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Inflation Nation: Preparing for the Big Pop?

Man in suit holding needle over yellow balloon, a moment before bubble burst. Isolated on white.

The good news is that the labor market remains strong, with companies across most industries focused on solving the hiring/retention issue and finding real talent to fill seats and bring their expertise to the table. However, the tech downturn that came after Big Tech lost over $1 trillion in value over three trading sessions and stuck out like a sore thumb, now appears to be spreading to other industries as inflation hits and The Great Resignation refuses to quit.

Big Tech as Influencer?

To say that what is happening right now is unusual is a major understatement. From tech companies being driven, pushed, and cheered on toward rapid growth, to stopping in its tracks and becoming focused on staying resilient during an economic upheaval, the industry has moved from hyper-evolution to high-alert survival status.

Those storm clouds are now moving across other industries, including retail marketing, insurance and consulting. Recruiting services are also, obviously, withdrawing offers. Real estate brokerage Redfin Corp has rescinded job offers in recent weeks. Despite this, the labor market remains strong. Unemployment stills stands near the half-century low it reached in 2020 at 3.6 percent.

Do these companies know something we don’t?

Well, we all know about inflation. We know we’re living in an incredibly unstable time, which means the bottom line is business forecasting. The experts relied on to make informed predictions about future economic scenarios, upon which decisions can be made, cannot pretend to have any great confidence in things going one way or the other.

Or to what degree.

Trying to predict the next 12 months from an economic standpoint isn’t possible; at least, not with any degree of confidence. The most worrying part — possibly — of rescinded job offers is that they show us clearly that businesses are quickly undoing decisions made only weeks before, as if a panic button was pressed that instantly changed everything.

This shocking turnaround is, unfortunately, an objectively conservative action: batten down the hatches to maximize durability against a potentially devastating storm. An old story of survival.  The irony is that, although this wave appears to be growing larger and building beyond the tech industry, most employers across most industries still can’t find enough workers.

The competition for talent is actually growing, according to Gartner. Voluntary turnover is set to rise almost 20 percent by the end of 2022 to a massive 37.4 million. While tech and other companies batten down the hatches as a survival strategy, The Great Resignation itself is holding its position at a steady pace.

In fact, Gartner is still helping businesses by recommending optimized strategies, such as:

  • Signing bonuses – address key talent gaps
  • High-level benefits – including retention bonuses
  • Decouple pay/location – optimize hybrid/remote by decoupling pay and location

It does feel strange, of course, to so easily step between two different worlds that exist in the same period of time, as if moving easily into an alternative universe, then stepping back. But here and there is where we are. Whether job seekers are able to position themselves in the right one is a question for them to answer — so far, from a big picture perspective — the odds are massively in their favor. 

The question of whether one will come to dominate the other remains to be seen. It’s all a matter of time.

Speaking of which…

Recession and the Four-Day Week

“Time and money” is a phrase we all know. And time always comes first. Internationally, 4-day week experiments are taking place right now, with a view to changing the way we live and work forever. The US trial started on April 1 and is set to last six months. Whether that date indicates it will turn into one big joke also remains to be seen.

How inflation will impact and spread the “batton down the hatches” mentality across industries is something to watch for. The question of how it will effect the idea of the 4-day week (on full pay), is also interesting. Perhaps most interesting is how inflation will impact The Great Resignation as more companies demand that workers return to the office.

It does seem like the key ingredient in a perfect storm.

Now may be the perfect time to offer time to employees, from a competitive viewpoint. The more flexibility the better. Once people have been given something and get used to it, taking it away can cause problems. 

Amazon announced its intent to “return to an office-centric culture as our baseline” to its corporate employees on March 31st. By June 10th, it had backtracked the decision, with corporate workers no longer required to return to the office even three days a week.

Things are changing quickly in confusing ways.

Elon Musk – certainly not recognized publicly as a Luddite – is demanding workers return to the office 40-hours per week. Only “high-power employees” should be allowed the luxury of working remote, apparently. This comes as inflation soars and may be seen as a major slap in the face to employees. It also raises the question:

“Are you sure technology can drive our cars for us when it can’t even facilitate optimized human communication?” Ironically, some are predicting that Elon’s “back-to-office” order will be a train wreck.

Head of remote for Cimpress and Vista, Paul McKinlay, told Fortune that Musk was “on the wrong side of history” and predicted a mass resignation of employees at Tesla. Given inflation and all the uncertainty in today’s world, it’s understandable that some see the move as unnecessarily harsh and willfully tone deaf.

