Philippa Kaur

Should companies be hiring or firing? Demand for workers has roared back over the past two years so many firms need to hire. Yet at the same time fears of recession are widespread. Across industries firms are scrambling to find the right response—and coming up with different answers. Last week Snap, a social media firm, said it would fire a fifth of its workforce and noted the “difficult macro backdrop”. Mark Zuckerberg is reported to have told employees at Facebook that “there are probably a bunch of people who shouldn’t be here,” but has not announced big layoffs. Tim Cook, the boss of Apple, takes the middle course. Apple will continue to hire “in areas”, he said recently, but he was “clear-eyed” about the risks to the economy.For now the hirers are trumping the firers. Figures released on September 2nd show that American employers, excluding farms, added 315,000 workers to payrolls in August. The Jobs Openings and Labour Turnover Survey (jolts), released a few days earlier, shows there were 11.2m job openings in July. There were almost two vacancies for every unemployed person (see chart 1). The situation in Britain is similar. The Bank of England forecasts a bitter recession but Britain has a near-record level of vacancies. Why is that? Behind today’s labour paradox lies three factors. First, high churn in the labour market. Second the post-pandemic shakeup to the labour market. And lastly most businesses, fighting day-to-day battles, have limited bandwidth to deal with the new complexities of the labour market. The few that do may be able to secure a lasting advantage. Start with high churn. The jobs market is in a state of perennial change. Economic theory treats firms as if they are the same and the economy as if it is a “representative firm” writ large. In reality, firms are very different. Some businesses expand, while others shrink—in booms and in busts. The change in employment captured by indicators such as the monthly non-farm payrolls is a net figure, the difference between job creation and job destruction by enterprises and between joiners and leavers at the level of workers. These flows are large in comparison with the change in employment. In July, payrolls rose by 0.5m, but around 6.4m began new jobs and 5.9m left their old ones. The jolts data capture the rate of worker flows in a single month (see chart 2). Over the course of a year, an even larger number of people move from job to job or from not working to working (and vice versa). A rule of thumb is that jobs flow at a slower rate than workers flow. In expansions the rate of job creation trumps jobs destruction. In recessions, job destruction is greater. But churn is remarkably high at all times. Some hiring firms are also firing firms. Walmart, the largest private employer in America, confirmed in August that jobs would go at its headquarters even as it was creating some new roles. For other firms, though, a cyclical downturn is forcing a rethink. Planned layoffs at companies such as Shopify, Netflix and Robinhood are a correction to rapid hiring earlier. A lot of the historical cyclicality in hiring is down to high-growth startups and newish businesses, says John Haltiwanger of the University of Maryland. In booms providers of capital, whether venture-capital funds, banks or public-market investors, are willing to fund all sorts of enterprises. But in downturns, investors become averse to risk.Lay-offs can also be a response to deeper structural challenges. In February Ford’s boss, Jim Farley, was blunt about those at his firm: “We have too many people; we have too much investment; we have too much complexity”. In manufacturing, the need to cut jobs invariably means people get fired. But there are industries, notably retailing, where the normal rate of turnover is so high that jobs can be cut without any layoffs. Just stop hiring and payrolls will shrink. Mr Zuckerberg’s approach, it seems, is to try and hurry along Facebook’s rate of worker attrition. What about the second factor, the post-pandemic shift in the jobs market? Steven Davis, of the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business calls it the “great reshuffling”. The demand side of the jobs market has not been changed much by the pandemic, according to a a recent study by Eliza Forsythe of the University of Illinois, and three co-authors. Many of 20m American workers who were laid off in April 2020 were quickly recalled by their employers. But the supply side was more radically altered. The employment-to-population ratio remains below its pre-pandemic peak. Much of this is down to older workers retiring from the workforce, say the authors. And it is still a struggle to fill customer-facing jobs. The surge in vacancies is especially marked in the leisure, hospitality and personal-care industries. It is much the same in Britain. On a boiling weekday in August, dozens of businesses set out their stall on the campus of the University of Middlesex. Firms including JH Kenyon, a funeral directors, Metroline, a bus company and Equita, a debt-collection agency, were targeting the local unemployed—not fresh graduates. Many recruiters said job applicants used to come to them—a “constant pipeline”, according to one stallholder. But now firms need to go out and drum up