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Speaker 2: This is the Bloomberg Surveillance Podcast. I'm Jonathan Ferrow, along
Speaker 2: with Lisa Bromwitz and Amrie Hordern. Join us each day
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Speaker 2: He's ten years younger without a tie. Alas Hogstein, the
Speaker 2: former Senior Advisor for Energy and Investment and Us. Welcome
Speaker 2: to the program.
Speaker 3: Thank you. Its great to be here.
Speaker 2: Good to see you're seem happy. We can get into
Speaker 2: that a little bit later. This came from Javier Blass
Speaker 2: just in the last week, and I have read the piece.
Speaker 2: What Ukraine has is scorched earth. What it doesn't have
Speaker 2: is rare earth. Surprisingly, many people, not least us President
Speaker 2: Donald Trump, seem convinced the country has a rich mineral endowment.
Speaker 2: It's aphoonic.
Speaker 3: What's your view on all of this.
Speaker 4: Well, first, I think Javier Uh has done a lot
Speaker 4: of research into this rare earth's. I've never seen any
Speaker 4: evidence of rare earths in Ukraine. There probably are critical
Speaker 4: minerals which are different from rare earths in Ukraine, but
Speaker 4: not at a at a stage where they've been identified Uh,
Speaker 4: and there's been any exploration drilling, not in any of
Speaker 4: the commercial quantities that we are aware of. There may be,
Speaker 4: and there are, you know, I'm sure there's some data
Speaker 4: there behind some of this that suggested there is.
Speaker 3: But to get from.
Speaker 4: A green field, from a discovery to a production can
Speaker 4: take many, many years. It's not a This is not
Speaker 4: expanding existing deposits.
Speaker 3: So I think this is.
Speaker 4: A worthwhile conversation to have with Ukraine about how to
Speaker 4: develop their mineral resources. We should talk about how to
Speaker 4: redevelop their gas resources, how to develop their green power resources.
Speaker 4: Ukraine I believe can be a major supplier of power
Speaker 4: to Europe. Critical minerals, I think is going to be
Speaker 4: regardless of how this turns out, is going to be
Speaker 4: many years away.
Speaker 1: When it comes to all these commodities. Wasn't a discussion
Speaker 1: like this on the table when you were working in
Speaker 1: government under Biden.
Speaker 4: This has been under the discussion since I was working
Speaker 4: government in Obama administration, so this has been many, many years.
Speaker 4: We've always wanted to see Ukraine develop its resources because
Speaker 4: that will give them economic boost, that will allow them
Speaker 4: to be more independent from Russia and to grow their economy.
Speaker 4: The corruption was the issue, right, but the resources were there.
Speaker 4: The issue is we shouldn't be taking the revenue from it.
Speaker 4: We should want them to have the revenue so that
Speaker 4: they can invest in the country, so that their Ukrainians
Speaker 4: across Europe that had to fleet can come back and
Speaker 4: they can rebuild a country, a military security apparatus, and
Speaker 4: a future for their people.
Speaker 1: You mentioned corruption, so I'm reminded of an opinion piece
Speaker 1: you wrote in twenty twenty when you left the super
Speaker 1: board of NAFTA Gas. So you've done a lot of
Speaker 1: work in Ukraine when it comes to this sector. Do
Speaker 1: you think the corruption has gotten better since then? Tackling
Speaker 1: the corruption?
Speaker 3: Not really.
Speaker 4: I think there's a lot of corruption, predates Zelenski. It
Speaker 4: was a corrupt society before the Maydan Revolution. The idea
Speaker 4: was let's make it better. I think it did get better,
Speaker 4: and then some of those efforts stalled. There's been a
Speaker 4: tradition in government when there's a little bit of stress
Speaker 4: to go and use that moment to rob the kitty
Speaker 4: from state owned enterprises. That's a problem that sort of
Speaker 4: ebbs and flows. I think it continues with the state
Speaker 4: control and during the war. It's hard to criticize during
Speaker 4: a war when you're having your city's bombed regularly, how
Speaker 4: you don't do that.
