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Employers and their workers can’t seem to find common ground on benefits. While 78% of employers believe their workers are highly satisfied with their benefits, only 59% of employees express the same, according to Aflac’s newest WorkForces Report, released this week.
The discrepancy underscores the gap between employers, who want a high ROI on costly benefits, and what resources employees will use.
“Employers are spending money simply because of increased health care costs. But employees are saying, ‘Yeah, that’s not necessarily what we want, and it’s not necessarily what we need [or] would prefer,’” says Jeri Hawthorne, senior vice president and chief human resources officer at Aflac.
It’s not just benefits costs where employers stand to lose money—unsatisfied employees may look for jobs that provide more desirable benefits packages. Just 48% of employees say they are confident that their employer cares, a sharp decline from 56% in 2022 and 59% in 2021. And 60% of workers who think their employer doesn’t care about their well-being say they are at least somewhat likely to look for a new job next year.
Workers may even be willing to make a trade-off in compensation to get the benefits they want: 53% of employees say they are at least somewhat likely to accept a position with lower pay but better benefits. The key for employers wishing to retain these employees is understanding what “better benefits” mean to their workers.
“It’s the focus of the company and the HR leaders of those organizations to say, ‘They’re saying better, what exactly does that mean when we’re thinking about offerings that employees actually want?” says Hawthorne.
While that answer will vary between employers, one area nearly all organizations can turn their attention to is mental health coverage. More than half (57%) of all American workers say they experience at least moderate levels of burnout—relatively unchanged from 2022, according to Aflac’s report. Workplace stress and heavy workloads are the biggest culprits. Women are also more prone to burnout, with 61% reporting at least moderate levels, compared to 54% of men.
Closing the gap is also a matter of educating employees on benefits. While 79% of employers think workers understand benefits costs well, just under half (48%) say they do.
“I think that a lot of companies offer great benefits. It really goes to how they educate employees about what those benefits are and encourage them to use the benefits on a consistent basis,” says Hawthorne.
Paige McGlauflin
paige.mcglauflin@fortune.com
@paidion
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
The war for talent has already become a war for skills, and a ritzy college diploma isn’t the differentiator it once was.
A great mismatch between skills employers want and skills workers are able to provide has led to an increased focus on skills-based hiring, rendering old credentials like college degrees or years of experience less significant. Everyone from former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and former IBM CEO Ginni Rometty to Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and LinkedIn chief Ryan Roslansky have stressed the importance of skills-based hiring and skill development among workers. That’s probably great news to those who would prefer not to attend college at all, given the insurmountable state of the student debt crisis.
Over the past few years, companies of all kinds in both the private and public sectors have been gradually shedding their degree requirements for new hires. Nearly half (45%) of respondents told ZipRecruiter in a new 2,000-person survey they’ve nixed degree requirements for certain roles this year, and 72% said they now practice skills-based hiring by definitively prioritizing skills over certificates—a sign that skills-first attitudes are catching fire.
The exact reasons underpinning the move are unclear, per ZipRecruiter. But the report suggests it could be a response to lower college enrollment, winnowed interest in certain fields (like finance and accounting), the increased simplicity of offshoring roles, and “rising skepticism about the value of a degree amid grade inflation and generative AI.”
Employers are “kind of pulling out all the stops and doing as much as they can” to narrow the skills gap, Julia Pollak, ZipRecruiter’s chief economist, tells Fortune. They’re “increasingly shifting to [strategies] that can have permanent effects, not just temporary Band–Aids of the past.”
That’s with good reason: According to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, 95% of executives and HR heads say nontraditional candidates perform just as well, if not better than, degree-holders. Competency, ability to learn, and versatility is more practical than pedigree, leaders have found.
“With 1.5 job openings for every unemployed job seeker, it’s clear that narrowing the talent gap continues to be a challenge,” Richard Wahlquist, CEO of the American Staffing Association, tells Fortune. “Skills-based hiring can be a more fair and equitable way to hire people, and it can lead to more qualified and engaged workforces.”
Indeed, over half of ZipRecruiter respondents said that compulsory degree requirements are a major barrier to diversity, equity, and inclusion goals. The problem is compounded for smaller firms with less capital to invest in their recruitment and retention efforts to begin with. Businesses which were more likely to struggle with hiring (mainly small and medium-size firms) were more likely than larger and more established businesses to drop degree requirements and center skills.
