Economy

Listed companies controlled by billionaire Gautam Adani have lost more than $100 billion in market value since Jan. 24, when U.S. short seller Hindenburg Research accused the conglomerate of stock manipulation and improper use of offshore tax havens.The group has rejected the allegations and denied any wrongdoing.Adani group will now shoot for revenue growth of 15% to 20% for at least the next financial year, down from 40% originally targeted, Bloomberg News said citing people familiar with the matter.A spokesperson for Adani Group did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Holding back on investments for even as little as three months could save the conglomerate as much as $3 billion, the report said, adding that the plans are still imminent. Adani group has also been a part of India’s market regulator’s investigation into the group’s links to some of the investors in its scrapped $2.5 billion share sale.Earlier this month, India’s ministry of corporate affairs started a preliminary review of Adani Group’s financial statements and other regulatory submissions made over the years, Reuters reported, citing two senior government officials. More

Pub and bar bankruptcies across the UK were near the highest level in a decade with more than 500 businesses folding last year, according to an analysis of official figures, as hospitality venues struggled with rising costs and tepid demand. Some 512 companies went out of business in 2022, up 56 per cent from the previous year when pandemic-related business support stopped a wave of insolvencies, according to an analysis of Insolvency Service data by accountancy firm UHY Hacker Young. The number of closures was close to the peak of 551 recorded in 2013. The total number of licensed venues in the UK has fallen by 15 per cent over the past decade with the annual bankruptcy rate averaging 466.Kate Nicholls, chief executive of UKHospitality, an industry body, warned the damage to the hospitality industry would look “much starker” after the government’s £18bn energy support package for business “tapers away” from the end of March.The sector has been struggling with a combination of high energy, labour and food and drink wholesale costs, which has been partially offset by the state intervention to cap the cost of gas and electricity. The government will extend the scheme for another year from April but is slashing the level of support it gives to businesses and put the total cost of the revised package at £5.5bn. Companies facing particularly high bills will receive a unit discount of £6.97 per MWh for gas and £19.61 per MWh for electricity under the replacement scheme. “This scale of insolvencies is unfortunately reflective of the enormous challenges facing hospitality,” added Nicholls, pointing to the impact of widespread strike action on demand and the pressure of repaying pandemic loans on top of the effect of high inflation.

J D Wetherspoon said last month that like-for-like sales in the 12 weeks to January 22 were still 2 per cent down on pre-pandemic sales in the same period in 2019. The pub chain increased prices by 7.5 per cent this year to offset cost rises.“Energy costs are simply a pub killer,” said Steven Alton, chief executive of the British Institute of Innkeeping, which represents independent pubs. He estimated that up to half of venues were suffering because they were locked into fixed-term energy contracts as prices peaked last autumn in “a grossly unfair and uncompetitive [energy] market”.He called on the government to help those businesses. “As energy costs have now significantly reduced, we are calling on government to allow these unfair agreements to be changed to access today’s competitive rates.”Wholesale gas prices have fallen nearly fivefold since their late August peak and wholesale electricity prices are down fourfold from their late September peak. Emma McClarkin, chief executive of the British Beer and Pub Association, called on the relevant parliamentary committees “to launch an investigation into malpractice and profiteering on the part of energy suppliers”. More