Speaker 3: So there's a lot of temptation there.
Speaker 4: But I think it's a systemic issue that the international
Speaker 4: community should tackle.
Speaker 5: Just ignoring some of the more heated rhetoric around the
Speaker 5: Ukraine Russian War because of the lack of accountability of
Speaker 5: where funding is going. Do you think that there is
Speaker 5: validity in pushing back unjust how much the US and
Speaker 5: even European nations are contributing to the Ukrainians in this
Speaker 5: Ukraine Russian War.
Speaker 4: You got to separate a couple of things. One is
Speaker 4: we need to support Ukraine because another country invaded. You
Speaker 4: can argue whether or not the words that Zelenski used
Speaker 4: before the invasion were smart or not.
Speaker 3: Was it good or bad?
Speaker 4: Nothing gives you the right to invade another country because
Speaker 4: you don't like what the leader said, you just can't
Speaker 4: do that. So they invaded another country and we should
Speaker 4: support it. And they invaded Georgia in two thousand and eight,
Speaker 4: and if we didn't intervene, they would control all of
Speaker 4: Georgia today and Ukraine. So you got to stop that then,
Speaker 4: I think one hundred percent. And we talked about this
Speaker 4: already Biden administration. There's a lot of concern about where
Speaker 4: is this money going and who's in control of it?
Speaker 4: And this came up in many conversations with le with
Speaker 4: his top people about our concerns. So what you should
Speaker 4: do is tighten the controls on the money and put
Speaker 4: the oversight in place so that you know where the
Speaker 4: money is going. But you can't do it while also saying, well,
Speaker 4: because of that, we're going to allow the Russians to
Speaker 4: take a whole bunch of territory and win the war.
Speaker 4: So it's a really tough balance. But you know, government's hard.
Speaker 5: When you left the government, where was the Ukrainian situation
Speaker 5: in terms of how much territory Russia had taken and
Speaker 5: the sense of the balance of power at a time
Speaker 5: where it seemed like Russia was making some inroads.
Speaker 4: So Russia was making some inroads, but largely the confanty
Speaker 4: had been frozen for a long time. Where Russia makes
Speaker 4: a little bit of inroads, then Ukraine makes some inroads
Speaker 4: somewhere else. You know, on a netnet basis, Russia was
Speaker 4: making more inroads than it was losing, but it wasn't
Speaker 4: massive amounts of territory, so it was largely frozen. But
Speaker 4: that was in order to get to a negotiation. I
Speaker 4: agree with the Drum administration that enough is enough, let's
Speaker 4: get to a negotiation. I think you have to force
Speaker 4: both sides to come to the table, and you got
Speaker 4: to force some tough choices by both sides.
Speaker 3: Need to make some tough choices.
Speaker 4: Freezing the war place and saying okay, we're done, let's
Speaker 4: call this a border is really tough because hundreds of
Speaker 4: thousands of people have been killed to do what just
Speaker 4: to allow for the parts of the country to go away,
Speaker 4: and then what is there a disarmed rush on the
Speaker 4: other side, I don't think so. So they invade again
Speaker 4: in two years, in four years. So you have to
Speaker 4: create a negotiation that has both sides of the table,
Speaker 4: that allows for some kind of resolution that both sides
Speaker 4: don't like, but that ends the war.
Speaker 2: Some points that might the argument that the current president
Speaker 2: and President Trump is attempting to shock the Europeans into action.
Speaker 2: Can you walk us through your experience with the European allies?
Speaker 2: How frustrating was that?
Speaker 4: I think for us, for the United States, it's always
Speaker 4: a bit frustrating. I think we like to go a
Speaker 4: little bit faster, and we want to do things more
Speaker 4: aggressively when it comes to areas of conflict and negotiations.
Speaker 4: On the other hand, on the economic policy, we tend
Speaker 4: to go a little bit slower.
Speaker 3: In the environmental issues. We were as a green pro green.
