Latest / Bloomberg Intelligence / Jobs, ChatGPT, and Barbie (Podcast)
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: Welcome to the Bloomberg Markets Podcast. I'm Paul Sweeney alongside
- 0:04Speaker 1: my co host Matt Miller.
- 0:05Speaker 2: Every business day we bring you interviews from CEOs, market pros,
- 0:09Speaker 2: and Bloomberg experts, along with essential market moving news.
- 0:14Speaker 1: Find the Bloomberg Markets podcast called Apple Podcasts or wherever
- 0:17Speaker 1: you listen to podcasts, and at Bloomberg dot com slash podcast.
- 0:21Speaker 3: We're gonna go ahead and go over to Tom Gimble.
- 0:23Speaker 4: Now, he's the founder and CEO of Lesalm Network and
- 0:27Speaker 4: he this is a hiring firm, so he is going
- 0:29Speaker 4: to be able to give us a fantastic outlook of
- 0:32Speaker 4: those jobs numbers that we got yesterday and of course
- 0:35Speaker 4: the numbers that we got today.
- 0:36Speaker 3: Tom.
- 0:37Speaker 4: Great to speak with you, and thanks so much for
- 0:39Speaker 4: chatting with us on this Friday. Talk me through the
- 0:41Speaker 4: totality of the data here and what it tells you
- 0:44Speaker 4: about the jobs market. Is it the bad news that
- 0:47Speaker 4: we should be listening to or the good news?
- 0:50Speaker 5: I think an economist can spend in any way they
- 0:52Speaker 5: want to. However, anytime an economy adds over two hundred
- 0:55Speaker 5: thousand jobs, I'd say, thank you, let's move on to
- 0:59Speaker 5: the next month. I mean, there's nothing here that we
- 1:01Speaker 5: should be depressed about. I think what the layman needs
- 1:05Speaker 5: to realize is there's really two messages. One is the
- 1:09Speaker 5: economy good for me today? And number two is what
- 1:13Speaker 5: are economists and the Fed looking at for interest rates,
- 1:16Speaker 5: which is a longer ballgame at a higher macro level.
- 1:19Speaker 5: And what this says right now is that because of
- 1:24Speaker 5: two hundred and nine thousand versus roughly a quarter million,
- 1:27Speaker 5: which is what the economists were estimating, is that the
- 1:30Speaker 5: Fed won't raise interest rates again, that people think it's
- 1:34Speaker 5: slowing down, which is actually an even better thing for
- 1:37Speaker 5: the economy. So we missed the number by a smidge.
- 1:40Speaker 5: We still add over two hundred thousand jobs. The Fed
- 1:43Speaker 5: won't raise interest rate, the party continues. Everybody's happy, but
- 1:47Speaker 5: let's paint it is really sad and depressing right now.
- 1:49Speaker 6: Well, there was a time when if I could fond
- 1:51Speaker 6: a mirror, I could get a job. Is that still
- 1:53Speaker 6: the case?
- 1:54Speaker 5: It's not too far off from that, to be quite frank.
- 1:58Speaker 5: We're looking at a situation where companies are still hiring. Obviously,
- 2:02Speaker 5: we added over two hundred thousand jobs, and the difference
- 2:06Speaker 5: is is they're not hiring in bulk. So you might
- 2:09Speaker 5: not be able to get a job at any company
- 2:11Speaker 5: you want to, as you could have in twenty twenty one. However,
- 2:15Speaker 5: there are more than enough jobs for people who are
- 2:17Speaker 5: looking okay.
- 2:18Speaker 4: But when you look at the ADP data specifically, leisure
- 2:22Speaker 4: was the biggest growth area. But leisure, I mean, you
- 2:25Speaker 4: can tell me this, Tom, It feels like a little
- 2:27Speaker 4: bit of a concerning area because it can those jobs
- 2:32Speaker 4: can go away so fast, and we obviously saw that
- 2:34Speaker 4: in March.
- 2:35Speaker 5: Seasonality No, no, I disagree because it's seasonality. So compare
- 2:39Speaker 5: June over June and look at the summer, and we
- 2:42Speaker 5: know those are coming. So that was built into the
- 2:45Speaker 5: estimate that the economists had that they've been doing this
- 2:48Speaker 5: for forever. And when they predict two hundred and forty
- 2:51Speaker 5: thousand or two hundred and fifty thousand, they're figuring in
- 2:53Speaker 5: for the summer hospitality jobs too. This is a good report.
- 2:57Speaker 5: Anything other is chicken little, as I say every month
- 3:00Speaker 5: on this show.
- 3:01Speaker 4: But is it potentially a final gasp for air before
- 3:04Speaker 4: the economy starts to slow?
- 3:07Speaker 5: No, I really don't think so, because what's gonna end
- 3:10Speaker 5: up My guess is I haven't what's the market doing right?
- 3:12Speaker 6: Now, oh, with a stock market, I'm gonna call it mixed.
- 3:16Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a little unch very much.
- 3:19Speaker 5: It's unchanged, right, So what that message sends. If it
- 3:23Speaker 5: were a bad number, the market would be down. It's
- 3:25Speaker 5: a number that says we're still adding jobs. And once
- 3:28Speaker 5: the Fed doesn't raise rates at the next go around,
- 3:31Speaker 5: this thing is gonna shoot. The market's gonna shoot up
- 3:33Speaker 5: even more. We added over two hundred thousand jobs. It's
- 3:36Speaker 5: funny how quickly we forget the spring of twenty twenty.
- 3:39Speaker 5: It's funny how quickly we forget two thousand and eight
- 3:42Speaker 5: and two thousand and nine. Those were bad. This is good.
- 3:47Speaker 5: We got to keep things in.
- 3:48Speaker 6: Perspective, Tom Doo, Who has the leverage is that the
- 3:52Speaker 6: mixed starting to change is still the employee, like, hey,
- 3:55Speaker 6: you can give me a raise or else I'm gonna
- 3:57Speaker 6: go find another job. But we're with the employer.
- 4:00Speaker 5: We've gotten away from that. The leverage is back on
- 4:04Speaker 5: the employer side, and I think that's what the changes
- 4:07Speaker 5: that we're seeing. And if there's a little bit of
- 4:10Speaker 5: not desperation in the air, but fear around, it's people
- 4:13Speaker 5: bringing employee companies bringing employees back to the office. And
- 4:16Speaker 5: the employees can't quit and go get another job working
- 4:19Speaker 5: fully remote anymore because a lot of companies are bringing
- 4:22Speaker 5: people back to the office. So my feeling is a
- 4:26Speaker 5: year from now, we're not going to be talking oh,
- 4:28Speaker 5: post pandemic and who's working in the office and who's
- 4:31Speaker 5: working not Almost every company will be three days a week,
- 4:34Speaker 5: if not four days a week a year from now.
- 4:36Speaker 4: And where are you seeing the most demand for workers.
