Santa’s warehouse workers AI transcript and summary - episode of podcast Marketplace

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Episode: Santa’s warehouse workers

Author: Marketplace
Duration: 00:26:35

Episode Shownotes

Seasonal hiring is in full swing and demand for temporary workers is back to pre-pandemic levels. But unemployment is down, so retailers are gonna have to be flexible to fill those jobs. A lot of those open spots are for warehouse jobs, not brick-and-mortar store positions. Also in this episode:

After nearly two years of ChatGPT, who’s using it? And, we visit the only master’s-level nurse-midwife program in California.

Summary

In this episode of 'Marketplace,' the discussion centers around the contrasting holiday spending forecasts from major retailers like Walmart and Target, reflecting consumer sentiment divided along partisan lines. Seasonal hiring, while rebounding to pre-pandemic levels, faces challenges as retailers seek to fill 400,000 to 500,000 positions amid low unemployment. Furthermore, the episode explores the slower-than-expected adoption of generative AI tools, with a significant portion of the U.S. working-age population utilizing AI. Finally, the shortage of nurse midwives in California is highlighted, emphasizing concerns over maternal care accessibility amid a national healthcare crisis.

Go to PodExtra AI's episode page (Santa’s warehouse workers) to play and view complete AI-processed content: summary, mindmap, topics, takeaways, transcript, keywords and highlights.

Full Transcript

00:00:00 Speaker_19
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00:00:38 Speaker_19
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00:00:51 Speaker_19
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00:01:04 Speaker_02
It is the season for consumption, so today we'll talk about the businesses, workers, and shoppers who make it happen. From American Public Media, this is Marketplace. In New York, I'm Kristen Schwab, and for Kaira's Doll, it's Friday, November 22nd.

00:01:26 Speaker_02
Thanks for listening. Yeah, a lot happened this week. News of the political kind, also about the economy, from inflation to retailers to consumers. To help sort through it all, we have Sadiq Reddy at Politico and Courtney Brown at Axios here with us.

00:01:42 Speaker_02
Hey, you two.

00:01:43 Speaker_00
Hi, Kristen.

00:01:45 Speaker_02
Hey, Kristen. Hello, hello. Well, it was a big week for retail earnings. Ahead of a big week for retail, there was Walmart, Target, Lowe's, The Gap all reported.

00:01:55 Speaker_02
Courtney, what do you think what they had to say tells us about where holiday spending might be headed?

00:02:02 Speaker_09
Something really unsatisfying is that we kind of got divergent narratives about the state of the US consumer. And if you're an econ nerd like me, like many of your listeners maybe,

00:02:16 Speaker_09
you look at these earnings reports from Walmart, from Target, to try to get an understanding of how the consumer is doing. Is this going to be a strong holiday season? Walmart says yes. Target says no.

00:02:30 Speaker_09
And so now it's a question of which one should you believe? We're in this kind of confusing economic moment where we can't tell whether we're at kind of a pivot point and things are going to start to weaken. And I think that makes it really difficult.

00:02:45 Speaker_09
It makes it possible that Walmart could be right and Target could be right.

00:02:50 Speaker_02
A little bit of both. Well, maybe we could turn to consumer sentiment numbers that we got an update on today then. We got the November revised consumer sentiment numbers, which are on the up and up.

00:03:03 Speaker_02
And a big bullet point here is that sentiment was split by party. Democrats are more likely to feel bad about the economy. Republicans are more likely to feel good.

00:03:12 Speaker_02
And I want to know, Sadiq, what that tells us about what Courtney was just talking about. And also, if we are so fickle, does consumer sentiment even matter?

00:03:22 Speaker_00
what just happened at an election two weeks ago. That's what just happened.

00:03:26 Speaker_00
And this has been one of these, the last few election cycles, one of these enduring features of consumer sentiment that the national mood is so tied up with who is winning the White House that these numbers shift in some direction within weeks of the election, sometimes within days, we'll know.

00:03:48 Speaker_00
with some of these gauges next month. There's a saying when you look at consumer sentiment, watch what consumers do, not what they say. And this is a clear indication that job market is still quite healthy. Layoffs are low.

