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    As Democrats Trim Spending Bill, Some Americans Fear Being Left Behind

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    President Biden had an ambitious agenda to remake the economy. But under the duress of negotiations and Senate rules, he has shelved a series of proposals, some of them indefinitely.WASHINGTON — Democrats in Congress are curbing their ambitions for President Biden’s economic agenda, and Jennifer Mount, a home health care aide, worries that means she will not get the raise she needs to pay more than $3,000 in medical bills for blindness in one eye.Edison Suasnavas, who came to the United States from Ecuador as a child, has grown anxious about the administration’s efforts to establish a pathway to citizenship, which he hoped would allow him to keep doing molecular tests for cancer patients in Utah without fear of deportation.And Amy Stelly wonders — thanks to a winnowing of Mr. Biden’s plans to invest in neighborhoods harmed by previous infrastructure projects like highways that have harmed communities of color — whether she will continue to breathe fumes from a freeway that she says constantly make her home in New Orleans shudder. She has a message for the president and the Democrats who are in the process of trying to pack his sprawling agenda into a diminishing legislative package.“You come up and live next to this,” Ms. Stelly said. “You live this quality of life. We suffer while you debate.”Mr. Biden began his presidency with an expensive and wide-ranging agenda to remake the U.S. economy. But under the duress of negotiations and Senate rules, he has shelved a series of his most ambitious proposals, some of them indefinitely.He has been thwarted in his efforts to raise the federal minimum wage and create a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. He has pared back investments in lead pipe removal and other efforts that would help communities of color. Now, as the president tries to secure votes from moderates in his party, he is reducing what was originally a $3.5 trillion collection of tax cuts and spending programs to what could be a package of $2 trillion or less.That is still an enormous spending package, one that Mr. Biden argues could shift the landscape of the economy. But a wide range of Americans who have put their faith in his promises to reshape their jobs and lives are left to hope that the programs they are banking on will survive the cut; otherwise, they face the prospect of waiting years or perhaps decades for another window of opportunity in Washington.“The problem now is this may be the last train leaving the station for a long time,” said Jason Furman, an economist at the Harvard Kennedy School who was a top economic adviser to President Barack Obama. “It could be five, 10, 20 years before there’s another shot at a lot of these issues.”President Biden entered the White House with an expensive and ambitious agenda to remake the U.S. economy. He has pared back those plans.Tom Brenner for The New York TimesMr. Furman and other former Obama administration officials saw firsthand how quickly a presidential agenda can shrink, and how presidential and congressional decisions can leave campaign priorities unaddressed for years. Mr. Obama prioritized an economic stimulus package and the creation of the Affordable Care Act over sweeping immigration and climate legislation in the early years of his presidency.Stimulus and health care passed. The other two did not. A similar fate now could befall Mr. Biden’s plans for home care workers, paid leave, child care subsidies, free prekindergarten and community college, investments in racial equity and, once again, immigration and climate change.If Mr. Biden is able to push through a compromise bill with major investments in emissions reduction, “he’s got an engine that he’s working with” to fight climate change, said John Podesta, a former top aide to Mr. Obama and President Bill Clinton. “If he can’t get it, then I think, you know, we’re really kind of in soup, facing a major crisis.”Republicans have criticized the spending and the tax increases that would help fund it, claiming that the Democratic package would hurt the economy. Democrats “just have an insatiable appetite to raise taxes and spend more money,” Representative Steve Scalise, Republican of Louisiana, said on “Fox News Sunday” this week. “It would kill jobs.”Amy Stelly said she wondered whether she would continue to breathe fumes from the Claiborne Expressway, which is near her home in New Orleans.Edmund D. Fountain for The New York TimesThe threat of Republican filibusters has blocked Mr. Biden’s plans for gun and voting-rights legislation.For now, though, the president’s biggest problem is his own party. He is negotiating with progressives and moderates over the size of the larger tax and spending package. Centrists like Senators Joe Manchin III of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona have pushed for the price tag to fall below $2 trillion. Mr. Manchin has said he wants to limit the availability of some programs to lower- and middle-income earners. Progressive groups are jockeying to ensure that their preferred plans are not cut entirely from the bill.The House has proposed investing $190 billion in home health care, for example, less than half of what Mr. Biden initially asked for. If the price tag continues to decrease, Democrats would almost certainly have to choose between two concurrent aims: expanding access to older Americans in need of caretakers or raising the wages of those workers, a group that is disproportionately women of color.Another proposal included in Mr. Biden’s original infrastructure bill was an investment of $20 billion to address infrastructure that has splintered communities of color, although the funding was slashed to $1 billion through a compromise with Republican senators.Ms. Stelly thought the funds, plus the president’s sweeping proposals to address climate change — which might also be narrowed to appease centrist Democrats — would finally result in elected officials addressing the highway emissions that have filled her lungs and darkened the windows of her home.Ms. Stelly, an