Speaker 4: Administration, were frustrated by how far sometimes the Europeans would
Speaker 4: go without thinking through the consequences of where they were going,
Speaker 4: and then they would suffer the consequences which affects us
Speaker 4: and they create high water marks that we then have
Speaker 4: to deal with our constituencies of why aren't you doing
Speaker 4: with the Europeans, And it's a bad answer. We say, well,
Speaker 4: wait two to five years, you'll see why we're not
Speaker 4: doing what the Europeans are doing. So I think there's
Speaker 4: always been frustrations there. We tried to do trade policy
Speaker 4: with Europe in the Obama administration, the Biden administration, the
Speaker 4: Trump administration now again very frustrating, very difficult to do it.
Speaker 4: So it's built into the system. But at the end
Speaker 4: of the day, these are our allies and we have
Speaker 4: to recognize that the argument with them, this is the
Speaker 4: argument inside the family, versus the arguments with others, which
Speaker 4: is outside the family.
Speaker 1: But don't almost sometimes need to maybe shake them up.
Speaker 1: You were part of the Obama administration telling Germany not
Speaker 1: to go ahead with Nordstream too, yet they did.
Speaker 4: It, yes, And if they didn't do it, large parts
Speaker 4: of why their declining economy is now would have been avoided.
Speaker 4: They bought into to the argument of your heroin dealer,
Speaker 4: the first hit is free and after.
Speaker 3: That you pay a big price, and telling that.
Speaker 4: I went to Journey before the Ukraine War five months
Speaker 4: before and said, something's wrong. You're you're in trouble, and
Speaker 4: they insisted that they weren't. When the Russians were playing
Speaker 4: a game of filling their storage in the winter from
Speaker 4: their own storage instead of from Russia, I said, how
Speaker 4: is it possible your pipeline's empty but your storage is filling.
Speaker 1: What took the Europeans so long to see the intelligence
Speaker 1: that the Biden administration was seeing, and that Jake Sullivan
Speaker 1: was openly telling the press from the podium.
Speaker 3: We shared all the intelligence.
Speaker 4: I think sometimes they had the exact same intelligence we
Speaker 4: had on the invasion. We knew we were saying the
Speaker 4: invasion's coming on this day, on this we on this day,
Speaker 4: at this hour. They refuse to see it.
Speaker 3: No, this is just an exercise.
Speaker 4: I think sometimes being the neighbor, you kind of can't
Speaker 4: see us.
Speaker 3: Being an ocean away, we see it with clearer eyes.
Speaker 4: We've missed plenty of intelligence, so I don't want to,
Speaker 4: you know, We've we had nine to eleven that people
Speaker 4: were training inside the United States and we didn't see it.
Speaker 4: So I think they were just too close to the
Speaker 4: Russians and always making the excuses for him, And that
Speaker 4: was the problem with Merko and others. They were making
Speaker 4: the excuses. No, he doesn't mean it, And I think
Speaker 4: we have to learn a lot of lessons, and Europe
Speaker 4: has to learn more lessons.
Speaker 3: But I think they have learned a lesson.
Speaker 4: They don't want this war to end this way because
Speaker 4: they're worried that this war it doesn't end here in
Speaker 4: five years from now.
Speaker 3: He invades another country.
Speaker 2: I wanted to finish on this because we could talk
Speaker 2: achieve oh day. I mentioned this a couple of times,
Speaker 2: and I was half joking but semi serious. Of course,
Speaker 2: ten years younger without the time. I've said this a
Speaker 2: few times. There are some really, really smart, intelligent people
Speaker 2: that work inside our administrations here in the United States.
Speaker 2: We spoke to one last week secretly, Best of the Treasury.
Speaker 2: I worry more and more as you has passed by
Speaker 2: that those kind of people want to go into US government.
Speaker 2: I consider you part of that. The leaves sing another
Speaker 2: at am I really talented, intelligent individuals. You might disagree
Speaker 2: with them on their politics, but when it comes to policy,
Speaker 2: they've thought things through. Do you worry about that too.
