Newsletter #15 (1/20/2025)
Is the economy really strong?, traffic in the US sucks, what are the Detroit Tigers doing to overtime pay, and John Deere in the news again
America’s economy continues with its strong numbers, but does Main Street believe the headlines?
Recruitonomics’ latest report on the economy declares that “the landing was soft”, but is that the reality we are seeing beyond the numbers?
Job growth remains strong, likely buoyed by the recent rate cuts. But the movement in the market has been trending in the wrong direction for some time, rivaling job market finding rates with recent recessions:
One of the larger concerns, however, for the US is the state of the residential housing market. Mortgage rates remain stubbornly high, recently surpassing 7% again despite several rate cuts by The Fed. Notably, “homebuyer demand for mortgages is now at the lowest level in 30 years, according to data from the real estate analytics tool Reventure App.”
Pay close attention to the following passage from an analysis of Reventure’s update:
“According to Reventure's data, which compiles information from the Mortgage Bankers Association and Investing.com, mortgage applications are down 63 percent from their pandemic peak. The principal issue right now for buyers is a lack of affordability. With the typical US homebuyer facing a mortgage payment that takes up nearly 40 percent of their gross income if they buy right now," Nick Gerli, a real estate analyst and the CEO of Reventure App, wrote on X, formerly Twitter, commenting on the data.”
In addition, inflation for groceries continues its recent upward swing after trending downward for the better part of 2024.
Whether you are watching your own bank account or your department’s budget, make sure you have a decent dose of realism as you approach the rest of 2025. In fact, don’t take my word for it…….
Pay attention to Southwest looking for efficiency, how REI killed its training agency, BP laid off 5% of its global workforce, and 3D home printer Icon is adjusting its workforce by approximately 25%.
I did not know until I came across this article that REI even had a travel business and skills training agency, but Southwest Airlines, BP and Icon are the latest companies to rightsize their workforce based on their current operating conditions.
Corporate layoffs at massive Fortune 500 companies continue to dominate headlines, if you are paying any sort of attention. While not to the levels we saw during the Great Recession, and hopefully they do not come close, the reality is the name of the game in 2025 is efficiency. If you are not taking the time to analyze how your company – your department – can perform the work more efficiently in 2025, you are going to fall behind your competitors.
Take the time as you plan out the remaining 11 months of the year to see how you can reduce bureaucracy in your organization, increase delivery of excellent services to your customers, remove barriers to collaboration, and simplify your processes without adding additional staff where possible. Consult for yourself before there is a need to bring in outside consultants like these guys:
Spending a week in traffic just sucks.
That’s how much the average American spends in traffic every year, according to the latest Global Traffic Scorecard.
Surprisingly, at least to this Texan, was that Houston was the only Texas city on the Americas report. If you’ve spent any time in Austin, San Antonio or Dallas, the traffic is simply terrible. Now, Houston is pretty bad, but comparatively in my opinion, none of the 4 largest urban areas in Texas are well planned to move large scale traffic around their respective city.
In addition to analyzing the actual time spent in traffic, the Global Traffic Scorecard was kind enough to put a value to the time and fuel that was spent unproductively. That “lost time” value in the US in 2024 was $771.
In summary, if you live and work in Houston, you spent a week of your life in traffic in 2024 and paid $771 for the benefit of wasting that time. Lucky you!
The Detroit Tigers are the latest company alleged to not pay overtime to their workers.
The truth is usually somewhere in between but here is a former employee asking for class action status for their case, accusing the Tigers of not paying overtime. More specifically, the lawsuit “argues the Tigers failed to take into account all pay the workers received when calculating overtime rates. Jones' lawyers argue the franchise did not include extra money a worker may receive for a "shift premium" — a perk for someone working an irregular shift — and other bonuses.”
Unfortunately, this is not an uncommon mistake by companies when calculating overtime. Many times, the error is unforced and/or not due to malice, but ignorance. Make sure your payroll practices are up to speed to avoid this type of situation with your employees.
It's about time someone told John Deere to cut the crap.
The US federal government recently stepped in against John Deere’s alleged long-standing consumer malpractice, accusing it in a lawsuit of unfair tactics including the bane of many farmers: the right to repair the products they own.
For the uninitiated, the lawsuit calls out how “Deere’s unlawful practices have limited the ability of farmers and independent repair providers to repair Deere equipment, forcing farmers to instead rely on Deere’s network of authorized dealers for necessary repair.”
Further, “the only fully functional software repair tool capable of performing all repairs on Deere equipment is produced by Deere. Deere makes this tool available only to Deere’s authorized dealers, forcing farmers to solely rely on more expensive authorized dealers for critical repairs. By creating these restrictions, Deere has unlawfully acquired and maintained monopoly power in the market for certain repair services for Deere agricultural equipment, according to the FTC’s complaint.”
In other words, Deere allegedly figured out how to game the system to where everything they sell, the only way to have it repaired is to go to a Deere dealership.
Deere is not the only corporation to be accused of rigging the system to their benefit, likely will not be the last, and reflects a long-simmering feud of consumers (and those representing their interests) of wanting the right to repair products they purchase without the aid of the company who made the product. While Colorado was the first state to pass “right to repair” legislation for farmers, the movement has attracted a lot of attention in the last several years. This New York Times article from a few years ago details many aspects to consider about the movement and what can be done about repairing the products you buy.
While every company reserves the right to maximize their revenue and profit margins based on the products and services they sell, if that behavior exudes monopolistic tendencies, they should be ready to have that right challenged. Sometimes, people are just tired of the shenanigans by the big companies.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
© January 2025, Brandon Caldwell. All rights reserved. Hyperlinks are used frequently for proper credit to source material on respective websites, news articles, social media or other sources. Images are used with and in credit to rights reserved to their respective owner(s). While it can be a useful tool, no ChatGPT or other generative AI was used in the production of this newsletter. Opinions are mine and do not reflect the opinion or policy of others including employers past or present.