(Reuters) – A look at the day ahead in Asian markets from Jamie McGeever.World markets this week will be dominated by U.S. inflation figures on Tuesday, leaving Monday free for investors in Asia to digest the previous session’s action on Wall Street and adjust positioning ahead of the numbers.Indian consumer price inflation for January tops Monday’s Asian economic calendar. Economists see a rise in the annual rate to 5.9% – the first rise since September, justifying the central bank’s hawkish messaging when it raised rates last week. Other regional highlights this week include Japanese Q4 and full-year GDP on Tuesday, rate decisions from Indonesia and The Philippines on Thursday, while China’s Lenovo reports Q3 earnings on Thursday. GRAPHIC – India inflation and repo rate Overshadowing all that is the January U.S. inflation report. Economists expect monthly rates to tick up, but the annual measures to decline. Revised figures on Friday showed that inflation in December was a little stronger than originally reported, and a closely-watched consumer inflation expectations survey showed a notable spike in the short-term outlook. Little wonder, perhaps, that Wall Street ended the week on the defensive, implied rates and short-dated yields stayed elevated, and market volatility gauges ticked higher. Froth continues to be taken off equities, particularly growth sectors. The Nasdaq has now only risen once in the last six sessions, the VIX volatility index hit a one-month high on Friday, and Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS)’ indices of U.S., global and emerging market financial conditions rose to the highest in three weeks.Tough talking on inflation from Fed officials was matched last week by their peers in Australia, India and Sweden, so the push is global. GRAPHIC – MSCI Asia ex-Japanhttps://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/mkt/gdpzqdewovw/AsiaStx.png Asian stocks ex-Japan on Friday fell more than 1%, resulting in the biggest weekly fall in four months. It’s a different story in Japan, where the Nikkei 225 index has risen five weeks in a row, its best run since 2020. That could be vulnerable to correction, however, if speculation around the man tipped to become the new Bank of Japan governor ends up strengthening the yen.Sources have told Reuters that 71-year old academic Kazuo Ueda, a former Bank of Japan policy board member has been lined up to replace Haruhiko Kuroda as BOJ governor. BOJ watchers and people who have worked with Ueda describe him as a pragmatist who is neither an explicit hawk nor a dove and is well-respected within the central bank. “Ueda won’t make any abrupt, hasty moves toward policy normalization. But he won’t leave the side-effects of the BOJ’s policy, such as dysfunctions seen in the bond market, unattended,” said Nobuyasu Atago, a former BOJ official who has worked with Ueda. GRAPHIC – Nikkei 225 – weekly changehttps://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/mkt/jnpwyxzwmpw/NIkkei.png Here are three key developments that could provide more direction to markets on Monday:- India inflation (January)- Fed’s Bowman speaks – ECB’s Lagarde participates in Eurogroup meeting (By Jamie McGeever; Editing by Diane Craft) More

David Solomon told a private gathering of Goldman Sachs’ top executives that he had erred by not cutting jobs earlier in 2022, according to people familiar with the remarks. Speaking to about 400 Goldman partners at a closed-door meeting in Miami this week, the chief executive said he took responsibility for being slow to reduce headcount and pare back investment in new projects when it became apparent there would be a significant business slowdown. “As the environment was growing more complicated in Q2 of last year, every bone in my body believed we should be much more aggressive in slowing hiring and reducing headcount,” Solomon said, according to one of the people with knowledge of the remarks. Goldman waited until January to cut 3,200 jobs, roughly 6.5 per cent of its workforce, as part of the bank’s biggest cost-cutting exercise in years. Solomon acknowledged this would have been less drastic if he had taken action earlier.Opinion: William Cohan, author and former investment banker, takes a look at how Goldman can regain its swagger. Five more stories in the news1. US shoots down fourth aerial object over North America The US military shot down a high-altitude object over Lake Huron on Sunday, in the fourth operation of its kind this month over the skies of North America, according to lawmakers and officials. While US officials have described the balloon shot down last week over the Atlantic as originating in China, they have not publicly identified the origin of the aerial objects shot down later.2. Erdoğan targets construction firms as earthquake deaths top 33,000 Prosecutors have issued arrest warrants for scores of developers as the death toll from last week’s earthquake in Turkey and Syria tops 33,000 and the security situation in some areas of the disaster zone deteriorates. Turkish investigators have identified 131 people of interest in a wide-ranging probe into the catastrophe.