urban designer, has since limited her expectations. She said she hoped the funding would be enough to at least issue another study of the highway, which claimed dozens of Black-owned businesses and the once-thriving neighborhood of Tremé.The Claiborne Expressway bisects the residential neighborhood of Tremé in New Orleans. Ms. Stelly said she hoped the funding would be enough for another study on the effects of the highway.William Widmer for The New York TimesSome Democrats are eager to pack as much as they can into the bill because they fear losing the House, the Senate or both in the midterm elections next year. Mr. Podesta has urged lawmakers to see the package as a chance to avoid those losses by giving Democratic incumbents a batch of popular programs to run on, and also giving the president policy victories that could define his legacy.Mr. Biden has promoted some of his policies as ways to reverse racial disparities in the economy and lift families that are struggling in the coronavirus pandemic from poverty.Ms. Mount, who immigrated to the United States from Trinidad and Tobago, said she was appreciative of her job helping older Americans and the disabled eat and bathe and assisting them in their homes. But her wages for her long hours — working about 50 hours a week for $400, at times — have made it effectively impossible to stay on top of payments for basic needs.She had hoped Mr. Biden’s plan to raise the minimum wage or salaries for home health care aides meant she would no longer need to choose between her electric bills and her medical expenses. She said the treatment had improved her blindness, but without a salary increase for her field, she is more convinced that she will be working for the rest of her life.“I have to make a choice: Do I go to the grocery store or pay my mortgage? Do I pay my water bill or pay my electric bill?” said Ms. Mount, who lives in Philadelphia. “With that, retirement looks B-L-E-A-K, all uppercase. What do I have there for retirement?”When Mr. Biden initially proposed two years of free community college, Ms. Mount, 64, was encouraged about future opportunities for her six grandchildren in the United States. But she fears that effort could also be cut.“That’s politics from on top,” she said. “At times, they always seem detached.”Protesters gathered in front of the White House in August in support of the DACA program, which protects young immigrants from deportation.Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesSome measures that Democrats have long promised voters have run afoul of Senate rules that dictate which policies the administration should include in bills that use a special process to bypass the filibuster, including a minimum-wage increase and a plan to offer citizenship to immigrants brought to the United States as children.When the Senate parliamentarian rejected the strategy, it made Mr. Suasnavas, who has lived in the United States since he was 13, consider the prospect of eventually being deported; he would have to leave behind his job as a medical technology specialist, and his 6-year-old daughter and 2-year-old son.“We’ve been having the hopes that politicians in Washington — Democrats and Republicans — will see not only the economic impact we can bring to the country but also we’re still people with families,” said Mr. Suasnavas, 35. “Our hearts have been broken so many times that it feels like another wound in your skin.” More

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    Debate Looms Over I.M.F.: Should It Do More Than Put Out Fires?

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    As the International Monetary Fund gets set for its annual meeting, economists ask if it’s time to update its mandate as the world’s financial crisis responder.Lopsided access to vaccinations, extreme economic inequality, rising food prices and staggering debt are on the agenda when the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank gather for their annual meetings in Washington next week.A pressing issue not in the official program is the controversy that has been swirling for weeks around the chief of the I.M.F., Kristalina Georgieva, threatening her leadership.An investigation last month accused Ms. Georgieva of rigging data to paint China as more business friendly in a 2018 report when she was chief executive at the World Bank. Ms. Georgieva has denied any wrongdoing.The scandal has focused on the bank’s credibility — billion-dollar decisions can be made on the basis of its information — as well as Ms. Georgieva’s culpability.But lurking behind the debate over her future are foundational questions about the shifting role of the I.M.F., which has helped guide the planet’s economic and financial system since the end of World War II.Once narrowly viewed as a financial watchdog and a first responder to countries in financial crises, the I.M.F. has more recently helped manage two of the biggest risks to the worldwide economy: the extreme inequality and climate change.Some stakeholders, though, have chafed at the scope of the fund’s ambitions, and how much it should venture onto the World Bank’s turf of long-term development and social projects. And they object to what’s perceived as a progressive tilt.“There is a modernizing streak here running through major financial institutions which is creating a kind of tension,” said Adam Tooze, a historian at Columbia University and the author of “Shutdown: How Covid Shook the World’s Economy.”Other pressures weigh on the agency as well. Washington is still home to the I.M.F.’s headquarters, and the United States is the only one of the 190 member countries with veto power, because it contributes more money than any other. But its dominance has been increasingly challenged by China — straining relations further tested by trade and other tensions — and emerging nations.The willingness of the Federal Reserve and other central banks to flush trillions of dollars into the global economy to limit downturns also means that other lenders, aside from the I.M.F., have enough surplus cash on hand to lend money to strapped nations. China has also greatly expanded its lending to foreign governments for infrastructure projects under its ambitious