Ep. 91: K-Shaped Ad Market, Comcast's NBCU Split And More

A pretty slow week.

I saw a weaker than expected jobs report.

We're back into a strange world where potentially bad news on the economic stats.

The market reacts positively because they expect, you know, that won't mean raised interest rates.

This typically happens during the summer when things slow down.

Did anything else stand out to you?

Well, in fact, I took a quick look-see at European unemployment rates.

I was certainly curious to see how the data is faring there because the Eurostat also released their latest data.

And 6.2% versus the U.S. 4.2% on a comparable basis.

6.2% might actually surprise people because 6.2% if that were in the U.S. is not terrible.

But that's actually where Europe is right now.

The employment situation is not bad.

What was really interesting, and because I hadn't looked at the data in a while, the participation rate in Europe is actually up quite a lot.

Whereas in the US, it's been relatively stable, around 71%.

In Europe, it's been going from the low 60s 20 years ago to the high 60s.

It's actually very similar to the US.

So there's been more employment growth in that context.

So I think it's kind of interesting, but it's safe to say that quality of jobs may not be what it was, which leads us to this notion of the K-shaped economy, which might be playing out in other spheres of the economy.