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Rents outpace wages in big cities across the U.S.

Rents outpace wages in big cities across the U.S.

Released Wednesday, 8th May 2024
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Rents outpace wages in big cities across the U.S.

Rents outpace wages in big cities across the U.S.

Rents outpace wages in big cities across the U.S.

Rents outpace wages in big cities across the U.S.

Wednesday, 8th May 2024
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0:02

On the show today, we'll talk about

0:04

the health of small business, the health

0:06

of household finances, and end with a

0:08

healthy balance of ice cream. From

0:11

American Public Media, this is Marketplace.

0:22

In New York, I'm Kristen Schwab in for

0:24

Kai Rizdahl. It's Wednesday, May 8th. Thanks

0:27

for joining. Have you ever

0:29

walked into your local supermarket or wine shop

0:31

or hardware store and taken a look at

0:33

what's on the shelves? Like really

0:36

take it a look. What's

0:38

up for sale and how well stocked those

0:40

shelves are can tell you a lot about

0:42

how a business owner feels about the economy.

0:45

I say all this because we learned

0:47

this morning that in March, wholesalers' inventories

0:50

fell from the month before, down 4

0:52

tenths percent according to the Commerce Department.

0:55

Meanwhile in April, a different survey

0:57

of business owners called the Logistics

0:59

Manager's Index shows inventories barely ticked

1:02

up. So Marketplace's Justin

1:04

Ho called up a few small businesses

1:06

to get the scoop on how they're

1:08

thinking about what and how much they're

1:10

stocking. Earlier in the

1:12

year, Pat Wayland decided to bring in a

1:15

lot of inventory for his grocery store and

1:17

wholesaling business in Brooklyn called Sahadi Fine Foods.

1:19

He imports a lot of products from parts

1:21

of the Middle East that are really unstable

1:23

right now. The political climate

1:25

there meant I had to bulk up inventory,

1:27

put a buffer here, add another couple of

1:30

months to the inventory cycle. But

1:32

Wayland says bulking up on inventory is a

1:34

whole different challenge because it requires borrowed money

1:36

and with interest rates as high as they

1:39

are. The cost of your inventory is two to

1:41

three times what it was a few years ago. As

1:43

a result, Wayland says he's trying to be a

1:46

little smarter about his inventory levels. We're

1:48

still going to continue to replenish, but we need

1:50

to take that buffer down a little bit. Some

1:53

of other businesses had been loading up on

1:55

inventory this year because they thought if the

1:57

Federal Reserve caught interest rates soon... Murray's

2:00

would be ready to spend more. At

2:02

stale Rogers said professor at Arizona State

2:05

University who helps put together the Logistics

2:07

Managers' index. He says businesses of realize

2:09

that it's not clear whether the several

2:11

cut rates at all this year as

2:13

a result. They're making

2:15

decisions in some cases

2:18

to postpone purchases till

2:20

they absolutely need it.

2:23

That kind of just in time. Him and Tory

2:25

management has a lot of advantages. Catherine

2:28

Reynolds handles imports, had Palmetto Towel

2:30

Distributors, and South Carolina. She's also

2:32

ordering less inventory right now when

2:34

she. Says that lets stay nimble. As

2:37

idea say something that's not selling that I can

2:39

easily in our sell off the last part of

2:41

it. Not have to worry, not be stuck with

2:43

inventory that's kind of gone stale so to speak.

2:46

Reynolds. As keeping him in Tories low. Awesome!

2:48

What's her experimental? In a more for instance,

2:50

you can bring in a small amount of

2:52

new boulder titles for It's no big deal

2:55

if they don't sell, but if they do

2:57

then great. With. Work for the lab

2:59

architects and designers and it's always good deck

3:01

and to pique their interest and have the

3:03

latest greatest things turn to offer them. Reynolds.

3:05

Says that can help or boost sales

3:08

even when the economy's uncertain. I'm

3:10

Justin. How for Marketplace? Wall

3:12

Street today a little up, a little down.

3:15

Love the details when we do the numbers.