Speaker 4: I think it's getting harder and harder to come into government.
Speaker 4: I mean, obviously, the hours are terrible. The stress is
Speaker 4: why your family time is terrible. And I've seen so
Speaker 4: much damage to people's families just by making the choice,
Speaker 4: especially if you're at the White House or at.
Speaker 3: Senior levels in the government.
Speaker 4: And the problem is if you're not already wealthy, it's
Speaker 4: becoming even harder because the income is relatively lower.
Speaker 3: And I get it.
Speaker 4: It's higher than the average American salary, but it is
Speaker 4: lower relative to what the earning potential is for the
Speaker 4: people that are in those jobs. And the stress on
Speaker 4: it and the amount that it costs you to manage
Speaker 4: your life the government doesn't pay for, and the scrutiny.
Speaker 4: I mean, I have protesters outside my house yelling that
Speaker 4: I'm accusing me of genocide, going after my daughter and
Speaker 4: putting her on Instagram, my thirteen year old. That comes
Speaker 4: with the job. And it's not like the Secret Service
Speaker 4: was there to help me or the cops. I mean
Speaker 4: they're just standing there watching. So what you get, the
Speaker 4: blowback that you get and is in to manage your
Speaker 4: life is.
Speaker 3: Really really difficult.
Speaker 4: The process for confirmation by the Senate is out of control,
Speaker 4: and for relatively low level positions. So to come and
Speaker 4: be an assistant secretary in some random agency, you are
Speaker 4: now supposed to hire lawyers and accountants and to do
Speaker 4: a forensics auditing of your life, of your personal life,
Speaker 4: of your financial I mean it's too much, and so
Speaker 4: I worry that outside of it being you know, I
Speaker 4: made a lot of money, so I'm going to go
Speaker 4: into government and play with that for a little bit,
Speaker 4: and that happens at both parties. I worry that that
Speaker 4: it gets harder and harder to get good people.
Speaker 3: To come in.
Speaker 2: I think a lot of people share that worry. Almost
Speaker 2: it's good to see you. Hopefully we'll catch up again soon,
Speaker 2: I mustoxting there they form a senior advisor for Energy
Speaker 2: and Investment to President Bier At mos of RAMA, James
Speaker 2: joins us. Now we can extend this conversation and welcome
Speaker 2: to the program, sir. Hopefully we can hear you, because
Speaker 2: we didn't hear our last guest, so hopefully we can
Speaker 2: hear you. And there you are perfect, wonderful, and let's
Speaker 2: talk about the dojeffer over the weekend.
Speaker 3: Sir.
Speaker 2: That email that went out, what's in the consequence of
Speaker 2: all of this will ultimately be so.
Speaker 6: John, I want you to send me an email by
Speaker 6: midnight tonight, and if you don't respond, I get a
Speaker 6: million dollars. I think that's one of the responses here
Speaker 6: in DC. The question I have with this is that
Speaker 6: if you go into the executive order that establishes DOGE,
Speaker 6: this is not within their charge, and so you are
Speaker 6: going to have a series of things and this is
Speaker 6: a real issue here in DAE as to who are
Speaker 6: you actually reporting to and if you don't report, are
Speaker 6: there some legal consequences. Certainly, everyone who wants to keep
Speaker 6: their job is looking for guidance of exactly what they
Speaker 6: are supposed to do with this under the executive order.
Speaker 6: Those are supposed to be working on an upgrade to
Speaker 6: the IT system and sub support. The Chief of Staff
Speaker 6: to the President, Susie Wilde Those does not set this
Speaker 6: out in executive Order, but we keep on seeing expansion
Speaker 6: of that, and until we get some of the legal
Speaker 6: infrastructure around that, I think there's gonna be a lot
Speaker 6: of quote unquote trauma and uncertainty here in DC. If
Speaker 6: you want to shrink the federal government, you can do that.
Speaker 6: We've seen that in the past. There are processes in place.
