December 16, 2022 • 19 mins
For quite a while now, employees have been able to call the shots as the labor market remained tight. They could job hop and get higher wages too. Well now, the balance of power is shifting back to the employer and workers with high hopes for raises in the coming year may be disappointed. Companies are adjusting budgets for salaries, and it doesn’t look like it is keeping up with inflation or expectations. Matt Boyle, senior reporter at Bloomberg News, joins us for what to expect.
Next, where have all the coupons gone? As high inflation continues to hit us, many are looking for deals anywhere they can, but paper coupons and even digital ones are harder to come by. Circulation is down and redemption rates have also plummeted as people just don’t have the time to sort them all and smartphones have made other shopping incentives possible. Lydia DePillis, economy reporter at the NY Times, joins us for what to know.
Finally, as the workplace landscapes have changed with remote work and others starting different jobs, many have been using their cell phones instead of old business lines and caller ID has been outing people. Because caller ID is linked to the main account holder, many young professionals are being outed as still being on their parents’ phone plane. Lindsay Ellis, careers reporter at the WSJ joins us for more.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's Friday, December. I'm Oscar Ramirez in Los Angeles, and
this is the daily dive. For quite a while now,
employees have been able to call the shots as the
labor market remain tight. They could job hop and get
higher wages too well. Now the balance of power is
shifting back to the employer, and workers with high hopes
(00:22):
for raises in the coming year may be disappointed. Companies
are adjusting budgets for salaries and it doesn't look like
it's keeping up with inflation or expectations. Matt Boyle, senior
reporter at Bloomberg News joins us for what to expect next?
Where have all the coupons gone? As high inflation continues
to hit US, Many are looking for deals anywhere they can,
(00:44):
but paper coupons and even digital ones are harder to
come by. Circulation is down, and redemption rates have also
plummeted as people just don't have time to sort them
all out, and smartphones have made other shopping incentives possible.
Lydia Dapillis Economy report at The New York Times joins
us for what to know Finally, as the workplace landscapes
(01:04):
have changed with remote work and others starting different jobs.
Many have been using their cell phones instead of old
business lines, and Caller I D has been outing people
because caller ID is linked to the main account holder,
many young professionals are being outed as still being on
their parents phone plan. Lindsay Ellis Careers, reported at The
Wall Street Journal, joins us for more. It's news without
(01:25):
the noise. Let's dive in. People's confidence in their ability
to get a new job is kind of ebbing a
little bit. So when people sit down with their boss
or the head of HR, you know, they're probably going
to see a number that they're not totally satisfied with.
And what they do from there on is so sort
of going to say a lot about the labor market.
Joining us now is Matt Boyle, senior reporter at Bloomberg News.
(01:47):
Thanks for joining us, Matt, happy to be here. Well,
here's a conversation many people might not be excited for.
As we're starting to come into the new year. Uh,
you know, a lot of workers have high hopes to
get that raised, to get that bonus, but perhaps those
hopes might be a little too high. You know, we're
seeing what's going down with the economy. Things are slowing down.
We're seeing layoffs at least in tech sectors and finance sectors,
(02:11):
not everywhere just yet, but a lot of companies are
adjusting their budgets for salaries for the next year. And
there's gonna be a lot of hard conversations that are
coming as a result of that. So Matt tell us
a little bit more about what we're seeing. Yeah, exactly,
it's not just the sort of the layoffs that you've
seen in the news, and of course companies sort of,
you know, figuring out what what is our budget going
to be next year is a lot of uncertainty. There's
(02:33):
certainly a recession on the horizon. We're not sure when
it will hit or how long it will last. But
the thing, of course in the in the backdrop as
well is extraordinarily high inflation, of know at a percent,
and that's what's really, unfortunately driving a lot of this situation,
this disconnect between what employees are looking for in a
pay raise and what employers are willing to hand over um.
(02:56):
And you know, even if companies were not looking towards
for times and maybe battening down the hatches a bit um,
there still would be this pretty wide chasm between what
employees are looking for, and that's around you know, six,
around six five and a half percent what they were
expecting in terms of a raise for next year and
the more modest three or four four and a half
percent that employers are looking to pay them. So some
(03:19):
of that stems from the fact that people just you know,
see the inflation number, or they see that the price
of bread or you know, a restaurant meal is going
up and they think that, well, you know, my pay
is going to go up in in equal measure. And
that's unfortunately not how salaries are determined. Salaries are determined
by the supply of labor, not the sort of you know,
the price of a basket of goods, but compounding at all.