Belt and Road Initiative.At the same time, long-held beliefs like the single-minded focus on how much an economy grows, without regard to problems like inequality and environmental damage, are widely considered outdated. And the preferred cocktail for helping debt-ridden nations that was popular in the 1990s and early 2000s — austerity, privatization of government services and deregulation — has lost favor in many circles as punitive and often counterproductive.The debate about the role of the I.M.F. was bubbling before the appointment of Ms. Georgieva, who this month started the third year of her five-year term. But she has embraced an expanded role for the agency. A Bulgarian economist and the first from an emerging economy to head the fund, she stepped up her predecessors’ attention to the widening inequality and made climate change a priority, calling for an end to all fossil fuel subsidies, for a tax on carbon and for significant investment in green technology.She has argued that however efficient and rational the market is, governments must step in to fix built-in flaws that could lead to environmental devastation and grossly inequitable opportunity. Sustainable debt replaced austerity as the catchword.When the coronavirus pandemic brutally intensified the slate of problems — malnourishment, inadequate health care, rising poverty and an interconnected world vulnerable to environmental disaster — Ms. Georgieva urged action.Here was “a once in a lifetime opportunity,” she said, “to support a transformation in the economy,” one that is greener and fairer.The I.M.F. opposed the hard line taken by some Wall Street creditors in 2020 toward Argentina, emphasizing instead the need to protect “society’s most vulnerable” and to forgive debt that exceeds a country’s ability to repay.I.M.F. headquarters in Washington, where Republicans have bristled at Ms. Georgieva’s agenda.Daniel Slim/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesThis year, Ms. Georgieva managed to create a special reserve fund of $650 billion to help struggling nations finance health care, buy vaccines and pay down debt during the pandemic.That approach has not always sat well with conservatives in Washington and on Wall Street.Former President Donald J. Trump immediately objected to the new reserve funds — known as special drawing rights — when they were proposed in 2020, and congressional Republicans have continued the criticism. They argue that the funds mostly help American adversaries like China, Russia, Syria and Iran while doing little for poor nations.Ms. Georgieva’s activist climate agenda has also run afoul of Republicans in Congress, who have opposed carbon pricing and pushed to withdraw from multinational efforts like the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris climate agreement.So has her advocacy for a minimum global corporate tax like the one that more than 130 nations signed on Friday.In July, Laurence D. Fink, who runs BlackRock, the world’s largest investment management company, and was at odds with the I.M.F.’s stance on Argentina, called the fund and the World Bank outdated and said they needed “to rethink their roles.”The investigation into data rigging at the World Bank focused on what is known as the Doing Business Report, which contains an influential index of business-friendly countries. WilmerHale, the law firm that conducted the inquiry, said various top officials had exerted pressure to raise the rankings of China, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates or Azerbaijan in the 2018 and 2020 editions.The law firm reported that Ms. Georgieva was “directly involved” with efforts to improve China’s rating for the 2018 edition. She said WilmerHale’s report was inaccurate and rejected its accusations. The I.M.F. executive board is reviewing the findings.The United States, which is the fund’s largest shareholder, has declined to express support for her after the allegations. Ahead of a meeting of the I.M.F. board on Friday, Ms. Georgieva maintained strong support from many of the fund’s shareholders, including France, which had lobbied hard for her to get the job in 2019. Late Friday, the I.M.F. released a statement saying the board would “request more clarifying details with a view to very soon concluding its consideration of the matter.”In Congress, Republicans and Democrats called for the Treasury Department to undertake its own investigations. A letter from three Republicans said the WilmerHale inquiry “raises serious questions about Director Georgieva’s ability to lead the International Monetary Fund.”Several people sprang to her defense, including Shanta Devarajan, an economist who helped oversee the 2018 Doing Business Report and a key witness in the investigation. He wrote on Twitter that the law firm’s conclusions did not reflect his full statements, and that the notion that Ms. Georgieva had “put her thumb on the scale to benefit one nation is beyond credulity.”“It was her job to ensure the final report was accurate and credible — and that’s what she did,” Mr. Devarajan added.In an interview, he said critics had used the investigation to discredit Ms. Georgieva. The problem, he said, is “how people may have chosen to read the findings of the report and use that to criticize Kristalina’s credibility and leadership.”Mr. Devarajan was not the only one to make the case that the controversy was functioning in some ways as a proxy for the contest over the I.M.F.’s direction. Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia, wrote in The Financial Times that Ms. Georgieva was receiving “McCarthyite treatment” by “anti-China forces” in Congress.Whatever role one might prefer for the I.M.F. — traditional, expanded or something else entirely — the scandal is both a distraction and a threat.Nicholas Stern, a British economist who formerly served as the chief economist and senior vice president of the World Bank, said this controversy could not come at a worse moment.“The coming few years are of vital importance to the future stability of the world economy and environment,” he wrote in a letter to the I.M.F. board in support of Ms. Georgieva. “This is as decisive a period as we have seen since the Second World War.”Alan Rappeport More

