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The World
4.3 million workers are missing. Where did they go? Scarce labor is becoming a fixture of the U.S. economy, reshaping the workforce and prodding firms to adapt by raising wages, reinventing services and investing in automation. The absence comes as U.S. employers are struggling to fill more than 10 million job openings and meet soaring consumer demand. In another sign of just how tight the labor market is, jobless claims—a proxy for layoffs across the U.S.—fell to 293,000 last week, the first time since the pandemic began that they fell below 300,000, the Labor Department said Thursday. Workers are quitting at or near the highest rates on record in sectors such as manufacturing, retail, and trade, transportation and utilities, as well as professional and business services. Participation has fallen broadly across demographic groups and career fields, but has dropped particularly fast among women, workers without a college degree and those in low-paying service industries such as hotels, restaurants and child care. (Wall Street Journal)
Deere workers go on strike for the first time in 35 years: More than 10,000 workers walked off the job at the farm- and construction-equipment maker after earlier rejecting a deal with pay raises and bonuses over six years. (Wall Street Journal)
Xi Jinping expected to snub UK summit on climate crisis: Boris Johnson has been told that President Xi of China will not attend next month’s critical climate change conference in Glasgow amid international pessimism that the event will be successful. In a setback to the ambitions of the Cop26 summit, the prime minister has been advised by diplomats that Xi is not expected to join more than a hundred other world leaders, including President Biden. (The Times)
Sydney will open up to fully vaccinated international travellers from Nov. 1 without the need for quarantine, the country's most populous state said on Friday, bringing forward a full return of overseas travel. (Reuters)
Test scores in both reading and math declined for 13-year-old students between 2012 and 2020, according to new National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) data. It's the first major decline in the two subjects since the NAEP began tracking long-term academic achievement trends in the 1970s. "These data show that student progress declined or was stalled even before the COVID-19 pandemic," National Assessment Governing Board chairwoman Beverly Perdue said. "Clearly, these results raise the alarm at all levels that education policy to change these results must be a top priority,“ Perdue added. (Axios)
Americans revert to favoring a reduced government role: Americans have shifted back to favoring a more hands-off approach for government in addressing the nation's problems after a rare endorsement of a more active role last year. Currently, 52% say the government is doing too many things that should be left to individuals and businesses, while 43% want the government to do more to solve the country's problems. In contrast, a record-high 54% of U.S. adults last year said the government should do more to solve problems. (Gallup)
Economy
Close to 40% of U.S. households say they face financial difficulties as the pandemic continues. More than 30% of people say their situation is worse, survey finds; 19% of households have depleted their savings. (Wall Street Journal)
Chinese president Xi Jinping appears to be sailing into an economic storm of his own making, as one of China’s largest developers teeters on the edge of bankruptcy and manufacturers grapple with power shortages across the country. But aside from minor course corrections, analysts and government advisers expect Xi to take advantage of what he has termed a “window of opportunity” to press ahead with difficult structural reforms. If successful, it will be the latest in a long series of bold political gambles — from the elimination of term limits on the presidency to his pursuit of “common prosperity” — that have made him China’s most feared leader since Mao Zedong. It has also put him on the cusp of an unprecedented third term in power at the Chinese Communist party’s 20th congress late next year. Common prosperity is particularly risky, as Xi’s determination to rein in property prices and reduce income inequality could do more harm than good to the world’s second-largest economy. (Financial Times)
Japan’s new prime minister has pledged to move the country away from neoliberal fundamentalism as he lambasted his own party’s failure to deliver broad-based growth under the Abenomics program that defined the economy for almost a decade. In his first interview with international media since taking over Japan’s leadership this month, Fumio Kishida told the Financial Times that while regulatory reform remained necessary, he would approach it with a focus on narrowing the gap between the rich and poor. (Financial Times)
