Aurelia Butler

America’s largest newspaper publisher has a problem: it cannot find enough people to toss editions on to readers’ doorsteps.Gannett, which publishes more than 250 titles from the Abilene Reporter-News to USA Today, is short of about 1,000 drivers to drop off papers in the small hours of the morning. About 12 per cent of its delivery routes are now unstaffed.Yet at the same time, Gannett has told employees that “painful” cuts to staffing are coming as it tries to control costs in its declining print operations.The disconnect between job shortages and lay-offs, even in a single company, illustrates the mixed messages emanating from the US labour market. A historic burst of hiring is colliding with questions about whether some employers have hired too fast.As industries from trucking to fast food complain of labour shortages, businesses as diverse as Coinbase, Goldman Sachs, Microsoft, Netflix, Robinhood, Shopify, Tesla, Twitter and Walmart have warned of job cuts in recent weeks.The backdrop is an economy that added an unexpectedly high 528,000 jobs in July, bringing unemployment down to a historically low 3.5 per cent even after two quarters of declining gross domestic product.“We’re all scratching our heads a little bit,” admits Martine Ferland, chief executive of Mercer, which advises companies on workforce and benefits issues.“I’ve been in this industry for 25 years and I’ve never seen anything like it,” echoed Joanie Bily, chief workforce analyst at EmployBridge, which places workers in manufacturing, logistics and call centre jobs. “Even if we’re in a technical recession, this is a really different type of recession because the labour market still remains strong,” she said.For Andrew Challenger, head of sales for Challenger, Gray & Christmas, the anecdotal evidence of widespread job cuts is not supported by his staffing company’s research. Lay-offs were above 2021 levels in June and July, but the number it tallied in the seven months between January and July was the lowest for a comparable period since it began tracking such cuts in 1993.The US government’s job openings and labour turnover data only runs up to June but tells a similar story of lay-offs still running at historically low levels in most industries.

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“We’ve been in a very severe labour shortage at a time when companies have been completely focused on hiring and have had their eye off lay-offs altogether. That being said, there are some reasons to believe we might be at an inflection point,” Challenger said.The recent cuts his firm has tracked have been concentrated in a few sectors such as the automotive, construction and financial technology industries.Areas of finance that are sensitive to rising interest rates, such as mortgage lenders, have also been affected, Bily at EmployBridge noted: “Two years ago those jobs were in such high demand and wages were going through the roof for loan processors and closers. That has come to a screeching halt.”On Wall Street, too, the mood has shifted from bumper bonuses in 2021 to fears of lay-offs in 2022 amid a sharp decline in investment banking fees. Many firms have realised that they have a surplus of bankers, after unprecedented levels of dealmaking led them to cull fewer low-ranked performers than usual.Analysts attribute the suddenly curtailed hiring plans of tech companies such as Etsy, Meta, Pinterest and Spotify to something else: overdue cost controls in a once free-spending sector whose funding and valuations has fallen sharply this year.One change which has caught several industries off guard is a slowdown in the pace of employees leaving for better offers elsewhere.The so-called quits rate remains well above pre-coronavirus pandemic levels in most sectors, but Mercer’s Ferland said that attrition has stabilised in recent months, making it harder for employers to gauge how many people they will need to recruit to replace the leavers.Rob Sharps, chief executive of T Rowe Price, cited this factor at the fund manager’s latest earnings announcement. A fall in voluntary attrition “means headcounts can go up meaningfully”, he observed in explaining why it had become more careful about recruitment.Such caution led to the number of job openings falling by 5.4 per cent between May and June, although at 10.7mn, the number of available positions remains well above early 2020 levels.“For the last year and a half it’s just been blinders on, trying to hire as many people as you could get in the door. Nobody could keep up with the demand they had, but I think that’s starting to level off,” said Challenger. Now, he said, clients are starting to think more strategically about who they need in their workforce after a “wildly unpredictable” period.