- 4:40Speaker 5: It's always going to be in technology right now because
- 4:43Speaker 5: we have well, we have this intersection right now where
- 4:46Speaker 5: it's technology is growing so fast and we're having so
- 4:51Speaker 5: Now we have AI, which is what dot Com was
- 4:54Speaker 5: twenty years ago. Right twenty years ago, you put dot
- 4:57Speaker 5: com in your company's name and you'd go public. Can
- 5:00Speaker 5: you'd be worth a billion dollars? Just wait until every
- 5:02Speaker 5: company has it being less sound network AI. Everything is
- 5:05Speaker 5: going to be AI AI AI, and we're going to
- 5:08Speaker 5: see this be a self fulfilling prophecy that it's going
- 5:11Speaker 5: to balloon a new market and it's going to be
- 5:12Speaker 5: the driver of jobs through AI and cybersecurity.
- 5:16Speaker 6: Well, what's go over average pay for me in the
- 5:19Speaker 6: different industries that you are familiar with.
- 5:23Speaker 5: Well, I think average pay is a really interesting issue,
- 5:26Speaker 5: and the reason is is because it figures in salaried
- 5:30Speaker 5: and hourly, and we have hourlyas that have been en
- 5:33Speaker 5: that have rose over the past three years due to
- 5:36Speaker 5: number one COVID pandemic, pay, number two social unrest, number
- 5:41Speaker 5: three municipalities wanting to with more liberal aldermen so to speak,
- 5:47Speaker 5: and mayors and officials running it. So we've seen the
- 5:50Speaker 5: municipal minimum wage rise that used to be ten dollars
- 5:54Speaker 5: an hour. In some cities it's fifteen to seventeen dollars
- 5:56Speaker 5: an hour. And we've seen hourly factory workers and hourly
- 6:00Speaker 5: warehouse workers go from ten to twelve dollars an hour
- 6:03Speaker 5: to eighteen to twenty to twenty five dollars an hour.
- 6:05Speaker 5: So you have that aspect of the business which is
- 6:08Speaker 5: still healthy, but we'll see how that gets affected. It's
- 6:12Speaker 5: usually the first area. The interesting thing is on the
- 6:15Speaker 5: white collar jobs, where people were getting counteroffers from their
- 6:19Speaker 5: employer when they leave for huge amounts to get them
- 6:22Speaker 5: to stay. We're not seeing that as much anymore. We're
- 6:25Speaker 5: seeing companies toe the line and say we're not going
- 6:27Speaker 5: to screw up our whole salary structure. Because the economy's good,
- 6:31Speaker 5: not unbelievable.
- 6:32Speaker 4: But we're seeing also a decline to your point in
- 6:35Speaker 4: weekly hours worked. Is that a key indicator to you
- 6:40Speaker 4: of something that's to come and is that something that
- 6:42Speaker 4: you're seeing in your day to day now.
- 6:44Speaker 5: I think you see a decline in weekly hours work
- 6:47Speaker 5: because of the increase in the hospitality sector. And so
- 6:50Speaker 5: when you've got people that are hiring in those phases,
- 6:53Speaker 5: it sometimes leverages down the amount of hours work by
- 6:56Speaker 5: each employee. And so the thing that makes it good
- 6:58Speaker 5: is that more people are getting jobs in that space.
- 7:01Speaker 5: The thing that makes it bad is some people who
- 7:03Speaker 5: are working over time and doing things like that. It's
- 7:06Speaker 5: not leveraged into the average hours, so you see a
- 7:08Speaker 5: natural decline in that way. You also see more people
- 7:11Speaker 5: taking time off in the summer, which lowers the average
- 7:14Speaker 5: hours worked. I don't think that's as big a deal
- 7:16Speaker 5: as a lot of economists do.
- 7:17Speaker 6: Can you give me an update on the gig economy?
- 7:20Speaker 6: Where does where does that stand?
- 7:22Speaker 7: Yeah?
- 7:22Speaker 5: I think the gig economy was a gig. I think
- 7:27Speaker 5: that it was something that we're seeing that people in
- 7:31Speaker 5: good times. It's awesome. I don't need my boss. I
- 7:34Speaker 5: can get a job whenever I want, so, I'll go uber,
- 7:36Speaker 5: I'll do door dash, I'll be a dog walker, I'll
- 7:40Speaker 5: do all these things. And that's why it didn't show
- 7:42Speaker 5: into the jobs numbers. Now we see those people saying, hey,
- 7:45Speaker 5: wait a second, I can't keep up with the cost
- 7:47Speaker 5: of living doing that. I need to get benefits. I
- 7:51Speaker 5: want to have a four to oh one k. People
- 7:53Speaker 5: start to settle in as gen Z becomes in their thirties, right,
- 7:57Speaker 5: So you have this cyclical nature. That's something that happened
- 7:59Speaker 5: with MILLENNI and they don't want to be doing gig economy.
- 8:02Speaker 4: Work really quickly. Thirty seconds here, Tom, If J. Powell
- 8:05Speaker 4: calls you and says, what do I need to know
- 8:07Speaker 4: about the jobs market that the economists aren't telling me?
- 8:09Speaker 3: What are you saying, I tell him.
- 8:11Speaker 5: The same thing I told him this morning when we
- 8:12Speaker 5: were talking. No, I'm kidding. I would tell him keep
- 8:16Speaker 5: things flat for the next cycle, don't do a thing.
- 8:18Speaker 4: All right, Well, we'll see if the market agrees with
- 8:21Speaker 4: you there. Tom, thank you so much for joining us
- 8:23Speaker 4: this morning to break down that job's data for us.
- 8:25Speaker 3: That was Tom Gimble. He is CEO at LaSalle Network.
- 8:29Speaker 4: That's a hiring firm, so John, he's got a great
- 8:31Speaker 4: outlook on what's really going on on the ground when
- 8:34Speaker 4: it comes to hiring and wages.
- 8:35Speaker 8: There you're listening to the team Ken's are Live program
- 8:40Speaker 8: Bloomberg Markets weekdays at ten am Eastern on Bloomberg dot Com,
- 8:44Speaker 8: the iHeartRadio app and the Bloomberg Business App, or listen
- 8:47Speaker 8: on demand wherever you get your podcast.
- 8:52Speaker 4: We were easing some of those declines earlier today and
- 8:56Speaker 4: now it's looking like we're back in the red for
- 8:58Speaker 4: the S and p NASDAC relatively unchanged. So we're going
- 9:01Speaker 4: to talk about what to make of the day's trade
- 9:04Speaker 4: with Ben Emmons. He is the principal, senior portfolio manager
- 9:08Speaker 4: and head of fixed income and Macro at New Edge Wealth.
- 9:11Speaker 3: Got a laundry.
- 9:12Speaker 4: List of previous work in the finance industry that we're
- 9:17Speaker 4: going to talk to him about. Ben, thanks for being
- 9:19Speaker 4: in studio with us. Helped me make sense of what's
- 9:22Speaker 4: going on in markets today. How are they digesting the
- 9:26Speaker 4: data here?