As you know, you have people now going on social
(03:41):
media and TikTok saying, you know, I'm underpaid or I
need to get an eight percent raise, or I'm leaving,
and some of them still can. I mean, that's the thing.
If you are you know, not satisfied with what your
employer is bringing you in terms of the pay raise,
we are still you know, in a fairly robust job market,
and if you have the skills, you can take those
skills down the street and probably get a raise that
you know, it could be ten fifteen even at some
(04:03):
rival company. But for people you know who are sticking
with their employers, and that's more than these days. As
the quits rate has declined, people's confidence in their ability
to get a new job is kind of ebbing a
little bit. So when people sit down with their boss
or the head of HR, you know, they're probably going
to see a number that they're not totally satisfied with.
And what they do from there on is so going
(04:24):
to say a lot about the labor market. I mean,
you hit the point right there. When we're seeing eight
percent inflation, it's tough for any company to provide eight
and nine and ten percent raises, you know, year over year,
especially as we're bringing on more and more employees all
that stuff. So, yeah, these companies are budgeting for something
a lot lower. You mentioned them, three point five maybe
(04:44):
four point five percent. And while throughout the pandemic everybody
kind of got a little spoiled right where you can
job hop all you wanted, make that pay increase, You
can still do that, right, but getting a job is
a little harder, at least getting those more highly coveted
jobs and even in remote work. Right one of these
things that we saw, one of these big perks was
remote work. A lot of companies are even doing away
(05:06):
with that, and they're putting a like a monetary value
on that, on being able to work from home. They're
saying it equals, you know, as much as a five
to ten percent pay increase. By and large, those companies
are just saying we want you back to the office
and more often, you know, let's say, three days a
week rather than one. So it's not like, you know,
remote work is disappearing tomorrow. It's not. It's it's firmly
(05:27):
embedded in the workplace environment right now for at least
for the people who can do it, you know, the
white collar workers who can do it. But yes, it's
been you mentioned that great research from Nicholas Bloom at
Stanford University who's pulled thousands upon thousands of workers since
the pandemics started and found that across industry, the ability
to work from home, not every day, you know, not
(05:47):
fully remote and not being some digital nomad and going
off to Tahiti to work for the rest of your life,
but just the ability to have some flexibility work from
home a couple of days a week that is tantamount
to a five to ten percent paying create for for
a lot of people. So that is something that companies
can and should be discussing with employers rather than just
saying get your butt back to the office. More often
(06:08):
it's you know, what can we do if we're not
able to give you the race that you're you think
you deserve or that you're happy with, could we do
things on the margins, whether it's remote work, enhancing benefits.
Equity of course, is part of the compensation package at
a lot of places. So it's what companies called the
total reward. I know that sounds jo agony, but it
basically means everything when you put it all together, the salary,
(06:28):
the bonus that benefits, you know, even the workplace experience
and the sort of the culture. What does that mean
for people? What is it worth for people? Yeah, and
it's a pretty fascinating to see how we look at work,
how we look at employment changes over the years. Right
during the pandemic or coming out of the pandemic, at least,
you know, the employees had all the power right that
(06:50):
the job hopping we talked about the great resignation, just
leaving your jobs. Now, some of that power is going
back to the employers, but you know, there's still a
tight labor market where they need a lot of employees.
So it's just an interesting look at how the balance
is kind of shifting back a little bit. Yeah, when
these conversations started occurring into January is when we really
(07:11):
see the peak sort of season things really step on
the gas a bit in terms of conversations you performance
reviews and then those salary discussions. You know, it's certainly
going to get it's gonna get interesting, but just another
sort of really interesting facet about how this sort of
you know, the tectonic plates below us in terms of
the work of the world of work are are shifting
under us and changing almost every day as we speak.
(07:34):
So it's really it's a really interesting time. Matt Boyle,
Senior reporter at Bloomberg News, Thank you very much for
joining us. Thanks for having me. Brands discovered that they
could use these promotions in a more sophisticated way if
(07:55):
they could trash the spending habits, and so there's all
different kinds of incentives they could offer other than sort
of the form of a coupon, which is in essence
a discount offered when you checked out. Joining us now
is Lydia. D pillis economy reporter at the New York Times.
Thanks for joining us, Lydia. Thanks for having me. Well,
(08:17):
let's talk about coupons, a mainstay for a lot of
people that we're looking to have get deals and whatnot.
Coupons we've seen that they're harder to find than ever.
A lot of brands and retailers are shifting away from
the paper coupons, and there's also a lot of digital
version of coupons, but they just haven't kept up pace
with everything else. So it's just a very interesting look
(08:40):
at all this, Lydia. What are we seeing with it?