It’s All Coming to a Head – But Whose Head?

In general, it’s likely that belts will continue to tighten and freezes on hiring will continue to happen. If caught by surprise, to whatever degree, as with the tech industry recently, rescinded job offers may continue to spread. That must include any potentially vulnerable industry:

Retail, Restaurants and Bars, Leisure and Hospitality, Automotive, Oil and Gas, Sports, Real Estate, etc., could all be planning a defensive position against an upcoming recession.

In such a scenario, increased hiring may come to the Healthcare industry, Utility Workers, Accountants, Credit and Debt Management Counselors, Public Safety Workers, Federal Government Employees, Teachers and College Professors, Delivery and Courier Services, Pharmacists and Technicians, Public Transportation, Lawyers and Legal Professionals.

The usual suspects in the recession-proof stakes also include: 

Consumer Staples – people need certain items in their homes and will always prioritize them. Toothpaste, soap, shampoo, laundry detergent, dish soap, toilet paper, paper towels. Specific things are always in demand. And so to:

Grocery & Consumer Goods – Grocery and consumer goods/ discount retails always tend to do well in recessions, although they are not necessarily bullet-proof, especially if shortages happen and alternatives spring up; online, for example.

Alcoholic Beverage Manufacturing – the higher end of the market may suffer in a recession, but the cheaper end tends to do well when people are worried.

4. Cosmetics – these always do well and tend not to be affected by recessions: Keeping up appearances.

5. Death and Funeral Services – doesn’t change; may get busier.

Still, because competition for talent dwindles during a downturn or recession, there is less threat to the key talent companies need to keep. That talent sees what’s going on out there and is content to stick around – although the phenomenon of The Great Resignation no longer makes even that a sure bet.

Top investor Jeremy Grantham – who correctly predicted the 2000 dot-com bubble, the 2007 housing bubble, and even the 1989-1992 Japanese asset bubble – is now warning of a “super bubble” in US markets.

Grantham believes the BIG POP will wipe out over $45 trillion of assets in the US alone. He has been talking this way for over a year now, publishing serious warnings along the way, and believes we are now standing on the precipice.

Graham believes this, as an upcoming event, has moved from a possibility to a probability – leaning toward certainty.

Still, the law of averages say he’s got to be wrong sometime, right?

Either way, Ladders doesn’t provide financial advice, so put whatever you read into whatever context you can through your own efforts, get advice from professionals in the field, and step carefully.

Strange days indeed as a famous New Yorker once said.

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The Closing Gap Between Passive and Active Candidates

Male hr manager holding magnifying glass head hunting choosing finding new unique talent indian female candidate recruit among multiethnic professional people faces collage.

The pre-pandemic annual average voluntary turnover rate was made up of 31.9 million employees quitting their jobs. This year, it’s likely to jump almost 20% to 37.4 million. According to the Gartner November 2021 survey, 52% of employees said that flexible work policies will effect their decision about whether to remain or move on; 16% stated they would be willing to quit if asked to work on-site full-time, while 8% said they would quit if asked to work partially on-site.

“New employee expectations, and the availability of hybrid arrangement, will continue to fuel the rise in attrition. An individual organization with a turnover rate of 20% before the pandemic could face a turnover rate as high as 24% in 2022 and the years to come. For example, a workforce of 25,000 employees would need to prepare for an additional 1,000 voluntary departures.”

— Piers Hudson, Senior Director, Gartner for HR Leaders

Tough crowd.

With the hiring and retention issue hitting hiring teams so hard, it’s tempting to wonder what the expansion rate on “hard-to-fill” positions is right now, particularly when bringing retention into the equation. With that in mind, hiring teams need to continue playing smart, looking into opportunities that may not have existed pre-pandemic, and developing new approaches.

Let’s take a look.

What Turns Passives Into Active Candidates?

Look at the numbers above again. They represent a lot of professionals in real-world jobs across industries sitting out there right now. Would you describe them as “passive”? If so, be careful when approaching any of them with a good offer, as they’ll likely bite your hand off.

Those passives have been primed for action.

To blow Ladders’ trumpet, our 7 million highly experienced, highly qualified members are identified in our database as active or passive; even though, as stated, that may not matter as much as it once did. Either way, those candidates can be reached out to very quickly through Ladders Recruiter.