Speaker 6: Clearly they want to move fast, as you saw Treasury
Speaker 6: Secretary Vesant say with your interview. However, it is unclear
Speaker 6: on if you move fast, asked is it more effective
Speaker 6: or not ed.
Speaker 1: We have several government agencies people that Trump put in place,
Speaker 1: people that everyone in a lot of mainstream media were
Speaker 1: calling serious loyalists, telling their employees to leave those emails
Speaker 1: on red At the same time that Trump is tweeting
Speaker 1: out memes, one of SpongeBob SquarePants saying, this is what
Speaker 1: I got done last week. Quote cried about Trump cried
Speaker 1: about Elon If you're an employee at one of these
Speaker 1: agencies and you want to secure your job, what do
Speaker 1: you do?
Speaker 6: You listen to your manager because ultimately that is going
Speaker 6: to be what you kind of have to work with.
Speaker 6: But there is a lot of uncertainty, and you know,
Speaker 6: I think that when we look at kind of some
Speaker 6: of the you know, we've discussed the national security issues,
Speaker 6: the classified issues, it is very kind of appropriate to
Speaker 6: have the Director of National Intelligence, Chelsea Gabbert, come out
Speaker 6: and say to the entire intelligence community, do not respond.
Speaker 6: There's just certain things that you can't When you hear
Speaker 6: from Elon Mo through his posts, some of this is
Speaker 6: are there government employees who are not on their email,
Speaker 6: are not responding to things. That's an appropriate thing to
Speaker 6: get a pulse check for individuals, whether or not they
Speaker 6: are engaged in their job. There have been individuals who've
Speaker 6: been told not to do their job. You look at
Speaker 6: the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, there's been a number of
Speaker 6: folks told stand down, don't work. So if you've in
Speaker 6: that position, how do you respond? But I'm also really
Speaker 6: looking amory at what's going to help happen here in DC.
Speaker 6: You know, we have a lot of to dos in
Speaker 6: Congress this week. We're going to see at the end
Speaker 6: of the week. Are they going to be able to
Speaker 6: fill out that five step thing? Did they pass the budget?
Speaker 6: Are we moving forward with the tax cris? Are we
Speaker 6: moving forward with that new defense and immigration spending?
Speaker 1: Do you think the House will pass the budget this week?
Speaker 6: I'm really skeptical. I think that, you know, we have
Speaker 6: a situation where one or two members can sync the
Speaker 6: entire thing. We already have one hard note out there.
Speaker 6: When we look at this bill, I don't know if
Speaker 6: there's enough of a crisis or a deadline to get
Speaker 6: this done just yet. So I wouldn't expect it to
Speaker 6: kind of go clean on the first start, but almost
Speaker 6: nothing happens clean on the first start. I am expecting
Speaker 6: that more attention is going to go to the Senate
Speaker 6: passed budget. Maybe that provides a quick win for the
Speaker 6: president on immigration spending, on defense spending, if they need
Speaker 6: a backup plan, if the House just can't get everyone
Speaker 6: on the same page, just yet how.
Speaker 5: Much spending that you see being cut from the US
Speaker 5: government is real versus just sort of theorized about. In
Speaker 5: other words, how much oxygen have they really saved by
Speaker 5: making some of these cuts in the federal workforce and
Speaker 5: announcing cuts to the Defense Department that haven't been approved yet,
Speaker 5: and our sort of discussions at.
Speaker 6: This point, Yeah, at least at this point, it's very low.
Speaker 6: A lot of the savings that have been announced are
Speaker 6: contracts that have actually already been paid. So I want
Speaker 6: to see more kind of on a go forward basis
Speaker 6: much that is going to kind of take into account.
Speaker 3: When we look at Congress.