So brands have a lot of different ways in which
they try to get consumers to try things that they
might not otherwise have thought. And for a long time
they relied on paper coupons that went out with almost
every newspaper in America, when newspapers in physical form the
(09:00):
main way that people consume news, and so there's a
lot of things going on. So these were distributed in
the hundreds of billions in the nineteen eighties and nineteen nineties,
and many people remember their parents clipping them and taking
to the store and getting a few bucks off on
toothpaste or cereal or whatever. So that started to decline
(09:22):
both in the numbers of coupons distributed and in the
share of those coupons that were being redeemed. And that's
the result of several factors. And you're going to go
just get into a list of why people aren't using them.
Time time to do all the research and get them.
That's one of the biggest things. I do think that's
(09:42):
one of the biggest things. You know. Another thing that
happened between the nineteen eighties and today is the rise
of to earner households. Right, more parents are working both
at once, and so it's something that that takes time
to do is clip and keep track of all those
coupons and also go to the difference stores where different
sales might be happening. So in that sense, we are
(10:04):
sort of less ri sensitive and that we're less willing
to spend time to save money because the value of
our time has increased, like more people can spend time working.
But the other thing is that as computers became a
dominant form of communication and then smartphones, brands discovered that
they could use these promotions in a more sophisticated way
(10:24):
if they could track their spending habits. And so there's
all different kinds of incentives they could offer other than
sort of the form of a coupon, which is in
essence a discount offered when you check out, right, But
what if they could do rewards for simply spending at
the store, or rebates later if you know, take a
(10:46):
picture of your receipt and send it to a vendor.
So what I've heard is that the absolute amount that
retailers and brands are spending on promotions has remained fairly steady,
but it's been diversified across a a number of different
kinds of don And you know, you had a quick
little history too of how coupons came to be, you know,
(11:07):
really starting in the seventies and and peekingty billion coupons
in newspaper circulation, leading all the way to the TV
show Extreme Couponing. I loved that show. And you know,
but when you looked at those people that were doing that,
it was a full time job for them. They were
spending eight hours, eight hours a day just cataloging everything
(11:29):
and getting ready for those big buys. But everything's just changed,
as we've been talking about. Yeah, well so more essession
was an interesting time and then it was a sort
of temporary or reversal of these long term trends. People
really did use coupons more and I think that's show
popularized the idea that you could get the Ferrimal three.
But also we has that kind of time and that's
still our coupon bloggers and video loggers who who show
(11:55):
really pretty ingenious ways of doing this. And it's become
more complicated, right like there's all other shopkick and I
bought it. There's all different kinds of ways to get
money back on your on your purchases. But others will
tell you more practical spotters will tell you that sometimes
that just leads to over buying. You buy things that
you don't need because just because there's a discount, and
that's exactly what retailers and manufacturers want to do. That's
(12:16):
the model of the coupon and bring you in and
buy other stuff. And you know, at the same time,
why we're not seeing as many deals. You know, you
didn't mention that some of the money is still kind
of the same, it's being allocated different ways, but the
margins are so much thinner, especially going through what we
saw with supply chain issues and whatnot. The margins are
so thin on some of these coupons for the manufacturers.
(12:38):
That's continuing why the model doesn't work as effectively anymore. Yeah. Right, So,
with the rise of e commerce, there was a lot
of competition for grocery stores and convenience stores, so they
were already offering fairly competitive rates, and so to give
a dis kind on top of that was a little
bit more than they could swallow. Um and the pandemic
(12:59):
made all of this worse because from a retailer or
a manufacturer's perspective, they couldn't even keep their shelves pulled,
so it's not like they were having trouble selling out
of their inventory, so they didn't want to add and
sentence on top of that. So that's why, and this
is something that many potters noticed. The supply just really
fell dramatically, and it wasn't made up for it by
the digital coupon. You know, I think that brands really
(13:21):
want to make digital coupons happen, but it's only a
small slice of people that's actually using them. At this point,
I think that adoption may rise, but it is something
that you have to figure out how to do pretty proactively.
Lydia Pills, economy reporter at the New York Times, Thank
you very much for joining us. I'm happy, you know,
(13:48):
it came up with an awkward question like, hey, who's
this guy when you're talking to a woman, or Hey,
who's who's Mary when when you're talking to you know,
a hockey player, who's whose mom's name is Mary? That
happens to him live on the radio. Joining us now
is Lindsay Ellis, careers reporter at the Wall Street Journal.