This surprised Pollak, she says. “State government after state government is adopting skill-based hiring, and major companies like Walmart are making announcements to that effect. But I didn’t think it was a trend among small businesses.”
Clearly, they’re being as creative as they can, she adds. “Maybe because they’re the most constrained.”
The three skills bosses want most
ZipRecruiter’s new findings align neatly with their previous research on skills—and statements from executives over the years. The share of job listings on ZipRecruiter calling for an undergraduate degree dropped 10% between this year and last year.
But recruiters are still having a hard time finding the right people with the right skills to fill those roles. Nearly a quarter of employers told ZipRecruiter they’ve struggled to fill a vacancy owing to a skills gap. The big problem is a fundamental mismatch between priorities. The top three skills employers say candidates most lack, as revealed during interviews, are time management, professionalism, and critical thinking.
Many employers “have been stuck not filling positions because they couldn’t find people with the right skills or training,” Pollak says. “But that constraint may be loosened when they can consider people without [a typical] background or necessary skills, and bring them up to speed more quickly.”
For the harder and more specific skills, employers are ready to pony up for training; 30% said they added new employee training and development programs in the past year. Doing so is a win-win; most employers say those kinds of programs improve recruitment and retention efforts—as do student loan assistance programs, naturally.
“The issue is that there is tremendous demand for jobs among college-educated people,” she adds. “More demand than supply, in most cases.”
That’s because many U.S. employers are currently working with agencies to recruit workers from abroad, as well as seeing which roles can be feasibly eliminated and replaced with AI. Nearly half of employers are already replacing some human workers with artificial intelligence applications, ZipRecruiter finds. But more likely than that is the move to search for humans with AI know-how to do ever-more complicated and technical jobs. Within five years, the same job will require a 25% change in digital skills—and it’ll be on workers to shore up that difference, LinkedIn chief economist Karin Kimbrough said last week. Tony college degrees will surely be of less importance as AI continues rapidly expanding and innovating—even the Ivy League can see that.
“Do I think white-collar work will inevitably require a college degree? Absolutely not,” Harvard management professor Joseph Fuller told Fortune earlier this year. “It will require certain types of technical or hard skills not necessarily indicated by college.”
Unlike Kimbrough’s prediction, this future isn’t five or 10 years away. Per ZipRecruiter’s findings, it’s already here.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
Former President Donald Trump attacked President Joe Biden over his encouragement of electric vehicles, skipping the second consecutive Republican presidential debate to make a pitch to auto workers in Michigan.
Trump spoke at a non-union auto-parts maker Drake Enterprises in Clinton Township, Mich., a day after Biden joined striking United Auto Workers on the picket line in Belleville, Mich.
Trump accused Biden of having an electric-vehicle “mandate,” charging that it would “put you all out of business.” He pledged that if elected again, automobiles would be made in the U.S., not overseas.
Kevin Munoz, a Biden campaign spokesman, slammed Trump’s speech in a statement.
“Donald Trump is lying about President Biden’s agenda to distract from his failed track record of trickle-down tax cuts, closed factories and jobs outsourced to China. There is no ‘EV mandate.’”
“Simply put: Trump had the United States losing the EV race to China and if he had his way, the jobs of the future would be going to China,” Munoz said.
The Trump campaign said the former president’s visit would include current striking UAW members, a claim UAW sources questioned because they said there had been no official outreach by the campaign.
Trump’s appearance in Michigan once again created a split screen for Republicans, as seven GOP hopefuls were preparing to face off in California for their second debate.
Trump, who has an commanding lead in polls over his fellow Republican candidates, has chosen to focus largely on Biden instead of his GOP rivals. During the last debate, the former president sat for an interview with Tucker Carlson and spent time attacking Biden, accusing him of being corrupt.
Biden in turn has blasted Trump’s economic record and said he endangers U.S. democracy.
Also read: Biden hails August jobs report, observes that Trump left office ‘with fewer jobs than when he entered’
Thousands of healthcare workers march down Vermont to call for the urgent need for improved working conditions, better support systems and increased investment in the healthcare workforce at Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles Medical Center in Hollywood on Monday, Sept. 4, 2023 in Los Angeles, CA.
Dania Maxwell | Los Angeles Times | Getty Images
More than 75,000 workers at the largest nonprofit health-care provider in the United States threatened Friday to strike if an agreement is not reached to resolve a staffing crisis by the end of next week.
A union coalition warned Kaiser Permanente that its members will walk out for three days in October at hundreds of health facilities across California, Colorado, Oregon, Washington, Virginia and Washington D.C., if a deal is not reached to relieve the issue.
The Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions issued the ultimatum after their final bargaining session concluded without an apparent resolution.
The unions said they will go on strike from Oct. 4 to 6 if an agreement is not reached when their current contract expires Sept. 30.
Kaiser Permanente serves nearly 13 million patients. It operates 39 hospitals and more than 600 medical offices across eight states and the District of Columbia.
Dave Regan, president of SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West, said that Kaiser has failed to adequately address a staffing crisis that has led to dangerous wait times for patients.
“Kaiser executives refuse to acknowledge how much patient care has deteriorated or how much the frontline healthcare workforce and patients are suffering because of the Kaiser short-staffing crisis,” Regan said in a statement
The Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions’ membership includes medical assistants, surgical and lab technicians, pharmacists and administrative staff among other health-care workers. Several unions voted overwhelmingly to authorize strikes at Kaiser last week.
Kaiser has called the unions’ claims misleading and urged employees to resist a call for a strike.
“The Coalition unions are positioned to strike in October. However, for the last 26 years of our historic labor-management partnership, we have reached agreements with the Coalition every time, with no strikes. A strike notice does not mean a strike will happen,” Kaiser said in a statement.
“Our top priority is caring for our members and patients, and we have plans in place to ensure we can continue to provide, high-quality care should a strike actually occur,” Kaiser said. “To be clear, we will continue to bargain in good faith until we reach a fair and equitable agreement that strengthens our position as a best place to work and ensures that the high-quality care our members expect from us remains affordable and easy to access.”
General Motors spent $21 billion on stock buybacks during the last 12 years. It should give more money to assembly-line workers, instead.
That’s the logic of the United Auto Workers (UAW), which is staging an intensifying strike against GM, Ford, and Jeep parent Stellantis. So far, nearly 13,000 UAW members have walked off the job. The union has threatened other walkouts on a weekly basis and to ratchet up the pain on all three Detroit automakers.
The inevitable PR war is breaking out as each side digs in. In the Detroit Free Press on Sept. 20, GM president Mark Reuss said GM has already made a “record offer” to striking workers, while arguing that GM has reinvested the vast majority of its profits in new facilities during the last 10 years. The next day, UAW vice president Mike Booth rebutted those claims, saying GM has been “lavishing Wall Street with the results of our labor,” including stock buybacks. A key plank of the UAW’s demands is that the Detroit Three have been minting profits and need to share more of the lucre with the rank and file.
It’s true the Detroit Three have enjoyed a nice run of profitability since emerging from the chaos of the Great Recession, when GM and Stellantis forerunner Chrysler declared bankruptcy and Ford nearly did. During the last five years, the Detroit Three combined have earned $99 billion in net income, according to data from S&P Capital IQ.
But any amount of profitability is meaningless unless compared with that of competitors. And next to other big automakers, plus upstarts such as Tesla, the Detroit Three don’t look nearly so rich.
The following chart shows Detroit Three profitability compared with the biggest automakers in Japan and Europe — Toyota and Volkswagen — along with Tesla, which only makes electric vehicles. GM and Ford trailed the other four in total profits last year, though Stellantis did better. On profit margin, Tesla beats them all, with a 15.4% margin in 2022, compared with 9.4% for Stellantis, 6.3% for GM and -1.3% for Ford, which had a small loss in in 2022.
Here’s the average profit margin for 11 big automakers during the last 10 years. Toyota’s average profit margin of 7.3% is about as good as it gets for a global automaker operating in every segment. The Detroit Three are considerably below that.
Tesla’s average margin is negative because it only started earning a profit in 2020. But it now has double-digit margins other automakers can only dream about.
What about each company’s future prospects? Past profitability doesn’t tell you much about that, but the stock price is supposed to reflect the market’s best guess about future profitability. By that standard, GM and Ford have been dismal performers, with GM down 15% during the last 10 years and Ford down 29%. The broader market was up 141% during the same time frame.
Stellantis has done better, with the stock up 283% since 2013. But that may reflect catch-up from the dismal days when Fiat-Chrysler emerged from Chrysler’s 2009 bankruptcy as a weird US-European mashup, eventually morphing into a company that involves brands as diverse as Jeep, Ram, Fiat, Citroën, Peugeot, Vauxhall, and Maserati.
