Retirement and Working in Later Life

You know, it was fine M. So so I mean You pick your own word to describe today's jobs report From American Public Media This is Met plans In Los Angeles, I'm Kyn Risdal. It is Thursday, today, the second of July, good as always, ste you along, everybody Here's another one for your consideration. Today's June Jobs report was fair to midland There was a decidedly underwhelming number of new jobs added to this economy last month, just fifty seven thousand, basically half of the best guesses. and April and May were revised down as well The unemployment rate, meanwhile, did scoot down to tenh percent, four point two percent, the lowest in a year Was it all mean Please is Mitell Harman gets us going There's a fair amount you can spin as upbeat in the June repeport, says Sell Guacieri at BMO Capital Markets We're not seeing widespread layoffs. That's a good thing and the unemployment rate has ticked down Though it's mostly for the wrong reason, says Nicole Bachau at Zip Recruiter Unemployment dropping back to four point two percent can seem good, but it fell because there are fewer people in the labor market as folks are exiting entirely seven hundred twenty thousand people just stopped working or looking for work in June As for job creation, says Beajot. pretty disappointing. Mentum earlier this spring did not hold in June. We saw soft job growth. The labor market still in a very fragile state. Still, Salguaire says fifty seven thousand jobs a month is more than enough to absorb new entrants to the labor force. W recent reductions in immigration, the so called break even point It's somewhere in the neighborhood of zero to about fifty thousand per month payrolls are growing in that range, then on average, the unemployment rate should remain fairly stable Drill down though, and the unemployment picture looks more worrisome A and Hispanic youth unemployment, that's sixteen to nineteen year olds, has been rising over the past year It could be a warning sign, says Angela Hanks at the Senturry Foundation In the next jobs report, what I would be paying attention to is are we seeing similar increases in bllack and Hispanic unemployment overall, increases for workers who have less than a college education? Also, the percentage of Americans who've been unemployed for twenty seven weeks or longer is up sharply from a year ago I'm Mitchell Hartman for Marketplace Wall Street today, the dow was up, the NSdAQ was down. everyverybody's taken tomorrow off. We will have the details when we do the numbers The fact is, you got to pick and choose when you're covering the monthly jobs report because there is just so much in there The choice we're going to make is wages today. Average hourly earnings in June were up three and a half percent from the same time a year ago. That is up just a tick from May. But the longer term trend is decidedly more mediocre. Last summer, wages were growing at close to four percent annual placeac as Stepanie Hughes has now Right now, the labor market doesn't have a lot of oom Hiring is kind of myth, so people aren't really changing jobs, which is key to getting paid more And you don't get bargaining power for wages from a job you have. you get it from the job that you could take. Cy Kantanga is an economist with LinkedIn It's hard to go to your current boss and say, Hey, pay me more. It's a lot easier if you can tell them Hey, these other guys are gonna to pay me more Right now, those offers aren't so plentiful and workers are staying put. So we're not going to be seeing wage growth go up until we start to see more workers quitting their jobs and finding new ones. Another potential factor, healthcare premiums are going up Economist Guy Berger with the Burning Glass Institute says that eats into employers pool of cash. They have to fork over more money for that. and to the degree that happens, there's less money left over for raises or giving people bonuses. And if wages aren't keeping up with prices, workers simply can't buy as much So now you're getting into the area of let's make choices. Belinda Roman's a professor of economics at St.t Mary's University in San Antonio. How do we eat? When do we eat? Do I buy my medicines? What am I going to change? But like good Americans, we also want to have fun. probably go spend and put it all on credit. But if we do spend less, LinkedIn's Coreory Kantenga points out, there are ripple effects for the whole economy. If spending slows down, that slows down overall growth, which again, shrinks the opportunities for workers. Cantenga says if you want to figure out if wage growth is gonna pick up Keep an eye on how many people are quitting their jobs. Some of them are probably leaving for one that pays more I'm Stephie Hgh from Marketplace. The nod to the temperatures in the eastern half of this country and the caveat that any single heat wave, no matter how hot, cannot be directly correlated to climate change Th is the planet is getting hotter And it's not just humans that are suffering. Scientists say rising temperatures are accelerating a sixth mass extinction The Texas sppace Company Colossal Biosciences says its technology can help prevent some of those losses, and even bring back some long extinct species from our climate podcast, How we Survive