Thanks for joining us, Lindsay, thank you so much for
(14:09):
having me. Well, let's talk about something kind of fun.
You know, a lot of people quit their jobs, a
lot of people transitioned, you know, from working in the
office to working at home. Everybody's on their cell phones.
And what kind of started happening was caller I D
had started outing a lot of people and you ask
in what way, Well, you know, people will call, you'll
call somebody. It maybe has a different name on the
(14:32):
caller I D. Maybe your parents name. And what we're
finding out was a lot of younger people, not so
young people too, sometimes are still on their parents phone plans,
and so that was coming through on the caller ID
to pose a lot of questions to a lot of people.
So lindsay, tell us a little bit about it. What
do we see with all this color I D craziness?
So when you make calls from your cell phone plan,
(14:54):
color I D will sometimes show you know the name
on the billing account, So if you're on your dad's plan,
it would show up as your dad's name. It wasn't
too much of a problem before the pandemic when people
were using death lines for work, or at the early
stages when hey, you call a co worker, but they
have you know, your phone number saved as sort of
(15:15):
you know, its own contact overriding caller i D. But
over the last few months, when employees were cold calling
with recruiters or a new boss, you know, it came
up with an awkward question like, hey, who's this guy
when you're talking to a woman, Or Hey, who's who's
Mary when when you're talking to you know, a hockey
(15:38):
player whose whose mom's name is Mary? And that happens
to him live on the radio. Yeah, that was a
great story. Yeah, and you know, the funny thing is
is in full disclosure, I myself am still on my
family's phone plan. We set it up a long time
ago when we got grandfathered into unlimited data plan, which
is an important thing why we didn't change. My wife
(15:59):
is on her own family's dad open and we didn't
get a joint one because of those reasons. Grandfather didn't
do such great deals. We didn't want to lose any
of that. But I do pay my own portion of
the bill, so I just wanted to say distraction. But
so in that sense it makes sense. That is all good.
But you do have a statistic in here talking about millennials.
(16:20):
I guess about twelve of them still do have their
parents paying their phone bill. So that's a little if
e there. So I talked to a professor actually who's
in his mid thirties and he's still on a family plan,
and he actually just started paying over VENMO. It was
(16:40):
late last year because you know, eventually his father asked um.
He was saying, you know, I wasn't gonna volunteer, but
happy to do it now now that I'm asked to
do so. But I think the most recent payment was
something like SHILTI three dollars and change. But I hear
that actually a lot, right. I mean, when I was
recording this story, people were saying that they worried that
(17:01):
leaving the plan would lose a great rate that they
were grandfathered into or unlimited data like yours. And also
just on a per line basis, some plans can be
more expensive for for fewer people than more. You know,
it just makes total sense to stay on those plans.
You you've been on them. You know you're not changing
your carrier service. Why would you ruffle any feathers. Right,
(17:25):
let's keep this going if it's if this situation is
working out. You know, this whole thing with the caller,
I d uh. You know that's kind of a funny
aside to all this. And you know you had the
key takeaway in the article too. You know, if that's
something that's happening to you, well you've got to go
down to your phone carrier and make sure that at
least that line reflects that you're the person that's on
that line that's calling. You know. Another art example you
(17:47):
had in there was, you know, when you go buy
a new phone plan or something like that, you know,
all of a sudden, now you have to call your
parents and say, well, what's the account number, what's this,
what's the passwords? I've been in that same boat as well. Yeah,
and have you ever had to have it happened where
one of your parents doesn't pick up and you're sort
of left at the store wondering, Okay, well how do
I what do I do? Now? Yeah? Yeah, that's that's
(18:09):
exactly what goes on. And you know to everybody that
that's kind of these small, little inconveniences. I guess that
you've got to go through, right, But you did mention
that the hockey player, that's a pretty funny one if
you could tell us that that's so was a Boston
Bruins player, Derek Forbert. He's thirty years old. He's making
millions of dollars. He calls into the radio station and
his mom's line pops up exactly and so he when
(18:34):
I talked to him later, I asked, you know what
his reaction was, and he was like, I didn't I
didn't even know caller I d was still a thing.
But he's been on his parents plan. He does tell
me that he's the keeper of the family Netflix and
Showtime accounts, So I think there's a little bit of
parody there maybe and who's paying for what? But he
(18:55):
was telling me the story of when he was in
his twenties and playing in the minor leagues. I mean,
the NHL plays in Canada and he would have to
text his mom and say, hey, can you activate the
international before I crossed the border. So he's been aware
of it, but I don't think he had realized that,
you know, his mother's name would come up when he
called into a line with caller. I D Lindsay Ellis,
(19:16):
careers reporter at the Wall Street Journal. Thank you very
much for joining us. Thank you so much for having me.