- 9:27Speaker 9: Still digesting medisine, But I think it's about you know,
- 9:30Speaker 9: the ADP number took a lot of the gas out
- 9:32Speaker 9: of the market. Because I was a real surprise. So
- 9:35Speaker 9: it's this headline from non fan patals comes in a
- 9:38Speaker 9: little softer, you get some muted reaction, but the reaction
- 9:42Speaker 9: is the same as yesterday. I yields a little bit
- 9:45Speaker 9: lower stocks because the market's trying to digeste This is
- 9:49Speaker 9: a job market that doesn't really cool off. If anything,
- 9:52Speaker 9: it just really underlines that the FED has to pull
- 9:55Speaker 9: forward here. It has to probably hike maybe more than
- 9:58Speaker 9: two times because the resiliency of the economy, you know,
- 10:02Speaker 9: there's too much strength underneath. And I know these reporters
- 10:06Speaker 9: that didn't show any significant weakness in any area. So
- 10:09Speaker 9: I think markets are looking at like we're going to
- 10:11Speaker 9: have to start factoring in a higher terminal rate that
- 10:14Speaker 9: may be beyond what the FED is factoring it in
- 10:17Speaker 9: for the end of the year.
- 10:18Speaker 6: You know, little history. One of the former FED chairman,
- 10:21Speaker 6: Paul Volker, used to carry in his breast pocket a
- 10:24Speaker 6: readout of the latest labor agreements, wage agreements with the unions.
- 10:30Speaker 6: Presumably how sticky are wages right now, because that seems
- 10:35Speaker 6: to be the key for all of us who follow
- 10:38Speaker 6: interest rates.
- 10:39Speaker 9: Yeah, the the every average hourly earnings of four point
- 10:42Speaker 9: four percent year on year. There was another I think
- 10:45Speaker 9: sign of that if you have labor being this strong
- 10:49Speaker 9: consistent job gains, you're going to get higher wages. And
- 10:52Speaker 9: every wage striking from the Atlanta FAT shows an upward momentum.
- 10:56Speaker 9: The ones that stand out to me are construction and
- 10:59Speaker 9: leisured as well. I think the biggest wage gains are happening.
- 11:02Speaker 9: There's maybe less of unionized area then if you think
- 11:05Speaker 9: about ups as an example right of what's happening there.
- 11:09Speaker 9: But to that point of Vocar, if you're getting consistent
- 11:13Speaker 9: gains of labor and wages pick up, yeah, there's some
- 11:17Speaker 9: level of let's say, prices drive to higher wages and
- 11:21Speaker 9: vice versa. So it is happening in the economy. Not
- 11:24Speaker 9: the same as in the seventies, but it's definitely a
- 11:26Speaker 9: trend of higher wages.
- 11:28Speaker 6: I'll go back to my ques. Is that sticky? Is
- 11:30Speaker 6: that going to remain?
- 11:32Speaker 10: It looks like.
- 11:33Speaker 9: It's sticky because if you think of the core pce exer,
- 11:38Speaker 9: core services, pce X housing you plot out against those
- 11:41Speaker 9: wage trackers from the Atlanta FAT, it's exactly the same trend,
- 11:45Speaker 9: almost identical, just on top of each other. That looks
- 11:47Speaker 9: like very sticky to me.
- 11:49Speaker 3: How sticky then, Okay, I've been dying to ask this question.
- 11:52Speaker 4: John, You're gonna love this. On a scale of peanut
- 11:55Speaker 4: butter to super glue, how sticky?
- 11:59Speaker 9: Oh not super glue. I don't compares that probably is
- 12:04Speaker 9: not because it is a competitive labor market. So I
- 12:07Speaker 9: do think that if you get layoffs, so you get like,
- 12:09Speaker 9: you know, some adjustment of wages in certain areas, it's
- 12:13Speaker 9: just more stickier in terms of the demand for labors.
- 12:16Speaker 9: Is sticky that or drives up wages. I think that's
- 12:19Speaker 9: the issue. The Commerce Department put out of a board
- 12:21Speaker 9: about a month ago highlighting all the labor shortages across
- 12:24Speaker 9: the economy. There's a lot of it still there that
- 12:27Speaker 9: keeps those wages like peing a butter.
- 12:29Speaker 3: Okay, well you you well, there you go. You do
- 12:32Speaker 3: a great job.
- 12:32Speaker 4: Though, ben of looking at this from a global perspective,
- 12:35Speaker 4: and when you look at the inflation picture in the UK,
- 12:37Speaker 4: it makes me glad that I'm in the US, even
- 12:39Speaker 4: though inflation here is pretty bleak for me when I'm
- 12:43Speaker 4: being a consumer outside of the desk here, talk to
- 12:46Speaker 4: me about to what extent the inflation picture in the
- 12:49Speaker 4: UK and the credit tight ning we're seeing there could
- 12:52Speaker 4: impact what the FED has to do here in the States.
- 12:55Speaker 9: Yeah, there's a bit of that. That's the idea of
- 12:56Speaker 9: butterfly fact. Yeah, you know, I think is more risk
- 13:01Speaker 9: of that rage price spiral part of it. There is
- 13:04Speaker 9: more unionized economy, but it's also it's showing the signs
- 13:08Speaker 9: of it. And you know, the UK obviously is really
- 13:11Speaker 9: suffering from the supply shock in Europe, the food supply
- 13:15Speaker 9: shock that's compounded by the Brexit. You know, that's now
- 13:19Speaker 9: really showing up in their data and they're you know,
- 13:22Speaker 9: the Bank of England didn't go so far as to
- 13:25Speaker 9: feted with a number of rate hikes really quickly after
- 13:28Speaker 9: one of not like large rate hikes, and this is
- 13:30Speaker 9: why the market is pricing in six and a half
- 13:33Speaker 9: percent of a bank rate that's on the base points
- 13:36Speaker 9: more than the where the FAT is projected at. I
- 13:39Speaker 9: think the food price inflation is where they're struggling. They
- 13:43Speaker 9: can't really cool that off because of the Brexit effect.
- 13:46Speaker 9: That's really the key issue.
- 13:48Speaker 6: Does the market now believe the Fed?
- 13:51Speaker 9: They do, John, I mean it has actually been there
- 13:54Speaker 9: way for a while. Sounds odd, but that transitory discussion
- 13:58Speaker 9: that where the fat apparently lost so much credibility, you know,
- 14:01Speaker 9: the bomb market early on, except like, well, Fat, you
- 14:04Speaker 9: started raising rates, You're going to get your inflation back
- 14:06Speaker 9: to two percent over time. That's what the inflation lik
- 14:09Speaker 9: bonb market has been very consistent in and that's I
- 14:13Speaker 9: think where we currently are today. It hasn't really changed
- 14:17Speaker 9: even though you're getting these good, you know, payroll numbers
- 14:20Speaker 9: and you see it continuing strength in the economy. There's
- 14:25Speaker 9: another side of it that the energy markets have really
- 14:27Speaker 9: cooled off from last year and commodity market students. That helps.
- 14:30Speaker 9: I mean, it's part of that calculation in these inflation expectations.
- 14:34Speaker 9: But I do think that market has been at the
- 14:36Speaker 9: side of the Fat saying you're going to succeed in
- 14:38Speaker 9: this mission. You're going to bring that inflation right down.
- 14:40Speaker 9: It may take a number of years, but you're going together, all.
- 14:42Speaker 6: Right, the obligatory questions. July that is twenty five basis points. Again,
- 14:48Speaker 6: what happens after that? Is it a higher rate regime
- 14:51Speaker 6: six months from now? You got forty five seconds.
