Higher salaries in big cities do not always translate into higher standards of living because the cost of living varies greatly across cities. By tracking salaries by location, we’re able to see where employees can enjoy the highest standard of living. The matrix below illustrates the average salary of job postings and cost of living in an MSA. So what is the price tag of living in your city? We can use price indices across metropolitan areas and average salaries, to see the ‘premium’ you receive or ‘tax’ you pay on average by living in a city.
Our nation’s infrastructure is set to get a massive funding boost courtesy of the Federal government’s American Rescue Plan Act and bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. In their new report entitled Hard-to-Fill Infrastructure Jobs: A Challenge to Building Our Future the National League of Cities explores the labor market’s readiness for the influx of infrastructure jobs that will be created by these new funding streams. An infrastructure job is one in which the work required is related to the design, construction or maintenance of infrastructure
When Dolly Parton spun her classic 9-to-5 into an ode to side hustles for Super Bowl commercials, it sparked controversy as to whether hustle culture is the new norm. But is this really a _'whole new way to make a livin’_? By looking at online profiles who list more than one concurrent position, we can track the rise and fall of hustle culture in the American economy:
Roughly twice as many Americans retired in the first fifteen months of the pandemic than they did in 2019. Some of these retirements were by choice—driven by increased investments and a refocus on what matters in life. Others were involuntary—people in struggling industries were laid off and didn’t return to work. While there is a “Great Resignation” happening across all working age groups, Baby Boomers are leaping into early retirement—ready or not. And financial planners have found themselves in demand. How are we seeing financial services bring customers in?
Londoners are staying closer to home than residents of other towns and cities as the country counts on a post-Covid recovery. Since the depths of lockdown England during January 2021, Huq’s measure of population mobility – that is, the mean maximum distance travelled each day – has recovered 50% as a whole. While residents in The South and North are building towards 75% and 86% of pre-pandemic levels respectively, London lags 35% behind at just 50%.
It appears we’re closing the summer on a hot streak as overall job listings continued to rise in August for the 6th month in a row. While the trajectory is positive, the pace of growth continues to slow with August non-farm payroll numbers missing estimates and another increase in the number of jobs deleted in our database. This could be a sign of a broader slow-down, but we would anticipate hiring will accelerate ahead of the holiday season.
We’ll post updated charts later this week when we get our data for August, but we wanted to post the two charts below that show total (below) and new job openings (bottom) in goods and services industries between January 2020 and July 2021. As the first chart below for total job openings shows, between May and November last year, labor demand in services industries rose faster immediately following the decimation of Q2 ’21 than goods-producing industries.
Several of the top 10 markets for job gains in the U.S. added more jobs in the year-ending July than they did in June, according to data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). This uptick in job gains in half of the top 10 markets slowed the downward trend of combined gains that we have seen over the past several months. Still, we expect combined annual job gains to return closer to historical norms (between 500,000 and 600,000 jobs) among the top 10 markets by late 2021 or early 2022.
Temperatures weren’t the only thing rising in July, as sky high summer heat was accompanied by increasing job listings, with the month up 4.6%. This follows the slowdown observed in June where listings dipped by almost 1%. Reflecting on job demand changes overall, it is noteworthy that over the last year, only two months have seen a decline in listings, and growth continues.
For some school districts*, the back-to-school shopping season has arrived. Following a year of mostly remote learning and a resulting stunted 2020 school shopping period, we looked at our data to see if 2021 would be any different. Good news for retailers: a return to in-person classes and some extra cash from the first Child Tax Credit payment shows the retail tide may be turning.
Last month, the US government made one of what will become several monthly payments to households with children, meant to spur spending and reduce economic hardship. In today’s Insight Flash, we take advantage of our unique demographic capability to isolate households with children, and to cross-reference that by income, to evaluate the impact of this payment. Households with children began ramping spending in advance of the payment, moving from lower spend growth than shoppers without children the week of June 6 to slightly higher growth the weeks ending June 13 – July 11.
According to The Economist, just 10% of the world’s population is fully vaccinated against Covid. This average conceals a huge global divide – for low-income countries, the average is just 1%; it is over 30% for the most advanced economies. Even in the developed nations, the formula for vaccine rollout success is a complex blend of politics, economics, public health preparedness and national attitude. But it is clear that the economic bounceback will be led by the largest and most developed economies.
The phrase “no place like home” took on new meaning for many at the height of the pandemic, with much of the country pivoting to a new normal of quarantine and remote work. Some of the biggest beneficiaries of this development were the Home Improvement and Home Furnishing sectors as consumers increasingly took on DIY home projects and invested in home offices—to the tune of $420 billion last year.
In our Non-farm Payroll forecast earlier this month, we highlighted the yawning chasm of the bid-ask spread between employers and employees these days and touched on some of the structural mechanics of the job market in the context of how efficient or inefficient the job market is (typically), how COVID has obliterated any normalcy that might have previously existed in the job market, and what we expect to see in the coming months.
The number of people visiting Brighton’s shops dropped by 6% over the last month, as Huq’s geo-data reveals how the economy of the most ‘pinged’ city in the South East is being impacted by people being told to self-isolate. In our deep-dive series exploring the link between alerts and the impact on economic activity, today’s focus is on the South East where more than 87,309 NHS self-isolate alerts were sent and the seven days leading up to 14 July.
The UK has experienced a fresh wave of Covid-19 infections in recent weeks. Figures from the JHU show that cases peaked on July 20th and have since fallen. The NHS’ Covid-19 app sent a record 607,486 contact tracing alerts in the week ending July 14th. The IHS Markit/CIPS composite PMI fell 4.5% from June to July. Some suggest that high alert-levels are having an adverse effect on the economy as workers and shoppers stay home. The moniker for this new feature of the crisis is the ‘Pingdemic’.
As the economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and recession continues, annual gains in employment that had spiked in May are beginning to temper toward more normal levels. The U.S. gained 6.3 million jobs in the year-ending June, according to data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). This pace is down from the 8.6 million jobs gained in the year-ending May, and below the 10 million jobs added in April.
Looking back at the month of June, we see growth has slowed and the labor market appears to be leveling off. The month brought the first signs that the job market is cooling down. It’s not quite a summer slump, but maybe, just maybe, this slowdown signifies things could be (dare we say it?!?) returning to “normal.” While more than half of industries saw decline, several did see strong job growth last month. Topping the list are Real Estate and Rental and Leasing (+7.3%), Finance and Insurance (+6.8%), Information (+5.4%), and Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services (+6.8%).
Cash App was the most downloaded P2P payment app in the United States in the first half of 2021. Globally, it was the fifth most downloaded. See who took the #1 spot on the worldwide list here: Top 10 Most Downloaded P2P Payment Apps in the World in H1 2021. As a market, the top 10 P2P payment apps in the US increased downloads approximately 38.7% YoY to more than 90M. This total represents a 66.8% increase from H1 2019— a significant two-year gain. As mentioned in our global analysis, the United States is the leader in downloads for the P2P payment app market.
Dollar General has been accused of causing food deserts in low-income areas. While there is an abundance of anecdotal evidence on this, there has been little empirical evidence. By tracking Dollar General employees and comparing them to traditional grocery store employees, we are able to better understand the relationship between Dollar General and food deserts. Although both Dollar General and traditional grocery stores have been growing steadily