This is really fun. That's it for today. Join us
on social media at Daily Dive pod on both Twitter
and Instagram. Leave us a comment, give us a rating,
(19:37):
and tell us the stories that you're interested in. Follow
us on iHeart Radio, or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
This episode of The Daily Dive is produced by Victor
Wright and engineered by Tony Sarrantino. I'm Oscar Ramirez and
this was your Daily Dive
It's Friday, December. I'm Oscar Ramirez in Los Angeles, and
this is the daily dive. For quite a while now,
employees have been able to call the shots as the
labor market remain tight. They could job hop and get
higher wages too well. Now the balance of power is
shifting back to the employer, and workers with high hopes
(00:22):
for raises in the coming year may be disappointed. Companies
are adjusting budgets for salaries and it doesn't look like
it's keeping up with inflation or expectations. Matt Boyle, senior
reporter at Bloomberg News joins us for what to expect next?
Where have all the coupons gone? As high inflation continues
to hit US, Many are looking for deals anywhere they can,
(00:44):
but paper coupons and even digital ones are harder to
come by. Circulation is down, and redemption rates have also
plummeted as people just don't have time to sort them
all out, and smartphones have made other shopping incentives possible.
Lydia Dapillis Economy report at The New York Times joins
us for what to know Finally, as the workplace landscapes
(01:04):
have changed with remote work and others starting different jobs.
Many have been using their cell phones instead of old
business lines, and Caller I D has been outing people
because caller ID is linked to the main account holder,
many young professionals are being outed as still being on
their parents phone plan. Lindsay Ellis Careers, reported at The
Wall Street Journal, joins us for more. It's news without
(01:25):
the noise. Let's dive in. People's confidence in their ability
to get a new job is kind of ebbing a
little bit. So when people sit down with their boss
or the head of HR, you know, they're probably going
to see a number that they're not totally satisfied with.
And what they do from there on is so sort
of going to say a lot about the labor market.
Joining us now is Matt Boyle, senior reporter at Bloomberg News.
(01:47):
Thanks for joining us, Matt, happy to be here. Well,
here's a conversation many people might not be excited for.
As we're starting to come into the new year. Uh,
you know, a lot of workers have high hopes to
get that raised, to get that bonus, but perhaps those
hopes might be a little too high. You know, we're
seeing what's going down with the economy. Things are slowing down.
We're seeing layoffs at least in tech sectors and finance sectors,
(02:11):
not everywhere just yet, but a lot of companies are
adjusting their budgets for salaries for the next year. And
there's gonna be a lot of hard conversations that are
coming as a result of that. So Matt tell us
a little bit more about what we're seeing. Yeah, exactly,
it's not just the sort of the layoffs that you've
seen in the news, and of course companies sort of,
you know, figuring out what what is our budget going
to be next year is a lot of uncertainty. There's
(02:33):
certainly a recession on the horizon. We're not sure when
it will hit or how long it will last. But
the thing, of course in the in the backdrop as
well is extraordinarily high inflation, of know at a percent,
and that's what's really, unfortunately driving a lot of this situation,
this disconnect between what employees are looking for in a
pay raise and what employers are willing to hand over um.
(02:56):
And you know, even if companies were not looking towards
for times and maybe battening down the hatches a bit um,
there still would be this pretty wide chasm between what
employees are looking for, and that's around you know, six,
around six five and a half percent what they were
expecting in terms of a raise for next year and
the more modest three or four four and a half
percent that employers are looking to pay them. So some
(03:19):
of that stems from the fact that people just you know,
see the inflation number, or they see that the price
of bread or you know, a restaurant meal is going
up and they think that, well, you know, my pay
is going to go up in in equal measure. And
that's unfortunately not how salaries are determined. Salaries are determined
by the supply of labor, not the sort of you know,
the price of a basket of goods, but compounding at all.
As you know, you have people now going on social
(03:41):
media and TikTok saying, you know, I'm underpaid or I
need to get an eight percent raise, or I'm leaving,
and some of them still can. I mean, that's the thing.
If you are you know, not satisfied with what your
employer is bringing you in terms of the pay raise,
we are still you know, in a fairly robust job market,
and if you have the skills, you can take those
skills down the street and probably get a raise that
you know, it could be ten fifteen even at some
(04:03):
rival company. But for people you know who are sticking
with their employers, and that's more than these days. As
the quits rate has declined, people's confidence in their ability
to get a new job is kind of ebbing a
little bit. So when people sit down with their boss
or the head of HR, you know, they're probably going
to see a number that they're not totally satisfied with.