- 14:55Speaker 9: Yeah, so July that's now of course confirmed by this
- 14:58Speaker 9: data at CPI next week, so that probably he's going
- 15:01Speaker 9: to fully cement it to one hundred percent probability. You
- 15:04Speaker 9: know it will remain data dependent. That's how the market
- 15:07Speaker 9: is trying to price it. So the September and November
- 15:09Speaker 9: meetings all still in play. But the probabilities do show
- 15:12Speaker 9: that you'd like you have an honor rate high extra.
- 15:14Speaker 9: The federal match is median forecast plus. The probability of
- 15:19Speaker 9: a six percent rate in November has notched up a
- 15:21Speaker 9: little bit. It's about ten percent. So let's keep an
- 15:24Speaker 9: eye on that because that is not impossible to see
- 15:26Speaker 9: a six percent rate.
- 15:27Speaker 3: Yeah, and it seems like if you're listening to j.
- 15:30Speaker 4: Powell, he's just going to continue to look at the
- 15:32Speaker 4: totality of the data when deciding what he is going
- 15:34Speaker 4: to do next. Ben Emmons, thank you so much for
- 15:37Speaker 4: joining us as always, great to see you in the
- 15:39Speaker 4: studio with us as well. That was Ben Emmons's principal,
- 15:43Speaker 4: senior portfolio manager and head of fixed income at New
- 15:46Speaker 4: Edge Wealth, joining to talk about those jobs numbers and
- 15:48Speaker 4: of course what the Fed is going to do next?
- 15:51Speaker 3: Our favorite question here at Bloomberg.
- 15:53Speaker 8: You're listening to the tape. Can's our live program Bloomberg
- 15:57Speaker 8: Markets weekdays at ten am Eastern on Bloomberg Radio, the
- 16:00Speaker 8: tune in app, Bloomberg dot Com, and the Bloomberg Business App.
- 16:04Speaker 8: You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our
- 16:06Speaker 8: flagship New York station, Just say Alexa play Bloomberg eleven thirty.
- 16:13Speaker 4: No, you're all loving our FED Speak analysis here, but
- 16:15Speaker 4: we've got a great guest in to talk with us
- 16:18Speaker 4: about the jobs data and how it's going to impact
- 16:20Speaker 4: FED mooves moving forward.
- 16:22Speaker 3: We've got Julia Pollock here.
- 16:24Speaker 4: She is a chief economist at zip Recruiter, joining us
- 16:28Speaker 4: on zoom to talk through some of these jobs numbers. Julia,
- 16:30Speaker 4: thank you so much for coming on this morning with us.
- 16:36Speaker 4: Talk to me about what your take is on the
- 16:38Speaker 4: current jobs market. I mean, if we're listening to gooules By,
- 16:41Speaker 4: it sounds like it's strong but cooling.
- 16:44Speaker 3: Would you agree with that description?
- 16:46Speaker 11: Absolutely strong, solid, robust, But there are clear signs of
- 16:51Speaker 11: cooling in today's jobs report, not just the slowest job
- 16:56Speaker 11: growth number since decem for twenty twenty, but also rise
- 17:00Speaker 11: in the number of people working part time for economic reasons.
- 17:03Speaker 11: Those are people who've had their hours cut or who
- 17:05Speaker 11: can't find full time work but want to be working
- 17:08Speaker 11: full time.
- 17:09Speaker 6: You guys, a ZIP recruiter must generate its own proprietary data.
- 17:14Speaker 6: What does that tell you, if anything?
- 17:16Speaker 11: Absolutely so, that has shown a large decline in online
- 17:21Speaker 11: job hostings than even in BLS reported jobs data, but
- 17:26Speaker 11: a rebound in June. So we also saw a pretty
- 17:31Speaker 11: strong June, but even clearer signs that the lave market
- 17:36Speaker 11: is cooling down and that the Fed's interest rate hikes
- 17:38Speaker 11: are starting to bite. That they are reducing private investment
- 17:42Speaker 11: and causing companies, even those that would like to be
- 17:45Speaker 11: hiring more, to be a bit more cautious and concerned.
- 17:50Speaker 6: What about wages? What does your data show?
- 17:55Speaker 11: So wage growth in job hostings has also slowed In
- 17:59Speaker 11: twenty twenty two, the share of job titles that saw
- 18:04Speaker 11: average wage increases over the year was three times higher
- 18:09Speaker 11: than the share that saw declines. This time around, we're
- 18:12Speaker 11: actually seeing more job titles show lower average posted wages
- 18:19Speaker 11: in job hostings than games.
- 18:22Speaker 4: Yeah, it's so important to watch. And our Bloomberg Economics
- 18:26Speaker 4: team puts it really well that they still anticipate a
- 18:29Speaker 4: recession coming in the second half of twenty twenty three.
- 18:32Speaker 3: So anytime now.
- 18:33Speaker 4: And they say that you start to see those cracks
- 18:36Speaker 4: in the labor market about two to three quarters after
- 18:39Speaker 4: recession officially begins. So, Julia, I wonder if when you're
- 18:43Speaker 4: looking at the data, does it feel to you like
- 18:45Speaker 4: this is just the beginning of the title wave of
- 18:48Speaker 4: recessionary impacts on the jobs market, or is it something
- 18:52Speaker 4: less intense than that.
- 18:54Speaker 11: Well, I think it's something less intense than that. I
- 18:56Speaker 11: think we're now at a place where the labor market
- 18:59Speaker 11: is at as steady sustainable pace. We could keep this
- 19:03Speaker 11: up for months and months and months. Employment levels are
- 19:06Speaker 11: still well below their pre pandemic trend, and so there's
- 19:08Speaker 11: still a lot of catch up hiring that could take
- 19:11Speaker 11: place in the coming months. Industries that were hardest hit
- 19:13Speaker 11: in the recession are sort of finally playing catch up,
- 19:16Speaker 11: like the government, not an industry, but you know what
- 19:18Speaker 11: I mean, a sector that was far behind. So I
- 19:22Speaker 11: think there are lots of reasons to be bullish on
- 19:24Speaker 11: this labor market still. And then we also just had
- 19:27Speaker 11: an almost fifteen percent return in the stock market year
- 19:30Speaker 11: to date and a rebound and consumer confidence. All of
- 19:34Speaker 11: those things could bode well for job growth in the future.
- 19:38Speaker 11: There are huge risks, don't get me wrong, but I
- 19:41Speaker 11: don't think we necessarily are in a bad place.
- 19:47Speaker 6: I put this question just about every guest we had today.
- 19:49Speaker 6: I'll put it to you who's in the driver's seat,
- 19:52Speaker 6: the employers have the leverage or the employees.
- 19:58Speaker 11: It very much depends on the industry. Talking about goods
- 20:01Speaker 11: related industries like retail, transportation, and warehousing, workers there have
- 20:06Speaker 11: seen a large decline in their leverage, and that's because
- 20:09Speaker 11: consumers are shifting their spending back from goods to services.
- 20:12Speaker 11: Tech is still a glaring weak spot in this economy,
- 20:16Speaker 11: with far fewer quits than before the pandemic and more
- 20:19Speaker 11: layoffs than before the pandemic.
- 20:21Speaker 4: Can I talk to you a little bit about your
- 20:22Speaker 4: new higher survey that you include in your note here.
- 20:27Speaker 4: I love talking about employees ghosting their employers.
- 20:30Speaker 3: Do you know about this, John?