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    The New Jobs Report Numbers Are Pretty Good, Actually

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    They fell far short of analyst expectations, but they reflect a steady expansion that is more rapid than other recent recoveries.It’s not as bad as it looks.That’s the most important thing to take away from Friday’s release of the September jobs report, which found that employers added 194,000 jobs last month, a far cry from the 500,000 analysts expected. The initial response among experts was to wonder whether it called for an exclamation of a mere “oof” or a more extreme “ooooooof.”But when you peel apart the details, there is less reason to be concerned than that headline would suggest. The story of the economy in the second half of 2021 remains one of steady expansion that is more rapid than other recent recoveries. It is being held back by supply constraints and, in September at least, the emergence of the Delta variant. But the direction is clear, consistent and positive.Much of the disappointment in payroll growth came from strange statistical quirks around school reopening. The number of jobs in state local education combined with private education fell by 180,000 in September — when the customary seasonal adjustments are applied.There is reason to think the pandemic made those seasonal adjustments misleading. Schools reopened in September en masse, and employed 1.28 million more people (excluding seasonal adjustments) in September than in August. But a “normal” year, whatever that means anymore, would have featured an even bigger surge in employment. In other words, this might be a statistical artifact of a shrinking education sector earlier in the pandemic, not new information about what is happening this fall.Or as the Bureau of Labor Statistics put it in its release, “Recent employment changes are challenging to interpret, as pandemic-related staffing fluctuations in public and private education have distorted the normal seasonal hiring and layoff patterns,” which is the government statistical agency equivalent of a shrug emoji.Another detail in the report that takes some of the sting out of the weak payroll gains was news that July and August numbers were revised up by a combined 169,000 jobs, implying the economy entered the fall in a stronger place than it had seemed.Meanwhile, the focus on the underwhelming job growth numbers has masked what should be viewed as unambiguously good news.The unemployment rate fell to 4.8 percent, from 5.2 percent in August. It fell for good reasons, not bad — the number of people unemployed dropped by a whopping 710,000 while the number of people working rose by a robust 526,000. (These numbers are based on a survey of households, in contrast with the payroll numbers that are based on a survey of businesses; the two diverge from time to time, including this month.)This represents a remarkably speedy recovery in the labor market — attaining sub-5 percent unemployment a mere 17 months after the end of the deepest recession in modern times. By contrast, in the aftermath of the global financial crisis, the jobless rate did not reach 4.8 percent until January 2016, six and a half years after the technical end of that recession.Part of it is the unusual nature of a pandemic-induced recession and part of it is the highly aggressive response of fiscal policymakers to the crisis. But the result is that jobs are abundant and most people who want to work can.And while participation in the labor force remains well below prepandemic levels and has lots of room for improvement, it is not as bad as it was in that last expansion.In September, for example, the share of people 25 to 54 who were in the labor force — that is, either working or looking for work — was 81.7 percent. That is still well below 83.1 percent before the pandemic, but considerably better than the 81 percent achieved in January 2016, the point in the last expansion when the unemployment rate got this low.Labor force participation remains the Achilles’ heel of this recovery. Many Americans who have dropped out of the work force — because of whatever mix of burnout, challenges with child care, or ability to live on pent-up savings or government benefits — are not yet back in action.Notably, even as expanded unemployment insurance benefits expired in early September, there was no surge in participation in the labor force. The labor force participation rate for all adults fell by 0.1 of a percentage point, to 61.6 percent. That suggests that the end of extra-generous job benefits may not be the solution to labor shortage woes that many business groups have argued it would be.Low rates of labor force participation and the weaker-than-expected job growth numbers are most likely two parts of the same story. Businesses want to hire and expand, and labor shortages are real. But there are fewer workers available to be hired right now than there were before the pandemic.That makes for good opportunities for Americans who do want to work. It is reflected in higher pay — average hourly earnings in the private sector were up 4.6 percent in September from a year ago. But it is also acting as a constraint on just how fast this recovery can go. More

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    College Graduates Find Booming Job Market a Year After Pandemic Lows

