China’s Incipient Recession
It was only a matter of time before slack demand in the rest of the world backed up into China, the world’s biggest manufacturer. According to an article in the New York Times finished goods have been piling up in Chinese warehouses, car dealers’ lots and in the spaces between other things in factories. China is [...]
New approaches for front office
We’re coming back. We aren’t out of the proverbial woods but we should be on the upswing from the long downturn. According the Labor Department the U.S. economy added 103,000 jobs in December bringing the unemployment rate down to 9.4 percent. Jobs are traditionally a lagging indicator so even better. Most importantly this was not [...]
The Subscription Economy
I get a lot of email. It’s not all because of my job or because I publish my work frequently. Some of it is like that, but it seems like my email address is on a lot of lists and I am one of the people who get spammed whenever there’s a webinar to fill. [...]
Contingent Staffing and the Economy: Do Regulatory Smoke Signals Suggest Trouble? (Part 3)
In the first two posts in this series (Part 1 and Part 2), we examined some of the trends highlighting the movement to contingent workforces as well as how the current state of the economy ties to just that — not to mention some …
Contingent Staffing and the Economy: Do Regulatory Smoke Signals Suggest Trouble? (Part 2)
In the first post in this series, I cited a Workforce Management article that highlights the recent trend toward contingent hiring as a replacement for — rather than a supplement to — bringing on regular W-2 full-time employees….
Contingent Staffing and the Economy: Do Regulatory Smoke Signals Suggest Trouble? (Part 1)
I’ve often found the contingent staffing market to be a useful indicator for looking at where an economy is in regards to its overall cycle — from growth to recession. The traditional thinking goes that contingent hiring ramps up…
Friday Rant: Get Ready for a Double-Dip Recession and Its Impact on Procurement (Part 2)
Last Friday, we introduced economic data that suggests the US could be headed for a double-dip recession sooner than many might realize (as early as Q2, when revised numbers come out). In this Friday’s post, we’ll continue providing what we believe are the most critical checklist supplier recommendations to consider based on the highly probable [...]
Friday Rant: Get Ready for a Double-Dip Recession and Its Impact on Procurement (Part 1)
Our sister-site MetalMiner ran an article yesterday citing some pretty serious — and historically accurate — leading indicative consumer data that suggests the US will soon face the prospects of a double-dip recession as Q2 revisions and Q3 GDP data come up. You can read the full story here. Lisa Reisman, who authored the piece, [...]
FedEx Demand Forecast Suggests Some Decent News in the Global Economy
Last week, FedEx came out with an earnings report and outlook that actually casts the global economy in a better light than many I talk to on a regular basis forecast. According to the WSJ’s coverage of the quarter, FedEx executives observed that t…
The BI Recession?
Some have called the current economic recession “The SAP Recession,” as ERP systems like SAP have given companies unprecedented ability to control spending. However, this was mostly true by the beginning of the 2001 recession (perhaps we are still in the 2001 recession?). What has changed since 2001: business intelligence systems are pervasive. Companies now have the ability to identify underperforming business units and shut them down. Perhaps this should be called “The BI Recession.”
