining, but it is hitting women harder than men As a result, women are more likely to cut back on spending Alyisssa Bronstein is an economics professor at Colorado State University. She says that's a problem because every dollar of women's income tends to have a bigger impact on the broader economy not because of anything intrinsic about women But because women are more likely to be in lower paid, stretched, thin jobs covering the household's basic needs And people with lower incomes tend to spend that money faster. So underpaying women squeezes exactly the households most likely to spend every dollar which makes the hit to demand bigger than the paycheck alone In other words, a widening gender wage gap holds back the entire economy I'm Justin Howe for Marketplace I' done an official count, but over the last year or so, I'm willing to bet that tariffs have been a leading topic on this show, and for good reason Because while a lot of the taxes put in place by the Trump administration have been ruled unconstitutional, For some businesses, the reversal of those policies came too late For the past year, I've been keeping in touch with Nicole Panetteri, who owned The Tiny Owl, a children's shop here in New York City Nicole, it's nice to talk to you again Thank you for having me So we last talked in the fall And you were about to close the doors on your children's store, the tiny owl. Mostly we talked about because of inflation, tariff pressures, also a big box store moving into the neighborhood And you are about to turn your attention to your other shop, the brass owl. Where do things stand now? Unfortunately, I have now closed the br owel. The br sawel was open for twelve years. And shortly after we spoke, things started getting a little difficult and I w up taking a job to take myself out of the payroll equation and hoping that would make things financially a a little healthier And I didn't really see the results of that. And then when we got into twenty twenty six, things continued to decline. So we made the decision And I believe it was march of twenty sixth to close and our last day was may ninth Well, I'm sorry to hear that. I mean, how are before we get into the business of it, how are you That's a great question. I'm good. You know, there's so much to be proud of. twwelve years owning a business in New York City, I feel so proud and I feel like I did more than just have a store. I feel like I really built a community But it's really sad to see see it go away and to see all my hard work kind of just dissolve. There's like a silver lining because I have my weekends now. I don't have to work weekends. So there's a little bit of a silver lining. Okay, take we'll take one silver lining. What happened? W it kind of more of the same of what was happening, what I mentioned at the top about the tiny owl? or what was it like to come to the decision to close and what was the turning point? one hundred percent the same factors But it really started with opening the kids store, seeing that decline, that started draining the money as a total from my overall LLC. and then the big box coming in and then the economy getting worse. and then the gas prices going up and it just kept snowballing and I just really couldn't dig out of the hole anymore. And there's no forgiveness for a small business to say, hey, I've had a bad three years, but look at the first nine Somebody helped me out. So I kind of got to a point where I ran out of money I mean, twelve years is a lot of business expertise and a lot of history. What changes did you see in the last year compared to you know, the eleven before I would say mostly the disiscretionary income in our neighborhood, I would say, it was the biggest change because so many people would come in and say things like, oh, I'm just like, I'm in between jobs or when I get my next paycheck, I'll come back. And I heard it more and more. I think people were feeling, you know, even though we've been through so much, we've been through inflation, we went through COVID, I think that people were starting to feel the strain in a way that made it more difficult to shop in a boutique You know, you're pretty ingrained in the local business community. You have a business group you started What are you hearing from other business owners in your area about what it is like to operate right now We actually recently just did a survey with our local businesses on someome of the issues they're seeing and a lot of them are saying the same things is that the economy is just very difficult right now We need commercial lease assistance or stabilization. Commercial tenants are responsible for property taxes. We need help there There needs to be a vacancy tax and they are seeing a huge slowdown in spending due to the economy due to inflation and tariffs and gas prices and war, etcetera, etcetera et cetera, etera You said you got a new job as a buyer What's next for you? Do you see another business in your future Sadly no. I wish the answer was yes. You know, I said maybe who knows down the road what happens life, you know, you never know, but There's no other way to say it, but completely honest, I have a significant financial hole to dig out of. So the possibility of doing a new business would would only come with if I win the lototto. Nicole Panetteri in Queens, New York She is a former small business owner and also teaches at the Fashion Institute of Technology Nicole, thanks again Thank you so much for your time Coming up, this change since the pandemic made it possible for them to have children Work from home is giving families more options, but first, let's do the numbers The Dow Jones Industrial average rose one hundred and thirty five points, a quarter percent, to finish at fifty two thousand three seventeen. The NSDAQ added three hundred ninety three points, one and fiveal percent, to close at twenty six thousand two thirteen, and the S andP five hundred gained fifty eight points eight tenths percent to end at seventy four ninety nine For the second quarter that ends today, the DAO expanded twelve and nine tenths percent. The NSDAQ acquired twenty one and four tenths percent, and the SMP increased fourteen and nine tenths percent in just three months Chip making companies wrapped up their best first half of a year in more than twenty years thanks to what else? all of that AI spending? Micron technologies accumulated eight tenths percent. Intel added six percent, Marvevel technology rang up seven and a quarter percent Bonds fell, the yield on the tenure tenote rose to four point four five percent, You're listening to Marketplace This is Marketplace. I'm Kristin Schwab The demand for natural gas just keeps growing In the next five years, the US will rapidly expand its exports of liqufied natural gas to Europe and Asia Meanwhile, the data center building boom is creating more need for natural gas powered electricity To meet that rising demand, the US. needs a critical, invisible infrastructure lines Marketplac's Elizabeth Troval has more There's a growing underground highway that gets the United States cheap and abundant natural gas to new customers. Jameson Cochlin is with Natural Gas Intelligence The pipeline buildout was pretty crucial to natural gas production growth as Sale plays expanded across the country over the last decade or two. And right now, there's kind of a renaissance of sorts because of these data centers, because of these LNG terminals that are coming online and Matthew Piotic with SMP Global Energy says while data centers are often being built close to where natural gas is being produced Natural gas that will be exported abroad must travel a lot further Now we have requirement for more connective tissue, a pipeline path that enables flows