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    Seniors and graduates are again in demand as companies revive recruiting, underscoring the economic premium that comes with a diploma.Trevaughn Wright-Reynolds, a senior at Colby College in Maine, expected a lengthy job search when he returned to campus in August. “I wasn’t sure how much interest I was going to get,” he said. “I didn’t know what to think of the job market.”It didn’t take him long to find out. By September, he was in the final round of interviews with several suitors, and on Oct. 1, Mr. Wright-Reynolds accepted a position with a proprietary trading firm in Chicago. “I didn’t think I would get an offer this quickly,” he said.For many college students, the pandemic’s arrival last year did more than disrupt their studies, threaten their health and shut down campus life. It also closed off the usual paths that lead from the classroom to jobs after graduation. On-campus recruiting visits were abandoned, and the coronavirus-induced recession made companies pull back from hiring.But this year, seniors and recent graduates are in great demand as white-collar employers staff up, with some job-seekers receiving multiple offers. University placement office directors and corporate human resources executives report that hiring is running well above last year’s levels, and in some cases surpasses prepandemic activity in 2019.“The current market is great for employment,” said Lisa Noble, director of employer partnerships and emerging pathways at Colby. “There was a lot of trepidation for companies in 2020. People wanted to see how things would work out and were stalling.” Since June 1, Ms. Noble has had discussions with 428 employers, compared with 273 in the same period last year.Much of the recruiting is taking place virtually, as are job fairs and even many internships. But the reliance on virtual platforms like Zoom and Microsoft Teams for interviews, job offers and eventually welcoming new hires aboard hasn’t dimmed enthusiasm among employers.“The appetite for college labor is strong right now, whether it’s student positions, or part time, all the way through entry-level jobs,” said Jennifer Neef, director of the Career Center at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.That appetite at this stage of the pandemic — when overall U.S. employment remains more than five million jobs below the level in early 2020 — underscores the longstanding economic premium for those with a college education over holders of just a high school diploma.The unemployment rate for all workers with a college degree stood at 2.8 percent in August, compared with 6 percent for high school graduates with no college. Among workers 22 to 27, the jobless rate in June was 6.2 percent for those with at least a bachelor’s degree and 9.6 percent for those without one, according to a study by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.“We’ve seen a bifurcation in the labor market recovery,” said Gregory Daco, chief U.S. economist at Oxford Economics. “College graduates were less affected by job losses and have seen a faster rebound while people with high school diplomas or less witnessed a much more serious decline in employment opportunities during the Covid crisis.”What’s more, the spread of the Delta variant of the coronavirus has been a one-two punch for those lacking a college degree, hitting the sectors they depend on the most, like restaurants and bars, hotels and retail businesses. By contrast, white-collar employers are thriving.Office work can also be done remotely, a key advantage over face-to-face jobs dealing with consumers that frequently employ less-educated workers. In many cases, the new hires will rarely set foot at corporate headquarters, with orientation and full-time work mostly taking place online.And the courtship rituals of recruiters haven’t changed, even if everything is done over the internet.“It’s back to business as usual,” said Wendy Dziorney, global university hiring leader at HP Inc. The company plans to hire 315 graduates of the class of 2021 in the United States, compared with 126 from the class of 2020 and 210 in the class of 2019.Fall marks the peak of the recruiting season on campus, with interviews and full-time offers for seniors, while internships beckon for sophomores and juniors.Students in search of jobs and internships gathered to listen to recruiters from a consulting firm at Colby College last week.Tristan Spinski for The New York Times“October is our busiest month,” said Jennifer Newbill, director of university recruitment at Dell Technologies. Her company has extended full-time offers to more than 1,300 graduates this year, up 60 percent from 2020.Recruiters of students in the hottest majors — including engineering, computer sciences, accounting and economics — find themselves butting up against one another for the same candidates.“I’ve been with the firm 26 years and I’ve never seen it this competitive,” said Rod Adams, talent acquisition and onboarding leader at PwC, the accounting and consulting firm. “It’s not just our direct competitors but also tech firms, big industry, banks and investment companies.”For this year, PwC plans to extend offers for internships and full-time jobs to 12,000 people, up 15 to 20 percent from 2020 and 10 percent above 2019 levels. Like many employers, PwC is approaching students earlier and trying to get top candidates to make a commitment as soon as possible.The interviewing process used to extend through November, but Mr. Adams hopes to get offers out by the middle of this month and to hear back from candidates by Thanksgiving. “We are moving faster, and the moment students set foot on campus, they start hearing from us,” Mr. Adams said.PwC is using a hybrid approach to recruiting, with Mr. Adams and his team visiting a few campuses in person while contacting many more virtually. “It allows us to extend our reach,” he said.In particular, the company has made an effort to pursue students from historically Black colleges and universities, recruiting from 35 of these institutions; five years ago, it recruited from seven.The rise in campus hiring means more choices for some current students as well as belated help for the pandemic-hit class of 2020, said Annette McLaughlin, director of the Office of Career Services at Fordham University.“Activity is up significantly from last year and is about 10 percent higher than it was before the pandemic,” she said. “It’s likely that students will get multiple offers and they will have to choose.”“The current market is great for employment,” said Lisa Noble, director of employer partnerships and emerging pathways at Colby.Tristan Spinski for The New York TimesThe rebound is also benefiting recent Fordham graduates like Jonah Isaac, who finished school in May 2020, two months after the pandemic struck. Several companies withdrew offers, and Mr. Isaac, a business administration major, spent a year interviewing for spots that never materialized until a Fordham alumnus helped him get a sales development job with Moody’s Analytics in June 2021.