3:45

We talked about the tough spot aspiring

3:48

homebuyers and even some home owners are

3:50

in right now. fault things

3:52

are not exactly rosie out there for

3:54

renters either in almost every single big

3:57

city in the us over the last

3:59

five years Rent have grown faster

4:01

than wages. On average, about one and

4:03

a half times faster. That's

4:05

according to new data from Zillow and StreetEasy.

4:08

There are some exceptions. In Austin,

4:10

San Francisco and Portland, wage growth

4:12

has actually outpaced rent growth. But

4:15

here in New York, rent has

4:17

risen seven times faster than wages.

4:20

Marketplace's Samantha Fields reports. I'm

4:23

going to say it again because I think it bears

4:25

repeating. Rent in New York

4:27

City rose seven times faster than wages

4:29

did last year. And

4:31

yes, New York is notoriously expensive.

4:34

But it's not just New York.

4:36

It's also Boston, Cincinnati, Buffalo, Chicago.

4:39

As long as there are people who are

4:41

willing to pay those rents and prices, the

4:43

market will keep going up. Jenny

4:45

Schutz at the Brookings Institution says that's what we've

4:48

been seeing in the last couple of years. People

4:51

who own real estate, people who own stock

4:53

portfolios, people in really high-paid jobs are doing

4:55

extremely well in this economy. That means they

4:57

have a lot of money to spend on

4:59

housing. And increasingly, a lot of

5:01

them are renting, partly because there are so

5:03

few houses to buy. And

5:05

that is driving up rents for everyone. David

5:08

Dworkin at the nonprofit National Housing Conference

5:10

says this is putting a particular strain

5:13

on lower-income people. You're talking

5:15

about the person who makes your coffee,

5:17

the person who serves you lunch, the

5:19

people in your doctor's office, the people

5:21

who come to rescue you if you

5:23

get into a car accident, the nurse

5:25

at the hospital. Over half

5:27

of renters were cost-burdened as of

5:30

2022, meaning they're spending more

5:32

than 30 percent of their income on

5:34

rent. Igor Popov, chief economist at Apartment

5:36

List, says as rents have spiked, we've

5:39

also started seeing fewer people forming new

5:41

households. That means that folks

5:43

aren't going out and getting that new apartment,

5:45

aren't moving out from living with

5:47

parents, with family at the same clip that they were,

5:50

because they're kind of looking at a market and saying,

5:53

well, maybe it doesn't make sense right now. Things

5:55

are starting to improve for renters in some

5:57

markets, says Kenny Lee, senior economist at Apartment List.

6:00

at Street Easy and Zillow. Austin

6:02

and Houston, Texas are

6:04

great examples. In both of

6:06

those cities, wages grew faster than rents. What's

6:09

different about them is the substantial

6:11

increase in the supply of new

6:13

rental buildings. Really

6:16

simply put, building more can make

6:18

such a big difference for renters.

6:21

Only most cities aren't doing enough of

6:23

it. In New York, I'm

6:25

Samantha Fields for Marketplace. Let's

6:53

go from wages and rent to

6:55

wages and basketball. The WNBA

6:58

preseason has been selling out games.

7:00

More than 6,000 people bought tickets

7:03

to see Indiana fever rookie Caitlin

7:05

Clark's debut against the Dallas Wings.

7:08

Clark and other high-profile members of her

7:10

draft class — Angel Reis, Cameron Brink,

7:12

Camila Cardozo — they're expected

7:14

to draw record crowds and viewership when

7:16

the regular season tips off next week.

7:19

But for all the fans and media focus

7:21

and money these rookies are bringing in, WNBA

7:24

players have relatively low salaries. They

7:27

fall in the mid-70,000-dollar range. But

7:30

as Marketplace's Savannah Marr reports, new fans

7:32

and interest from investors could help turn

7:35

that around. The

7:37

WNBA draft isn't typically

7:39

appointment viewing, but this

7:41

year 2.4 million people tuned

7:43

in — more than four times the

7:45

previous record. The

7:47

Indiana fever selects Caitlin

7:50

Clark, University of Iowa. Clark,

7:53

who's dressed head-to-toe in Prada, by the

7:55

way, has already made over $3 million

7:58

in endorsements. after

8:00

as decorated a collegiate career

8:02

as we have ever seen.