Places Amy Scott report Inside a small glass cage, two mice are running around, pretty much your typical mouse habitat But these are not typical mice. They're kind of poofed up looking with shaggy golden hair Yeah, these are our woollly mice Do they have names? Chip and Dale That's Ben Lamb, CEO of Colossal Biosciences. The company claims that using tiny bits of woolly mammoth DNA preserved over thousands of years, they can use gene editing to bring the giant creature back. They have to start small We identified core genes in the mammoth genome that relate to hair thickness, color, density, how it grows, and whatnot. And we applied all of those into the mouse equivalent of them. What they learn from creating shaggier mice could help bring back the mammoth Lam comes from the startup world. He'd founded or co founded a bunch of other tech companies before starting colossal in twenty twenty one Today, he's wearing a shirt that looks like a concert tea, but instead of a band, it has a picture of a dire wolf, the first creature that Colossal claims to have successfully de extincted It actually says original tour date eight thousand five hundred BC on core performance twenty twenty five resurrected wolves live on an undisclosed ecological preserve. At the company's glossy new headquarters in Dallas, doors to state of the art labs branch off a long hallway, each one with scientists working on a different piece of the dextinction puzzle Other target species include the dodo and Ma, extinct birds and the Tasmanian tiger Michael Abrams leads the Mammoth proroject Our first step is to sequence the woolly mammoth genome. and we've got multiple samples. You can see here this is a woollly mammoth molar. It's about the size of a brick off a little piece that contains ancient DNA, then they sequence it, figuring out as much as they can about which specific mammoth genes code for important physical traits Eventually, they plan to edit genes in an Asian elephant, the mammoth's closest living relative. creating a modern day mammoth, or at least an Asian elephant that looks like one. The reality is that only mammoths get to decide what mammoths are. And they're not here to tell us anymore Jacqueline Gill is a paleoecologist at the University of Maine. She studies ice age ecosystems, including mammoths Gil says she's deeply skeptical of breeding a genetically modified elephant and calling it a mammoth there's this whole constellation of unanswered questions about viability, can we actually make a mammothy elephant that's mammothy enough Impact, willill it do the things we think and then ethics Is this an okay thing to do Plenty of investors seem to think so. Colossal has been valued at more than ten billion dollars, with buuzzy backers, including Peter Jackson, Tom Brady, and InQutel, the investing arm of the CIA. Colossal CEO Ben Lamb says that investment could also spur advances in human and animal healthcare and also protect endangered species Look, I think it's unethical not to do what we're doing. I don't think that human cause climate events are going to slow down. And so I do think it's important that we have mitigation strategies against that, which includes dextinction tools The company is also working with Dubai's Museum of the Future to create a biovault for endangered species. The place to store genetic material so that no animal ever has to go the way of the dodo I'm Amy Scott for Marketplace Amy and the team did a whole season on some What could possibly go wrong climate interventions? Subscribe. How how we survive on your favorite podcast app Coming out I think I've probably hosted seven hundred and fifty people That is a very big dinner party, huh? First though Let's do the numbers. D industs up five hundred and ninety four points one and a tenth percent finished at fifty two thousand nine hundred. That is a world record. The NSDaak down two hundred seven points, aboutout eight tenth percent, twenty five thousand three hundred eighty two SP five hundred will' call that flat seventy four and eighty three. For the short week, the dow gained one point nine percent the NAasAQ Also picked up one and nine tenths percent. S andP five hundred improved itself one and seven tenths If you are hosting a fourourth of July barbecue with burgers and beer's going to be a little bit more expensive this time round. average price for a pound of lean ground, beef at a record of eight dollars sixty two cents in May. That's up more than twelve percent from last year. So says the BLS This made a cost of a ten person barbecue one hundred and sixty one dollars It's the Wells Fargo Agraa Food Institute coming up there. You're listening to Marketplace This is Marketplace. I'm Kai Rzdol Imagine for me now, if you would, a game of musical chairs. You know, from back in elementary school where everybody scrambles when the music stops that in your mind Why you listen to this The lump of labor fallacy is simply the notion that There's a fixed amount of work to be done Eduar Wemy is an associate professor of economics at Clark University and the lump of labor fallacy is about jobs If you believe there's a fixed amount of work to be done in this entire economy It is kind of like a big game of musical chairs. One player equals one worker and one chair equals one