“It was a huge hit for many students, and not getting anything was demoralizing,” said Mr. Isaac, a Chicago native who was a wide receiver on Fordham’s football team. “I’d get to the third or fourth interview, and they’d say, ‘Sorry, we’re going in another direction.’”Members of the class of 2021 have had an easier time. Brittanie Rice, a Spelman College graduate, landed a job at Dell after working as an intern the summer before. “I felt lucky,” she said. “A lot of my friends had cancellations left and right, but my internship went on.”Ms. Rice was a computer science major, an especially sought-after concentration for many big employers. But Ms. Newbill, the university recruitment director for Dell, said her company was also hiring students majoring in nontechnical fields — like philosophy and journalism — for sales positions. “Sales is about the personality, not the degree,” she said.Still, graduates in STEM-related fields are having the most success.Manuel Pérez, 23, is two months into his job as a data analyst at Accenture, which led him to move to Nashville after graduating from the University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez.Mr. Pérez, an information systems major, said he attended a virtual job fair last October and applied to work at Accenture after meeting with recruiters over Microsoft Teams. After three rounds of interviews, he received a job offer in March and started his position in the summer.“I had other job offers, but they all wanted me to start immediately, and I wanted to graduate first,” said Mr. Pérez, from Camuy, P.R. “I feel the job demand has grown, with more people demanding better pay, in every sector from retail to white-collar jobs.”Mr. Wright-Reynolds, the Colby senior, is studying statistics with a minor in computer sciences. A native of Medford, Mass., he will start at the trading firm in Chicago in August.“This was a great opportunity, and I couldn’t go wrong in accepting it,” he said. “I feel like a weight is off my shoulders. I have a lot more time to enjoy senior year.” More

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    'Squid Game,' the Netflix Hit, Taps South Korean Fears

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    The dystopian Netflix hit taps South Korea’s worries about costly housing and scarce jobs, concerns familiar to its U.S. and international viewers.In “Squid Game,” the hit dystopian television show on Netflix, 456 people facing severe debt and financial despair play a series of deadly children’s games to win a $38 million cash prize in South Korea.Koo Yong-hyun, a 35-year-old office worker in Seoul, has never had to face down masked homicidal guards or competitors out to slit his throat, like the characters in the show do. But Mr. Koo, who binge-watched “Squid Game” in a single night, said he empathized with the characters and their struggle to survive in the country’s deeply unequal society.Mr. Koo, who got by on freelance gigs and government unemployment checks after he lost his steady job, said it is “almost impossible to live comfortably with a regular employee’s salary” in a city with runaway housing prices. Like many young people in South Korea and elsewhere, Mr. Koo sees a growing competition to grab a slice of a shrinking pie, just like the contestants in “Squid Game.”Those similarities have helped turn the nine-episode drama into an unlikely international sensation. “Squid Game” is now the top-ranked show in the United States on Netflix and is on its way to becoming one of the most-watched shows in the streaming service’s history. “There’s a very good chance it will be our biggest show ever,” Ted Sarandos, a co-chief executive at Netflix, said during a recent business conference.Culturally, the show has sparked an online embrace of its distinct visuals, especially the black masks decorated with simple squares and triangles worn by the anonymous guards, and a global curiosity for the Korean children’s games that underpin the deadly competitions. Recipes for dalgona, the sugary Korean treat at the center of one especially tense showdown, have gone viral.A shop in Seoul selling “Squid Game”-themed dalgona.Heo Ran/ReutersLike “The Hunger Games” books and movies, “Squid Game” holds its audience with its violent tone, cynical plot and — spoiler alert! — a willingness to kill off fan-favorite characters. But it has also tapped a sense familiar to people in the United States, Western Europe and other places, that prosperity in nominally rich countries has become increasingly difficult to achieve, as wealth disparities widen and home prices rise past affordable levels.“The stories and the problems of the characters are extremely personalized but also reflect the problems and realities of Korean society,” Hwang Dong-hyuk, the show’s creator, said in an email. He wrote the script in 2008 as a film, when many of these trends had become evident, but overhauled it to reflect new worries, including the impact of the coronavirus. (Minyoung Kim, the head of content for the Asia-Pacific region at Netflix, said the company was in talks with Mr. Hwang about producing a second season.)“Squid Game” is only the latest South Korean cultural export to win a global audience by tapping into the country’s deep feelings of inequality and ebbing opportunities. “Parasite,” the 2019 film that won best picture at the Oscars, paired a desperate family of grifters with the oblivious members of a rich Seoul household. “Burning,” a 2018 art-house hit, built tension by pitting a young deliveryman against a well-to-do rival for a woman’s attention.The masked guards in “Squid Game” mete out violence during the competitions.NetflixSouth Korea boomed in the postwar era, making it one of the richest countries in Asia and leading some economists to call its rise the “miracle on the Han River.” But wealth disparity has worsened as the economy has matured.