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The Detroit Three have done well during the last few years because they’ve pared many small, barely profitable vehicles from their US lineups, relying heavily on large trucks and SUVs with hefty margins. Consumers have spent with abandon, aided by low interest rates for several years, then by trillions of dollars in COVID stimulus in 2020 and 2021 meant to keep the US economy going strong.
But investors aren’t sanguine about the three automakers’ futures, as the market shifts from the gas-powered models that have dominated for a century to electrics that require completely different technology and massive amounts of up-front investment. Ford says it will lose several billion dollars on EVs this year. General Motors has struggled with technology problems and delayed EV rollouts. Stellantis says EV sales, mostly in Europe, have contributed to profitability, but it still needs deep cost cuts to stay profitable.
Tesla is in a different category, given that it has no gas-powered vehicles to transition away from. Yet Tesla burned cash and lost billions before turning its first annual profit in 2020. Tesla’s stock has soared to stratospheric highs because investors think the pain of building robust EV infrastructure is largely in the past and Tesla will eventually displace many legacy automakers. Much of the pain for the Detroit Three, by contrast, is still in the future.
The Detroit Three are the only fully unionized automakers in the United States, and they already have higher labor costs than Tesla and all the foreign brands that operate US factories. The UAW is now demanding pay hikes that would raise that cost differential even more.
On paper, maybe the Detroit Three can afford to pay workers more and shareholders less. But nobody is asking their competitors to do that, and some of those competitors already enjoy advantages. The Detroit automakers aren’t the titans they used to be, and they’re not the titans the UAW seems to think they are, either.
Rick Newman is a senior columnist for Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Twitter at @rickjnewman.
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President Joe Biden on Friday offered his support to the United Auto Workers, as he addressed their strike aimed at the Big Three auto makers.
Auto companies have seen record profits because of the “extraordinary skill and sacrifices” of UAW workers, Biden said in a brief speech at the White House.
“Those record profits have not been shared fairly, in my view, with those workers,” the president added.
“The companies have made some significant offers, but I believe they should go further to ensure record corporate profits mean record contracts for the UAW,” he also said.
Biden gave his remarks after about 12,700 workers went on strike early Friday as their union and the Big Three automakers failed to reach an agreement before a contract expired.
It’s a targeted strike at a Ford Motor
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plant in Michigan, a General Motors
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plant in Missouri and a Stellantis NV
STLA,
plant in Ohio.
The UAW so far has not endorsed Biden’s re-election bid, even as the AFL-CIO and other big unions have lined up behind the Democratic incumbent.
The presidential race in 2024 could be a rematch of 2020’s contest between Biden and former President Donald Trump, who has won over some union households that historically have backed Democrats like Biden rather than Republicans.
See: Here are the Republicans running for president
Biden got more support than Trump from union households in the battleground states of Michigan and Wisconsin in 2020, but Trump got more support from such households in Ohio and Pennsylvania, according to Edison Research exit polls.
Trump has seized on concerns that the car industry’s shift toward electric vehicles
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which the Biden administration has promoted, could hurt American workers. “The all Electric Car is a disaster for both the United Auto Workers and the American Consumer,” the former president said Friday in a post on his Truth Social platform.
On Friday, Biden said he hopes the UAW and car companies “can return to the negotiation table to forge a win-win agreement,” and he said he’s sending two administration officials to Detroit — Julie Su, the acting secretary of labor, and Gene Sperling, a senior adviser.
GM posted a 2022 net profit of $11.04 billion, up from $10.38 billion in 2021, while Ford recorded a 2022 net profit of $7.62 billion, up from $6.43 billion in the prior year. For Stellantis, the parent company for brands such as Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep, last year’s net profit was $17.83 billion, up from $15.12 billion.
UAW President Shawn Fain said in a statement after Biden’s speech that union members “agree with Joe Biden when he says ‘record profits mean record contracts.’”
Fain also said: “Working people are not afraid. You know who’s afraid? The corporate media is afraid. The White House is afraid. The companies are afraid.”
Now read: Tesla may be the winner of the Big Three labor woes
And see: Will the UAW strike push up car prices?
Plus: UAW strike to have limited impact on Big Three, Fitch says
Claudia Assis contributed.
Workers prepare apples and avocados inside a Sweetgreen Inc. restaurant.
Adam Glanzman | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Ten Sweetgreen employees are suing the salad chain, alleging racial discrimination at seven of its New York City restaurants.
The lawsuit, filed Thursday in New York Supreme Court in the Bronx, alleges that the plaintiffs’ co-workers and managers subjected them to daily use of the N-word and other racist comments.