applicants. Employers in America are also stepping up the intensity of recruitment. Skill requirements in adverts for customer-facing jobs have been relaxed. Pay has picked up more sharply than in other kinds of work. Ms Forsythe and her colleagues find an increased likelihood of unemployed and low-skilled workers moving into white-collar jobs. Opportunities on the higher rungs of the jobs ladder appear to have opened up, because of retirements. The combination of a looming recession, high churn and the shifts in the supply of workers is exceptionally complex to manage for most firms. In principle, a well-run business could recruit strategically across the business cycle. But for a lot of firms even the certainty of a recession in 12 months’ time would not be enough to help them fine-tune their recruitment strategy. They would need to know the magnitude, duration and industry characteristics of any recession. Turning on and off hiring in response to subtle cyclical shifts is beyond what is feasible. Firms, like people, have limited bandwidth. What bandwidth there is being expended on navigating working-from-home policies. At one extreme is Elon Musk, who has demanded that Tesla’s employees turn up in the office for at least 40 hours a week or “pretend to work somewhere else.” At the other are Yelp, a review website, which favours a “remote-first” strategy, and Spotify, which has a “work from anywhere” policy. This approach has advantages in a tight jobs market. A firm can cast its recruitment net over a wider area. Remote workers may trade off greater flexibility for lower pay. But there are obvious downsides, too. It is tough to sustain unity of purpose when colleagues barely meet each other.Can any firms navigate today’s tricky labour market well? Apple appears to be doing so. In Europe Ryanair, an airline, hoarded staff during the pandemic and began hiring aggressively as the economy reopened. It has kept flying this summer, gaining market share as rivals have cancelled flights. But for many firms finding an answer to the labour paradox will not be easy. One recruiter at the jobs fair in Britain with a pipeline of infrastructure projects says he hopes it will be unscathed by recession. Still when it comes to hiring workers in the here and now it is a scramble, “you just need to be able to turn up on time and show some willingness and commitment,” he says of his target applicant. “No previous experience is required.”■ More

Should companies be hiring or firing? Demand for workers has roared back over the past two years. At the same time fears of recession are widespread. Firms are scrambling to respond—and coming up with different answers. Last week Snap, a social-media firm, said it would fire a fifth of its workforce and noted the “difficult macro backdrop”. Mark Zuckerberg is reported to have told employees at Meta that “there are probably a bunch of people who shouldn’t be here,” but has so far not announced big lay-offs. Tim Cook, boss of Apple, takes the middle course. The iPhone-maker will continue to hire “in areas”, he said recently, but he was “clear-eyed” about the risks to the economy.For now the hirers are trumping the firers. Figures released on September 2nd show that American employers, excluding farms, added 315,000 workers in August. The Jobs Openings and Labour Turnover Survey (jolts), released a few days earlier, reported 11.2m job openings in July. There were almost two vacancies for every unemployed person (see chart 1). The situation in Britain is similar. The Bank of England forecasts a bitter recession but vacancies are near record levels. Why is that? Behind today’s labour paradox lie three factors. First, high churn in the labour market. Second, that market’s post-pandemic shake-up. Last, most businesses, fighting day-to-day battles, have limited bandwidth to deal with subtle cyclical shifts. The few that do may be able to secure a lasting advantage. Start with high churn. The job market is in a state of perennial change. Simple economic models treat all firms as the same and the economy as a “representative firm” writ large. In reality, firms are very different. Some businesses expand, while others shrink—in booms and in busts. The change in employment captured by indicators such as the monthly non-farm payrolls is a net figure, the difference between job creation and job destruction by enterprises and between joiners and leavers at the level of workers. These flows are large compared with the change in employment. In July payrolls rose by 500,000, but around 6.4m began new jobs and 5.9m left their old ones. The jolts data capture the rate of worker flows in a single month (see chart 2). Over the course of a year, an even larger number of people move from job to job or from not working to working (and vice versa). As a rule of thumb, jobs flow at a slower rate than workers. In expansions job creation outweighs jobs destruction. In recessions, job destruction is greater. But churn is high at all times. Some hiring firms are also firing firms. Walmart, America’s largest private employer, confirmed in August that jobs would go at its headquarters even as it was creating some new roles. For other businesses, a cyclical downturn is forcing a rethink. Planned lay-offs at firms like Netflix, Robinhood