And what they do from there on is so going
(04:24):
to say a lot about the labor market. I mean,
you hit the point right there. When we're seeing eight
percent inflation, it's tough for any company to provide eight
and nine and ten percent raises, you know, year over year,
especially as we're bringing on more and more employees all
that stuff. So, yeah, these companies are budgeting for something
a lot lower. You mentioned them, three point five maybe
(04:44):
four point five percent. And while throughout the pandemic everybody
kind of got a little spoiled right where you can
job hop all you wanted, make that pay increase, You
can still do that, right, but getting a job is
a little harder, at least getting those more highly coveted
jobs and even in remote work. Right one of these
things that we saw, one of these big perks was
remote work. A lot of companies are even doing away
(05:06):
with that, and they're putting a like a monetary value
on that, on being able to work from home. They're
saying it equals, you know, as much as a five
to ten percent pay increase. By and large, those companies
are just saying we want you back to the office
and more often, you know, let's say, three days a
week rather than one. So it's not like, you know,
remote work is disappearing tomorrow. It's not. It's it's firmly
(05:27):
embedded in the workplace environment right now for at least
for the people who can do it, you know, the
white collar workers who can do it. But yes, it's
been you mentioned that great research from Nicholas Bloom at
Stanford University who's pulled thousands upon thousands of workers since
the pandemics started and found that across industry, the ability
to work from home, not every day, you know, not
(05:47):
fully remote and not being some digital nomad and going
off to Tahiti to work for the rest of your life,
but just the ability to have some flexibility work from
home a couple of days a week that is tantamount
to a five to ten percent paying create for for
a lot of people. So that is something that companies
can and should be discussing with employers rather than just
saying get your butt back to the office. More often
(06:08):
it's you know, what can we do if we're not
able to give you the race that you're you think
you deserve or that you're happy with, could we do
things on the margins, whether it's remote work, enhancing benefits.
Equity of course, is part of the compensation package at
a lot of places. So it's what companies called the
total reward. I know that sounds jo agony, but it
basically means everything when you put it all together, the salary,
(06:28):
the bonus that benefits, you know, even the workplace experience
and the sort of the culture. What does that mean
for people? What is it worth for people? Yeah, and
it's a pretty fascinating to see how we look at work,
how we look at employment changes over the years. Right
during the pandemic or coming out of the pandemic, at least,
you know, the employees had all the power right that
(06:50):
the job hopping we talked about the great resignation, just
leaving your jobs. Now, some of that power is going
back to the employers, but you know, there's still a
tight labor market where they need a lot of employees.
So it's just an interesting look at how the balance
is kind of shifting back a little bit. Yeah, when
these conversations started occurring into January is when we really
(07:11):
see the peak sort of season things really step on
the gas a bit in terms of conversations you performance
reviews and then those salary discussions. You know, it's certainly
going to get it's gonna get interesting, but just another
sort of really interesting facet about how this sort of
you know, the tectonic plates below us in terms of
the work of the world of work are are shifting
under us and changing almost every day as we speak.
(07:34):
So it's really it's a really interesting time. Matt Boyle,
Senior reporter at Bloomberg News, Thank you very much for
joining us. Thanks for having me. Brands discovered that they
could use these promotions in a more sophisticated way if
(07:55):
they could trash the spending habits, and so there's all
different kinds of incentives they could offer other than sort
of the form of a coupon, which is in essence
a discount offered when you checked out. Joining us now
is Lydia. D pillis economy reporter at the New York Times.
Thanks for joining us, Lydia. Thanks for having me. Well,
(08:17):
let's talk about coupons, a mainstay for a lot of
people that we're looking to have get deals and whatnot.
Coupons we've seen that they're harder to find than ever.
A lot of brands and retailers are shifting away from
the paper coupons, and there's also a lot of digital
version of coupons, but they just haven't kept up pace
with everything else. So it's just a very interesting look
(08:40):
at all this, Lydia. What are we seeing with it?
So brands have a lot of different ways in which
they try to get consumers to try things that they
might not otherwise have thought. And for a long time
they relied on paper coupons that went out with almost
every newspaper in America, when newspapers in physical form the
(09:00):
main way that people consume news, and so there's a
lot of things going on. So these were distributed in
the hundreds of billions in the nineteen eighties and nineteen nineties,
and many people remember their parents clipping them and taking
to the store and getting a few bucks off on
toothpaste or cereal or whatever. So that started to decline
(09:22):
both in the numbers of coupons distributed and in the
share of those coupons that were being redeemed. And that's
the result of several factors. And you're going to go
just get into a list of why people aren't using them.