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3. Israel on brink of ‘constitutional collapse’, president warns In a primetime address on Sunday night, Isaac Herzog appealed to the hardline new government to delay a contested judicial overhaul, warning that mounting political polarisation had left the country “on the brink of constitutional and social collapse”. 4. Japan picks next central bank head, say local media Kazuo Ueda, a respected monetary policy expert who has previously warned against an early exit from Japan’s ultra-loose policies, is expected to replace Haruhiko Kuroda as governor of the Bank of Japan. News of the likely appointment, reported in local media, fired up the yen.Go deeper: Prime Minister Fumio Kishida sent shockwaves across global markets following reports that he had picked an outsider to Japan’s policy and political establishment.5. Second MEP is charged and another arrested in ‘Qatargate’ probe Marc Tarabella, a Belgian socialist, was remanded in custody on Saturday after being charged with corruption, money laundering and participation in a criminal organisation. He was arrested on Friday, just eight days after parliament lifted his immunity from prosecution, as Belgian prosecutors continued their investigation into the “Qatargate” scandal. The day aheadIndia inflation figures January consumer price index data is set to be released today. Use our global inflation tracker to see how your country compares on rising prices.EU economic forecast The European Commission will publish its winter interim economic forecast.Nato secretary-general address Jens Stoltenberg speaks to the press ahead of a two-day meeting of Nato member defence ministers in Brussels this week. Recently Nato allies have been under pressure from Kyiv to provide western aircraft to Ukraine.Join us on 22 February 2023 at the Future of Business Education: Spotlight on MBA, a free virtual one-day event focused on providing opportunities for ambitious individuals looking to accelerate their careers. The FT is also launching a new six-part email series that will take you through every stage of applying for an MBA. You can register for that here.What else we’re reading How English football became the real Super League The European Super League may have failed, but after an onslaught of spending on new players by Premier League clubs, many in the game are now wondering if it has become a de facto super league, where superior financial muscle is leaving the rest of European football behind. Premium readers can sign up to our Scoreboard newsletter for more on the business of sport.

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The untold story of the world’s most resilient currency In the 1998 Asian financial crisis, the Thai economy contracted by nearly 20 per cent, as stocks fell by more than 60 per cent and the baht lost more than half its value against the dollar. While the drama of that year is etched in history, the epilogue comes as a surprise: the baht has proved uncommonly resilient, writes Ruchir Sharma.What is the role of cultural understanding? Over Lunch with the FT Taiwanese-American scholar of Chinese literature Jing Tsu shared with the FT’s Yuan Yang why the west and China misunderstand each other — and how culture can bring them closer together. She expands on this theme in her series of public lectures at Yale.The death — and rebirth — of the ski resort The spot where Alpine tourism began seems now to offer a glimpse of how it might end, writes Tom Robbins. And yet despite the grass, mud and rain at Christmas, the abandoned off-piste routes and forsaken resorts brought on by climate change, the ski industry is not throwing in the towel.Saudi Arabia goes electric For decades, Saudi Arabia has attempted to launch its own car industry with nothing to show for it. It is now trying again — but this time with electric vehicles. It intends to pour billions into the project to create an electric vehicle manufacturing hub, with the aim of producing 500,000 cars a year by 2030.Take a break from the newsIncreasingly people are sharing their home renovation dramas on social media, captivating thousands of strangers as TikTok and YouTube have become star-makers of a handful of people turning their homes into content farms. Meet the influencers amassing thousands of followers and using their platform to fund ambitious projects.

Chelsea Stonier is documenting her second Victorian home renovation on @thehousethatblackbuilt: ‘The vast majority of this house renovation is paid for by Instagram’ More