Ladders Recruiter Resumes are immediately visible — and legible — on the search page, with full member contact information at your fingertips. Switching between a larger view and back to the same spot you left on the search page is a two-click thing, if needed at all.

You can sell yourself on the idea of how much pain that removes from the process.

Obviously, while this is a boon if you’re hiring for a “tough to fill” position right now, it remains a boon if you’re building a pipeline for the long-term. Passive candidates have a green light for hiring projects and should be worked into your upcoming hiring strategies.

So thinking of passive candidates as pending candidates — who just need to be reached out to in conversation —  could be an effective way of turning the tables on The Great Resignation. Even with that, there’s a lot more you can do to make the “new normal” roll up its sleeves and start working for you.

And it’s quite simple.

Mandates for Candidates? Not So Much

Mandating on-paper qualifications as a prerequisite to employment, rather than seeking-out real talent yourself, is not the right way to adapt to the new realities faced by hiring teams. The less we impose on potential candidates, the more potential you have to fill positions over the short-term and the long-term. How does that work? Easy. Just lighten up a little.

Like this.

How many “must-haves” appear in your latest job posts? If candidates don’t check all the boxes, including formal qualifications and years of experience, are they automatically filtered out from the candidate pool? Why not make the formal qualifications a “nice to have” and think harder about what those years of experience actually mean, for example?

If that thought-power doesn’t instantly hypnotize the rest of your hiring team, tests can be easily applied to the application process. These provide real-world data for yourself and your team to work from. A little “show, don’t tell” added into the hiring process doesn’t have credibility because a third party says it does, it has credibility because you watch it happen and know it does.

Making a big difference in any assessment.

You also should be willing to balance the hard and soft skills a candidate has against the core needs of the position, questioning which areas could easily be dealt with through training. This can often be the case in areas like software for team collaboration, in which successful adoption is probably not a major obstacle. 

A small investment could provide fantastic ROI for retention.


Stability Through Flexibility

If remote work is possible at your company, you’re in a good place. (Pun intended.) The numbers at the top of the article stand out in terms of how strongly employees feel about flexible work, particularly remote or hybrid options. Not to mention the fact that remote-work-mad 2021 marked the most profitable year for American corporations since post-World War II.

So there’s that.

The Great Resignation remains in power and employers playing hardball with “back to the office” mandates face a potentially serious backlash. Internationally, six-month four-day week trials are underway, with thousands of participating companies and a huge amount of anticipation about restructuring the way we all work forever. Inflexible leaders, determined to show everybody who the boss really is, could be set to become dinosaurs.

Adapt and survive, if you like. The bottom line is simple: If you’re conducting a reach out campaign to passive candidates, for a company offering flexible work options, your chances of a fast and positive response shoot up; particularly, of course, if the recipient doesn’t have flexible work options, or doesn’t have anything as tempting as what you can offer.

Investments and ROI. Again.


Over and Underlooked People

From 2020 to 2021, the number of people with disabilities in employment went up from 17.9% to 19.1%, after a drop from 19.3% in 2019, as compared to a 2020-2021 rise from 61.8% to 63.7% rise for people without a disability. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 26% of adults in the United States have some kind of disability.

Once again, an investment in a reliable, qualified and experienced person with a disability could be another ROI boon for retention. Of course, everybody wants to make the right noises when it comes to championing people with disabilities — being patronizing always gets you applause in today’s world — but looking at what a person can offer as talent, as an expert, from a purely business perspective, could win your business a lot more.

And a remote work option is likely to give you a big boost in hiring and retaining this talent base. As an example, according to CNN, one Gabe Moses enjoys working his full-time call center shift while lying on his stomach on a mattress set on the floor of his apartment. His previous commute and long hours in an office often left him in pain and without the ability to speak.

Not good for somebody working in a call center.

There are many stories like that and others that make clear remote work isn’t a straightforward solution for every person with a disability. In less severe cases, for example, investments in special software needed to be made and many companies have risen to that challenge. Smart investments for great ROI is a recurring theme here, as it is in all business questions, and it’s highly likely to be the right answer to the hiring and retention question.

So who are the underlooked people?

They’re the people working in the companies you’re hiring for. Here’s the problem: People settle into a role, the boss is happy, everybody is happy. The person becomes that role. When it comes time to look for somebody higher up the ladder, the hiring team automatically looks outward, for that perfect fit, that shiny new expert.