The complaint also alleges that managers failed to hire or promote qualified Black employees and gave preferential treatment to Hispanic workers. The plaintiffs allege that store managers said Hispanic people work harder than African Americans and called Black employees lazy.
The plaintiffs also claim complaints to upper management, including Sweetgreen’s human resources department, were ignored for years.
The lawsuit claims managers sexually harassed female workers, making sexual comments and touching them inappropriately.
“At Sweetgreen, we are committed to diversity as well as a safe and inclusive workplace. We take these accusations seriously and do not tolerate any form of harassment, discrimination, or unsafe working conditions,” a Sweetgreen spokesperson said in a statement to CNBC.
The spokesperson said the company was unable to comment further on pending legal matters.
The plaintiffs are seeking monetary and punitive damages and payment of attorneys’ fees.
The lawsuit was originally filed in March with only two plaintiffs. Thursday’s amended complaint includes eight new plaintiffs and adds more restaurants.
The seven Manhattan locations named in the lawsuit include restaurants in the Meatpacking District, the Financial District, Greenwich Village, Midtown East, the Upper East Side and the Upper West Side.
Companies are liable for their managers’ discriminatory conduct under New York City law.
The lawsuit also names two of Sweetgreen’s “head coaches,” or general managers, as defendants.
More than 3 million workers would be eligible for overtime pay under a rule proposed on Wednesday by the Biden administration.
Issued by the Labor Department, the proposal updates Fair Labor Standards Act rules for executive, administrative and professional employees.
Workers who make about $55,000 a year or below would be eligible for overtime under the proposal, up from the current threshold of $35,568 a year. That level was set by the Trump administration in 2019, when it was raised from $23,660.
Also see: Unions are key to reversing stagnant wages and economic inequality, Treasury Department says in first-of-its-kind report
An extra 3.6 million workers would be eligible for overtime under the proposal, according to the Labor Department.
As the Associated Press noted, the new rule could face pushback from business groups that mounted a successful legal challenge against a similar regulation that President Joe Biden announced when he was vice president in the Obama administration. He had then sought to raise the threshold to more than $47,000.
Heidi Shierholz, president of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, said the proposal is “a crucial step in creating a stronger, fairer economy.”
“This proposal would ensure that employers have ‘skin in the game’ when they ask these workers to work long hours,” Shierholz said in a news release.
The public has 60 days to comment on the proposal.
Commuters arrive into the Oculus station and mall in Manhattan, New York, Nov. 17, 2022.
Spencer Platt | Getty Images
The amount of money most workers want now to accept a job reached a record high this year, a sign that inflation is alive and well at least in the labor market.
According to the latest New York Federal Reserve employment survey released Monday, the average “reservation wage,” or the minimum acceptable salary offer to switch jobs, rose to $78,645 during the second quarter of 2023.
That’s an increase of about 8% from just a year ago and is the highest level ever in a data series that goes back to the beginning of 2014. Over the past three years, which entails the Covid-19 pandemic era, the level has risen more than 22%.
The number is significant in that wages increasingly have been recognized as a driving force in inflation. While goods prices have abated since pushing overall inflation to its highest level in more than 40 years in mid-2022, other factors continue to keep it well above the Fed’s targeted rate of 2%.
The New York Fed data is consistent with an Atlanta Fed tracker, which shows wages overall rising at a 6% annual rate but job switchers seeing 7% gains.
Employers have been trying to keep pace with the wage demands, pushing the average full-time offer up to $69,475, a 14% surge in the past year. The actual expected annual salary rose to $67,416, a gain of more than $7,000 from a year ago and also a new high.
Though there was a gap between the wage workers wanted and what was offered, satisfaction with compensation and upward mobility increased across the board.
With markets on edge over what the Fed’s next policy step will be, more signs of a tight labor market raise the likelihood that policymakers will keep interest rates higher for longer. At their July meeting, officials noted that wages “were still rising at rates above levels assessed to be consistent with the sustained achievement” of the 2% inflation goal, according to minutes from the meeting.
Monday’s survey results also showed some other mixed patterns in the labor market.
Job seekers, or those who have looked for work in the previous four weeks, declined to 19.4% from 24.7% a year ago. That came as job openings fell 738,000 to 9.58 million, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The likelihood of switching jobs fell, dropping to 10.6% from 11% a year ago, while expectations of being offered a new job also declined, falling to 18.7% from 21.1%.