Hello and welcome to the working week.Well, not for me. It’s the half-term break in England and Wales, so I will be spending the coming days shepherding two of my offspring to study for GCSE exams.There are upsides to the enforced home schooling. Given that we won’t get out of the house to visit London’s galleries, the Moules clan will not be disrupted by this week’s seven-day walkout by staff at the British Museum. Yes, it is another week of British industrial unrest. Civil servants at the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency will also strike on Monday, followed on Wednesday by university staff — although no longer teaching staff in Wales — and then ambulance workers in Northern Ireland on Friday.At the least the UK government will be hard at work, with negotiations with the EU over the post-Brexit settlement for Northern Ireland rapidly coming to a head. The issue is not on the formal agenda for the meeting of EU member state heads in Brussels on Thursday, but London hopes it can make progress in discussions with these European leaders in the coming days.Nato defence chiefs will also be meeting this week in Brussels to discuss the next steps in the ongoing brinkmanship with Russia. Invitees include Ukraine’s defence minister and his counterparts from Finland and Sweden.And the good news? Kosovo will celebrate 15 years of independence on Friday and in Rio the annual Carnival kicks off on Saturday.Before getting on to the economic and companies news, here is a plug for a few upcoming FT business education items.The FT’s annual ranking of full-time MBA degree providers is freshly published. If you are interested in applying to business school, the FT has launched its first email course, aimed at helping you do just that. The first email in the series will go out early on Tuesday. Sign up here.You can also join us on February 22 for a free one-day online FT Live event, called the Future of Business Education: Spotlight on MBA. Speakers will include the FT’s global education editor and business education rankings manager, sharing details about how we pick the best business schools. Click here to register.Thanks again for your comments and suggestions about the items mentioned. Email me at [email protected] or if you received this in your inbox just hit reply. Economic dataInflation and gross domestic product are this week’s main economic themes with data on the former from the UK, US, India and France and the latter from the EU and Japan. The UK also provides updates on its labour market with a new unemployment figure.There are no monetary policy committee meetings from the big economies but on Tuesday Japan’s prime minister Fumio Kishida is expected to nominate as the next central bank governor the respected expert and supporter of the country’s ultra-loose monetary policy, Kazuo Ueda. That would ensure a smooth transition from the incumbent Haruhiko Kuroda, who is due to step down in April after overseeing a decade of policies designed to keep interest rates at ultra-low levels by buying vast quantities of government bonds.CompaniesWe are over the hump of the current earnings season, especially in the US, but there are plenty in the diary for the next seven days. Consumer goods brands are going large this week with figures out from Nestlé, Coca-Cola, Krispy Kreme and Kraft Heinz. These companies’ products might not be the most healthy items on the supermarket shelf, but then neither is inflation, which — if Unilever’s earnings report last week is anything to go by — is at least likely to be of benefit to the top line of these companies’ accounts. However, people are cutting back, meaning the potential for a drop in sales volumes.The interest-rate rises to tame inflation have been good news for the retail banks with widening net interest margins for lenders such as NatWest, which is reporting full-year figures on Friday. This is good for shareholders because it will push up capital levels to much more than regulatory minimums and open the door to some quite lucrative dividend increases and stock buybacks. Also, NatWest is still 44.98 per cent owned by the UK government so the current earnings bonanza is good for British taxpayers, though as my colleague Helen Thomas notes it will not last.Barclays, which reports on Wednesday, is a bit of a different story. Its UK business should benefit from rate rises, but it is much more of a credit card business, so people will be focused on default rates and provisions in the UK and US. Also the decline in earnings at its investment bank, particularly the advisory and capital markets unit, will be in sharp focus. You can get a fuller picture by reading this Inside Business report from FT deputy editor Patrick Jenkins.Key economic and company reportsHere is a more complete list of what to expect in terms of company reports and economic data this week.MondayEU, European Commission publishes its winter interim economic forecastIndia, January consumer price index (CPI) inflation dataUK, Office for National Statistics research on homeworkingUS, Federal Reserve board governor Michelle Bowman to speak at the American Bankers Association Conference for