8:05

She's reportedly working out a $28 million deal with Nike.

8:09

So it's not like she'll live off

8:12

her WNBA earnings. But many

8:14

of her teammates will. And

8:16

News of Clark's five-figure salary was

8:18

astonishing for some fans. Not

8:21

everyone. Welcome to the party. We've been

8:23

trying to figure this out for some time. Thayer

8:26

Labial is with The Collective, which advocates

8:28

for women in sports and recently did

8:30

an audit of the athlete pay gap.

8:33

What we found was that women athletes

8:35

make 21 times less than men athletes

8:37

on the field of play. That's

8:40

on average. In professional basketball,

8:42

it's worse. Women

8:44

make 108 times less than their counterparts

8:46

in the NBA. And

8:48

of course, the NBA is 50 years

8:50

older than the WNBA. It

8:52

brings in billions more in revenue. But

8:55

Labial says the forces behind

8:57

those disparities are entrenched. It's

9:01

a challenge from needing enough

9:03

eyeballs in order to get the dollars, but in order to

9:05

get the eyeballs, you need to get the dollars. Let's

9:08

start with the eyeballs problem. For

9:10

decades, sports media was controlled by

9:12

a handful of old guard gatekeepers,

9:15

says Alicia Jessup, who studies the

9:17

business of sports at Pepperdine. If

9:19

you look at who the decision

9:21

makers are, they tend to be

9:23

middle-aged white men. Women

9:25

who long assumed there wasn't a market

9:27

for women's sports. So

9:29

they didn't get TV spots or coverage

9:32

by sports journalists. But now, Technology,

9:35

streaming, and social media,

9:37

what it has done is it's

9:40

democratized media. Athletes

9:42

and teams can market directly to fans

9:44

who can watch and engage with women's

9:46

sports more easily than ever. But

9:49

Jessup says there's a lingering investment

9:51

problem. For so long,

9:53

women's sports has been treated like

9:55

a charity case or a side

9:57

project. of

10:00

money behind an athlete or a league, but

10:02

then back off when they don't immediately see

10:04

a return. Jessup says

10:06

leaders in this space don't need to

10:09

play scared. What that means

10:11

is you place your financial bet,

10:13

but then you double down on

10:15

it by spending appropriately

10:17

on marketing and promotion so

10:20

that your investment can make

10:22

significant gains. Like how

10:25

investors have always treated men's sports.

10:28

Jessup guesses were years out from

10:30

the Kaitlyn Clark's of the world

10:32

making multimillion-dollar salaries, but

10:34

the true fandom and star power

10:36

around Clark and others in this

10:39

highly anticipated rookie class could

10:41

help move things along. I tell

10:43

you what, what a great time to be

10:45

a fan of women's basketball. Kiitra

10:47

Armstrong is a professor of sport management

10:49

at the University of Michigan. She's

10:51

also lived and breathed women's sports

10:53

for decades and watched critics put

10:55

the blame on women athletes for

10:58

revenue shortfalls and their low salaries.

11:00

There was a time that people

11:02

thought, yeah, yeah, women's sports is

11:04

an inferior version. The

11:06

media records tell us that's not the

11:08

case. Armstrong hopes this wave

11:10

of fan interest can put that conversation

11:12

to bed and put a

11:15

spotlight on the investments needed to get

11:17

women athletes paid. I'm

11:19

Savannah Marr for Marketplace. Coming

11:42

up 20 years ago, there was

11:44

no Amazon. We are trying to compete with

11:47

all of those service providers. Oh,

11:49

how times have changed. But first, let's

11:51

do the numbers. The

11:54

Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 172 points or 10th percent

11:56

to close at 39. The

12:00

NASDAQ fell 29 points, about 2 tenths percent, to finish at

12:02

16,302. And

12:07

the S&P 500 barely budged, ending at 5187. Samantha

12:12

Fields told us about the gap between wage

12:14

growth and rising home rental costs. Let's check

12:16

in on some publicly traded rental companies.

