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    What to Make of the Jobs Report’s Mixed Signals

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    Sometimes, the many numbers included in the government’s monthly jobs report come together to paint a clear, coherent picture of the strength or weakness of the U.S. labor market.This is not one of those times.Instead, the data released by the Labor Department on Friday was a mess of conflicting signals. It couldn’t even agree on the most basic of questions: whether the economy is adding or losing jobs.The report showed that employers added 272,000 nonagricultural jobs in May, far more than forecasters were expecting. That figure is based on a survey of about 119,000 businesses, nonprofit organizations and government agencies.But the report also contains data from another survey, of about 60,000 households. That data showed that the number of people who were employed last month actually fell by 408,000, while the unemployment rate rose to 4 percent for the first time in more than two years.The two surveys measure slightly different things. The employer survey includes only employees, for example, while the household survey includes independent contractors and self-employed workers. But that doesn’t explain the discrepancy last month: Adjusting the household survey to align with the concepts used in the employer survey makes the job losses in May look larger, not smaller.That means that the conflicting pictures come down to some combination of measurement error and random noise. That is frustrating but not unusual: Over the long term, the two surveys generally tell similar stories, but over shorter periods they frequently diverge.Economists typically put more weight on the employer survey, which is much larger and is generally viewed as more reliable. But they aren’t sure which data to believe this time around. Some economists have argued that the household survey could be failing to capture fully the recent wave of immigration, leading it to undercount employment growth. But others have argued that the employer survey could be overstating hiring because it isn’t accounting properly for recent business failures, among other factors. More

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    U.S. Accuses Hyundai and Two Other Companies of Using Child Labor

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    The Labor Department filed a lawsuit accusing Hyundai, one of its suppliers and a staffing company of jointly employing a 13-year-old on an auto body parts assembly line in Alabama.The Labor Department on Thursday sued Hyundai over the use of child labor in Alabama, holding the car manufacturer liable for the employment of children in its supply chain, including a 13-year-old girl who worked up to 60 hours per week making car parts.In the suit, filed in a federal court in Montgomery, Ala., the department said Hyundai was responsible for the employment of children at a Smart Alabama factory in Luverne, Ala., which produces parts like body panels that are shipped to a Hyundai factory in Montgomery. The suit also claimed a staffing agency, Best Practice Service, recruited the children to work at the supplier’s plant.In a statement, Hyundai said child labor was “not consistent with the standards and values we hold ourselves to as a company.” It added that the Labor Department used “an unprecedented legal theory that would unfairly hold Hyundai accountable for the actions of its suppliers.”Smart did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Representatives of Best Practice Service, which is no longer in business, could not be reached for comment.From July 2021 to February 2022, a 13-year-old girl worked at the Smart plant, where she was recruited to work by Best Practice Service, the suit claimed. The suit also contended that two other children were employed at the plant.The Labor Department said that through the employment of children at its supplier, Hyundai was in violation of the “hot goods” provision of the Fair Labor Standards Act, which prevents the interstate commerce of goods “that were produced in violation of the minimum wage, overtime or child labor provisions” of that law.“Companies cannot escape liability by blaming suppliers or staffing companies for child labor violations when they are in fact also employers themselves,” said Seema Nanda, the Labor Department’s chief legal officer, in a statement Thursday.The suit comes after investigations by Reuters and The New York Times documented the use of child labor by the suppliers of car companies. In 2022, Reuters found that Smart Alabama had used child labor at its facility, and that Kia, which is part of the same South Korean conglomerate as Hyundai, had also used child labor in the South. A 2023 investigation by The Times found children employed at the suppliers of General Motors and Ford Motor.Hyundai imports many of its vehicles from South Korea but has made big investments in factories in the South, spending nearly $8 billion on an electric vehicle plant in Georgia. The United Automobile Workers union has said it hopes to organize workers at Hyundai’s Montgomery plant. More

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    If A.I. Can Do Your Job, Maybe It Can Also Replace Your C.E.O.