- 20:32Speaker 6: All the time there's an increase.
- 20:34Speaker 4: I'm sure you do, increase in employees ghosting potential employers
- 20:39Speaker 4: after getting job offers. Julia, what do you make of that?
- 20:42Speaker 4: And how widespread is this starting to get?
- 20:46Speaker 7: So?
- 20:47Speaker 11: In this survey of two thousand recently hired Americans, I mean,
- 20:50Speaker 11: there's still plenty of sign that workers are confident and
- 20:54Speaker 11: that they are they have a lot of leverage so
- 20:58Speaker 11: much so that they don't need to behave well necessarily
- 21:01Speaker 11: they are, yes, exactly. They're still getting pretty big wage increases,
- 21:07Speaker 11: they're still getting attractive offers, and they're still finding jobs
- 21:11Speaker 11: very quickly. And the other thing that they're seeing is
- 21:13Speaker 11: that companies have made huge improvements in their recruiting and
- 21:19Speaker 11: hiring processes since the pandemic. They have made those far
- 21:22Speaker 11: more mobile friendly. They've also adopted more automated tools. That's
- 21:27Speaker 11: the likely explanation for the increase in the share of
- 21:30Speaker 11: workers who are getting very quick responses to their applications.
- 21:34Speaker 11: I think many companies have automated that system and tell
- 21:37Speaker 11: people right away whether they're likely to get a job
- 21:40Speaker 11: real quick.
- 21:41Speaker 6: Can they still work from home or is that changing.
- 21:45Speaker 11: Work from home has stabilized it? Around twenty eight percent
- 21:48Speaker 11: of all worked days in America, up from five percent
- 21:51Speaker 11: before the pandemic. There are industries where you are seeing
- 21:54Speaker 11: a bit of a pullback now, but on the whole
- 21:57Speaker 11: it's still very very steady.
- 21:59Speaker 4: Yeah, And really I just want to mention, because we
- 22:01Speaker 4: have to leave it. Their job seekers look like in
- 22:04Speaker 4: your survey, they're becoming more pessimistic across the board about
- 22:07Speaker 4: current labor market conditions and the medium term economic outlook,
- 22:11Speaker 4: which is certainly something that I feel myself and amongst
- 22:14Speaker 4: my friends here. Julia Pollock, thank you so much for
- 22:17Speaker 4: joining us.
- 22:18Speaker 3: That was a great conversation. Oh my god, of course
- 22:20Speaker 3: I am.
- 22:22Speaker 8: You're listening to the Team Can't Live program Bloomberg Markets
- 22:26Speaker 8: weekdays at ten am Eastern on Bloomberg dot com, the
- 22:29Speaker 8: iHeartRadio app, and the Bloomberg Business app, or listen on
- 22:32Speaker 8: demand wherever you get your podcasts.
- 22:36Speaker 4: We are going to get back to some of that
- 22:38Speaker 4: job's data from today, and on the line, we've got
- 22:41Speaker 4: a really fantastic voice on this. We've got Jeffrey Cleveland
- 22:45Speaker 4: here to discuss the jobs market numbers and also what
- 22:48Speaker 4: we're seeing in terms of moves from the bond market
- 22:51Speaker 4: off of that news as well. Jeffrey, thank you so
- 22:53Speaker 4: much for joining us to talk about what.
- 22:56Speaker 3: We're seeing here in the market.
- 22:58Speaker 4: I mean, when you look at this June jobs report,
- 23:02Speaker 4: it feels like some good news this morning. If you're
- 23:05Speaker 4: the Fed, bad news yesterday when it came to that
- 23:07Speaker 4: ie popping ADP number. Talk to me about where you
- 23:11Speaker 4: think our economy sits when you're looking at the totality
- 23:14Speaker 4: of that job's data.
- 23:17Speaker 10: Well, I think the context matters, you know, when you
- 23:19Speaker 10: look at each report that comes out every month, and
- 23:23Speaker 10: if you I talked to a lot of economic bears,
- 23:25Speaker 10: they're my favorite species of market participants in you know,
- 23:29Speaker 10: they were telling me last month, Hey, you have to
- 23:32Speaker 10: look at the household survey it was negative. You have
- 23:35Speaker 10: to look at ours worked. You know, it had ticked down,
- 23:39Speaker 10: and you know, so lo and behold, we had I
- 23:42Speaker 10: think a decent non farm payroll number, two hundred and
- 23:44Speaker 10: nine thousand. We had the household survey component of that
- 23:48Speaker 10: bouncing back, so that was up two hundred and seventy
- 23:50Speaker 10: three thousand, hours worked ticked up, and then average hourly
- 23:54Speaker 10: earnings another point four month to month print. So I
- 23:58Speaker 10: think you have to look at that full context and
- 24:00Speaker 10: it's it's a pretty solid report in my view. It
- 24:03Speaker 10: doesn't tell us, you know, maybe the job growth is
- 24:06Speaker 10: slowing a bit, bought nothing close to a recession, and
- 24:11Speaker 10: I even hesitate to call slow. And I mean, we're
- 24:13Speaker 10: still adding over two hundred thousand jobs in the latest number.
- 24:16Speaker 10: That three month average of non farm payroll still two
- 24:19Speaker 10: forty two fifty k. It's really solid. We only need
- 24:23Speaker 10: like one hundred thousand jobs per month just to keep
- 24:25Speaker 10: the unemployment rate where it is, So if you're getting
- 24:27Speaker 10: over two hundred thousand, it's a it's pretty good.
- 24:30Speaker 6: All right. So what does it tell us about the
- 24:31Speaker 6: stickiness of inflation.
- 24:34Speaker 10: Well, I think if you're a policy maker, you're going
- 24:37Speaker 10: to look at two things here. You're gonna look at
- 24:39Speaker 10: that three point six percent unemployment rate, and you're going
- 24:43Speaker 10: to conclude that the risks are still toward inflation pressure.
- 24:47Speaker 10: That's an unemployment rate that's very low. So we have
- 24:50Speaker 10: very tight labor markets. I think you heard Powell last
- 24:55Speaker 10: week he said the goal for the Fed was to
- 24:57Speaker 10: get the labor market in better supply demand balance. And
- 25:02Speaker 10: three point six percent on employer rate, it's really tight conditions.
- 25:06Speaker 10: And then the second thing you'd look at, I think
- 25:08Speaker 10: would be average hourly earnings again zero point four percent
- 25:11Speaker 10: month to month. So I've been hearing from the lot
- 25:14Speaker 10: of the bears they oh, job growth is going to
- 25:16Speaker 10: roll over, and also ways growth is going to roll
- 25:18Speaker 10: over any second now, and that's just not happening. It's
- 25:22Speaker 10: not playing out here. So I think this keeps the
- 25:25Speaker 10: FED on track to hike we think they will hike
- 25:28Speaker 10: in July at the July meeting, and we think they're
- 25:31Speaker 10: on in every other meeting hiking pace right now, So
- 25:33Speaker 10: that would imply skipping September and hiking again in November.
- 25:36Speaker 10: So we get the five fifty by year end on
- 25:39Speaker 10: FED funds.