12:19

Invitation Homes shaved off 8 tenths

12:21

percent. American Homes for Rent subtracted

12:23

8 tenths percent as well. Blackstone

12:25

retreated 1.4 percent. Futuring

12:29

firms drove in opposite directions today.

12:31

Uber shares fell 5.7 percent

12:33

after the company reported first quarter results that

12:36

were kind of mixed. Lyft

12:38

rose 7.1 percent after the

12:40

company reported faster than expected revenue

12:42

growth. Bond prices fell. The yield

12:44

on the 10-year T-note rose to 4.49 percent. You're

12:48

listening to Marketplace. Hey

12:57

everyone, it's Rima Khres, host of This

12:59

is Uncomfortable. If you're looking for some

13:01

good recommendations on books to read, well

13:04

you should join This is Uncomfortable from our

13:06

book club. Every other week

13:08

in our newsletter, we'll share a new book

13:10

that'll make you rethink your relationship to money,

13:12

class, and work, while also featuring

13:14

an interview with the author or an expert on

13:16

the topic. Plus, when you join,

13:18

you'll be entered in a giveaway where you can

13:21

win some This is Uncomfortable merch. Be

13:23

sure to check it out. Sign up

13:25

today at marketplace.org slash book

13:27

club. This

13:31

is Marketplace. I'm Kristen Schwab. Americans,

13:34

generally speaking, built up a pretty

13:36

good cash cushion during the pandemic.

13:38

Economists at the San Francisco Fed found that

13:41

by August of 2021, we

13:43

collectively saved up to $2 trillion

13:45

more than we would have had

13:47

there been no pandemic. But

13:50

now those very economists say all the

13:52

extra savings are gone. So

13:54

where did all of it go? Marketplace's Kaylee

13:57

Wells talked to some economists about how they

13:59

spent their savings. savings and where everyone else's

14:01

might have went. Preston

14:03

Moye earned his PhD during the pandemic. He

14:05

was dipping into savings and the stimulus checks

14:07

he got kept him from dipping too far.

14:10

It really helped me out. I probably

14:12

spent it on takeaway food when I

14:15

was writing my dissertation. Now

14:17

he's a senior economist at Employ America

14:19

and he says smaller savings accounts aren't

14:21

as worrisome for consumer spending as they

14:23

sound because there's an even more important

14:26

factor here, wages. And

14:28

the fact that labor income growth is still

14:30

strong employment is still strong and wage growth

14:33

is still strong leads me

14:35

to believe that consumption at least for the

14:37

foreseeable future is going to be healthy. Lots

14:39

of higher income households saved and invested

14:42

their money. That's what Scott Baker did.