job The Bureau of Labor Statistics told us this morning that in June There were one hundred fifty nine million jobs in this economy If one person were to gain one job, then it must be at the expense of somebody else. So if one more worker is going enter the labour market, someone else must lose a seat Catalina Amuedo Dorandes is a professor of economics at the University of California Merced. And here's where economic theory current economic reality A Reuter ipss poll not too long ago It found that more than half of Americans are afraid artificial intelligence could put them or someone in their household out of work You're gonna basically, you know remove a chair. But here's where I tell you that history tells us the economy is not in fact a game of musical chairs Technology does not simply eliminate labor It changes basically what workers do, and it can raise productivity, lower cost and create new products, firms and occupations in general That's the fallacy part the lump of labor fallacy. If you think about the new technologies of the past mechanized agricult. sewing machines and word processors. Those technologies didn't lead to mass unemployment They freed people up to work in other industries and create new businesses and new jobs. It's actually they bring more chairs Some jobs will be lost, but more jobs overall are going to be created in terms of total employment That's the lump of labor fallacy in action right there. But That thing he said about some jobs being lost It's really important indndividually it's going to hurt. But on a macro level More jobs are going to be created All right, so let's bring you back to artificial intelligence I study the sociotechnical implications of AI. Nigel Melville is an associate professor at the University of Michigan And he says Aentic AI AI that acts autonomously unlike technologies of the past. It's already taken over some software engineering and customer service jobs. I call it the gap. So this is the difference between the people that are being laid off for being let go because of AI? And then the new jobs that are created because of AI A new report from Challenger Greaying Christmas found that companies cited AI in more than one hundred thousand layoff announcements this year And according to the Stanford AI index, around ninety percent of all organizations Now use artificial intelligence for at least one business function We don't know exactly will it be this huge gap and how fast will it be, But we do know that we're approaching level four or level five rapids It hurts when a new technology takes your job. Yes, absolutely the lump of labor fallacy tells us that eventually, The economy is going to adjust and the total number of jobs, that one hundred fifty nine million. is going to grow So I would not say that History proves that AI will have no negative employment effects maybe. but I would be skeptical of the claim that every automated task translates directly into a permanent loveve job There will be more chairs Big question is how and maybe even whether companies and organizations and the government are going to prepare workers to sit in those new chairs The World Cup is obviously about the soccer, but it is also a very big, very expensive business And FIFA's got to cover those expenses somehow. Pricey tickets and even a four billion dollars television rights contract aren't gonna do it So enter then cororporate sponsors If you've been watching even casually, you've seen some of the brands that are trying to capitalize on all the attention Places Elizabeth Trrouble has this story about one of them. More than ten thousand minutes of soccer will be broadcast during the World Cup this summer, including replayable highlights like this one. But accompanying every World Cup moment like this is an elite tier of brands. They pay tens of millions of dollars to be plastered on the perimeter of the field and behind media interviews One of those sponsors is Saudia Ramco Sudia Remkco is the world's biggest oil company They're the Saudi state oil comppany. Frank Kising with fossil free football has led a global movement to oppose AramCo's partnership with the World Cup They want to pump up oil and sell oil for as long as they can but to have a bad reputition because they're a fossil fuel company. And when you have a bad repetition, what's better to associate yourself with than the most popular event in the world? Despite its oil dominance, Saudi Aramo has billed itself as the global energy partner of this World Cup and not the global oil partner Tim Cawkins with Northwestern says that's no accident Oil is sort of a bit of a negative brand. I don't think a lot of people go out and say I love oil But everybody appreciates energy. They're clearly trying to position themselves as part of the energy transition as sort of more than just an oil company Christian Coates Orickson with Rice University. He says what ArAMcoo and other brands do is often called sports washing. They try to change the way that people talk, so you're not focusing on negative stuff. You're focusing on sports on positive things. Sport has't appeal like no other. But consumers don't buy crude oil. They buy gasoline from a gas station and don't really care where those molecules come from. So I ask Tim Cawkins, what is