Of course the job numbers were bad.
I’ve lost count of how many people reached out to me about the President’s unceremonious firing of the Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. There’s plenty not to love about it.
For the sake of argument, though, put aside the potential implications for democracy and our global standing. If we’re being honest, there must be better ways to measure and report on the job market. At minimum, it makes no sense to publish monthly numbers when they’re subject to such wild revisions – it happens with GDP and the Consumer Price Index too. In our business, we would never report results to a client before we knew the data was rock solid. Sometimes that takes a day. Others, months.
If you’re a benefit-of-the-doubt kind of person, maybe a new BLS commissioner will build a better, faster mousetrap. Great.
However, hypothetically, if a new leader or new methodology is deemed unreliable or politically skewed, rest assured that people whose livelihoods rely on an accurate assessment of the U.S. economy – Wall Street types, retail executives, etc. – will snuff it out in a heartbeat. New private sector methods for analyzing employment will emerge a bit later. I know alternatives are being actively contemplated as we speak. Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.
Even for someone with a penchant for privatizing most things that can be privatized, economic reporting should be government-led, at least in a well-functioning democracy and free market. Companies come and go. Numbers that drive policies affecting every woman, man, and child in America should be derived through consistent, objective, and transparent means. Mild incidental inaccuracy can be tolerated, so long as certainty is softened accordingly (election pollsters would do well to follow that advice too, but I digress).
Here’s hoping whatever the Administration does next will meet those standards. Admittedly, the timing, circumstances, and knee-jerk reaction are enough to make anyone but the most loyal red hats skeptical.
In the meantime, there’s no reason to believe last week’s revised job numbers were wrong. Many of you reading this are employers, business leaders, or cogs in large corporations. Unless you work for a big tech company swimming in AI capital expenditures, you’ve felt the cooling of the job market for months. Businesses have been paralyzed by tariffs and supply chain uncertainties, not to mention pullbacks in consumer spending across a multitude of categories. Budget and hiring freezes abound. The percentage of U.S. workers who feel uncertain in their current employment situation reached a post-pandemic high, per CivicScience, last month.
We need reliable economic data – a universal source of truth. And, yes, it could be faster.
But sometimes the numbers merely verify what we already know.
Here’s what we’re seeing:
People are returning to the office, kicking and screaming. With five full years of data since the advent of lockdown, we’re beginning to learn a lot about how people like to work. Today, 29% of employed Americans would choose to be in the office full-time, a number that has remained fairly steady since 2021. Those who’d rather work at home full-time have jumped from 26% to 40% during that same period. The popularity of hybrid work, meanwhile, has plummeted. Once workers’ number one choice (at 45% in 2021), hybrid schedules are now only slightly more popular (31%) than full-time in the office. The numbers vary by gender, as you might expect. Nonetheless, what workers want matters less and less today. One byproduct of a tightening labor market (and household budgets) is the leverage it gives employers to make the rules.
AI will eventually change the workplace more than COVID did. Sticking with our employment theme, we held our latest Pulse of the U.S. Workforce webcast with our partners at Idealis this week. The data and discussion focused on the rapid emergence of AI at work. Nearly 50% of U.S. workers are already using AI tools in their jobs, with one-quarter of those people using it several times a day. Users of the technology find it increases their productivity and quality of work, primarily in completing routine tasks and sharpening communications (e.g., email). What I found most notable is that, while the average American is growing more optimistic about the positive role AI will play in our collective future, the people who use AI tools at work are far more concerned about the security of their jobs. Familiarity breeds contempt.
Americans are increasingly turning to hobbies to manage stress and financial strain. Eighty-nine percent of U.S. adults report having at least one hobby – making me feel bad for the 11% who don’t. The majority of those hobbyists, however, spend less than 5 hours per week pursuing them, meaning it would take them at least 38 years to gain Malcolm Gladwell-level expertise. The good news is that the number of people who are engaging in their hobbies 6 hours or more per week has increased 8 percentage points since 2023 – even as overall spending on hobbies has declined during that period. Also, hobbyists are increasingly self-taught. Over half report using YouTube or other online videos to learn and develop their hobbies.
Despite the recent economic headwinds, adults are splurging on toys and collectibles. Over one-third of U.S. adults say they’ve purchased one or more toys or collectibles for themselves or another adult in the past year, up from 28% in 2022. While nostalgia is a big driver – it’s the most common reason cited by Gen Xers and Boomers – lots of other factors explain the trend. Hobbies, financial investments, and being part of a community are also popular reasons. Most importantly for the marketers out there, these toy and collectibles buyers are a particularly brand-loyal bunch. You should find and target them to bring them into your web.
As if their sheer size isn’t impressive enough, the profile of Netflix’s audience is a marketer’s dream. We published the first in a series of upcoming studies on the psychographic makeup of different streaming platform users – this week looking at the king of the hill, Netflix. It includes a snapshot of the top ten and bottom ten most popular retail brands among NFLX users, which given their near ubiquity (over 60% of Americans subscribe to the service), it more or less corresponds with the size of each retailer. Still, even among niche national brands like Chico’s or REI, Netflix users over-index as loyal shoppers. They’re even more likely than average to say they’ll patronize small and independent retailers this upcoming holiday season.
More awesomeness from the InsightStore this week:
- Our 3 Things to Know: The impact of shipping costs on e-commerce purchasing behaviors, the rising popularity of price-matching in retail, and how K-12 parents are shopping differently than college-kid parents this back-to-school season.
The most popular questions this week:
Do you generally opt for a more elaborate or basic showering routine?
Have you ever been part of a high school musical or theater production?
How important do you think it is for all areas of the US to have broadband internet access?
Do you think playing multiple sports ultimately makes someone a better athlete?
Answer Key: Not at all, Tara would flip; Super basic – 5 minutes or less; Extremely creeped out by it; Yeah – Hello Dolly and Mame; Absolutely essential; Definitely, and also less injury prone.
Hoping you’re well.
JD