00:04:01 Speaker_00
There's no reason to expect that consumers are going to pull back on their spending, even if they feel a little bit gloomier because their candidate did not win.

00:04:12 Speaker_00
two weeks ago, so I wouldn't put too much stock in this, but there are other factors going on right now that we will see in the coming months.

00:04:22 Speaker_00
Will Republicans suddenly feel better about the inflation picture after January 20th than they did before November 5th?

00:04:30 Speaker_00
Will Democrats flip a little bit, who had been a little bit more on board with where inflation was headed, will they feel differently?

00:04:40 Speaker_00
That's actually a really important indicator of inflation expectations that does matter a little bit more than consumer sentiment does.

00:04:50 Speaker_02
Well, we don't know exactly what's to come in January, but we do know that it's likely that tariffs probably will be part of the picture. Courtney, you recently wrote a story about business owners stocking up on goods.

00:05:01 Speaker_02
What are you hearing from them and how worried are they?

00:05:05 Speaker_09
Yeah, I spoke to someone who said that, you know,

00:05:10 Speaker_09
The moment after the election was decided, the next morning he felt that he was getting an influx of calls from his clients asking how could they get goods from overseas faster in order to front load on inventory to escape tariffs.

00:05:35 Speaker_09
And I think that there are some anecdotes that that's actually happening. Stanley Black and Decker, for instance, toolmaker, they told investors this week that their inventory was looking on the heavier side because a few things were happening.

00:05:51 Speaker_09
But they said that because of tariffs, they had imported more goods than maybe they might need. Now, I want to be clear. I mean, there's only so much stuff you can import to, you know, get ahead of tariffs.

00:06:05 Speaker_09
I mean, it looks like these tariffs are coming, whether retailers want them or not, but how bad they are, you know, we won't know yet.

00:06:14 Speaker_02
Sure.

00:06:14 Speaker_02
Well, I want to pull back for a second and look at the bigger picture with inflation, which tariffs may or may not have something to do with, because central bakers in Australia, Russia, and India have expressed concerns about maybe an uptick in inflation.

00:06:31 Speaker_02
Inflation rates in Canada and the UK came in a bit hotter than expected this week. Sadiq, what does that mean for us in the US?

00:06:39 Speaker_00
It really means that we've got to be on the lookout for a potential resurgence of inflation. Inflation as a rate has come down quite a bit. Price levels, of course, have not adjusted, and that's what's got a lot of consumers still concerned.

00:06:56 Speaker_00
Businesses are now worried about what if that price level goes up, and that's where the tariff and the stocking concerns come in. If you are concerned, as we just said, if you're concerned about prices going up overseas, you want to bring product in.

00:07:11 Speaker_00
But there are other factors as well. If the economy does hold up, oil prices could go a little bit higher. create a little bit of that resurgence.

00:07:20 Speaker_00
In the US, we have other factors with labor costs, particularly low-end labor and concern about deportation of workers who might be filling the gap in the lower end and farms and factories. These are all things that are going to weigh on minds.

00:07:41 Speaker_00
The fact that it's a global phenomenon, though, really is something that has carried on through prior bursts of inflation. That's why everybody's watching it so closely now.

00:07:51 Speaker_02
Well, Courtney, what are you looking at next week to thread the story of the macro picture when we get a bunch of data? What data are you keeping your eyes on?

00:08:02 Speaker_09
Okay, data. Okay, I won't talk about the fact that I'm looking forward to my mom's cooking for Thanksgiving.

00:08:08 Speaker_02
Very important too.

00:08:11 Speaker_09
On the data front, for what is for a lot of people a short week, there is some interesting data coming out next week, including inflation, personal consumption expenditures, price index, not as sexy as CPI, but that is the one that the Fed cares about.

00:08:28 Speaker_09
So we get an update on that next week. One other thing I'm watching is we get a revision on GDP. So we'll see whether the economy is as strong as we thought it was, or is there a bump up, a bump lower? I think that'll be on my radar for sure.