- 25:40Speaker 4: What's so interesting to me is that the data and
- 25:43Speaker 4: the FED moves and the market moves are all over
- 25:45Speaker 4: the place, but also the vibes of us regular folks
- 25:49Speaker 4: out in the world. We just talked with an economist
- 25:51Speaker 4: from Zip Recruiter who talk to us about how the
- 25:53Speaker 4: majority of job seekers are feeling this pinch of market
- 25:57Speaker 4: conditions and they feel that they should take the first
- 26:01Speaker 4: job that they're offered because they're so concerned with the economy.
- 26:05Speaker 4: From where you sit, Jeffrey, does that square with what's
- 26:09Speaker 4: actually going.
- 26:09Speaker 3: To happen in the economy?
- 26:11Speaker 4: And what do you make of the feeling of anxiety
- 26:14Speaker 4: with American workers given that we continue to get these
- 26:17Speaker 4: great jobs numbers.
- 26:18Speaker 10: Well, just talking to friends and family, we're being constantly
- 26:22Speaker 10: told that the recession is going to start imminently, right,
- 26:24Speaker 10: It's going to be dead next week, next month. We've
- 26:26Speaker 10: been hearing that for a better part of a year
- 26:28Speaker 10: now really since last June. So if that is what
- 26:31Speaker 10: the average person is hearing, I can understand a little
- 26:34Speaker 10: bit of consternation. The data, though the macro data doesn't
- 26:37Speaker 10: really bear that out. I mean, in terms of labor demand,
- 26:40Speaker 10: still very very high job openings hanging out around ten million,
- 26:45Speaker 10: so we're still seeing pretty good labor demand. Now. It's
- 26:48Speaker 10: down from the peak where we had extreme amount of
- 26:50Speaker 10: labor demand, but it's still high relative to other cycles,
- 26:54Speaker 10: so I still think it's a pretty good time to
- 26:56Speaker 10: be in the market looking for a job. I think
- 26:58Speaker 10: we also saw that the quits data tick back up.
- 27:02Speaker 10: Yeah for May. Yeah, we saw that that was the
- 27:04Speaker 10: paidon and regal chart of the week. If anyone was
- 27:07Speaker 10: interested in checking that out. We just compared quits you know,
- 27:10Speaker 10: this cycle are still well above what we saw at
- 27:13Speaker 10: any point really in the twenty tenths. So I still
- 27:17Speaker 10: think it's a better environment now, and that's good news
- 27:19Speaker 10: for someone who's looking for a job or was in
- 27:21Speaker 10: the labor market. It's better environments than it was for
- 27:23Speaker 10: much of the twenty tenths, so that's good.
- 27:25Speaker 6: I don't want to get too geeky, but there was
- 27:27Speaker 6: an account of as Rudy dorm Bush. Among other things,
- 27:31Speaker 6: he said that when things turn, they turn pretty quickly.
- 27:35Speaker 6: Do you get a sense of that.
- 27:37Speaker 10: Yeah. We always say, like the unemployment rate is a
- 27:40Speaker 10: good example of this. It falls like a feather and
- 27:42Speaker 10: it rises like a rocket. So you can see looking
- 27:47Speaker 10: at the unemployment rate chart that exact story. So that's
- 27:50Speaker 10: why we're always on guard looking at things just for
- 27:53Speaker 10: the early hints, in the early signs, you know, initial
- 27:56Speaker 10: claims for unemployment. That weekly data that comes out tends
- 27:59Speaker 10: to be a pretty good but you know sign an
- 28:02Speaker 10: indicator of that. It ticked up recently, but it's been
- 28:05Speaker 10: hanging out. I would say for the last three or
- 28:07Speaker 10: four months, around two hundred and forty thousand in the
- 28:09Speaker 10: weekly claims data.
- 28:11Speaker 3: So it's moved up.
- 28:12Speaker 10: It's indicative of a slower job growth, but it's it's
- 28:15Speaker 10: nothing worrisome. I don't I don't think. I also think payrolls.
- 28:19Speaker 10: He gets a lot of pushback and people say, oh,
- 28:22Speaker 10: it's a lagging indicator. But in real time, we're getting
- 28:25Speaker 10: data for last month, for June, we're getting it released here,
- 28:29Speaker 10: you know, seven days into the month. It's pretty good
- 28:31Speaker 10: real time indicator from me from a bond market economist perspective,
- 28:35Speaker 10: always have relied on that, and as I started this segment,
- 28:39Speaker 10: two hundred and forty four thousand, the three month moving
- 28:42Speaker 10: average of non payroll growth, it's a pretty good indicator
- 28:44Speaker 10: of where we are. It's it's slowed down, so growth
- 28:47Speaker 10: has slowed from a year ago, six months ago, but
- 28:50Speaker 10: still very solid job growth.
- 28:52Speaker 6: So you're a bond market he's a bond market economist.
- 28:55Speaker 6: So that means you are a pessimist, is it not.
- 28:58Speaker 10: I'm supposed to be. Yeah, I'm supposed to be out
- 28:59Speaker 10: here telling you that, you know, inflation is rolling over,
- 29:02Speaker 10: it's time to buy bonds, you know, exten duration. But
- 29:06Speaker 10: I would like to think that I'm objective. I'm just
- 29:08Speaker 10: looking at the data here. Yeah, we're very far from
- 29:11Speaker 10: the Fed's target on inflation. Yeah, the unemployment rate is
- 29:14Speaker 10: very low, and I think their bias from policy makers
- 29:17Speaker 10: is going to be to keep hiking, So that's going
- 29:19Speaker 10: to keep putting pressure on front end yields. So you're too.
- 29:22Speaker 10: You know, yesterday we did see two year yields creep
- 29:24Speaker 10: above five percent, which makes sense to me. We're back
- 29:27Speaker 10: below this morning. I think we'll move back above. At
- 29:31Speaker 10: some point, the Fed's got two more rate hikes.
- 29:33Speaker 3: That's the gott.
- 29:35Speaker 10: To face the facts here. So that's what bond market
- 29:37Speaker 10: participants have to face those facts. Don't fight the Fed.
- 29:39Speaker 4: Okay, well, since you brought it up, I got to
- 29:41Speaker 4: talk to you about the yield curve because we are
- 29:43Speaker 4: seeing a little bit of a moderation when it comes
- 29:45Speaker 4: to the twos tens inversion. Are you thinking that the
- 29:50Speaker 4: bond market is seeing something that the Fed isn't when
- 29:53Speaker 4: it comes to where this economy is going.
- 29:56Speaker 10: Go talk to our traders on the trading floor. They
- 29:58Speaker 10: would tell you, yes, the bond market, bond investors are smart.
- 30:03Speaker 10: Maybe they are, But you think about the yield curve.
- 30:06Speaker 10: I've always I've always loved looking at the yeld curve,
- 30:08Speaker 10: but it can have long lags to when it actually
- 30:10Speaker 10: signals a downturn. So I remember this very well. If
- 30:14Speaker 10: you go back to say the two thousand and six era,
- 30:17Speaker 10: if you're looking at the yield curve, you started to
- 30:19Speaker 10: get concerned, but the recession didn't begin until end of seven.