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    Chief executives are vulnerable to the same forces buffeting their employees. Leadership is important, but so is efficiency — and cost-cutting.As artificial intelligence programs shake up the office, potentially making millions of jobs obsolete, one group of perpetually stressed workers seems especially vulnerable.These employees analyze new markets and discern trends, both tasks a computer could do more efficiently. They spend much of their time communicating with colleagues, a laborious activity that is being automated with voice and image generators. Sometimes they must make difficult decisions — and who is better at being dispassionate than a machine?Finally, these jobs are very well paid, which means the cost savings of eliminating them is considerable.The chief executive is increasingly imperiled by A.I., just like the writer of news releases and the customer service representative. Dark factories, which are entirely automated, may soon have a counterpart at the top of the corporation: dark suites.This is not just a prediction. A few successful companies have begun to publicly experiment with the notion of an A.I. leader, even if at the moment it might largely be a branding exercise.A.I. has been hyped as the solution to all corporate problems for about 18 months now, ever since OpenAI rolled out ChatGPT in November 2022. Silicon Valley put $29 billion last year into generative A.I. and is selling it hard. Even in its current rudimentary form, A.I. that mimics human reasoning is finding a foothold among distressed companies with little to lose and lacking strong leadership.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Teamsters Struggle to Unionize Amazon and FedEx Delivery Workers

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    The Teamsters union has made little headway in organizing workers at Amazon and FedEx despite wage and other gains it secured at UPS last year.Last year, two unions representing workers at three large automakers and UPS negotiated new labor contracts that included big raises and other gains. Leaders of the unions — the United Automobile Workers and the Teamsters — hoped the wins would help them organize workers across their industry.The U.A.W. won one vote to unionize a Volkswagen factory in Tennessee last month and lost one this month at two Mercedes-Benz plants in Alabama. The Teamsters have made even less progress at UPS’s big nonunion rivals in the delivery business, Amazon and FedEx.Polling shows that public support for unions is the highest it has been in decades. But labor experts said structural forces would make it hard for labor groups to increase their membership, which is the lowest it has been as a percentage of the total work force in decades. Unions also face stiff opposition from many employers and conservative political leaders.The Teamsters provide an instructive case study. Many of the workers doing deliveries for Amazon and FedEx work for contractors, typically small and medium-size businesses that can be hard to organize. And delivery workers employed directly by FedEx in its Express business are governed by a labor law that requires unions to organize all similar workers at the company nationally at once — a tougher standard than the one that applies to organizing employees at automakers, UPS and other employers.Some labor experts also said the Teamsters had not made as forceful a push as the U.A.W. to organize nonunion workers after securing a new contract with UPS.“You didn’t have that energy that you saw with the U.A.W.’s leaders,” said Jake Rosenfeld, a sociologist who studies labor at Washington University in St. Louis.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    A Loss at Mercedes-Benz Slows U.A.W.’s Southern Campaign

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    After Mercedes workers voted against joining the United Automobile Workers, the union will have less momentum as it campaigns to organize Southern factories.After suffering a setback at two Mercedes-Benz plants in Alabama on Friday, the United Automobile Workers union’s efforts to organize other auto factories in the South is likely to slow and could struggle to make headway.About 56 percent of the Mercedes workers who voted rejected the U.A.W. in an election after the union chalked up two major wins this year. In April, workers at a Volkswagen plant in Tennessee voted to join the union, the first large nonunion auto plant in the South to do so. Weeks later, the union negotiated a new contract bringing significant pay and benefit improvements for its members at several North Carolina factories owned by Daimler Truck.“Losing at Mercedes is not death for the union,” said Arthur Wheaton, director of labor studies at Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations. “It just means they’ll have less confidence going to the next plant. The U.A.W. is in it for the long run. I don’t think they’re going to stop just because they lost here.”Since its founding in 1935, the U.A.W. has almost exclusively represented workers employed by the three Michigan-based automakers: General Motors, Ford Motor, and Chrysler, now part of Stellantis. And it has long struggled to make headway at plants owned by foreign manufacturers, especially in Southern states where anti-union sentiment runs deep.Workers at the Volkswagen plant had voted against being represented by the U.A.W. twice by narrow margins before the recent union win there. An effort a decade ago to organize one of the Mercedes plants failed to build enough support for an election.Harley Shaiken, a professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley, noted that broad union organizing efforts seldom proceeded smoothly. In the 1930s, the U.A.W. won recognition at G.M. and Chrysler but struggled at Ford, which continued employing nonunion workers for a few years.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Few Chinese Electric Cars Are Sold in U.S., but Industry Fears a Flood