to move all the way along your initial production enabling capacity all the way to the Gulf Coast That means lots of additional pipelines. Dan Pickering is with Pickering Energy Partners Essentially what you're doing is digging a big trench in the ground laying massive imagined pipelines that are bigger than you can reach around in the ground and moving that over, you know, hundreds and thousands of miles It's a big, long, complicated process get landowner approval. Dig those trenches get all that pipe imported late in the ground from one end to the other, welded together covered back up so that you know, the Earth is as it was before that will continue to generate economic activity over the next several years. Jay Sing is with Ricead Energy Certainly lots of steel and lots of construction work welding, They do tend to create jobs, albeit temporary The long term economic benefit is more for the producers of natural gas in places like West Texas. And Hers is with the University of Houston Those producers in the Permian basasins look at natural gas as a revenue center, as a profit center Producers can charge more for their natural gas when they can actually reach their customers. I'm Elizabeth Troval for Marketplace . We heard from Justin Hoe earlier in the program about how the gender wage gap has been widening since the pandemic This next story is about another pandemic related work trend, but a more positive one More than a quarter of parents work remotely for at least part of the week now, according to government data. And this shift in job flexibility has given parents more career opportunities and in some cases, has made it more feasible for people to actually have kids Claire Kane Miller at the New York Times wrote about how work life balance is changing. Claire, welcome to the show It's great to be here So I think most of us office workers can remember the before times, five days a week in person the rules changed for parents you talk to in this story. who can work remotely Most of them are working remotely some of the time. A few of them are full time remote, but a lot of them are hybrid And it has changed their lives in really dramatic ways, both on the days that they can work from home, but also they said that it's opened up a new culture at work where it's become more acceptable say you have family demands or to talk about a caregiving need that comes up during the workday that they used to feel they would have to hide Mhm Has this the flexibility around work actually peopleople make the decision in having children So several of the women I interviewed for my story, it surprised me. They said it actually made the decision for them that they either weren't going to have children. They were sure that they could not have children, know with a job that they had to be in the office five days a week, or that they were really on the fence and deeply ambivalent about it And they said in no uncertain terms that this change since the pandemic, made it possible for them to have children Mhm You know, more mothers are working now than they were before the pandemic I wonder how much of this is out of choice and how much of it you think is perhaps necessity that's become feasible Sure. So this is quite stunning development that so many more mothers are in the workforce, especially because at the beginning of the pandemic it looks like it might sort of wipe out women's progress and careers And remote work and flexibility as well as this attitude that we've been talking about about openness to caregiving, is a part of it. Another part of it is, of course, prices have gone up with inflation. People are having trouble making ends meet. Their earnings might not be rising as fast as prices But I want to be careful when we talk about this because surveys show that most mothers, most parents, want to work Maybe they don't want to work full time. Maybe they don't want to work the same number of hours at every stage of their children's lives. But this is not really a choice people have. It is something that they want to do and that they need to do And these changes since the pandemic have made it more possible to do that. Mhm And of course, there are so many jobs that require in person work. know you can't work from home. What are some of the options you explore at the end of your piece where government or corporate policies could help create more work life balance for everyone So the most important thing for people whose jobs can't be done at different times or places, different hours or from home is predictability in their schedules. so that they get their schedules many weeks in advance and they can arrange child carere around them, they know when they'll be gone. For example, teachers have this. The healthcare field has a lot of this. There's a lot of women going into healthcare because hospitals, doctors's offices put out schedules well in advance. And even though you do need to be there, you can't do many of those jobs from home you know in advance on what they will be. A lot of hourly service workers do not have this. A lot of people working in like cashier type jobs or retail, they get their schedules at the last minute. and they're expected to sort of be on call until those schedules come through And that can make work life balance obviously incredibly difficult Some other ideas that researchers raised to me during this reporting is that our school days, as everyone knows, are not aligned with working hours. School's usually around nine to three, It's closed for the summer. That's not aligned with working hours at all, which makes this really challenging And so work hours could change, school hours could change. Some offices have also experimented with an idea where everyone needs to work at the same time together for certain hours of the day and then the other hours they can do when they want. And so maybe if it's important for you to be with your kids from three to five, then you pick up that work from eight to ten or whatever it is You know, a lot more offices are trying to get people back in person. I wonder if you think this work flexibility we've seen will stick There have been a lot of indications lately that some of this might be changing. Like you said, there are these return to office mandates I recently covered a few large companies that cut paid family leave time. The reason that I think this will stick is about a quarter of parents are still working remotely some days of the week And that has not changed. That has been really steady since the pandemic ended. So there still seems to be some openness to the idea that this flexibility is now built in and that it's actually really helping things like retention and work family balance for people who otherwise might not be able to stay in their jobs Claire Kane Miller reports on gender and families at the New York Times. Claire, thanks for sharing your reporting Thanks for having me This final note on the wayay O today, saw this on CNBC We've talked a lot on the show about the drivers of inflation Here's one allegedly behind the great egg price spike that happened a few years ago Three of the country's biggest egg producers, Calmaine Foods, Versova, and Hickman's Egg Ranch have agreed to a three point three million dollars settlement with the Department of Justice and seventeen state attorneys genereral, including New York, California, Wisconsin, and Florida over price manipulation They allegeed that the compananyies illegally coordinated to inflate a daily price index for eggs A federal judge still needs to approve the proposed settlements Jordan Manji, Soneeil Maharaj, Janet Wyn, Olga Oxman, and Virginia Kay Smith are the digital team, and I'm Kristin Schwab. We'll be back here tomorrow This is APM