- 30:22Speaker 10: So people tend to go early if they just focus
- 30:25Speaker 10: on the yield curve. So that's the thing. It could
- 30:28Speaker 10: be long lags. Not to ignore the yield curve. You
- 30:30Speaker 10: got to look at there's information there, but it could
- 30:32Speaker 10: be long lags. I also think there's some unique features
- 30:35Speaker 10: this time. I mean, inflation is higher than it has
- 30:38Speaker 10: been at any time really in the last forty years.
- 30:40Speaker 10: So in typical business cycles, you haven't really had to
- 30:44Speaker 10: think about, well, what's going on in the front end.
- 30:46Speaker 10: Why is the front end so high? The front end
- 30:48Speaker 10: is high and yield because the FED is trying to
- 30:50Speaker 10: stamp out inflation. I think the bond market has a
- 30:53Speaker 10: bit different forecast for inflation than we do. The bond
- 30:57Speaker 10: market has been perpetually expecting inflation to come down much
- 30:59Speaker 10: more quickly, and so maybe that's the reason why five
- 31:02Speaker 10: year yels and ten year yields have been a bit lower.
- 31:05Speaker 10: So as you, as you pointed out in the last
- 31:07Speaker 10: day or so, the long end even moved up, and
- 31:10Speaker 10: I think, yeah, yeah, I think that's a recognition of
- 31:12Speaker 10: the fact that, hey, things are you know, the economy
- 31:16Speaker 10: is in better shape. We're not getting that recession everyone advertised.
- 31:19Speaker 10: Inflation is a bit more sticky. The FED is going
- 31:22Speaker 10: to be higher and maybe higher for longer, and that
- 31:24Speaker 10: does tend to have some impact on five intentions and.
- 31:28Speaker 3: Maybe a soft landing.
- 31:29Speaker 10: You think, yeah, you know, this morning, one of my
- 31:33Speaker 10: colleagues ping me. He said, oh, this is goldilocks, this
- 31:35Speaker 10: is this is a soft landing report. We've got a
- 31:38Speaker 10: very low unemployment, we've got a little bit of a
- 31:40Speaker 10: slowdown in job growth, so it's possible. We wrote a
- 31:44Speaker 10: piece at the beginning of the year, you know, we
- 31:45Speaker 10: said we said it's the case for a soft landing.
- 31:49Speaker 10: It may not be the base case, but something everyone
- 31:51Speaker 10: should think about. So we're we're leaning towards that. What
- 31:56Speaker 10: in this I don't think was really a soft landing
- 31:58Speaker 10: was probably the average early earnings because that's still coming
- 32:01Speaker 10: in a little bit hot. But remember the unemployment rate
- 32:04Speaker 10: stays low as job openings come down, that's your soft landing.
- 32:09Speaker 10: That's your You think about the the beverage curve kind
- 32:12Speaker 10: of relationship. You get, you get an easing of labor
- 32:15Speaker 10: demand and the unemployment rate doesn't rise, that's your soft landing.
- 32:20Speaker 10: So it's it's possible. With a three point six unemployment rate,
- 32:22Speaker 10: we're on we're on track for it. I wouldn't rule
- 32:24Speaker 10: it out.
- 32:26Speaker 6: Keep in mind, Madison, the Goldilocks story that had three
- 32:28Speaker 6: bears in it. Wow, where are you? Because we got
- 32:33Speaker 6: like twenty seconds left. Because I'm interested in anecdotal you know,
- 32:37Speaker 6: what's the local economy there? I'm looking out the window.
- 32:39Speaker 6: Where are you?
- 32:40Speaker 10: This is downtown LA. I don't know. If you can
- 32:41Speaker 10: see the background, you can probably see the Hollywood signs.
- 32:43Speaker 10: So we are where paid in Rigel is located. That Actually,
- 32:47Speaker 10: if you want to be bearish, if you want to
- 32:49Speaker 10: be bearish, the story that I would tell is I
- 32:50Speaker 10: would say, hey, look at the un the plot on
- 32:53Speaker 10: your Bloomberg terminal, the California and unemployment rate. It's bottomed
- 32:56Speaker 10: out about a year ago at three point nine. It's
- 32:58Speaker 10: at four point five right now, so it's risen point
- 33:01Speaker 10: six percentage points, while you know, the unemployment rate nationwide
- 33:05Speaker 10: is low.
- 33:06Speaker 6: Got to run.
- 33:07Speaker 10: California's a big economy, so that's all.
- 33:09Speaker 3: That's the best fourth largest there.
- 33:11Speaker 4: Jeffrey Cleveland, director and chief economist at Pagan Regal, Thank.
- 33:14Speaker 3: You so much.
- 33:15Speaker 8: You're listening to the tape. Catch are live program Bloomberg
- 33:18Speaker 8: Markets weekdays at ten am Eastern on Bloomberg Radio, the
- 33:22Speaker 8: tune in app, Bloomberg dot com, and the Bloomberg Business app.
- 33:25Speaker 8: You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our
- 33:28Speaker 8: flagship New York station. Just say Alexa play Bloomberg eleven thirty.
- 33:34Speaker 4: This is very exciting stuff. Me and my friends are
- 33:36Speaker 4: all really pumped. I know that you'll you'll be joining
- 33:39Speaker 4: us at the theater John, for the new Barbie movie.
- 33:41Speaker 4: One of the reasons we're so pumped is because of
- 33:43Speaker 4: the amount of money getting poured into branding for the film.
- 33:47Speaker 3: So we're going to talk about all of this.
- 33:49Speaker 4: It's today's big Take story, and we've got Kelly Gilblam
- 33:52Speaker 4: on the line, our Bloomberg News editor out in LA,
- 33:55Speaker 4: to discuss it with us.
- 33:56Speaker 3: Kelly, thanks for being patient with us as we Is this.
- 34:00Speaker 6: A kid movie or an adult I mean for older
- 34:04Speaker 6: people adult?
- 34:05Speaker 7: Yeah, thank you for your interest in Barbie. It's actually
- 34:09Speaker 7: not really a kid movie. It's rated PG thirteen. If
- 34:14Speaker 7: you've seen the trailer, you can see that it has
- 34:16Speaker 7: a lot of sexual innuindow and.
- 34:18Speaker 6: So it's not creepy. If Charlie goes to see it.
- 34:21Speaker 3: By himself, John, it's it's for adults.
- 34:24Speaker 4: It's for adults well, and it was very expensive to
- 34:27Speaker 4: make and so it's it's a big bet on those
- 34:31Speaker 4: adults coming in to buy tickets, right, Kelly.
- 34:34Speaker 7: Yeah, it was very expensive to make. It was one
- 34:36Speaker 7: hundred million dollars. Mattel, which owns the Barbie brand, didn't
- 34:41Speaker 7: actually pay for the budget. It licensed the brand to
- 34:44Speaker 7: Warner Brothers, which covered the budget. But Mattel is definitely
- 34:47Speaker 7: taking a big bet for itself on the overall perception
- 34:51Speaker 7: of the brand. If you, you know, recall hearing about
- 34:55Speaker 7: Barbie dolls at any point in your life, they can
- 34:57Speaker 7: be pretty controversial. So so they're really hoping that people
- 35:02Speaker 7: are more endeared to them after this movie comes out.
- 35:06Speaker 3: Yeah. Well, and also it's interesting.