14:44

He is a finance professor at Northwestern

14:46

University who says now that the savings

14:49

are gone and interest rates are up,

14:51

loan and credit card payments are more

14:53

challenging, especially for lower income households with

14:56

less financial wiggle room where the savings

14:58

probably ran out months ago. Those

15:00

debt payments are going to start to

15:03

bite a bit more and kind of continue to

15:05

take a chunk out of the disposable

15:08

income that households have. As

15:10

for one of the economists behind

15:12

the San Francisco Fed research, Hamza

15:15

Abdul-Rahman, he says that's a good

15:17

reminder of the fact that savings aren't

15:19

the only indicator of wealth here. A

15:22

lot of households like his used their

15:24

money to buy more non-financial assets, think

15:26

cars and houses. And that was thanks

15:28

to a low interest rate environment

15:31

and some influx of cash and

15:33

financial support at the beginning of

15:35

the pandemic. Those assets help

15:37

people to feel wealthier even as

15:39

their savings dwindle. And Abdul-Rahman

15:41

and his co-authors say the wealthier people

15:43

feel the more likely they are to

15:46

keep spending. I'm Kaylee Wells for

15:48

Marketplace. Thank

15:51

you. General

16:06

Electric has been a big piece of American

16:09

business for 132 years. So

16:12

big that it's almost hard to remember all

16:14

of the industries the company has touched. It's

16:17

made televisions and light bulbs, and

16:19

has even provided home mortgages. But

16:22

that is the past, because GE is

16:24

entering a new phase. Last

16:27

month it split into three separate companies,

16:29

a wind power business, an aerospace firm,

16:31

and a healthcare company. Marketplace's

16:34

Sabree Beneschor looks back at GE's

16:36

long history. The first

16:38

spoken words in human history to be

16:40

recorded and replayed were from a nursery

16:42

rhyme, recited by Thomas Edison in 1877.

16:46

The original recording was destroyed, but Edison

16:48

re-recorded it decades later. Mary

16:50

had a little lamb, it spilt quite

16:52

a slow, and everywhere that Mary went,

16:54

the lamb would shoot it all. Five

16:57

years after inventing the phonograph, in

16:59

1892, one of Thomas Edison's companies

17:01

merged with another electric company to

17:04

form General Electric. It wasn't

17:06

actually Edison's idea. It was J.P. Morgan's,

17:08

the original J.P. Morgan, like the guy. GE

17:11

ushered in the age of electricity, and

17:13

it was big from the get-go. You

17:16

have to think of it as

17:19

sort of the Microsoft, Google, Apple

17:21

of its time. William

17:23

D. Cohen is author of Power Failure, The

17:25

Rise and Fall of an American Icon. Edison

17:28

was a better inventor than a businessman,

17:30

and was quickly sidelined from leading the

17:32

new company, but it continued to create.

17:35

In the 1910s and 1920s,

17:37

it quickly became a

17:39

powerhouse of invention, innovation.

17:42

GE inventors developed radio broadcasts and an electric

17:44

car. In the 20s, GE got into home

17:46

appliances. By the 60s, it was making plastics

17:49

and silicones for the boots and helmets and

17:51

the moon landing. It also

17:53

got into the credit business. It

17:56

had started during the Depression to

17:58

help people buy GE products. that

18:00

they couldn't otherwise afford. By

18:02

the middle of the 20th century,

18:04

GE became seen as ubiquitous because

18:07

it was. And generally like this,

18:10

progress is our most important

18:12

product. GE

18:14

had a long and tense history with unions,

18:17

from the beginning, and its desire to escape

18:19

unions helped drive the company in 1956

18:21

to move its computing department out

18:25

of what would become Silicon Valley

18:27

and into Phoenix, Arizona. Elizabeth

18:30

Tandy-Shermer is a professor of history at

18:32

Loyola University. Phoenix, Arizona

18:34

has anti-union laws with a more

18:36

favorable labor and tax policy. That

18:39

decision proved fateful. The company that made

18:42

everything from A to Z ended up

18:44

losing out on C, computers. Because

18:47

the GE computing was so

18:49

removed from that hotbed of

18:52

computer innovation, they really got left

18:54

behind. But by 1999, GE employed 340,000 people worldwide, nearly

18:59

200,000 of them in the U.S. It

19:02

was still the quintessential conglomerate, and there

19:04

was a rationale for that. And

19:06

this was this notion that some degree of

19:08

the research would be shared across these industries.

19:11

Ted Mann is co-author of Lights Out, Pride,

19:13

Delusion, and the Fall of General Electric. He's

19:16

also a reporter at Bloomberg. He

19:18

says while one tentacle of GE could

19:20

theoretically help out the others, it could

19:22

also bring them all down. GE's

19:25

financial arm almost did both. Under

19:27

GE's most famous CEO, Jack Welch,

19:30

GE Capital had exploded. That

19:32

grew into what was essentially the seventh

19:34

biggest bank in the country. At

19:36

one point, generating 50% of GE's earnings. When

19:40

the great financial crisis hit, it began to

19:42

implode and nearly took all

19:44

of GE with it before being bailed

19:46

out, along with the too-big-to-fail banks, William D.

