The website of economist and keynote speaker Linda Nazareth, expert in demographics, global trends and the future of work
If you were a brand new graduate from a top tier university, you had a degree that made you a hot item and you could work anywhere at all, where would you choose? Say it came down to Wall Street or Silicon Valley – both of which offered pretty nice compensation packages – which would […]
There are so many facets of the shuttle-bus-to-Silicon-Valley story that fascinate me. The fact that people are willing to commute a fair distance to be able to live in San Francisco while working for tech companies 60 miles away has big implications, and not just for the bus drivers who are in the news this […]
Attention interest rate watchers: Walmart is raising wages so the U.S. Federal Reserve is likely to be hiking interest rates. It is not as simple as that, but it kind of is actually. In case you missed it, here is the New York Times’ take on Walmart’s move. Basically the company is raising the wages […]
How would you like free college tuition for you and for your kids? It would really take the pressure off, right? Of course you’d take it if offered – but what if there was a catch, the catch being really high taxes forever? That’s the deal that Denmark – and a lot of Europe for […]
Here is the good news for U.S. restaurants: it costs less to fill those SUVs and minivans these days, so some of the saved money is going to be spent eating out. (Blooming Onions for everyone!). The bad news? That windfall to restaurants is not what it would have been in the good old days […]
Former Abercrombie CEO Mike Jeffries (yes, I said ‘former’, he stepped down today) said some pretty dumb and offensive things about who he wanted his clientele to be. If the company’s numbers were good nobody might have cared, but in this retail environment he rightly got beat up for them. As far as selling the […]
Do you go to the mall? I used to, quite a bit actually. In the 70s, 80s, 90s, even the 00s – the mall was the place to buy stuff, and I liked stuff as much as any child and young woman in North America. Now, you can buy stuff in lots of other places […]
Trust me, I am not saying that ‘Oprah’s Favorite Things’ are a good approximation of anyone’s holiday shopping list. Still, I think it is an economic indicator, of a type, just the same. The Queen of Daytime Talk (and the Forbes-magazine certified 580th richest person in the world, thank you very much) debuted the list […]
Everybody has their favorite so called-called ‘bellwether’ company, the one that tells you where the economy is going if you scan its fortunes. A lot of people like Federal Express, since tracking shipments tells you a lot about the level of activity. Another favorite is Caterpillar, since it gives you a guide to business spending. […]
Advertising, television, media – they sound like cool places to work right? What with Mad Men like a giant commercial for the glamorous industry of advertising, I imagine more people than ever are lusting after careers writing copy and crafting campaigns. Maybe though, their better bet would be to plan to hand out samples in […]