- 35:09Speaker 4: Because they have a tough challenge with the Barbie kind
- 35:12Speaker 4: of stereotype that they have to sort of rebrand as
- 35:16Speaker 4: like a new age feminist character.
- 35:18Speaker 3: What can you tell us, Kelly about the likelihood of
- 35:23Speaker 3: Warner Brothers being able to do that?
- 35:26Speaker 7: It seems like from the response so far, they've mostly
- 35:30Speaker 7: managed to pull it off. It's gone Everything about it
- 35:32Speaker 7: has gone viral. People are so excited. The box office
- 35:36Speaker 7: tracking figures keep going higher and higher and higher, and
- 35:40Speaker 7: it's one of the rare movies that's actually targeted toward women.
- 35:44Speaker 7: You know, we calculated only like six percent of movies
- 35:48Speaker 7: with this type of budget are for women. So I
- 35:52Speaker 7: do think it will it will make a big impact
- 35:55Speaker 7: and could possibly pull off this reputational move that they're
- 35:59Speaker 7: trying to make.
- 36:00Speaker 6: The story is great, I mean, it's the history of
- 36:03Speaker 6: this is fascinating, well to the extent that it can
- 36:06Speaker 6: be fascinating to somebody like me. But there's actually the
- 36:09Speaker 6: Barbie and Ken are actually named for the founders of Mattel,
- 36:13Speaker 6: their kids.
- 36:14Speaker 7: Right, that's right. Yeah, Ruth Handler was the inventor of
- 36:18Speaker 7: Barbie and one of the founders of Mattel. It's a
- 36:20Speaker 7: long time chief executive officer, control of operations, in control
- 36:26Speaker 7: of operations there. And yeah, she saw a German doll
- 36:30Speaker 7: that was actually for adults.
- 36:33Speaker 6: Oh, let's be clear. This is a German sex doll
- 36:36Speaker 6: on which Barbie is based, right.
- 36:39Speaker 7: Do I have? I mean it was for bachelor parties people,
- 36:43Speaker 7: you know, sent it around as a gag gift, and
- 36:45Speaker 7: she thought it would be great for you know, if
- 36:48Speaker 7: she kind of remade it more targeted for kids, would
- 36:51Speaker 7: be great for her daughter, Barbara. And then a few
- 36:54Speaker 7: years later Ken rolled out.
- 36:56Speaker 4: Yeah, and Ken her brother either way, right right, right,
- 37:02Speaker 4: very you always bring us the fun facts here, John.
- 37:06Speaker 4: I also feel like Kelly Greta Gerwig as the director
- 37:10Speaker 4: here is an important choice because she has kind of
- 37:13Speaker 4: a history of making these inclusive films that center female
- 37:17Speaker 4: characters as the main subject.
- 37:20Speaker 8: Yeah.
- 37:20Speaker 7: I think she's one of the pre eminent female you know,
- 37:24Speaker 7: coming of age genre directors writers. She's come to prominence
- 37:29Speaker 7: in recent years, especially with Little Women her remake, and
- 37:33Speaker 7: with Lady Bird, both Oscar nominated films. I think one
- 37:37Speaker 7: actually won an Oscar, so that was a big, a
- 37:42Speaker 7: big get for them, and that was it was actually
- 37:45Speaker 7: Margot Robbie who's playing Barbie, who was able to make
- 37:48Speaker 7: that connection and recommended her as a screenwriter.
- 37:52Speaker 3: Oh cool, I didn't know that. That's really cool.
- 37:54Speaker 6: Now is Barbie? What does this do for Barbie? This film?
- 37:58Speaker 6: If it's a flop, does Mattil get crushed? Is Barbie
- 38:02Speaker 6: even relevant anymore?
- 38:05Speaker 7: I think that's the big question for Mattel is how
- 38:08Speaker 7: relevant is Barbie gonna be? It really went through a crisis,
- 38:11Speaker 7: the whole company did, because Barbie fell out a step
- 38:14Speaker 7: with society. They remade The Doll in twenty sixteen and
- 38:18Speaker 7: made it more inclusive with different body types and that
- 38:21Speaker 7: sort of thing. So this is trying to showcase that work,
- 38:25Speaker 7: but it doesn't really. I mean, analysts aren't really seeing
- 38:29Speaker 7: a big Toy sail bump in twenty twenty three. It
- 38:32Speaker 7: could be more long term, and I think the real
- 38:34Speaker 7: value for Mattel would come if they can turn it
- 38:37Speaker 7: into a broader franchise, like a Marvel type of franchise,
- 38:40Speaker 7: you know, where you have a Ken movie spin off
- 38:42Speaker 7: and a Skipper TV series and a you know, roller
- 38:45Speaker 7: coaster and that sort of thing.
- 38:47Speaker 6: I was traumatized by Barbie. My sisters had it, and
- 38:50Speaker 6: they used to take the legs and they'd hit me
- 38:53Speaker 6: with it. So I had these like two little bruises
- 38:56Speaker 6: where Barbie's breasts hit me in the you know.
- 38:59Speaker 3: It's just like sorry to hear that, John. Hopefully you
- 39:02Speaker 3: can you can go watch this movie and get a
- 39:05Speaker 3: little bit.
- 39:05Speaker 6: Has anybody seen it yet or is it you're waiting
- 39:07Speaker 6: for reviews and all that stuff.
- 39:09Speaker 3: It's it's coming out in July, right, Kelly later later, Yeah,
- 39:13Speaker 3: a couple of weeks.
- 39:14Speaker 7: That's right. Some people have seen it. They're all critics.
- 39:17Speaker 7: Their reviews should start coming on the thirteenth, and then
- 39:19Speaker 7: it's world premiere is on Sunday, but it's released wide
- 39:23Speaker 7: on the play first.
- 39:25Speaker 4: Thank you, Kelly for those listening on radio not seeing us.
- 39:28Speaker 4: My hand is physically out in front of John to
- 39:30Speaker 4: kind of control the commentary here when it comes to.
- 39:33Speaker 6: Barbie, because you're going to hit me with your Barnbach.
- 39:35Speaker 3: All right, Kelly, thank you so much for joining us.
- 39:38Speaker 4: Sorry, things are getting a little crazy as we wrap
- 39:40Speaker 4: up our show, but it's an incredible story.
- 39:42Speaker 3: It's Today's Big Take.
- 39:43Speaker 4: You can find it on Bloomberg dot com or on
- 39:45Speaker 4: the terminal wherever you get your Bloomberg News. It's also
- 39:48Speaker 4: the Big Take podcast, which you can download wherever you
- 39:50Speaker 4: get your podcasts as well. It's incredibly well researched. They
- 39:54Speaker 4: go through everything when it comes to Mattel and the
- 39:57Speaker 4: Barbie movie. Highly recommend giving it a read or listen
- 40:00Speaker 4: over the weekend.
- 40:05Speaker 2: Thanks for listening to the Bloomberg Markets podcast. You can
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- 40:12Speaker 2: podcast platform you prefer. I'm Matt Miller. I'm on Twitter
- 40:16Speaker 2: at Matt Miller nineteen seventy three, and I'm fall Sweeney.
- 40:19Speaker 1: I'm on Twitter at Ptsweeney Before the podcast, you can
- 40:22Speaker 1: always catch us worldwide at Bloomberg Radio