and Shopify are a correction to rapid hiring earlier. A lot of the historical cyclicality in hiring is down to high-growth startups and newish businesses, says John Haltiwanger of the University of Maryland. In booms providers of capital, be they venture-capital funds, banks or public-market investors, are willing to fund all sorts of enterprises. In downturns, they become averse to risk.Lay-offs can also be a response to deeper structural challenges. In February Ford’s boss, Jim Farley, was blunt about those at the carmaker: “We have too many people; we have too much investment; we have too much complexity.” In manufacturing, the need to cut jobs invariably means people get fired. But there are industries, notably retailing, where the normal rate of turnover is so high that jobs can be cut without any terminations. Just stop hiring and payrolls will shrink. Mr Zuckerberg’s approach, it seems, is to try and hurry along Meta’s rate of worker attrition. What about the second factor, the post-pandemic shift in the job market? Steven Davis of the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business calls it the “great reshuffling”. The demand side of the market has not been changed much by covid-19, according to a recent study by Eliza Forsythe of the University of Illinois and three co-authors. Many of the 20m Americans who were laid off in April 2020 were quickly recalled by their employers. The supply side was more radically altered. The employment-to-population ratio remains below its pre-pandemic peak, mostly as a result of older workers exiting the workforce, say the authors. And it is still a struggle to fill customer-facing jobs. The surge in vacancies is especially marked in the leisure, hospitality and personal-care industries. Employers in America are stepping up the intensity of recruitment. Skills requirements in adverts for customer-facing jobs have been relaxed. Pay has picked up more sharply than in other kinds of work. Ms Forsythe and colleagues find an increased likelihood of unemployed and low-skilled workers moving into white-collar jobs. Opportunities on the higher rungs of the jobs ladder appear to have opened up, because of retirements. It is much the same in Britain. On a boiling weekday in August, dozens of businesses set out their stall on the campus of the University of Middlesex. Firms like JH Kenyon, a funeral director, Metroline, a bus company, and Equita, a debt-collection agency, were targeting not fresh graduates but the local unemployed. Recruiters recalled how jobseekers used to come to them—a “constant pipeline”, according to one. Now firms are doing the seeking. The combination of a looming recession, high churn and the shifts in the supply of workers is exceptionally complex to manage for most firms. In principle, a well-run business could recruit strategically across the business cycle. In practice, even the certainty of a recession in 12 months’ time would not be enough to help firms fine-tune hiring. They would need to know the magnitude, duration and industry characteristics of any recession. Turning hiring on and off in response to subtle cyclical shifts is unfeasible. Firms, like people, have limited bandwidth—and that bandwidth is being expended on navigating work-from-home policies. At one extreme is Elon Musk, who has told Tesla’s employees to turn up in the office for at least 40 hours a week or “pretend to work somewhere else”. At the other are Yelp, a review website, which favours a “remote-first” strategy, and Spotify, which allows “work from anywhere”. This approach has advantages in a tight job market. It lets firms cast recruitment nets over a wider area. Remote workers may trade off greater flexibility for lower pay. But there are obvious downsides, too. It is tough to sustain unity of purpose when colleagues barely meet each other.Can any firms navigate today’s tricky labour market well? Apple appears to be doing so. In Europe Ryanair, an airline, hoarded staff during the pandemic and began hiring aggressively as the economy reopened. It has kept flying this summer, gaining market share as rivals have cancelled flights. But for many firms finding an answer to the labour paradox will not be easy. One recruiter at the jobs fair in Britain with a pipeline of infrastructure projects says he hopes it will be unscathed by recession. Still, when it comes to hiring workers in the here and now, it is a scramble. “You just need to be able to turn up on time and show some willingness and commitment,” he says of his target applicant. “No previous experience is required.” ■For more expert analysis of the biggest stories in economics, business and markets, sign up to Money Talks, our weekly newsletter. More