Community Bankers, in OrlandoResults: Arista Networks Q4, Cadence Design Systems Q4, Denny’s Q4, Lend-Lease H1, Michelin FY, Rothschild & Co FY, SolarEdge Technologies Q4, Zee Entertainment Enterprises Q3TuesdayEU, flash Q4 GDP figuresEU, Q4 employment dataFrance, Q4 unemployment rateJapan, flash Q4 GDP figures (AM local time)Opec monthly oil market reportUK, flash Q4 labour productivity estimateUK, February labour market statistics, including the unemployment rateUK, January insolvency figures for England and WalesUS, January CPI inflation dataResults: Airbnb Q4, Akamai Technologies Q4, Asahi Group FY, Avis Budget Q4, Carrefour Q4, Carr’s Group FY, Coca-Cola Company Q4, Kirin Holdings Q4, Marriott International Q4, Norsk Hydro Q4, Telecom Italia FY, ThyssenKrupp Q1, Toshiba Q3WednesdayEU, trade balance figuresFrance, European Central Bank president Christine Lagarde takes part in a plenary debate on the ECB Annual Report 2022 at the European parliament in StrasbourgInternational Energy Agency oil market reportUK, January CPI and producer price index (PPI) inflation figuresUK, December house price index figuresUS, Former Goldman Sachs partner Tim Leissner is due to be sentenced in a Brooklyn federal court, where he pleaded guilty to corruption charges for his role in helping loot billions of dollars from Malaysia’s 1MDB development fundUS, monthly retail sales figuresUS, NAHB Housing Market IndexResults: Analog Devices Q1, Barclays FY, Cisco Systems Q2, Dunelm H1, Equinix Q4, Glencore FY, Hargreaves Lansdown H1, Heineken FY, Kering FY, Kraft Heinz Q4, Krispy Kreme Q4, Tui Group Q1, Yandex Q4ThursdayEU, European Central Bank economic bulletinItaly, trade balance figuresJapan, January trade balance figures (AM local time)UK, Census 2021 NHS health data for England and WalesUS, January PPI inflation dataUS, unemployment claimsResults: Ahold Delhaize Q4, AIG Q4, Albemarle Q4, Applied Materials Q1, AutoStore Q4, Centrica FY, Coface FY, Commerzbank Q4, Hasbro Q4, Indivior Q4, Kerry Group FY, MJ Gleeson H1, Moneysupermarket.com FY, Nestlé FY, Orange FY, Paramount Q4, Pernod Ricard H1, Relx FY, Renault FY, SSP Group trading update, Standard Chartered Q4FridayFrance, January CPI and Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices inflation dataUK, January retail sales figuresUS, Super Nintendo World, an immersive park themed around the Japanese gaming brand Nintendo, opens at Universal Studios HollywoodUS, Federal Reserve monetary policy reportResults: Air Canada Q4, Air France-KLM FY, Albemarle Q4, Allianz FY, Deere & Co FY, EDF FY, Hermès FY, Kingspan FY, NatWest FY, Pod Point FY, Segro FY, Swiss Re FYWorld eventsFinally, here is a rundown of other events and milestones this week. MondayBelgium, Nato secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg speaks to the press ahead of a two-day meeting of Nato member defence ministers on Tuesday and Wednesday, in BrusselsGermany, citizens of Dresden are due to hold a candlelit vigil to commemorate victims of the extensive aerial bombardment of the city during the second world war. Concerns have been raised that far-right groups will hold protests.India, Aero India 2023 air show begins in BengaluruUnited Arab Emirates World Government Summit begins in Dubai. Speakers at the three-day event include Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Egyptian president and Senegalese president Macky Sall.UK, a legal challenge by billionaire Guy Hands’ property company Annington Homes to government moves to unwind its £1.7bn sale and leaseback agreement for Ministry of Defence properties reaches the High Court in one of the year’s most significant judicial reviewsUK, more than 100 members of the PCS union at the British Museum begin seven days of strike action over pay, pensions, job security and redundancy terms. PCS workers at the DVLA in Swansea will also stage a five-day walkout.TuesdayEU, Ecofin meetings of member state finance ministers in BrusselsUK, University and College Union members at more than 150 universities begin three days of strike action over pay, working conditions and pension cuts.WednesdayJapan, inaugural launch by the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency of the H3 heavy lift rocket, the new flagship rocket built by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (AM local time)UK, auction planned of the car park in Leicester where the remains of King Richard III were discovered 10 years ago, with the adjacent Grey Friars building also going under the hammer. Guide price is £4mn to £4.1mnUS, New York Fashion Week concludesThursdayGermany, 73rd Berlin International Film Festival begins in the German capitalUK, ambulance workers in Northern Ireland who are members of the Unite union stage two days of walkouts over pay and conditions.FridayKosovo celebrates 15 years of independence from SerbiaUK, London Fashion Week beginsSaturdayBrazil, Carnival kicks off in Rio de Janeiro with a week of events that make it the world’s largest musical street festivalSundayUK, the Bafta film awards ceremony is held in LondonUS, the 500-mile Nascar Cup Series motor race, the Daytona 500, is held in Daytona Beach, Florida More