The four largest U.S. consumer banks posted another strong quarter this week as the rebounding economy allowed them to release more cash they had set aside for pandemic losses, while sizzling deals, equity financing and trading also boosted their bottom lines. JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Well Fargo, and Bank of America, seen by analysts and economists as bellwethers of the broader economy, reported a combined profit of $28.7 billion for 3Q21, beating analyst estimates. (Reuters)
The U.S. should create a new regulator to oversee digital asset markets, Coinbase said in a new policy proposal. It warned that failure to regulate appropriately could leave the country even further “behind” other governments. The proposal comes a day after one of its investors, venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, released its own vision of how next-generation internet services including blockchain and digital assets should be regulated. Executives from a16z, as the firm is known, planned to meet with leaders across the government this week. (CNBC)
The U.S. SEC is poised to allow the first U.S. bitcoin futures exchange-traded fund to begin trading next week. (Bloomberg)
A wave of US public listings and sales have resulted in a windfall for tech investors and employees, providing a record $582.5bn in the year to September. Start-ups that completed initial public offerings, direct listings or deals with special purpose acquisition companies made up $513.6bn of the total, with 93 listings occurring between July and September — the highest of any quarter this year. Sales accounted for the remaining $68.9bn. The data showed that the total proceeds from sales and public listings was already twice as high as last year’s figure. (Financial Times)
Southeast Asia hosting more unicorns as internet economy takes off. (Nikkei Asian Review)
How hospitality brands should rethink loyalty programs to win over Gen Z. The youngest demographic of travelers differs from other generations by their greater need for choice, flexibility and exclusive experiences from hotel rewards programs. (Morning Consult)
Technology
LinkedIn said it will sunset the localized version of its app in China and will instead launch a new job boards app called "InJobs" later this year. The company said it's making these changes because it's facing "a significantly more challenging operating environment and greater compliance requirements in China." The news comes weeks after reports that LinkedIn blocked the profiles of several U.S. journalists from the company's China-based platform, citing "prohibited content." (Axios, LinkedIn)
Google is changing the way search works on mobile devices, initially in the U.S. Now, when you reach the bottom of a set of search results on your phone, you won’t have to tap to go to the next page. Instead, the next set of results will automatically load so you can continuously scroll down to see more information. The change will roll out on the mobile web and will be supported on the Google mobile app for both iOS and Android in the U.S. for most English-language searches for the time being. Because it’s a staggered release, you may initially encounter some results which scroll and others that do not. (Techcrunch)
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the world's biggest contract chipmaker, will build its first-ever chip plant in Japan, answering Tokyo's call to strengthen the local semiconductor supply chain to cope with an unprecedented global crunch in key components. (Nikkei Asian Review)
In Q2 2021, Apple captured 75% of the overall handset market operating profit and 40% of revenue despite accounting for only 13% of global smartphone shipments. (Counterpoint)
Facebook wants machines to see the world through our eyes: Machines can recognise what they see in photos and videos thanks to large datasets like ImageNet, a hand-curated collection of millions of photos used to train most of the best image-recognition models of the last decade. But the images in these datasets portray a world of well-framed objects—a picture gallery quite unlike everyday life as humans experience it. To get machines to see things as we do will take a wholly new approach. Facebook is kickstarting a project, called Ego4D, to build AIs that can understand scenes and activities viewed from a first-person perspective—how things look to the people involved, rather than to an onlooker. Think motion-blurred GoPro footage taken in the thick of the action, instead of neatly framed scenes taken by someone on the sidelines. (MIT Technology Review)
Smart Links
Amazon puts its own “brands” first above better-rated products. (The Markup)
Luxury watch shortage drives growth of $20 billion secondhand market as start-ups rush to cash in. (CNBC)
Climate software is suddenly a hot investment. (Crunchbase)
LeBron James’ entertainment firm, SpringHill Company, raised $250-350MM at a valuation of around $725 million. (The Information)
How a $2 Million luxury condo in Brooklyn ends up with a $157 tax bill. (Bloomberg Businessweek)
As second homes get far more use, the question is: Where do you live? (Wall Street Journal)