In the meantime, he added, history suggests that the continued resilience of hiring may be little guide to the outlook for the US economy. “We know that employers always hire pedal-to-the-metal two or three months into a recession . . . It’s a lagging indicator.”At Gannett, which advertises the chance to earn up to $600 a week by delivering newspapers, the shortages have started to ease up a little since June. But it sees several reasons why they will remain a problem.“Many of these delivery people [also] work 9am-5pm jobs,” noted Wayne Pelland, its senior vice-president of publishing operations. As other businesses raise wages and offer more flexibility to fill entry-level positions, people are turning away from low-paid, part-time jobs that require early starts and expensive petrol bills.As competition from employers offering better pay and career opportunities continues to drain the pool of people interested in part-time delivery jobs, Pelland said, “we are confronting a perfect storm”.Additional reporting by Caitlin Gilbert, Joshua Franklin and Lydia Tomkiw More

A top Federal Reserve official has warned it is far too early for the US central bank to “declare victory” in its fight against elevated inflation after new data showed a reprieve in consumer price pressures.In an interview with the Financial Times, Mary Daly, president of the San Francisco branch of the Fed, did not rule out a third consecutive 0.75 percentage point rate rise at the central bank’s next policy meeting in September, although she signalled her initial support for the Fed to slow the pace of its interest rate increases.Her comments come amid intense debate about how quickly the Fed will tighten monetary policy in the second half of 2022, after raising rates at the fastest pace since the early 1980s in the first half of this year. The federal funds rate, which hovered near zero in March, is now fixed between 2.25 per cent to 2.50 per cent.“There’s good news on the month-to-month data that consumers and business are getting some relief, but inflation remains far too high and not near our price stability goal,” Daly said on Wednesday, after the latest consumer price index report showed no increase between June and July and a slower annual inflation rate of 8.5 per cent.Still, “core” prices — which strip out volatile items such as energy and food — climbed higher, led by an uptick in services inflation that Daly said showed little sign of moderating.“This is why we don’t want to declare victory on inflation coming down,” she said. “We’re not near done yet.”Daly on Wednesday maintained that rates should rise to just under 3.5 per cent by the end of the year, a level that constrains business and consumer activity. But she cautioned against moving too aggressively to damp demand.“There is a lot of uncertainty, so leaping ahead with great confidence that [a 0.75 percentage point rate rise] is what we need and being prescriptive would not be optimal policy.” She spelt out why a half-percentage point rate rise in September is her “baseline”.Daly pointed out that the Fed has already tightened monetary policy significantly and the full effects of those actions have not yet trickled through the economy. Other global central banks are also rapidly raising interest rates in a “synchronised” way to an extent that has dramatically tightened global financial conditions, she added, while growth prospects across advanced and emerging economies have soured.“We have a lot of work to do. I just don’t want to do it so reactively that we find ourselves spoiling the labour market,” Daly said. She pushed back on rising investor expectations that the Fed will abruptly turn to cutting rates next year. “If we tip the economy over and [people] lose jobs, then we haven’t really made them better off.”

So far the labour market has registered strong momentum, with the US adding 528,000 jobs in July. That pushed the unemployment rate down to its pre-coronavirus pandemic low of 3.5 per cent.Job vacancies have begun to drop from recent highs and jobless claims have risen from very low levels, but Daly affirmed she does not expect the unemployment rate to rise too far beyond 4 per cent as the Fed tackles soaring prices. Some economists have warned that the jobless rate may need to rise in excess of 5 per cent if the central bank is to be successful in taming inflation.When the Fed gathers in September, officials will have another month’s jobs figures and inflation data. Daly said she would be watching those reports closely in order to validate whether it is appropriate to shift down to a slower pace of policy tightening.“What we need is not a good report on inflation. It’s encouraging, but it’s not evidence of the goal we really want,” she said. Instead, Daly is looking for the data in the aggregate to affirm the Fed is “on a path to bring inflation down substantially and achieve our price stability target”.This story has been amended since first publication to correct the number of US jobs added in July to 528,000. More