“South Koreans used to have a collective community spirit,” says Yun Suk-jin, a drama critic and professor of modern literature at Chungnam National University. But the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s undermined the nation’s positive growth story and “made everyone fight for themselves.”The country now ranks No. 11 using the Gini coefficient, one measure of income inequality, among the members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the research group for the world’s richest nations. (The United States is ranked No. 6.)As South Korean families have tried to keep up, household debt has mounted, prompting some economists to warn that the debt could hold back the economy. Home prices have surged to the point where housing affordability has become a hot-button political topic. Prices in Seoul have soared by over 50 percent during the tenure of the country’s president, Moon Jae-in, and led to a political scandal.“Squid Game” lays bare the irony between the social pressure to succeed in South Korea and the difficulty of doing just that, said Shin Yeeun, who graduated from college in January 2020, just before the pandemic hit. Now 27, she said she had spent over a year looking for steady work.“It’s really difficult for people in their 20s to find a full-time job these days,” she said.South Korea has also suffered a sharp drop in births, generated partly by a sense among young people that raising children is too expensive.“In South Korea, all parents want to send their kids to the best schools,” Ms. Shin said. “To do that you have to live in the best neighborhoods.” That would require saving enough money to buy a house, a goal so unrealistic “that I’ve never even bothered calculating how long it will take me,” Ms. Shin said.Characters in the show receive invitations to participate in the Squid Game.Netflix“Squid Game” revolves around Seong Gi-hun, a gambling addict in his 40s who doesn’t have the means to buy his daughter a proper birthday present or pay for his aging mother’s medical expenses. One day he is offered a chance to participate in the Squid Game, a private event run for the entertainment of wealthy individuals. To claim the $38 million prize, contestants must pass through six rounds of traditional Korean children’s games. Failure means death.The 456 contestants speak directly to many of the country’s anxieties. One is a graduate from Seoul National University, the nation’s top university, who is wanted for mishandling his clients’ funds. Another is a North Korean defector who needs to take care of her brother and help her mother escape from the North. Another character is an immigrant laborer whose boss refuses to pay his wages.The characters have resonated with South Korean youth who don’t see a chance to advance in society. Known locally as the “dirt spoon” generation, many are obsessed with ways to get rich quickly, like with cryptocurrencies and the lottery. South Korea has one of the largest markets for virtual currency in the world.Like the prize money in the show, cryptocurrencies give “people the chance to change their lives in a second,” said Mr. Koo, the office worker. Mr. Koo, whose previous employer went out of business during the pandemic, said the difficulty of earning money is one reason South Koreans are so obsessed with making a quick buck.“I wonder how many people would participate if ‘Squid Game’ was held in real life,” he said.Seong Gi-hun, the show’s protagonist, entering an arena for one of the games.Netflix More

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    U.K. Braces for a Difficult Holiday Season Due to Shortages

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    Military personnel are driving transport trucks. Pig farmers may start culling their stock. Even the government says shortages will affect Christmas, as Britons brace for a challenging winter.BUNGAY, England — To understand the deep sense of anxiety Britons feel about the supply shortages currently afflicting the nation — and threatening disruptions to the Christmas dinner table — one need only travel to Simon Watchorn’s pig farm, about two hours northeast of London.In 2014, Mr. Watchorn was England’s pig farmer of the year, with a thriving business. But this year, he said, the outlook for the fall is bleak.Slaughterhouses are understaffed and are processing a smaller-than-usual number of pigs. There is a shortage of drivers to move pork to grocery stores and butcher shops. And there are fewer butchers to prepare the meat for consumers.If the problems persist, Mr. Watchorn may have to start culling some of his 7,500 pigs by the end of next month. Pigs grow about 15 pounds each week, and after a certain point, they are too big for slaughterhouses to process.Mr. Watchorn said the last time he can remember things being this bad was during an outbreak of mad cow disease in the late 1990s. “It’s a muddle,” he said. “It’s worse than a muddle, it’s a disaster, and I don’t know when it’s going to finish.”Mr. Watchorn, 66, is one of many producers of food and other goods warning of a daunting winter ahead for Britons. Shortages continued to bedevil the British economy on Monday as gas stations in London and in southeastern England reported trouble getting fuel, and the government began deploying military personnel to help ease the lack of drivers. Supermarket consortiums say pressures from rising transport costs, labor shortages and commodity costs are already pushing prices higher and will likely continue to do so.The chancellor of the Exchequer, Rishi Sunak, acknowledged on BBC Radio on Monday that there will shortages at Christmastime. He said the government was doing “everything we can” to mitigate the supply chain issues but admitted there was no “magic wand.”Mr. Watchorn, whose farm is near the town of Bungay, England, northeast of London, is convinced that Brexit is responsible for the current distress.Andrew Testa for The New York TimesMr. Watchorn, who prides himself on running a farm where all adult stock live outside, is convinced that Brexit is responsible for the current distress, saying the exodus of European workers from Britain had led to damaging labor shortages. The British people voted to break with the European Union to reduce immigration, he believes, without realizing how damaging a cliff-edge exit from the bloc would be for businesses.