January 25, 2023

Contrary to the optimism at the start of the year (expressed elsewhere, of course), the Canadian and world economies seem to be heading for a slump. The question is, how big?

The Daily Shot had these two graphs this morning:

Pretty good indicators that we are not heading to a good place.

For the USA, earning reports from tech companies are coming this week. The reports are causing fun graphs like MicroSoft's:

As the image says, it is great to look at past earnings and get excited, but there is a reason that all these tech companies are laying people off: their future earnings are not predicted to be good.

And these companies know how things are going to go because their investments in expected future profits drive much of the market.

And, the scariest graph for the federal reserve that believe in fairy dust and wage-lead inflation showing real wage growth (in the USA).

Almost 30% of Professionals Say Theyve Tried ChatGPT at Work

Basically, if you have not automated your job yet, you are doing it wrong.

While some professionals arent sold on the practicality of the use cases or quality of the output, others are convinced workers are only a few years away from being supplanted by the technology. “If ChatGPT starts making slides, I am done for,” one Deloitte employee wrote. (“Sorry bro… Already exists,” two others wrote back.)

It will be everywhere before the year's out. Unions are, as per usual, very far behind thinking about how this affects members.

Current "technological change" language will not be particularly helpful here.