Should companies be hiring or firing? Demand for workers has roared back over the past two years. But labour supply has not kept pace, and shortages are pervasive. That means many firms need to hire. On the other hand, fears of recession are widespread. Some bosses suspect they already have too many workers. Mark Zuckerberg has told Facebook employees that “there are probably a bunch of people who shouldn’t be here”. Tim Cook, the head of Apple, takes the middle course. Apple will continue to hire “in areas”, he said recently, but he was “clear-eyed” about the risks to the economy.For now the hirers are trumping the firers. Figures released on September 2nd show that American employers, excluding farms, added 315,000 workers to payrolls in August. The Jobs Openings and Labour Turnover Survey (jolts), released a few days earlier, found 11.2m job openings in July. America’s unemployment rate ticked up from a 50-year low of 3.5% to 3.7%, but only because of a sudden influx of jobseekers to the labour market. Put another way, there were almost two job vacancies for every unemployed person in America (see chart 1). The situation in Britain is similar. The Bank of England forecasts a protracted recession. Even so, Britain has a near-record level of vacancies. Businesses in both countries are hiring as if a downturn might never come.To understand these puzzling jobs trends, keep three important influences in mind. First, there is always a lot of churn in the labour market. The foundations of economic theory treat firms as if they are all the same, and the economy is just this “representative firm” writ large. In reality, companies differ from one another. Some expand, while others shrink—in booms and in busts. The firms that will be forced to fire workers in any recession are probably not the same as those that are furiously hiring now. A second factor is what Steven Davis, of the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, calls the “great reshuffling”. This refers to a post-pandemic shakeup in employment in response to changes in the preferences of workers. It explains a lot of the frantic activity in the jobs market. The third issue is that organisations have limited bandwidth. In principle, a well-run business could recruit strategically across the business cycle. Some, like Apple, appear to do so. Ryanair hoarded staff during the pandemic hiatus and began hiring aggressively as the economy reopened. Its planes have kept flying this summer, while rivals have cancelled flights. But such firms are exceptions. Most businesses are not nearly as nimble. Start with the perennial churn in the jobs market. The change in employment captured by indicators such as the monthly non-farm payrolls is a net figure. It is the difference between two flow measures—between job creation and job destruction by enterprises, and between joiners and leavers at the level of workers. These flows are large in comparison with the change in employment. In July payrolls rose by 0.5m, but around 6.5m workers took new jobs and 5.9m left their old jobs. The jolts data captures the rate of worker flows in a single month (see chart 2). Over the course of a year, an even larger number of people move from job to job, or from not working to working (and back). A rule of thumb is that jobs flow at a slower rate than workers flow. (Imagine a hypothetical firm with two joiners and one leaver: workers move but the net change is one created job). In expansions, the rate of job creation trumps destruction. In recessions, job destruction is greater. But churn is remarkably high at all times. Some hiring firms are also firing firms. Walmart, the largest private employer in America, recently confirmed that around 200 jobs would go at its headquarters. But the retailer said it was also creating some new roles. While jobs are being created in the aggregate, not every business is furiously hiring. For some firms a cyclical downturn is forcing a rethink on staffing. Planned layoffs at companies like Shopify, Netflix or Robinhood are a correction to previous bouts of rapid hiring. For other businesses, layoffs are a response to deeper structural challenges. In February Ford’s boss, Jim Farley, was blunt about his firm’s challenges: “We have too many people; we have too much investment; we have too much complexity”. In manufacturing, the need to cut jobs invariably means people get fired. But there are industries, notably retailing, where the normal rate of turnover is so high that jobs can be cut without any layoffs. Just stop hiring, and payrolls will shrink. This leads to the second big issue on recruitment: the great reshuffling. A recent study by Eliza Forsythe, of the University of Illinois, and three co-authors portrays a jobs market in which the demand side was not changed much by the pandemic. Many of the 20m American workers laid off in April 2020 were quickly recalled by their employers. But the supply side was more radically altered. The number of adults in work as a share of all adults—the employment-to-population ratio—remains below its pre-pandemic peak. Much of this is down to older workers retiring from the workforce, say the authors. Another consequence of the pandemic has been a struggle to fill customer-facing jobs. The surge in vacancies is especially marked in the leisure, hospitality and personal-care industries.It is much the same in Britain. On a boiling hot weekday in August, dozens of businesses have set out their stall on the campus of the University of Middlesex in Barnet, a London borough. These firms are looking to fill a backlog of vacancies. The target applicants are not graduates, but the local unemployed. Among the companies are JH Kenyon, a funeral directors; Metroline, a bus company; and Equita, a debt-collection agency. Many recruiters say applicants used to come to them—a “constant pipeline”, says one