00:08:49 Speaker_02
Gotcha. Sadiq Reddy is at Politico. Courtney Brown is at Axios. Thanks again, you two.

00:08:54 Speaker_00
Thanks, Kristen.

00:08:56 Speaker_02
Thanks, Kristen. Wall Street Today was feeling a little thankful this week before Thanksgiving. We'll have the details when we do the numbers. Sadiq and Courtney and I were just talking about holiday retail and what it says about the economy.

00:09:38 Speaker_02
Holiday retail hiring can tell us something, too, about how much shopping stores expect people to do and about the job market and how many people are looking for seasonal work. Marketplace's Kimberly Adams has more.

00:09:51 Speaker_10
With holiday sales expected to increase between 2.5% to 3.5% this year, the National Retail Federation estimates stores will need to hire between 400,000 to 500,000 seasonal workers.

00:10:04 Speaker_10
Ben Meadows teaches economics at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

00:10:09 Speaker_18
It looks like hiring is back to kind of the pre-pandemic level, but on a year-by-year basis, that is actually a lower hiring level than last year.

00:10:18 Speaker_10
But unemployment is pretty low too, which means retailers are struggling to fill all those jobs this season. One of the strategies, says the National Retail Federation's Ed Iggy, keep things flexible.

00:10:31 Speaker_16
Many of my members go out of their way to make sure that their employees are accommodated in providing opportunities for them to work at and when they deem appropriate.

00:10:42 Speaker_10
Flexible shifts, app-based scheduling, another strategy, be more accommodating to different kinds of workers, perhaps luring in retired workers who want to make some extra cash over the holidays. And, says Iggy,

00:10:55 Speaker_16
Certainly on the disability front, many of our members have been very aggressive going out to disabled workers and trying to accommodate them in the workplace.

00:11:04 Speaker_10
Because there are all kinds of jobs that need filling over the holidays.

00:11:08 Speaker_04
Transportation, warehousing, retail, obviously these are the biggest areas.

00:11:13 Speaker_10
James Atkinson is with the Society for Human Resource Management, or SHRM.

00:11:18 Speaker_04
We have seen kind of a larger percentage of retail hires this year compared to some of the recent years. So a larger percentage of the overall seasonal hiring.

00:11:28 Speaker_10
And more of those jobs are in e-commerce rather than brick and mortar shops. So Santa's elves are more likely to be packing a box at a warehouse than ringing you up at a cash register. In Washington, I'm Kimberly Adams for Marketplace.

00:11:46 Speaker_02
On yesterday's show, we told you about the Department of Justice's plans to end Google's internet search monopoly. More specifically, its plans to try to restrain Google from influencing the development of artificial intelligence.

00:11:59 Speaker_02
Which got us thinking more about AI. Because next week will mark two years since the debut of OpenAI's ChatGPT. Two years of hype and bans and scary predictions about the end of the world as we know it.

00:12:13 Speaker_02
So we had Marketplace's Matt Levin take stock of how much people and businesses are actually using AI.

00:12:19 Speaker_21
I hesitate to tell you this, but Google has a relatively new AI product called Notebook LM that can basically turn anything you feed it into a podcast.

00:12:30 Speaker_21
Economist Anton Koronek at the University of Virginia uses it all the time, mostly to summarize research papers that are a slog to actually read.

00:12:40 Speaker_17
I sometimes do that now because honestly, those voices are so engaging and it's so well done.

00:12:46 Speaker_21
It's quite impressive. Notebook LM is just one of the many leaps that tech has made over the past two years. Generative AI is also less likely to just make things up. And yet AI is not being adopted as quickly as Koronek would have thought.

00:13:02 Speaker_17
There is this almost free tool that's extremely powerful. And it's like $100 bills lying on this floor and nobody's picking them up.

00:13:13 Speaker_21
Convincing businesses to pick up those low-hanging dollars is part of Shane Cummings' job. He's the president of AcroLynx, a company that offers AI content standard services to big enterprises.

00:13:25 Speaker_21
He says while tech and finance have been early adopters, other industries are just more risk averse.