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    Automakers in the United States and their supporters welcomed President Biden’s tariffs, saying they would protect domestic manufacturing and jobs from cheap Chinese vehicles.The Biden administration’s new tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles won’t have a huge immediate impact on American consumers or the car market because very few such cars are sold in the United States.But the decision reflects deep concern within the American automotive industry, which has grown increasingly worried about China’s ability to churn out cheap electric vehicles. American automakers welcomed the decision by the Biden administration on Tuesday to impose a 100 percent tariff on electric vehicles from China, saying those vehicles would undercut billions of dollars of investment in electric vehicle and battery factories in the United States.“Today’s announcement is a necessary response to combat the Chinese government’s unfair trade practices that endanger the future of our auto industry,” Senator Gary Peters, a Michigan Democrat, said in a statement. “It will help level the playing field, keep our auto industry competitive and support good-paying, union jobs here at home.”On Tuesday, President Biden announced a series of new and increased tariffs on certain Chinese-made goods, including a 25 percent duty on steel and aluminum and 50 percent levies on semiconductors and solar panels. The tariff on electric vehicles made in China was quadrupled from 25 percent. Chinese lithium-ion batteries for electric cars will now face a 25 percent tariff, up from 7.5 percent.The United States imports only a few makes — electric or gasoline — from China. One is the Polestar 2, an electric vehicle made in China by a Swedish automaker in which the Chinese company Zhejiang Geely has a controlling stake. In a statement, Polestar said it was evaluating the impact of Mr. Biden’s announcement.“We believe that free trade is essential to speed up the transition to more sustainable mobility through increased E.V. adoption,” the company said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    What Forecasters Say About Interest Rates (and Why They Disagree)

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    Hopes for a steep drop in borrowing costs for consumers and businesses have been dashed. But some experts predict modest reductions in coming months.How soon is soon? Or exactly how much later is later?As the year started, there was a widespread view among economists and on Wall Street that the Federal Reserve would lower interest rates in the first half of the year. Maybe in March, maybe in May, but sooner rather than later.That long-awaited moment, two years after the Fed began ratcheting up rates to their highest level in decades, held the prospect of brightening consumer sentiment, increasing company valuations and improving corporate financing opportunities. It was called “the pivot party,” and everyone was invited.But three months of hotter-than-expected inflation data followed. Financial markets then projected that the Fed would lower rates once, near the end of the year, or not at all — based on a view that the central bank will see little merit in such a move as long as inflation remains a bit elevated and employment is growing.Interest rates for home and car loans tilted up again. And it seems the pivot party has been canceled. But some experts argue that it has only been postponed, leaving forecasters divided about what the rest of the year will bring.Camp 1: Inflation Is Coming Under ControlSome market analysts and bank economists are making the case that rate cuts are still on the table. The April jobs report, which implied a cooling labor market and softer wage growth, gave them some fodder.These analysts generally contend that current measures of inflation are overstated because of lagging indicators, reflecting cost pressures from over a year ago, that will ebb in summer. And they believe that while the diffuse process of stabilizing prices, formally called disinflation, may face setbacks (especially any oil shock), it is on track.After a wild ride, inflation has dropped back to lower levels, according to the Fed’s preferred measure.The annual percent change in the Personal Consumption Expenditures price index

    Source: U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis By The New York TimesA measure of U.S. inflation that excludes an estimate of homeownership costs suggests that price increases are less rapid.The annual percentage change in the Consumer Price Index compared with the change in the Harmonized Index of Consumer Prices. H.I.C.P. is an inflation measure commonly used in other countries that excludes “owners’ equivalent rent,” an estimate of how much it may cost homeowners to rent a similar home.

    Source: Eurostat and Bureau of Labor StatisticsBy The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More