Investors are betting on a longer period of higher interest rates as they begin to accept the message from US Federal Reserve officials that more time is needed to cool inflation in the face of a resilient labour market.Pricing in the futures market shows that investors expect rates to peak slightly above 5 per cent in July, with only one interest rate cut by year-end. As recently as last week, they had been expecting a peak of around 5 per cent in May, with two interest rate cuts by the end of 2023.The shift came after a blockbuster employment report which showed the labour market surged by half a million jobs in January.Investors have for months been wagering that a rapid deceleration in inflation would allow the Fed to cut interest rates as soon as the fourth quarter of this year, despite the insistence of central bank officials that they had no plans to do so. Some market watchers, including Morgan Stanley, had bet that the Fed’s 0.25 percentage point increase on February 1 would be its last.But those expectations have recently deflated as investors’ bets on where inflation will be in a year’s time have ratcheted up — from about 2.4 per cent before the jobs report to 3.9 per cent as of Friday, according to Refinitiv data.The shift in interest rate expectations takes investors closer to the Fed’s official projections which were published in December, although they still underestimate the central bank’s expectation that it will not cut interest rates until at least 2024. This week a series of senior US monetary policymakers sought to reinforce the Fed’s message, insisting that they did not expect a quick end to their policy tightening. Christopher Waller, a Fed governor, said on Wednesday: “Some believe that inflation will come down quite quickly this year. That would be a welcome outcome. But I’m not seeing signals of this quick decline in the economic data, and I am prepared for a longer fight to get inflation down to our target.” Also on Wednesday, John Williams, president of the New York Fed, said: “We need to retain a sufficiently restrictive stance of policy. We’re going to need to maintain that for a few years to make sure we get inflation to 2 per cent.”But even though markets are now more aligned with the Fed’s projections, some economists worry that the central bank is not giving sufficiently clear guidance about its policy path. After the last FOMC meeting, Jay Powell, the Fed chair, struck a more dovish tone — before reverting to a position that appeared to be more hawkish this week.“I think the Fed is taking a big risk by not dictating the narrative,” said Gregory Daco, chief economist at EY Parthenon. “The Fed is exposing itself to rapid and significant market pivots.”Tuesday’s release of January’s consumer price index will be the latest test of the Fed’s resolve as it will provide key evidence of whether the pace of price growth is slowing.In December, headline inflation increased at an annual rate of 6.5 per cent, or 5.7 per cent on a core basis which strips out volatile food and energy costs. Annual CPI hit a peak of 9.1 per cent in June last year.Revisions to 2022 CPI data released on Friday added to economists’ concerns that inflation was not falling as fast as they had hoped. “We continue to see the data as going in the right direction for the Fed across a range of metrics but at a potentially slowing pace and slightly higher level than had seemed to be the case a few months ago,” Peter Williams of ISI Evercore said.