Speaker 6: We're not quite sure when they are coming up with
Speaker 6: some of their budget cuts, how much are those paper savings,
Speaker 6: how much of those are real savings. I do think though,
Speaker 6: there is a lot of momentum of making the tax
Speaker 6: cuts that passed in twenty seventeen permanent, and I don't
Speaker 6: think they're going to be able to get five trillion
Speaker 6: dollars worth of pay for US either through dose savings
Speaker 6: or through some of the savings that Congress chooses. So
Speaker 6: having this conversation about how aggressive Doze is being, how
Speaker 6: aggressive we are going to be on tariff policy is
Speaker 6: providing political cover and groundwork to actually add to the
Speaker 6: debt and the deficit over the next ten years, even
Speaker 6: when you've had this narrative that there's such a significant
Speaker 6: reduction in staff and savings of the federal government.
Speaker 2: Lisa ed, thank you, sir. We're going to leave it
Speaker 2: there at most of Raymond James joining us on the
Speaker 2: latest DOJ effort down in Washington, day sable. So here's
Speaker 2: the like sis you've mentioned. Sentiment showing consumer inflation expectations
Speaker 2: jumping to their highest level in almost three decades. Survey responses,
Speaker 2: mostly along party lines, showing new inflation reconcerns about President
Speaker 2: Trump's tariff policy. Joining us now to break it down.
Speaker 2: Nata Richardson of ABP NATA good morning. Got to start
Speaker 2: with you missed on Friday. How reliable is that economic data?
Speaker 2: How much weight should we put on that?
Speaker 3: I think it.
Speaker 7: Gives you good situational awareness. Should you create monetary policy
Speaker 7: around it?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 7: I don't think so. But in terms of where the
Speaker 7: consumer is going, what they're thinking, and tracking that every
Speaker 7: single month, I think it gives you a benchmark or
Speaker 7: at least some context for how consumers are feeling. We
Speaker 7: can't interview every person on the street. If we could,
Speaker 7: we get you know, more real time data, but it's
Speaker 7: a survey. There's luckily other things from the FAD about
Speaker 7: consumer expectations from the New York Fad and other banks
Speaker 7: that we can also use to support this data. But
Speaker 7: I think if we take from it that consumers are
Speaker 7: still feeling inflation and it's dampening their sentiment, I think
Speaker 7: that's a great piece of information to move forward to
Speaker 7: and think about the economy in a broader context.
Speaker 5: We've been pretty parished. I've gotten a couple of emails
Speaker 5: people saying, really, this is coming back. And on the
Speaker 5: flip side, there's a lot of optimism along businesses. See
Speaker 5: I'm actually being positive here, And even though you have
Speaker 5: consumers that feel negative consumer the optimism among small businesses
Speaker 5: is skyrocketed. So which is more important to hiring and
Speaker 5: to the overall economy. If people have jobs, what they
Speaker 5: do and what they say are going to be different things.
Speaker 7: What they do and what they say are different things.
Speaker 7: And I think it's a matter of timing because feelings
Speaker 7: do translate into action, and if consumers are feeling bearish
Speaker 7: about this economy, it matters for hiring because it's a
Speaker 7: consumer driven economy. Consumers are driving the industries that are
Speaker 7: being that are surviving and thriving right now, leisure and hospitality,
Speaker 7: healthcare which includes a lot of discretionary procedures as well,
Speaker 7: like dental work for example. So you know, we can't
Speaker 7: discount the consumer mood and the consumer vibe. At the
Speaker 7: same time, it's encouraging to see small firms feeling optimistic
Speaker 7: because small firms are the engine of growth for the economy.
Speaker 7: So what are they optimistic about. I think they're optimistic
Speaker 7: about perhaps slower interest rates, slower financing costs, maybe an
Speaker 7: easier hiring environment, viz. Are the larger firms who have
Speaker 7: outmanned them in recruitment and talent, And maybe there's a
Speaker 7: feeling of less regulation going into this new year, new
Speaker 7: administration that gives them some like tailwind to their spirits.
Speaker 5: Statistic is there a sense that the negativity and consumer
Speaker 5: sentiment can persist for a very long time and it
Speaker 5: not be felt in the broader economy. And I say
Speaker 5: this because there was a data out of Moodies that
Speaker 5: said that the top ten percent of US earners now
Speaker 5: account for about half of all consumer spending that actually
Speaker 5: in the period in the year ended September twenty twenty four,
Speaker 5: they increase spending well, the rest of the earners decrease spending.