00:13:31 Speaker_12
One of the things that hasn't changed in the last two years is that large enterprises, all enterprises, they are accountable for the content they produce. They're legally accountable. They're ethically accountable. They're financially accountable.

00:13:46 Speaker_21
Yet about 40 percent of the U.S. working age population uses generative A.I. in some way, according to a recent study co-authored by Vanderbilt University economist Adam Blandon. He says the early spread of A.I.

00:13:59 Speaker_21
mirrors the pace of a previous tech revolution.

00:14:02 Speaker_01
Our overall adoption rate among workers looks very similar to the overall adoption rate of computers in 1984. Just to give you some perspective, 1981 was when the IBM PC was released.

00:14:15 Speaker_21
Lennon also says there may be more AI going on in the workplace than we know about. It may be a few more years until employees are comfortable telling their bosses they use chat GPT to whip up that PowerPoint. I'm Matt Levin for Marketplace.

00:15:05 Speaker_13
Coming up... People are starting to think about Christmas and holiday shopping.

00:15:09 Speaker_02
Starting to think about shopping and starting to shop are two different things. But first, let's do the numbers. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 426 points, about 1%, to close at 44,296. That is a record.

00:15:20 Speaker_02
The Nasdaq advanced 31 points, a tenth percent, to finish at 19,003. And the S&P 500 added 20 points, three-tenths percent, to end at 59.69. For the week, the Dow gained nearly 2%, the Nasdaq picked up 1.75%, the S&P 500 finished 1.7% higher.

00:15:47 Speaker_02
Matt Levin just told us about that chat GPT anniversary. OpenAI is private, but checking some public companies in the AI business.

00:15:55 Speaker_02
NVIDIA lost 3%, Meta retreated 0.7%, Alphabet fell 1.6%, and Amazon shaved off 0.6% after it announced a new $4 billion investment in AI startup Anthropic. Gap surged almost 13% after the clothing retailer boosted its full-year outlook.

00:16:14 Speaker_02
Department store chain Ross lifted 2% after a quarterly earnings report investors liked. Bond prices rose. The yield on the 10-year t-note fell to 4.41%. You're listening to Marketplace.

00:16:42 Speaker_19
Heads up, folks, interest rates are falling, but you can still lock in a 6% or higher yield with a bond account at public.com. That's a pretty big deal, because when rates drop, so can the interest you earn on your investment.

00:16:54 Speaker_19
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00:17:23 Speaker_20
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00:17:33 Speaker_20
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00:17:37 Speaker_19
Dell Technologies' Cyber Monday event is live, and if you've been waiting for an AI-ready PC, this is their biggest sale of the year. Tech enthusiasts love this sale because it's all the newest hits, plus all the greatest hits, all on sale at once.

00:17:51 Speaker_19
Savings on Dell Technologies' most popular PCs that accelerate AI with Intel Core Ultra processors are here, like the XPS 16.

00:18:00 Speaker_19
So, if you're ready to step up all the things you like to do, streaming, surfing, multitasking, whatever, Dell Technologies' AI-ready PCs are the perfect upgrade.

00:18:10 Speaker_19
And for the best of Intel Core Ultra processors, look for Intel Evo Edition laptops, engineered to do it all. Just visit dell.com slash deals.

00:18:20 Speaker_19
Whether you're treating yourself or thinking of others, these Cyber Monday prices were worth the wait, but it's only here for a limited time. Shop now at dell.com slash deals.

00:18:33 Speaker_08
This Marketplace podcast is supported by Gusto. Look, payday's awesome, but running payroll, calculating taxes and deductions, staying compliant, that's not easy. Unless, of course, you have Gusto.

00:18:47 Speaker_08
Gusto is a simple online payroll and benefits tool built for small businesses like yours. Gusto gets your team paid while automatically filing your payroll taxes. Plus, you can offer benefits like 401k, health insurance, and workers comp.

00:19:02 Speaker_08
Just for listening today, you also get three months free. Go to gusto.com slash marketplace. That's gusto.com slash marketplace.