“The market will likely and should, in our view, continue to reprice towards higher [rates] for longer given the shift in the data we’ve seen.”Economists and Fed officials have been particularly worried that service sector inflation will prove to be more stubbornly hard to bring down than goods inflation. “It’s probably going to be bumpy,” Powell said this week of the “disinflationary process” in an interview with David Rubenstein, the founder of Carlyle, the private equity group. “If the data were to continue to come in stronger than we forecast, and we were to conclude that we needed to raise rates more than is priced into the markets or than we wrote down at our last group forecast in December, then we would certainly do that,” Powell said. “We would certainly raise rates more.” More

“Rolling recessions” has become a popular term these days for what the U.S. has faced since a slowdown that started in early 2022.
Housing, manufacturing and finance all have shown signs of contraction, though the economy broadly has escaped the recession definition.
Some of the best places for workers to find jobs this year will include accommodation, oil and gas, hospice and health care, according to LinkedIn data.
Tougher sectors will be government administration, education and consumer services.

A Now Hiring sign is seen inside a WholeFoods store in New York City.
Adam Jeffery | CNBC

Recession-like conditions rolling through the U.S. economy are likely to cause more ripples through an otherwise strong jobs market.
“Rolling recessions” has become a popular term these days for what the U.S. has faced since a slowdown that started in early 2022. The term connotes that while the economy may not meet an official recession definition, there will be sectors that will feel very much like they are in contraction.

That will be true as well for the jobs market, which overall has been strong but has seen weakness in sectors that could intensify this year, according to data from popular networking site LinkedIn.
Economists there, in fact, have identified multiple sectors that will show varying degrees of tightness this year.
“Labor markets remain tighter compared to pre-pandemic levels,” said Rand Ghayad, head of economics and global labor markets at LinkedIn. “They’re still resilient. They’re still stronger than what we’ve seen in the pre-pandemic period, but they’ve been slowing down gradually and will likely continue to slow down over the next few months.”
Various dominoes already have fallen during the rolling-recession period.
Housing entered a sharp downturn last year, and the widely followed manufacturing indexes have been pointing to contraction for several months. In addition, the most recent senior loan officer survey from the Federal Reserve noted significantly tighter credit conditions, indicating a slowdown is hitting the financial sector.

Other sectors could follow as economists broadly expect that the U.S. will see — at best — slow to moderate growth this year.
LinkedIn data, which comes from job postings and other data from the site’s more than 900 million members worldwide, is markedly different from government data in an interesting way.
Whereas the more widely following data from Bureau of Labor Statistics finds an extremely tight labor market, with nearly two open jobs for every available worker, LinkedIn’s “labor market tightness” metric has shown about a 1-to-1 ratio that even looks to be loosening a bit more.
The implications are important.
The Federal Reserve has cited the historic tightness of the labor market as motivation for its series of interest rate hikes aimed at taming inflation. If the market trends are unfolding the way LinkedIn data indicates, it could provide impetus for the central bank to ease up on its own tightening measures.
“Everything depends on what the Fed will be doing over the next couple of months,” Ghayad said.

Where the jobs will be

For job seekers, the phrase “rolling recessions” means that it will be easier to get employment in some industries, while others will be tougher.
LinkedIn identifies certain industries as having slack, meaning that employers are having an easier time filling jobs and don’t need to use as many enticements to find workers. Those industries are government administration, education and consumer services, where applicants outnumber job openings.
Moderately tight markets include, tech, entertainment, information and media, professional services, retail estate, retail and financial services. In these industries, job applicants are having an easier time finding opportunities while employers are having to step up recruitment efforts.
Extremely tight labor markets include accommodation, oil and gas, hospice and health care. LinkedIn says that in those fields “employers cannot fill vacancies fast enough.”
Though hospitality consistently has been the leader in expanding payrolls, the industry is still about 5.5 million below its pre-pandemic level, according to BLS data. That is true even though hotels, restaurants, bars and the like have collectively raised hourly wages by about 23%.
“This industry is actually still looking to hire a lot of people. It’s the tightest industry in the United States,” Ghayad said. “There’s a lot of demand. They’re looking for people. There’s a lot of shortages. They can’t find people so these industries, services, industries, accommodation and anything that has to do with food or entertainment are booming.”

Recession fears loom

From a business standpoint, Ghayad said there have been four industries that have been recession-proof: government, utilities, education and consumer services. He does not expect to see any significant slowdown in hiring there.
Despite the seeming healthiness of the labor market, many economists think a broader recession is still ahead.
A recession survey from The Wall Street Journal sees about a 61% chance of a contraction, and the New York Fed’s recession indicator, which tracks the spread between 10-year and 3-month Treasury yields as an indicator, is pointing toward a 57% chance of a recession in the next year. That’s the highest level since 1982.
Still, Ghayad said he expects hiring to remain strong, even though LinkedIn posts mentioning words such as “layoffs,” “recession” and “open to work” have been on the rise in recent months.
“We don’t expect sort of any potential downturn to significantly impact the labor markets,” he said. “We’re in a very good position right now. There’s some cooling, but … the labor market continues to be the brightest spot in the U.S. economy.”