stallholder. But now firms need to go out and drum them up. Employers in America are also stepping up the intensity of recruitment. Skills requirements in ads for customer-facing jobs have been relaxed. Pay has picked up more sharply than in other kinds of work. Ms Forsythe and her colleagues find an increased likelihood of unemployed and low-skilled workers moving into white-collar jobs. Opportunities on the higher rungs of the jobs ladder appear to have opened up, because of retirements. The third big influence on recruitment trends is organisational capacity. The huge crosscurrents in the economy are taxing the capabilities of business. Apple sells discretionary goods. It has to keep an eye on the cycle, because in downturns people will delay upgrading their Mac or iPhone. But for a lot of firms even the certainty of a recession in 12 months’ time would not be enough knowledge to help them fine-tune their recruitment strategy. They would need to know the magnitude, duration and industry characteristics of any recession, and not only the fact and timing of it. Turning hiring on and off in response to subtle cyclical shifts is not feasible for a lot of firms. Bosses need to ensure the whole organisation is aligned on objectives. Firms, like people, have limited bandwidth. And recession fears are probably not the main influence on recruitment strategy just now. For many employers, says Mr Davis, the key decision is whether and how to accommodate the desire of employees to work from home. There is a spectrum of responses. At one extreme is Elon Musk, who has gruffly demanded that Tesla employees turn up in the office for at least 40 hours a week or “pretend to work somewhere else.” At the other end is Yelp, a popular review website, which favours a “remote-first” strategy, and Spotify, which has a “work from anywhere” policy. This approach has advantages in a tight jobs market. A firm can cast its recruitment net over a wider area. And there is evidence that remote workers will trade greater flexibility for lower pay. But there are obvious downsides, too. It is tough to sustain corporate culture or unity of purpose when colleagues barely meet.For some kinds of firms, the cycle will eventually bite. A lot of the historical cyclicality in hiring is down to high-growth startups and newish businesses, says John Haltiwanger of the University of Maryland. In booms, providers of capital—whether venture-capital funds, banks or public-market investors—are willing to fund all kinds of enterprises. But in downturns investors become averse to risk. And young firms without a long track record find it harder to finance their growth. Hiring across the economy then suffers.It is natural to believe that your firm is recession-proof, and that your rivals will suffer. The archetypal “man in a van”, who specialises in renovations, will struggle next year, says a recruiter at the Barnet jobs fair. Bigger building firms that are part of large infrastructure projects, such as his, have a pipeline of projects. But with workers so scarce, he is as clear-eyed as Mr Cook about what is possible. “You just need to be able to turn up on time and show some willingness and commitment,” he says of his target applicant. “No previous experience is required.” ■ More

The companies behind two of America’s most widely used covid-19 vaccines are at loggerheads. Despite promising publicly not to enforce covid-19-related patents until the pandemic was over, Moderna, an American drugmaker, filed claims on August 26th against Pfizer, another American firm, and BioNTech, its German partner, in American and German courts. The dispute is over elements of the messenger rna (mrna) technology used by the firms to make their jabs. CureVac, another German pharmaceutical firm, also began legal action against BioNTech in July. The floodgates have opened for intellectual-property squabbles between vaccine-makers.Listen to this story. Enjoy more audio and podcasts on More

From the pier at Mundra, the biggest private port in India, it is possible, on a clear day, to spot the world’s largest oil refinery, 50km south across the Gulf of Kutch. In the early 1990s both sites in the state of Gujarat were malarial swamps and farmland. Today they are monuments to India’s economic promise—and to the tycoons who built them. Gautam Adani and Mukesh Ambani, both billionaires, have in recent years become the best-known faces of Indian business. To supporters, they are patriotic nation-builders, using their sway and resources to further India’s economic progress. To critics they are only in it for themselves. Their motivation seems to lie somewhere in between.Listen to this story. Enjoy more audio and podcasts on More

Jensen huang is a man literally schooled in adversity. When the co-founder of Nvidia, America’s most valuable semiconductor company, was first sent to boarding school in Kentucky, little did his Taiwanese relatives realise that it was a school for troubled youths. He shared a room with a knife-scarred boy fresh out of prison. On some days he would either be picked upon or forced to clean the toilets. Far from buckling under the strain, he has said he learned to tolerate discomfort. That is a useful skill in the highly cyclical world of silicon chips. Listen to this story. Enjoy more audio and podcasts on More