And the person who knows the job inside out is invisible. Even though they’re supremely aware of all the inner quirks and idiosyncrasies of bosses, teams, systems, the flow, the go-to people, the stay-away-from people, the whole damn thing — making it much smarter to move such a person up and hire from outside for the position just vacated.

Or scratch your head when that person quits.

Never Mind the Gap

Given that we’ve all had a gap of some sort forced into our lives over the last two years, employment gaps are pretty much meaningless right now.

Gaps in resumes are abundant today. This is partly because many older, experienced professionals went into forced retirement during the pandemic. Many will return, if the incentives are right. And if hiring teams need reliable, experienced experts, not being a sap about a gap makes sense. Forced retirement aside, people were let go or furloughed left, right and center over the last two years, so let it slide.

Goodbye, gaps.

Wait — that’s the second gap closed in this article so far.

Something must be working.

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Welcome to the 4-Day Week

Man proposes four-day week sign. Notepad in hand.

There are currently 5.5 million more jobs than unemployed people in the U.S. At the end of April, the number of people quitting their jobs remained steady at 4.4 million, while layoffs and discharges hit a low of 1.2 million. Hiring and retention, therefore, are major concerns across industries, with all the smart talk – and action – revolving around increased flexibility for employees.

It isn’t difficult to see that this stems from the compulsory work-from-home experiment so many industries have been forced to take part in over the last two years, with the final analysis showing that 2021 proved the most profitable for U.S. corporations since 1950’s post World War II America.

Work-from-home, hybrid arrangements, flexible hours — employers are bending over backwards to gain a competitive advantage and boost hiring and retention rates as The Great Resignation holds sway, continuing the sea change in attitudes toward working life and ushering in a potentially permanent restructured approach.

Welcome to the 4-day week.

UK’s 3-Day Week Experiment – 1974

When Elvis Costello opened his debut album My Aim Is True with Welcome to the Working Week in 1977, he was singing about the 5-day week and citing productivity issues such as: “I feel like a juggler running out of hands” and “You wouldn’t believe how I felt when they buried me alive.” Ouch.

Of course, while critics and music fans loved him, the great and the good paid no attention to the angry young chap – possibly because they couldn’t understand a word he was spitting; or maybe because the UK’s 3-day week was only a few years in the rear mirror, part of oppressive measures to conserve electricity, which few remembered fondly.

However, the 3-day work week had not wreaked havoc on the UK economy. The forced experiment lasted from the start of January until March 07, 1974. In that time, many eyes were watching closely to see what happened – and expectations were dire, with experts on all sides predicting economic calamity.

The actual result was the wholesale agreement that “the British worker demonstrated surprising resilience.” A result reflected today, of course, by the response shown internationally to the pandemic restrictions and the outcomes of the forced work-from-home experiments mentioned at the top.

Stunningly, there was a fall of only 1.5 in consumer spending during the first quarter of that period – helped along by an increase in spending on alcohol, possibly to stave off the disappointment of broadcasting closing down at 10.00pm, street lights turned off, and long days with nothing to do but sit around moaning or dance around drinking.

Tough call.

The fact is, as mentioned, disaster was expected by highly educated and informed people. Pretty much all economists predicted bad outcomes, particularly in the form of massive production losses, which didn’t ultimately happen. British workers surprised everybody by adapting to the challenge as if the war effort had returned.

Production levels were far ahead of what was expected from a 3-day week, with a predicted 40 percent decline landing somewhere between 20-10 percent. The workers simply worked harder and produced more – with no loss in quality – in less time.

Many theories arose as to why that was and the more cynical opined, with amazing arrogance, that the results demonstrated British workers, under normal circumstances, didn’t work as hard or as diligently as they were capable of doing.

A “thank you” would have been nice!

Interestingly, loss of earnings fell way below expectations, too, with a drop of only 4.5 percent – providing a solid answer to the low drop in spending, of course. Reasons for this included extra hours with overtime pay, wage guarantees and unemployment benefits – although unemployment didn’t rise above 1 million.

The prediction, from the National Economic Development Council, had cited a number of 4 million unemployed, should the 3-day week continue through February, which it did.

Despite some industries being hit harder than others, the bottom line is that the predicted disaster of the 3-day week simply didn’t materialize. The finding, according to The New York Times in 1974, was that “productivity can be increased under duress.”

A misinterpretation, of course, of the spirit that rose to the occasion and created the results that stunned the so-called experts. However, duress, like the spirit that rose to the occasion, isn’t a long-term solution.

And that’s a problem.