Time time to do all the research and get them.
That's one of the biggest things. I do think that's
(09:42):
one of the biggest things. You know. Another thing that
happened between the nineteen eighties and today is the rise
of to earner households. Right, more parents are working both
at once, and so it's something that that takes time
to do is clip and keep track of all those
coupons and also go to the difference stores where different
sales might be happening. So in that sense, we are
(10:04):
sort of less ri sensitive and that we're less willing
to spend time to save money because the value of
our time has increased, like more people can spend time working.
But the other thing is that as computers became a
dominant form of communication and then smartphones, brands discovered that
they could use these promotions in a more sophisticated way
(10:24):
if they could track their spending habits. And so there's
all different kinds of incentives they could offer other than
sort of the form of a coupon, which is in
essence a discount offered when you check out, right, But
what if they could do rewards for simply spending at
the store, or rebates later if you know, take a
(10:46):
picture of your receipt and send it to a vendor.
So what I've heard is that the absolute amount that
retailers and brands are spending on promotions has remained fairly steady,
but it's been diversified across a a number of different
kinds of don And you know, you had a quick
little history too of how coupons came to be, you know,
(11:07):
really starting in the seventies and and peekingty billion coupons
in newspaper circulation, leading all the way to the TV
show Extreme Couponing. I loved that show. And you know,
but when you looked at those people that were doing that,
it was a full time job for them. They were
spending eight hours, eight hours a day just cataloging everything
(11:29):
and getting ready for those big buys. But everything's just changed,
as we've been talking about. Yeah, well so more essession
was an interesting time and then it was a sort
of temporary or reversal of these long term trends. People
really did use coupons more and I think that's show
popularized the idea that you could get the Ferrimal three.
But also we has that kind of time and that's
still our coupon bloggers and video loggers who who show
(11:55):
really pretty ingenious ways of doing this. And it's become
more complicated, right like there's all other shopkick and I
bought it. There's all different kinds of ways to get
money back on your on your purchases. But others will
tell you more practical spotters will tell you that sometimes
that just leads to over buying. You buy things that
you don't need because just because there's a discount, and
that's exactly what retailers and manufacturers want to do. That's
(12:16):
the model of the coupon and bring you in and
buy other stuff. And you know, at the same time,
why we're not seeing as many deals. You know, you
didn't mention that some of the money is still kind
of the same, it's being allocated different ways, but the
margins are so much thinner, especially going through what we
saw with supply chain issues and whatnot. The margins are
so thin on some of these coupons for the manufacturers.
(12:38):
That's continuing why the model doesn't work as effectively anymore. Yeah. Right, So,
with the rise of e commerce, there was a lot
of competition for grocery stores and convenience stores, so they
were already offering fairly competitive rates, and so to give
a dis kind on top of that was a little
bit more than they could swallow. Um and the pandemic
(12:59):
made all of this worse because from a retailer or
a manufacturer's perspective, they couldn't even keep their shelves pulled,
so it's not like they were having trouble selling out
of their inventory, so they didn't want to add and
sentence on top of that. So that's why, and this
is something that many potters noticed. The supply just really
fell dramatically, and it wasn't made up for it by
the digital coupon. You know, I think that brands really
(13:21):
want to make digital coupons happen, but it's only a
small slice of people that's actually using them. At this point,
I think that adoption may rise, but it is something
that you have to figure out how to do pretty proactively.
Lydia Pills, economy reporter at the New York Times, Thank
you very much for joining us. I'm happy, you know,
(13:48):
it came up with an awkward question like, hey, who's
this guy when you're talking to a woman, or Hey,
who's who's Mary when when you're talking to you know,
a hockey player, who's whose mom's name is Mary? That
happens to him live on the radio. Joining us now
is Lindsay Ellis, careers reporter at the Wall Street Journal.
Thanks for joining us, Lindsay, thank you so much for
(14:09):
having me. Well, let's talk about something kind of fun.
You know, a lot of people quit their jobs, a
lot of people transitioned, you know, from working in the
office to working at home. Everybody's on their cell phones.
And what kind of started happening was caller I D
had started outing a lot of people and you ask
in what way, Well, you know, people will call, you'll
call somebody. It maybe has a different name on the
(14:32):
caller I D. Maybe your parents name. And what we're
finding out was a lot of younger people, not so
young people too, sometimes are still on their parents phone plans,
and so that was coming through on the caller ID
to pose a lot of questions to a lot of people.
