Economy, Strategy & Finance Data Reactions

One of the striking features of COVID-19 is that it appears to be much more dangerous for older people than for younger people. As a result, older people are more likely to stay at home and avoid having other people enter their home. As older Americans will experience a longer and more extreme social distancing, they are likely to cut back on spending more than younger people.

Labor shortages are becoming one of the main barriers for sustaining a healthy US economy, especially in industries that hire many blue-collar and manual service workers. Is this a passing phase or a long-lasting problem?

Trust is an important, but often neglected, intangible asset of the corporation. Trust is a value enhancer for corporate value, and conversely, a lack of trust can destroy market value in an instant.

How should companies prepare themselves to take a position on social issues? It comes down to four Ps: Purpose, Plan, Process, and Product. The important thing is to be strategic and to approach taking a public stand in the same way that a company would approach any other business decision.

I offer a Theory of Intangible Capital, a conceptual framework that includes brand as well as other internally grown unaccounted assets that don’t appear on the balance sheet but are reliable drivers of corporate value. Intangible capital is about understanding how intangible assets that you manage fit into the big picture of the total market value of the company.

It is not news that the US labor market is very tight. That is, with the unemployment rate near historic lows, employers are facing significant recruitment and retention difficulties. What is less known is that the labor market is tighter for blue-collar and manual services jobs than for the highly educated white-collar jobs. The exact opposite of prevailing trends in recent decades.