00:19:10 Speaker_02
This is Marketplace. I'm Kristen Schwab. There is a real shortage of medical workers in this country. We need more dentists and physicians and nurses, and specifically nurse midwives.

00:19:22 Speaker_02
These are registered nurses who have graduate-level training and provide pregnancy care, including delivering babies, mostly in hospitals. In California, there's just one school training nurse midwives.

00:19:34 Speaker_02
The only other program in the state has paused admissions as it shifts to a doctoral degree program, which requires significantly more training.

00:19:42 Speaker_02
The move worries maternal care advocates because they say the change will make training longer and more expensive at a time when access to care is dwindling. From LAist, LEU reports.

00:19:56 Speaker_11
The room is buzzing at the Women's Health Simulation Lab at Cal State Fullerton. That's because today everyone gets their own anatomic model of a pelvis and a baby head. Professor Angela Sejobi is teaching a class to midwives in training.

00:20:11 Speaker_11
She holds up an example pelvis and mimics how a baby moves through the birth canal.

00:20:15 Speaker_05
Go through that mechanism of labor with your baby and

00:20:21 Speaker_11
Today, the class is learning about the first stage of labor. Last week, students practiced catching babies with a mannequin in a birthing bed. Next week, they'll learn how to suture using foam and raw chicken for practice.

00:20:33 Speaker_11
Student Janine Ruiz says it's a sort of hands-on experience that helped her choose this school's program.

00:20:38 Speaker_15
We got to practice, like, how do we position our hands? And it's not a person, it's a mannequin, so if we mess up, if we drop the baby, it's okay. Nobody's getting hurt. I couldn't imagine my first experience of this being at the bedside.

00:20:53 Speaker_15
That would be terrifying.

00:20:55 Speaker_11
Ruiz and other students are training to be certified nurse midwives. Studies have shown that being cared for by a midwife has led to fewer C-sections and fewer preterm births. But only about 12 percent of births in the U.S. are attended by a midwife.

00:21:09 Speaker_11
Sojobi, the professor, says midwives can fill a critical gap as the country faces a shortage of thousands of maternal care providers.

00:21:16 Speaker_06
So we need more people providing care for women. Nurse midwives are very capable to provide this care.

00:21:25 Speaker_11
But Cal State Fullerton only graduates about 10 to 12 midwives a year, and now it's the only master's-level program left in the state training these nurses.

00:21:34 Speaker_11
This year, the other program in California, UC San Francisco, paused admissions to switch to a doctoral program. Sejobi says that will make it harder, especially for people of color, to enter the workforce.

00:21:45 Speaker_06
It's already difficult to recruit people of color. Now we're going to increase the amount of time you're going to be in school. and the amount of money you're going to pay for school.

00:21:56 Speaker_11
She says midwives can play an important role in the Black maternal health crisis, where Black birthing parents are three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related complications.

00:22:06 Speaker_06
For us to be able to start really changing the data on disparities between care, the people to do it are the nurse midwives. And those are the people we have less of practicing.

00:22:23 Speaker_11
The doctoral program at UCSF will cost around $150,000, nearly $90,000 more than the master's program. It'll also be longer by six quarters.

00:22:33 Speaker_11
The school says the shift is part of a national movement to change advanced nurse degrees to doctoral ones and will better prepare graduates with more expertise as they navigate a complex healthcare landscape.

00:22:44 Speaker_11
Students can take classes in things like health policy, leadership, and healthcare innovation. But the American College of Nurse Midwives is opposed to a doctoral requirement. Ginger Breedlove is past president of the group.

00:22:56 Speaker_11
She says there's no evidence that a higher degree increases the ability to safely provide care as a midwife.

00:23:02 Speaker_07
You may want to do a post-master's doctoral degree if you want to teach, if you want to build your resume to go into administrative leadership, but not to practice.

00:23:14 Speaker_11
She says in a time when the maternal health care crisis is so pressing, schools need to make programs more accessible. In California alone, nearly 50 maternity wards have closed over the last decade. In Los Angeles, I'm Ellie Yu for Marketplace.