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The directives establish a “regulatory mechanism that guarantees efficient and balanced rates in the costs of transporting goods through the railways,” according to the government’s official gazette. The country’s inflation was at 8.15% in the year through July, up from 7.99% in June, with closely watched core inflation at 0.62% in the month of July.The measure follows several measures by the government meant to tame inflation, including a 430 billion peso subsidy on gas, 73 billion pesos for domestic energy aid and a 69 billion peso “food security” program. More

The Central American country’s government finalized its petition to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) a month after announcing it would negotiate entry into the Pacific Alliance bloc of Latin American countries.”It allows us to share commercial strategies, attract investment and create linkages for small and medium-sized companies,” said Chaves, who said the CPTPP accounts for 17% of global trade.The CPTPP went into effect in 2018 as an offshoot of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, following the United States’ departure from that proposed trade bloc. Current members are Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam.Costa Rica, with 5.2 million inhabitants, has free trade agreements with nine countries and is negotiating one more with Ecuador, in addition to regional trade agreements with the European Union, Caribbean states (Caricom) and Central American countries (CAFTA). More

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) -Walt Disney Co edged past Netflix Inc (NASDAQ:NFLX) with a total of 221 million streaming customers and announced it will increase prices for customers who want to watch Disney+ or Hulu without commercials.The media giant will raise the monthly cost of Disney+ without advertising by 38% to $10.99 in December, when it begins to offer a new option that includes ads for the current price. Shares of Disney rose 6.9% in after-hours trading to $120.15 on Wednesday.Disney in 2017 staked its future on building a streaming service to rival Netflix as audiences moved to online viewing from traditional cable and broadcast television. Five years later, Disney has edged past Netflix in total streaming customers. The Mouse House added 14.4 million Disney+ customers, beating the consensus of 10 million expected by analysts polled by FactSet, as it released “Star Wars” series “Obi-Wan Kenobi” and Marvel’s “Ms. Marvel.”Combined with Hulu and ESPN+, Disney said it had 221.1 million streaming subscribers at the end of the June quarter. Netflix said it had 220.7 million streaming subscribers.”Disney is gaining market share when Netflix is struggling to add more subscribers,” Investing.com analyst Haris Anwar said. “Disney has still more room to grow in international markets where it’s rolling out its service fast and adding new customers.”To help attract new customers, Disney will offer an ad-supported version starting on Dec. 8 for $7.99 a month, the same price it now charges for the ad-free version, the company said. Prices for Hulu will rise by $1 to $2 per month in December depending on the plan.The company lowered its long-term subscriber forecast for Disney+ customers on Wednesday, blaming the loss of cricket rights in India.Disney now projects between 215 million and 245 million total Disney+ customers by the end of September 2024. That is down from the 230 million to 260 million which Disney had been forecasting.The adjustment came from reduced expectations for India, where the company is losing streaming rights for Indian Premier League cricket matches.For the first time, Disney broke out estimates for Disney+ Hotstar customers in India from the rest of Disney+.Chief Financial Officer Christine McCarthy said Disney expected to add up to 80 million Disney+ Hotstar customers by September 2024, and between 135 million and 165 million others. The company still expects its streaming TV unit to turn a profit in fiscal 2024, McCarthy said. In the most recent quarter, the division lost $1.1 billion. For the fiscal third quarter ended July 2, Disney posted adjusted earnings per share of $1.09, up 36% from a year earlier, as visitors packed its theme parks. Analysts polled by Refinitiv had expected earnings of 96 cents.Operating income more than doubled at the parks, experiences and products division to $3.6 billion.Streaming losses put a drag on the media and entertainment unit, whose profit declined by 32% to nearly $1.4 billion.Overall revenue rose 26% from a year earlier to $21.5 billion, ahead of the analyst consensus of $20.96 billion. More