19:49

Cohen. Right then is when

19:51

things really began to change. Under

19:53

CEO Jeff Immelt, GE sold

19:56

off NBCUniversal to help pay for

19:58

the fallout of the Great Recession and return to the world. its

20:00

industrial roots, GE Capital

20:02

was spun off. GE's different industrial

20:04

tentacles were chafing at being tied

20:06

to one another. Again, Ted Mann.

20:09

There was a realization that the only

20:11

way for these companies to thrive and

20:13

survive was to separate it all. It

20:16

took two more CEOs to accomplish that.

20:18

By 2021, General Electric's headcount in the

20:20

U.S. had fallen by almost 75

20:23

percent from its peak. And finally,

20:25

in April of this year, GE

20:27

split apart into a wind power

20:29

company, a healthcare company, and an

20:31

aerospace company. It is no longer

20:33

the great, ubiquitous conglomerate whose products

20:35

touched both Earth and Moon. It

20:38

was this incredible industrial company and built truly

20:40

incredible things. And so it does feel like

20:42

we're never going to see a

20:44

company that looks like that again. It's

20:46

a reminder that even the greatest of

20:48

companies don't have fate on their side

20:51

forever. In New York, I'm Sabri

20:53

Venasur for Marketplace. I

21:12

grew up in rural Minnesota, and one

21:14

of my core childhood memories

21:16

is Schwann's. Schwann's has

21:18

been around since the 50s, and it's

21:21

an iconic brand in the Midwest. Its

21:23

yellow trucks are like freezers on wheels,

21:25

going door to door, delivering ice cream

21:27

and chicken strips. I always

21:29

begged my parents for the orange Flintstones push-ups.

21:31

If you know, you know. Well,

21:34

a lot has happened in the grocery

21:36

industry since Schwann's heyday, like Instacart and

21:39

Amazon. So in 2018, the

21:41

Schwann's family sold most of its business

21:43

to a South Korean food company,

21:45

which renamed the brand Yellow. Harvest

21:48

Public Media's Elizabeth Rembert has more

21:50

on the company's transition. Since

21:53

1965, Mary Bartles has been

21:55

looking forward to her Schwann's deliveries.

21:57

She remembers her nine kids. to

22:00

see the delivery man drive his yellow

22:02

truck down the driveway. They would

22:04

get on the truck and climb all over

22:06

it, and they'd all come in with an

22:08

ice cream bar or something, and now I

22:10

realize he was giving those to those kids

22:12

out of his package, because I wasn't paying

22:15

for them. One of those kids

22:17

actually happens to be my stepdad, which is how

22:19

I know that nearly 60 years later, Mary

22:22

is still ordering ice cream, frozen

22:24

food, and meals from Schwann's. And

22:27

on this Thursday morning in Vermilion, South

22:29

Dakota, it's time for another delivery.

22:31

This is one that's the manager. Come in!

22:34

Hi, Mary. Hello! How are you?

22:36

Nate O'Grady lets himself in and takes

22:39

a seat at Mary's kitchen table. He's our

22:41

delivery man now. We have time

22:43

to sit and talk and socialize with people. He

22:45

says his favorite part of the job is getting

22:48

to know the customers along his route. You

22:50

get to know the customers well enough. You know exactly what

22:52

they want when you come to the door. You know exactly

22:54

what they're going to order. Mary's going to get her peanut

22:57

butter cups. I know that. Oh,

22:59

yeah, that's the best thing they have. Mary

23:03

says it's the great service that's kept her buying

23:05

from Schwann's for nearly 60 years. She

23:08

doesn't even have to get out of her recliner as

23:10

O'Grady checks her freezer for what she needs, grabs

23:12

the order from his truck, and

23:15

packs it onto the freezer shelf. When

23:18

the Schwann's family sold most of their business, they

23:20

kept the delivery service but changed its name to

23:22

Yellow, spelled Y-E-L-L-O-H.

23:24

Some customers, including Mary,

23:26

didn't take much notice.

23:30

When did they do the hat? The new

23:32

name is inspired by the unmistakable trucks,

23:34

according to Bernardo Santana, the company's CEO.

