What's up, everybody?

Disrupted supply chains; interest rate spikes; surging inflation; earnings warnings. And companies are laying off, implementing hiring freezes -- and desperately trying to hire and retain people, all at the same time.

What, pray tell, is going on?

This week we get wonky, and try to make some sense of it all. Our 3 bullets:

• Why do layoffs get all the glory -- when hiring freezes tell the real story?
• How is it possible to be laying off -- and aggressively hiring at the same time?
• What's the "triple squeeze" we're seeing in the economy -- and what does it mean for companies and leaders?

Thanks for reading -- and have a great week!

Aki & Usman

#1

#FollowTheFreezes #LetsGetWonky

This is a wonderful read, full of insight from investor Nnamdi Irregbulem. His TL;DR --

Layoffs get the press and attention (after all, they're dramatic, human events). But to understand where we're headed with respect to jobs and a recession -- it's much better to focus on hiring freezes. Unlike layoffs, freezes slow the rate of hiring, and they crush the supply of open jobs for people to move into. So they serve as a much better signal of unemployment. 🧐

#2

#HireFire #IndustrySHIFTS #LaborSHIFTS

Josh Bersin is an astute observer of work, and here he offers us a way to reconcile some of the tensions we see in the economy; namely, how it's possible to see layoffs and intense efforts to hire, at the same time:

For one, people are burned *out*, which limits the supply of talent. But the demand for goods and services -- and the people to provide them -- is still sky-high. So we get the current labor shortage.

Meantime, we're seeing huge, industry-wide transformations take place. And these shifts are forcing companies to rewire themselves: to simultaneously shed the talent irrelevant to their new business, and chase the talent to power the same.

#3

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#Vocabulary #TripleSqueeze #Ouch

All that demand for talent in bullet #2, chasing a limited and burned-out supply, leads right to this nifty term and visual from Gartner: "The Triple Squeeze". It describes the trifecta of rising inflation, talent shortages, and broken supply chains that companies now face. All of which places huge pressure on their margins and earnings.

And what are the solves according to Gartner? To invest in talent, not just technology; to avoid cost-cutting that impinges on employees' needs; and to experiment with innovative -- not just stabilizing -- talent initiatives.

In short, it's to reduce the squeeze that companies are placing on their own people.

Thanks for reading. 🙏🏻

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