Speaker 5: Can this continue for a while because people at the
Speaker 5: top are feeling pretty.
Speaker 7: Good as long as asset prices hold up. So if
Speaker 7: you are a wealthier consumer, some of your optimism and
Speaker 7: your spending patterns are based on the fact that assets
Speaker 7: have been really strong over this time period. So while
Speaker 7: lower income consumers are feeling inflation in a very visceral way.
Speaker 7: I mean, I was in Louisiana where the price of
Speaker 7: eggs were over ten dollars because of the bird flu.
Speaker 3: You're going to.
Speaker 7: Feel that as a low income consumer. But if asset
Speaker 7: prices stay strong, you may not feel the same pinch
Speaker 7: as a high income consumer and can keep that fluidity
Speaker 7: and that spending. But yes, the fact that this is
Speaker 7: a lopsided consumption market is a very real thing. If
Speaker 7: asset prices turned sideways, that changes the dynamic for the economy.
Speaker 1: That's a tough anecdote and something this administration or any
Speaker 1: administration Biden Trump, very challenging to do because it's going on.
Speaker 1: The bird flu Something else that struck me with the
Speaker 1: University of Michigan survey was that more than half of
Speaker 1: consumers expect the unemployment rate to rise over the next year.
Speaker 1: Do consumers think they might be out of a job?
Speaker 7: We're seeing that in the turnover race. There is some
Speaker 7: anxiety perhaps on the worker side. I mean, everyone's seeing
Speaker 7: the headlines on the federal government and what's going on there,
Speaker 7: but we don't really talk about what that could mean
Speaker 7: for the private sector. And from what I'm hearing anecdotally
Speaker 7: and what I'm seeing in the ADP data and we've
Speaker 7: sell about before the new year and the new administration,
Speaker 7: is that people and workers are staying put. There's a
Speaker 7: sense that the economic prospects, the job opportunities aren't as
Speaker 7: plentiful as they were two years ago. It's taking longer
Speaker 7: to get a job. It's taking longer to find a
Speaker 7: white collar job. We've seen business services retract their hiring.
Speaker 7: New college graduates are taking longer to get a job,
Speaker 7: and there's a sense that maybe I should stay with
Speaker 7: the employer. I have also with the Great Resignation, a
Speaker 7: lot of people switched like two years ago, and they're
Speaker 7: not ready to move, so that turnover is having an
Speaker 7: effect on the labor market and it's leading to the
Speaker 7: stasis that we're seeing. It's like the quiet before the
Speaker 7: storm in some sense.
Speaker 2: Andrew Honeholzer City talked about the same thing, this low
Speaker 2: churn dynamic in the labor market. They think is inconsistent
Speaker 2: with a healthy labor market.
Speaker 5: If the market is strong, you should be able to
Speaker 5: quit your job, and that's why people are watching quits
Speaker 5: come down to some of the lowest levels since the pandemic,
Speaker 5: and that's the reason why some people are saying it
Speaker 5: could portend something less positive.
Speaker 2: Focused on jobless claims as well. At the moment, aren't
Speaker 2: we every single Thursday at the index level, things are
Speaker 2: still okay. Beneath the index just focused on Virginia, Washington,
Speaker 2: d C certain places that things starting to break, and.
Speaker 5: People put out reports over the weekend of the proportion
Speaker 5: of federal workers that work in the DC area it's
Speaker 5: about twenty percent. So people are going to be looking
Speaker 5: at specific counts in specific counties to try to understand
Speaker 5: how this is trickling into numbers, to get a broader
Speaker 5: sense of how to even frame this in conversation.
Speaker 2: The estimates a Thursday morning, by the way, is two
Speaker 2: twenty one. The previous week was two nineteen. NEI look
Speaker 2: good to see you, as always, thank you, neither written
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