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President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s triumphant European tour may have prodded his partners towards contributing more weapons to defend his country against Vladimir Putin’s assault. That is welcome: Europe needs Ukraine to win the war and Russia to lose.But it also needs Ukraine to win the peace. For that, two other big Ukrainian asks — for reconstruction support and EU membership — are central. A Ukraine that stagnates in poverty, or is refused the tight political bonds that unite EU members, will be a permanent source of instability. It is in the EU’s self-interest to bring Ukraine into the community of prosperous liberal democracies.Europe is split between politicians who fully grasp this and those who do not. The current balance between the two is why we remain far from a real political commitment — a “whatever it takes” — to rebuild Ukraine and ready it for membership.This is understandable. No discussion about money can avoid questions over moral hazard, who bears the risk, whether loans are better than grants, and the legal basis for common financing. As for membership, big questions loom beyond economic integration. Will Ukraine be fit to join the Schengen borderless travel area? Will its judicial system be independent and effective? What about monetary union? What happens to European agriculture with the market entry of Ukraine’s huge farm resources? How would Ukraine’s voting rights change the political equilibrium of the union?These political difficulties are real and will take great statecraft to overcome. But while they remain unresolved, paths must be found along which Ukraine can make immediate progress towards becoming the prosperous EU member it needs to be. Two overlooked approaches deserve attention.Finding a new funding mechanism for tiding Ukraine over this year, which the EU pulled off in December, was hard enough. Creating one for vastly greater amounts needed for reconstruction is harder. But the eurozone countries have a disused mechanism available: the European Stability Mechanism, set up to grant rescue loans to financially distressed member states. The ESM has more than €400bn of unused financing capacity — enough for the 21st-century Marshall Plan promised by German chancellor Olaf Scholz. But the ESM will never be used for its original purpose again. It proved so politically toxic that no country wanted to tap it in the pandemic. Its huge borrowing capacity should be repurposed for Ukraine’s reconstruction. The ESM treaty authorises finance ministers to revise its support instruments. They could issue ESM bonds to fund euro governments which would lend on to a reconstruction platform. Currently lending must be for “the benefit of ESM members [facing] severe financing problems, if indispensable [for] financial stability”. Since the ESM remains an intergovernmental and not an EU body, its members could allow Ukraine to join — or just revise the treaty to allow supporting a non-member.As for EU membership, the debate has ignored the European Economic Area, which extends the single market to three European Free Trade Association countries — Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein. They adopt EU economic regulations and enjoy frictionless exchange, apart from customs rules of origin, in all sectors except for fish and agriculture.EEA membership is the closest existing alignment with the EU. If Ukraine qualifies for the EU, it will have qualified for the EEA. Conversely, qualifying for the EEA would fulfil important requirements for EU membership, and bring the rewards of the single market. Why not aim for the EEA as a staging post?This path would give Efta countries a chance to advance Ukraine’s European ambitions, first by inviting it to join Efta — itself a modest advance in the country’s westward journey. Norway could then support a Ukrainian EEA candidacy: the EEA Agreement gives all Efta countries the right to apply.Joining the EEA is a long slog too. But it is harder to stall Ukraine’s admission to the single market than full EU membership, because the thorny issues above would not be in play. Today those future difficulties create incentives to kick accession into the long grass, a move which Ukraine rightly fears. Once in the EEA, it would be well placed to hold the EU to confronting those questions without delay.In both cases, powerful institutional vehicles are at the ready. So in the spirit of recycling, let’s find new uses for old tools. Economising on institutional engineering to leave more space for statecraft is the geopolitical version of thinking locally and acting [email protected] More