In The Headlines How Demographic Shifts May Drive Big Changes in Spending If you are a job seeker, you have probably got more of a chance walking dogs for a living than teaching kids in the labor market of the coming decade. That is one of the implicit messages in a [...]

In The Headlines Will the Growth of Electric Vehicles Disrupt Oil Markets? The growth of battery-powered cars could be as disruptive to the oil market as the OPEC market-share war that triggered the price crash of 2014, potentially eliminating hundreds of billions of dollars from the value of fossil fuel producers [...]

In The Headlines Inside Outsourcing: The End of the Employee? No one in the airline industry comes close to Virgin America Inc. on a measurement of efficiency called revenue per employee. That is because baggage delivery, heavy maintenance, reservations, catering, and many other jobs are not done by employees. Virgin America [...]

In The Headlines A Gray Tsunami May Swamp China’s Plans for Long Term Growth The world’s most populous country is turning gray at an accelerating pace. That aging has big implications for China’s economic growth, which could be undermined as the labor force declines sharply from 2021 to 2030. It also [...]

In The Headlines Did Navient Cheat Student Loan Borrowers Out of Billions? Federal regulators at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) are suing Navient, the nation’s biggest student loan company, claiming that it cheated borrowers out of billions of dollars by giving them bad information, processing payments incorrectly, and failing to [...]

In The Headlines Hospitals Struggle to Survive in an Era of Hyper Cost-cutting The two gleaming operating rooms in this Kingston, New York, hospital still look brand-new seven years after being built for $5 million: They’ve never seen one patient, and never will. With an occupancy rate of just over 50%, [...]

In The Headlines A Not so Happy Holiday Selling Season for Most Retailers? Despite several early reads that the season came in better than expected, most of the department stores and specialty chains that have announced their results said sales at their established stores continued to slide in November and December. [...]

In The Headlines Foreign Selling of US Treasuries Could Pressure Rates Further The biggest foreign buyers of U.S. government bonds are quickly retreating after years of absorbing record amounts of the securities. This is an important dynamic to understand when looking at the potential fate of the $13.6 trillion Treasury market [...]

In The Headlines Phased Retirement and “Boomerangs” Extend the Work Life Expectancy With 10,000 baby boomers turning 65 each day, businesses are scrambling to find ways to slow an exodus of the most experienced employees and ensure that they pass along their knowledge before they leave. Some companies are offering employees [...]