“Do you feel your job description has changed since you were hired?” “What prompted you to start looking for another position?” Such questions are typical of the exit interview, to which an email from hr may invite you after you have handed in your notice. Do you accept? And if so, how honest should you be with your soon-to-be-ex-employer during the discussion? Just like humans, corporate entities do not want to admit their faults. As such, many companies deal with resignations badly. Exit interviews may help them do better. More important, understanding why workers leave is critical if you want to stop more of them heading for the exit. Recruiting and training top talent is a big cost for firms, particularly those in the service sector, so anything that can be done to reduce staff turnover is valuable. Poaching is part of any competitive industry, so knowing what drew an employee to a different firm can be useful, too. Former employees who leave happy can in future fill a role as corporate ambassadors. For firms the best exit interview is the one that doesn’t happen. A study conducted by the Harvard Business Review concluded that they should be “the culmination of a series of regular retention conversations”. Such attempts will not work every time, or even often—staff churn is a fact of corporate life. For unsalvageable cases, some firms arrange a one-to-one conversation with the leaver’s manager. Others offer an online form, which is less personal but provides the opportunity to collate feedback easily. Such exchanges are best scheduled after the initial rush of emotion has passed but before the employee has checked out mentally. The information gleaned can be revealing. In some firms, it travels all the way up to the board. The incentives for a departing employee are less clear. (If you are pursuing legal action against your employer, your lawyer is likely to tell you to avoid the interview altogether.) It is tempting either to ignore everyone and just walk away or, conversely, to really let rip. “When one burns one’s bridges,” wrote Dylan Thomas, “what a very nice fire it makes.” But letting off steam by unburdening yourself of all the wrongs and little things that ever upset you is a shallow game.The bottom line is, you never know. You can be denied a reference or unnecessarily complicate the paperwork related to your stock options and pension plan. Or you could miss a chance to turn a former employer into a client. Your columnist, a guest Bartleby, has no immediate plans to leave her current job. But if she ever did, and was asked to participate in an exit interview, she would agree to do so—and would advise you to do the same.As in any break-up, the one with an employer involves dealing with elusive concepts such as decorum (“It’s not you, it’s me”) or closure (“Thank you for everything”). It is also transactional. As such, it pays not to be too candid. Whether the process happens over the phone, on Zoom, in person or in an online form, refrain from speaking your mind too freely. It is better to be excited about your new chapter than to unleash vitriol on colleagues who were unkind or censorious over the years. Being too diplomatic is safer, unless it devolves into insincere platitudes. “This place is toxic” is bad; “the thing I admire about the leadership team is their long-term vision” may be worse. To strike the right balance it is useful to think of the exit interview as a performance appraisal in reverse. Outlining what you enjoyed most about the place (the pay, the camaraderie or the coffee) is a good place to start. Explaining what drew you to another employer can be particularly instructive. Gentle suggestions about what you would improve are fair game. Always remember that notes from the interview are official documentation that can be reviewed. Whatever you do, do not post rude comments about your former employer on social media.In his book “Liar’s Poker”, Michael Lewis tells the story of a senior trader quitting Salomon Brothers after being offered much more money by Goldman Sachs. His managers pleaded for him to stay, invoking loyalty to the firm; the trader retorted that if they wanted loyalty they should have hired a cocker spaniel. But a good exit interview should be about mutual graciousness when neither party has anything else to lose. For an employee to deny such a conference shows pettiness and resentment. For a company it is one last chance to leave a good impression. If you decide to part ways, why not do so on amicable terms?Read more from Bartleby, our columnist on management and work:Is travelling to work always a waste of time? (Aug 25th)When to trust your instincts as a manager (Aug 18th)Why employees want to work in vilified industries (Aug 13th)For more expert analysis of the biggest stories in economics, business and markets, sign up to Money Talks, our weekly newsletter. More

When chief executives ring the closing bell at the Nasdaq stock exchange in New York, it is usually because their firm has just gone public. When Adam Selipsky did so on June 27th, he was celebrating a tie-up with the bourse. He is the boss of Amazon Web Services (aws), the tech giant’s cloud-computing arm, and the deal is part of the exchange’s shift of its stockmarkets to aws’s More