00:24:00 Speaker_02
I was just a kid when Tickle Me Elmo broke Black Friday. But I still somehow remember all the news reports of shoppers causing an absolute frenzy to get their hands on the toy. Well, a lot has changed since then about how we shop.

00:24:15 Speaker_02
But Black Friday, which is one week from today, it's still the biggest shopping day of the year. And it requires a lot of prep for retailers, especially if you're one selling what's at the top of every kid's list.

00:24:28 Speaker_02
That's the setup for today's installment of our series, My Economy.

00:24:32 Speaker_13
I'm Stevie Bell. And I'm Amanda Calhoun. We are co-owners of Fantasy Island Toys in Fairhope, Alabama, and we're sisters. We had known before we went into business together that we wanted to own a business together.

00:24:52 Speaker_13
So when we found out in 2021 that Fantasy Island Toys, a children's toy store, was coming for sale, we knew that we had to figure out how to purchase this business.

00:25:09 Speaker_14
Amanda's kids shopped here growing up, and in my quest to be the best aunt that I could be, I certainly shopped in this store for my nieces and nephews prior to us buying it.

00:25:22 Speaker_14
This store is a landmark in the city of Fairhope, and it's really an honor to be able to continue its legacy.

00:25:36 Speaker_13
So far, we are off to a great holiday season. We have definitely picked up in the past, I would say about two weeks. With Thanksgiving being a week later, we're seeing people, like it's been a little bit slower start to the season.

00:25:53 Speaker_13
But like I said, you know, I mean, in the past two weeks, we have definitely picked up and people are starting to think about Christmas and holiday shopping.

00:26:02 Speaker_14
That's right, I mean, as a toy store, fourth quarter is absolutely the pinnacle and we're very optimistic. There's a lot of joy in the air. We know that the community is prioritizing shopping local and that is absolutely gonna help our bottom line.

00:26:21 Speaker_13
So to prepare for this holiday season, we did hire two employees.

00:26:26 Speaker_14
In addition to the six that we have on staff already. Yes, so two seasonal employees. We have retired teachers. We have retired art teachers. We even have a seasonal employee that has a master's degree in dyslexia education.

00:26:43 Speaker_14
So, I mean, like a really remarkable staff that will help talk about not just how fun the toy is, but the developmental benefits of each toy. Like all siblings,

00:27:01 Speaker_14
We have our moments, but at the end of the day, we know that we're in this together and that we have the support of our families, as well as our friends and our staff. We definitely balance each other out really well. Absolutely.

00:27:17 Speaker_14
And I think that it is very special to work together and also have the same vision for the company. which we definitely do. So it's fantastic. It's actually awesome. It's the best job that I've ever had.

00:27:31 Speaker_13
Yeah, it's great.

00:27:32 Speaker_14
And I do say that like multiple times a day.

00:27:40 Speaker_02
That's Stevie Bell and Amanda Calhoun, sisters and co-owners of Fantasy Island Toys in Fairhope, Alabama.

00:27:47 Speaker_02
Whether you have a business partner or you're flying solo, write to us about what's happening in your economy at marketplace.org slash my economy.

00:28:20 Speaker_02
This final note on the way out today, we're ending this consumer topic heavy show with a word of caution for you, the consumer, as you start your holiday shopping.

00:28:29 Speaker_02
In a new survey, Bankrate reviewed data from 100 major retailers, and at least 50 of them, including Macy's and TJ Maxx, have raised credit card interest rates. And they did it right before the Fed made its cuts in September and November.

00:28:44 Speaker_02
Usually, the two rates move in the same direction. This has put the average retail credit card interest rate at an all-time high of more than 30%, something to consider when you're inevitably tempted by that intro offer at checkout.

00:28:59 Speaker_02
Our theme music was composed by BJ Lederman. Marketplace's executive producer is Nancy Fargali. Donna Tam is the executive editor. Neil Scarbrough is the vice president and general manager. And I'm Kristen Schwab. Have a great weekend.

00:29:11 Speaker_02
We'll be back here on Monday. This is APM.