International 4-Day Week Trials – 2022

Not only is talk of a 4-day work week getting louder internationally, trials are already underfoot. Some people see the (potential) move as natural progress. The 6-day work week became the 5-day work week; the 5-day work week becomes the 4-day work week. Of course, that type of progress leaves some future generation with the 0-day work week, which does lead to thoughts of balance, moderation, and common sense.

Making trials a great idea.

With the cry: “We are taking the 4-day week global!” not-for-profit organization 4 Day Week Global has shown real guts and verve in organizing international trials, from which extremely valuable data will be collected and analyzed. Created, implemented and run by Charlotte Lockhart and Andrew Barnes, pilot programs are already running in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the biggest of them across the UK, whose trial kicked off on 6 June.

Good start, then.

Described as: “A coordinated, 6-month trial of a four-day working week, with no loss in pay for employees” the UK version is partnered with 4-Day Week UK Campaign, think tank, Autonomy, and researchers at Cambridge University, Oxford University, and Boston College.

It works like this.

  • The UKs experiment, for example, includes 3,000 workers across 70 companies.
  • Workers will receive 100 percent pay for 80 percent of time.
  • Worker commitment is to 100 percent productivity.

According to Joe O’ Connor, pilot manager for 4 Day Week Global: “The 4-day week challenges the current model of work and helps companies move away from simply measuring how long people are ‘at work’, to a sharper focus on the output being produced. 2022 will be the year that heralds in this bold new future of work.”

Obviously, some doubt can be raised here. Those running the programs appear to be strong advocates of the 4-day week, rather than dispassionate intellectuals running an experiment with open minds. Not that this will matter as long as the data collated is done so objectively and published transparently. 

Because there are clear potential downsides.

Professor of Sociology at Boston College, Juliet Schor, who is lead researcher for the pilot, said: “We’ll be analyzing how employees respond to having an extra day off, in terms of stress and burnout, job and life satisfaction, health, sleep, energy use, travel and many other aspects of life.”

A cross-industry pilot, education, banking, financial services, consultancy, food and beverage, digital marketing, online retail, skincare, automotive supply, animation, IT software training, recruiting, and many more are signed up and currently engaged in the 4-day week trial. 

Popularity and Productivity

The idea of a 32-hour work week is a popular one. In a Ladders survey, 79 percent of workers said they have already left or would leave a 5-day week job for a 4-day week job – provided no drop in salary is required. This is backed up by many similar results across many companies, which implies that people either love the idea itself, or they have fully thought out the implications of committing to 100 percent productivity, with no drop in quality, over a shorter period, and are confident it’s a good fit for them.

Probably the former, then.

The results from the UK forced experiment in 1974 provide insight into what people can achieve short-term when challenged. Long-term is potentially something else. Certainly, the trials taking place now are hugely important, with the UK’s being the biggest among them. Still, it would be good to have in depth information about how individual companies are structuring the working week, dealing with that heady balance between the needs of employees and the needs of the business.

For example, will everybody work Monday-Thursday and enjoy Friday off? What if that clashes with the needs of the business having to deal with clients and customers who expect them to be available?

Will each employee choose their own day off, with everybody else – both internally and externally – having to adapt?

“I feel like a juggler running out of hands.”

Or will there be a set number of days chosen by the company, which can be cherry-picked from by individuals, with everything then organized around that? (Not that this solves all potential issues.)

The response to everyday life under a 4-day week for millions of individuals remains to be seen. How many life-chores are accomplished after work during the week? Will they now build into a large pile until that precious day off, when they will need to be attended to in one go?

“You wouldn’t believe how I felt when they buried me alive.”

The questions of stress and burnout, brought up by Juliet Schor above, are good questions. The question of productivity vs. quality is also a good one, particularly over the long-term. The British surprised everybody back in 1974 with their short-term burst of intense productivity, apparently relieved by heavy drinking sessions during all those spare hours.

But how long would it have continued?

Six month international trials involving huge numbers of workers across industries do seem encouraging, so long as there isn’t, for example, a nine month burnout point built into the human condition that none of us are aware of at this point.

What would we do then? Mandate 12-hour days and encourage more short breaks during them? Revert to the 5-day week and deal with hiring and retention some other way? The question of how teams will function smoothly still looms large, as does the question of how flexible the whole thing is if the employer dictates the day off to employees.

Still, six months from now the data will start to roll in and the world will be keenly watching, unless the answer has already become clear by then.

Is it Friday yet?