23:37

That's one of the reasons we kept

23:39

the name as Yellow because of the

23:41

famous and recognizable Yellow truck to bring

23:44

back and to keep this connection with

23:46

our customers. The makeover comes as

23:48

Yellow contends with a much different market than when

23:50

the company started in 1952. Its

23:53

main competitors used to be local, family-owned shops.

23:56

Now, online giants like Walmart, Costco, and Amazon are

23:59

now selling their products. on are coming for

24:01

its customers. Yellow is

24:03

still delivering its own Yellow branded

24:05

proprietary products. About a year

24:07

and a half after announcing its new name,

24:09

Yellow made another change. It cut

24:11

750 employees and closed 90 delivery centers. Santana

24:16

says it's to keep up with new

24:18

technology and a more competitive online grocery

24:20

environment. 20 years ago,

24:22

there was no Amazon. We are trying to

24:24

compete with all of those service providers. The

24:27

new brand and cuts are part of

24:30

an overall strategy to modernize Yellow's delivery

24:32

service, says Okshe Rao, who teaches marketing

24:34

at the University of Minnesota. The

24:37

whole branding, cost cutting through the

24:39

reduction in their workforce and so

24:41

forth is part of a strategic

24:44

shift, which is emphasizing

24:46

costs rather than

24:49

customers. Yellow's CEO

24:51

Santana says customers are still the priority, but

24:53

the cuts do leave some in the dust.

24:55

The Yellow trucks used to make deliveries in

24:57

all 48 lower states. Now

25:00

it's just 18. Customers elsewhere

25:02

can get orders via UPS. It's

25:05

a loss for Deb Kua-Moto. She's in

25:07

Lincoln, Nebraska and won't receive deliveries anymore.

25:09

It's really kind of ironic

25:11

because here, Schwann's, they were

25:13

kind of like the first

25:16

grocery delivery and now everybody

25:19

else is kind of caught up to them.

25:21

Ordering from Schwann's and seeing the Yellow trucks

25:24

felt like stepping back into her childhood. I

25:26

think it's the end of an era because I

25:28

do miss the drivers. I really do. She

25:31

says she'll go to the grocery store instead

25:33

of ordering via UPS, even if the ice

25:35

cream there isn't as good as Yellow's. In

25:38

Lincoln, Nebraska, I'm Linda V This

25:51

final note on the way out today, generative

25:53

AI is certainly going to be transformative, but

25:55

it looks like for now, a lot of

25:57

people are just using it because they're tired.

26:01

Saw this in Wired, a new report

26:03

by Microsoft and LinkedIn says 75% of

26:05

people who have

26:07

desk jobs are using AI at

26:09

work. The company surveyed more than 30,000

26:12

people in more than

26:14

30 countries. Nearly 70% of

26:16

respondents say they struggle with the pace and

26:18

volume of work. And many of

26:20

them say they use AI to dig their way

26:22

out of emails, web chats, and meetings. Our

26:26

media production team includes Brian Allison,

26:28

Jake Cherry, Justin Dupri, Christian Dullert,

26:30

Drew Jostad, Gary O'Keefe, Charlton Thorpe,

26:33

Juan Carlos Tirado, and Becca Weinman.

26:35

Jeff Peters is the manager of

26:37

media production, and I'm Kristen Schwab.

26:39

We'll be back tomorrow. Hey

26:56

everyone, it's Rima Harais, host of This

26:58

is Uncomfortable. If you're looking for some

27:00

good recommendations on books to read, well,

27:02

you should join This is Uncomfortable's summer

27:04

book club. Every other week

27:07

in our newsletter, we'll share a new book

27:09

that'll make you rethink your relationship to money,

27:11

class, and work, while also featuring

27:13

an interview with the author or an expert

27:15

on the topic. Plus, when you

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join, you'll be entered in a giveaway where you

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could win some This is Uncomfortable merch. Be

27:22

sure to check it out. Sign up

27:24

today at marketplace.org slash book

27:26

club.

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