2019
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Working From Home? You're Far From Alone
March 29 | Gad Levanon, PhD, Former Vice President, Labor Markets, The Conference Board | Frank Steemers, Former Senior Economist, The Conference Board | Comments (0)Over the past few years, many of the world’s top companies have reduced or eliminated the option to work from home. Bank of America, IBM and Aetna all made news over their decision to change course.
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Why Are Labor Markets Tight in Central and Eastern Europe — Policy and Business Implications
March 25 | Frank Steemers, Former Senior Economist, The Conference Board | Comments (0)With labor markets tightening and labor costs rapidly rising in Central and Eastern Europe, the advantage of lower labor costs compared to the rest of the continent will further shrink over time and could mean that businesses will shift operations elsewhere.
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Headquartering Talent
March 25 | Brian Schaitkin, Former Senior Economist, The Conference Board | Comments (0)Cities that are among the most well educated tend to attract a disproportionate share of headquarters jobs. For example, Washington, New York, San Francisco, and Minneapolis all have a far higher percentage of college educated workers than the national average. An exceptionally well-educated workforce is a stronger draw for firms making headquarters location decisions than one more typical of the population.
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Teleworking continues to rapidly expand
March 11 | Gad Levanon, PhD, Former Vice President, Labor Markets, The Conference Board | Frank Steemers, Former Senior Economist, The Conference Board | Comments (0)Employers are facing a prolonged tight labor market for the first time in an era when advanced remote working technologies are available. To address talent shortages, companies can use teleworking to broaden the pool of potential workers. Teleworking is especially playing an important role in addressing talent shortages in white-collar occupations, but less so among blue-collar and low-paid service occupations.
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Explaining Harley Davidson’s Mid-Life Crisis
February 25 | Gad Levanon, PhD, Former Vice President, Labor Markets, The Conference Board | Comments (0)Spending on motorcycle sales are almost exclusively concentrated in middle-aged, white households. It turns out that in the next ten years, the number of consumers in this group is likely to shrink faster than any other population group in the US. We predict that these demographic shifts alone will lower spending on motorcycles by 3.7. Motor cycles are just one example of a product class where a core group of customers is aging out of a key demographic.
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C-Suite Challenge 2019: Labor Markets Implications
January 25 | Gad Levanon, PhD, Former Vice President, Labor Markets, The Conference Board | Comments (0)C-suite executives are taking notice of global talent shortages. Attraction and retention of top talent was the top ranked internal hot button issue by CEOs in every region of the world. At the same time, wage increases are ranked among the bottom of the hot-button issues across regions. This is in line with current wage data for most regions, but with the wage acceleration in recent quarters in many parts of the world, we do expect this to change in 2019.
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Central and Eastern Europe has one of the tightest labor markets in the world
January 17 | Frank Steemers, Former Senior Economist, The Conference Board | Comments (0)Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) is the region with perhaps the most severe shortage of labor in the world. Many companies with operations in this region are running into hiring difficulties and labor costs are rapidly rising. While a problem for companies, workers are benefiting and taking home large real wage gains.
2018
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The Unemployment Rate Does Not Fully Capture Labor Market Slack
December 13 | Frank Steemers, Former Senior Economist, The Conference Board | Comments (0)The unemployment rate may be overestimating current labor market tightness. An exercise on monthly employment changes shows that 63 percent of all newly employed people aged 25 to 54 in October 2018 were not actively looking for a job in the previous month. If employers are looking for slack in the labor market, they should find better ways to source and recruit the people who are not looking for work and allegedly not willing to work.