What we’re reading (5/26)
“Investors Pile Into ETFs At Record Pace Despite Market Turmoil” (Wall Street Journal). “Investors have plowed a record $437 billion into U.S. ETFs so far this year, unfazed by the wildest markets since Covid. And if inflows maintain the current pace—historically, they accelerate in the summer and fall months—it will mark the second straight record year for U.S. ETF flows.”
“The Myth Of The Single Market” (Silicon Continent). “The IMF puts the hidden cost of trading goods inside the EU at the equivalent of a 45% tariff. For services the figure climbs to 110%, higher than Trump’s “Liberation day” tariffs on Chinese imports—measures many saw as a near-embargo.”
“At Amazon, Some Coders Say Their Jobs Have Begun To Resemble Warehouse Work” (New York Times). “Since at least the industrial revolution, workers have worried that machines would replace them. But when technology transformed auto-making, meatpacking and even secretarial work, the response typically wasn’t to slash jobs and reduce the number of workers. It was to “degrade” the jobs, breaking them into simpler tasks to be performed over and over at a rapid clip. Small shops of skilled mechanics gave way to hundreds of workers spread across an assembly line. The personal secretary gave way to pools of typists and data-entry clerks. The workers “complained of speed-up, work intensification, and work degradation,” as the labor historian Jason Resnikoff described it. Something similar appears to be happening with artificial intelligence in one of the fields where it has been most widely adopted: coding.”
“These Are The College Majors With The Lowest Unemployment Rates — And Philosophy Ranks Higher Than Computer Science” (Entrepreneur). “According to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the college majors with the lowest unemployment rates for the calendar year 2023 were nutrition sciences, construction services, and animal/plant sciences. Each of these majors had unemployment rates of 1% or lower among college graduates ages 22 to 27. Art history had an unemployment rate of 3% and philosophy of 3.2%…Meanwhile, college majors in computer science, chemistry, and physics had much higher unemployment rates of 6% or higher post-graduation. Computer science and computer engineering students had unemployment rates of 6.1% and 7.5%, respectively[.]”
“Fed To take In Stride Another Month Of Tame Inflation” (Bloomberg). “The Federal Reserve may take comfort that tariffs have yet to materially boost official inflation readings, but policymakers will continue to suggest interest rates are on hold until they better understand the coming impact of US trade policy.”