Saudi A Ramo's play here A Rramco needs to have great relationships with regulators and big customers around the world. And Having a positive perception of the Aramco brand is really important when it comes time to negotiate big deals. It makes the brand more attractive to work for, partner with, invest in. Saudi ArAamco declined my interview request, but Caulkin says that the ArAMco partnership with FIFA is also about something else. The other piece though, is that this is largely to the bigger story around the brand of Saudi Arabia So Saudi Arabia is in the midst of a big rebranding project. I wouldn't be surprised if there was kind of a nudge from the kingdom as like, you know, this would be a good thing, also for us Ellen Wald wrote the book Soty In because Aramco is like one of the great crown jewels of of Saudi Arabia probably has a more favorable opinion you know than other things in Saudi Arabia or just Saudi Arabia. Is it sports washing Absolutely. And people talking about sports in Saudi Arabia helps the countriryess rebrand Christian Coates Ulrriksson again to they trying and be able to use sport to changed the way that people think about Saudi. so' Yemen, it's not human rights. It's not Jamal Khashoggi, it's not nine hundred and eleven now you talk about Saudi in terms of football. Saudi Arabia will host the Men's World Cup for the first time in twenty thirty four. The country has been investing in soccer and other sports in recent years. Ben K Hill is with the University of Texas at Austin I think in Saudi Arabia, they see the sports industry as a growth area. If you think about all the investment in soccer, the number of famous soccer stars who have come to play and Saudi Proly like Christiana Ronaldo and Neammar and Karine Denzima He says this is part of Saudi Arabia's vision for the future, a vision that imagines the country as more than just an autocratic petro state. I'm Elizabeth Troval for Marketplace There are a lot of things that make retirement really attractive More time to travel and spend time with your family, also not having to work, of course But there has been a trend the past decade or so that we've talked about before on the program of older Americans staying in the workforce longer The number of people over the age of sixty five still working rose thirty three percent between twenty fifteen and twenty twenty four You know what Continuing to work doesn't have to mean giving up completely on your vision for retirement And that brings us to the latest installment of our series My Economy This is Cheryl Alexander I live in San Diego near the beach. I am a Social worker therapist. And I have a small business where I lead a guided tour in Italy for small groups in the countryside About thirty years ago, some friends of mine invited me to travel with them to Italy for a few weeks And I fell in love with the beauty of the country and all that it has to offer I began to plan my Next trip on the way home flying back to San Diego, I was just convinced I had to go back again. So I started a website and invited people to come, spend a week in the Italian countryside And over the last thirty plus years, I think I've probably hosted seven hundred and fifty people, maybe close to a thousand I did start this business for financial supplemental reasons. Once I retired from my day job I realized that living in an expensive area of Southern California, I couldn't just live on retirement funds. So it's not anything that is going to make me rich because I don't want to do it full time. I just want to do it a couple of times a year and that has supported my vision for being able to travel and be somewhere where I really love being There is a question I ask myself periodically. I'm seventy seven How long do I want to keep going to Italy and guiding people It's really hard for me to give a straight answer. like I'm going to retire or stop or whatever. I think as long as I'm healthy and Mobile, I can do this and Nobody's brought up the fact that I haven't stopped doing it. My friends usually will say So are you going to Italy in October again Do you have a tour Are you taking some people in May again? You know, it's just gotten to be something that Cheryl does Cheryl Alexander in San Diego, California, also twice a year, Italy. Italian excursion is the name of her company if you're looking for a getaway. sign me up Wherever you are and whatever you do We want to hear your stories. markarketplace. org slash. My economy is where you can share them. Final note on the way out today for those wondering how the Dow hit a record high even as the jobs report was Mh and fine and so so Even though inflation is still high, which would ordinarily be met with an interest rate increase from the Federal Reserve, ah labor market means the central bank can more easily just wait and figure out what's going on before they raise rates. Listeners to this program will know that Wall Street hates interest rate increases, R? Our daily production team includes Andy Corbin, Mika Ellison, Maria Hoandhorse, Sarah Leasonon, Seaan McKenry and Sophetia Rorenzo. Will Story is the supervising senior producer. If you're working tomorrow, thank you. Do not about what fourth means, would you? I'm Kai Rizal. We will see you tomorrow, everybody This is APM