So lindsay, tell us a little bit about it. What
do we see with all this color I D craziness?
So when you make calls from your cell phone plan,
(14:54):
color I D will sometimes show you know the name
on the billing account, So if you're on your dad's plan,
it would show up as your dad's name. It wasn't
too much of a problem before the pandemic when people
were using death lines for work, or at the early
stages when hey, you call a co worker, but they
have you know, your phone number saved as sort of
(15:15):
you know, its own contact overriding caller i D. But
over the last few months, when employees were cold calling
with recruiters or a new boss, you know, it came
up with an awkward question like, hey, who's this guy
when you're talking to a woman, Or Hey, who's who's
Mary when when you're talking to you know, a hockey
(15:38):
player whose whose mom's name is Mary? And that happens
to him live on the radio. Yeah, that was a
great story. Yeah, and you know, the funny thing is
is in full disclosure, I myself am still on my
family's phone plan. We set it up a long time
ago when we got grandfathered into unlimited data plan, which
is an important thing why we didn't change. My wife
(15:59):
is on her own family's dad open and we didn't
get a joint one because of those reasons. Grandfather didn't
do such great deals. We didn't want to lose any
of that. But I do pay my own portion of
the bill, so I just wanted to say distraction. But
so in that sense it makes sense. That is all good.
But you do have a statistic in here talking about millennials.
(16:20):
I guess about twelve of them still do have their
parents paying their phone bill. So that's a little if
e there. So I talked to a professor actually who's
in his mid thirties and he's still on a family plan,
and he actually just started paying over VENMO. It was
(16:40):
late last year because you know, eventually his father asked um.
He was saying, you know, I wasn't gonna volunteer, but
happy to do it now now that I'm asked to
do so. But I think the most recent payment was
something like SHILTI three dollars and change. But I hear
that actually a lot, right. I mean, when I was
recording this story, people were saying that they worried that
(17:01):
leaving the plan would lose a great rate that they
were grandfathered into or unlimited data like yours. And also
just on a per line basis, some plans can be
more expensive for for fewer people than more. You know,
it just makes total sense to stay on those plans.
You you've been on them. You know you're not changing
your carrier service. Why would you ruffle any feathers. Right,
(17:25):
let's keep this going if it's if this situation is
working out. You know, this whole thing with the caller,
I d uh. You know that's kind of a funny
aside to all this. And you know you had the
key takeaway in the article too. You know, if that's
something that's happening to you, well you've got to go
down to your phone carrier and make sure that at
least that line reflects that you're the person that's on
that line that's calling. You know. Another art example you
(17:47):
had in there was, you know, when you go buy
a new phone plan or something like that, you know,
all of a sudden, now you have to call your
parents and say, well, what's the account number, what's this,
what's the passwords? I've been in that same boat as well. Yeah,
and have you ever had to have it happened where
one of your parents doesn't pick up and you're sort
of left at the store wondering, Okay, well how do
I what do I do? Now? Yeah? Yeah, that's that's
(18:09):
exactly what goes on. And you know to everybody that
that's kind of these small, little inconveniences. I guess that
you've got to go through, right, But you did mention
that the hockey player, that's a pretty funny one if
you could tell us that that's so was a Boston
Bruins player, Derek Forbert. He's thirty years old. He's making
millions of dollars. He calls into the radio station and
his mom's line pops up exactly and so he when
(18:34):
I talked to him later, I asked, you know what
his reaction was, and he was like, I didn't I
didn't even know caller I d was still a thing.
But he's been on his parents plan. He does tell
me that he's the keeper of the family Netflix and
Showtime accounts, So I think there's a little bit of
parody there maybe and who's paying for what? But he
(18:55):
was telling me the story of when he was in
his twenties and playing in the minor leagues. I mean,
the NHL plays in Canada and he would have to
text his mom and say, hey, can you activate the
international before I crossed the border. So he's been aware
of it, but I don't think he had realized that,
you know, his mother's name would come up when he
called into a line with caller. I D Lindsay Ellis,
(19:16):
careers reporter at the Wall Street Journal. Thank you very
much for joining us. Thank you so much for having me.
This is really fun. That's it for today. Join us
on social media at Daily Dive pod on both Twitter
and Instagram. Leave us a comment, give us a rating,
(19:37):
and tell us the stories that you're interested in. Follow
us on iHeart Radio, or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
This episode of The Daily Dive is produced by Victor
Wright and engineered by Tony Sarrantino. I'm Oscar Ramirez and
this was your Daily Dive
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