“They didn’t vote for supermarket shortages,” he said on Sunday as dozens of pigs gathered around him to be fed. “They didn’t understand that was going to be a probable, likely outcome.”Mr. Sunak and other Conservative leaders say supply problems are a global issue largely attributable to the pandemic and not limited to Britain. Indeed, businesses around the world are facing rising energy prices, product shortages and labor shortages.But the challenges in Britain are acute, with many industries facing a shortage of workers — in part because of the pandemic, but also, many business owners say, because of stricter immigration laws that came into effect after Britain’s exit from the European Union on Jan. 1.“We are desperately trying to find workers,” said Jon Hare, a spokesman for the British Meat Processors Association, which estimates that Britain is short of about 25,000 butchers and processing plant workers.He called on the government to issue more short-term visas to foreign workers to help the industry with the transition outside of the European Union. “There are only so many people you can take out of the production system before the system starts breaking down,” he said.A shopper confronted sparse food shelves in a Co-op supermarket in Harpenden, England, in September.Peter Cziborra/ReutersThe specter of disruptions to the holiday season is particularly resonant in Britain, where Christmas isn’t Christmas without traditional foods. And yet British meat producers say the dinner table could be lacking some of the seasonal specialties that people count on every December. That includes pigs in a blanket (bacon-wrapped sausages that are different from the American version), glazed ham and Yorkshire pudding, which require additional labor to prepare, Mr. Hare said.The National Pig Association has warned that about 120,000 pigs are backed up on farms because of a lack of slaughterhouse workers, and the British Poultry Council said it expected to cut Christmas turkey production by 20 percent. On Monday, protesters gathered outside of the Conservative Party conference in Manchester with signs that said “All we want for Christmas is our pigs in a blanket” and “#saveourbacon.”Consumers are already anticipating shortages. One farmer in Leeds said that by last month, customers had already ordered all 3,500 turkeys she was raising for Christmas — a first.A lack of truck drivers has also caused sporadic shortages for staples including eggs, milk and baked goods. One in six people in Britain said that in recent weeks they had not been able to buy certain essential food items because they were unavailable, according to a report by the Office for National Statistics, which surveyed about 3,500 households.Some consumers interviewed in recent days said they had not had any trouble finding what they wanted at grocery stores. But Meriem Mahdhi, 22, who moved from Italy to Colchester in southeast England last month to attend college, said she had struggled to find essential items at her local grocery store, Tesco, Britain’s largest supermarket chain.“All the dried foods like pasta, canned fruit, it’s all gone, every day,” she said. Tesco did not respond to a request for comment.Seeking a quick fix, 200 military personnel in fatigues on Monday arrived at refineries to help deliver fuel to gas stations. About half of them drove civilian vehicles and the others provided logistical support. “As an extra precaution we have put the extra drivers on,” Mr. Sunak said.Over the weekend, the government said it had extended thousands of temporary visas for foreign workers to work in Britain until the first few months of next year. But economists said the temporary visas were unlikely to be enough to make much of a difference, since there are shortages at every link in the supply chain.“There is a lack of workers coming in, and British people are not willing to do the job,” said Robert Elliott, a professor at the University of Birmingham. He said it was difficult to say how much of the supply-chain issues were a result of Brexit versus the pandemic, but regardless, the government has chosen policies that have not made the situation better.The government has underinvested in training workers to drive trucks, he said, and too few young people are pursuing the profession to replace ones who have retired.Even before Brexit, the meat industry had difficulties attracting workers because of the hard work, low pay and remote locations of processing plants. Producers have raised wages for butchers by an average of 10 percent this year, the British Meat Processors Association said, but shortages are still so severe that members of the British Poultry Council reported they had cut weekly chicken production by five to 10 percent.Mr. Watchorn said the situation was “a disaster, and I don’t know when it’s going to finish.”Andrew Testa for The New York TimesJames MacGregor, the general manager at Riverford, an organic food company based in Devon, England, said he was short of about 40 workers, or about 16 percent of the company. Butchers have been particularly hard to find, he said. To cope with the shortages, Riverford will likely offer fewer products for sale around Christmas.“It feels like we’re staring down the barrel of a gun a little bit at the moment,” Mr. MacGregor said. “It’s highly likely if we don’t see movement in terms of fuel and labor, we will ultimately end up passing some of this cost on to the consumer.”Kathy Martyn, the owner of Oakfield Farm in East Sussex, which has about 100 pigs, said she was relieved to find fuel on Friday, just in time to make it to a catering job for a wedding over the weekend. She said that fuel shortages have made planning difficult, and that she may have to cull about 20 of her pigs this year.“We’ll just roll up our sleeves and take a deep breath,” Ms. Martyn said.Mr. Watchorn, the pig farmer, said his farm will be losing money this year. Even culling pigs is costly. If it comes to that, he would have to find someone to slaughter the animals and then take them away. Financial help from the government to do that would help, but he said he was not counting on it. “When pigs fly,” he quipped.Mr. Watchorn said the last time he can remember things being this bad was during an outbreak of mad cow disease in the 1990s.Andrew Testa for The New York TimesAina J. Khan More