June 3, 2022
Seventeen states saw their unemployment rates drop again last month, even as an estimated four million jobs are currently unfilled. The 2022 labor market continues to be tighter than two coats of paint.
That market, however, did not stop Team Triad, no sir! Please join us in welcoming Savannah Beeler and Sarah Spotts to our humble collection of professionals! Strong lineup; deep bench!
President Joe Biden this week announced his plan to combat persistent inflation, a plan that essentially boils down to him sitting in Fed Chairman Jerome Powell’s office and pelting him with rubber bands until he figures something out.
Biden also took to the airwaves to plead with Congress to do something about gun violence. As one might expect, that effort is going juuuuuust swimmingly right about now. We advise you not to turn on C-SPAN for the next, oh, hundred days or so.
The U.S. Senate race between David McCormick and Dr. Mehmet Oz is still not over and probably won’t be until next week. McCormick’s 900 vote deficit looks like it’s not going anywhere, despite his insistence on recounts, recanvasses and hand counts. To put it in baseball parlance, Dave is down 9-0 with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning, the bases empty and an 0-2 count. Oh, and Oz has Mariano Rivera on the mound.
Inflation is causing the price of electric generation to rise (along with everything else), so maybe think about ways to cut back on your usage. For example, you can run your central air for nine minutes a day and save a ton of money while also losing weight. Winner, winner!
Here in relatively quiet Pennsylvania, the governor and General Assembly are in the home stretch of budget negotiations. These talks have been made (theoretically) easier because of the current multi-billion surplus. So, now we make our early two-team parlay bet. Take “CNI tax cut” and “more education spending” and put your house on it. And your neighbor’s house.
Some lawmakers are mulling ways to eliminate funding for the Big Three state-related universities: Pitt, Penn State and Temple. The argument is that funds should go directly to kids instead of the schools, which may be an idea worth discussing. But if you think this position is not without political risk, this is your reminder that Penn State alone has 380,000 alumni living in the state.
There is a looming teacher shortage in Pennsylvania, and for the life of us we cannot understand why. COVID shutdowns, mask mandates, angry parents, and classroom gun violence all sound like a great recipe for a stress-free, underpaid living.
Gov. Tom Wolf and his team are doing their part to help alleviate the nationwide baby formula shortage, announcing the construction of a new manufacturing facility in Berks County to help ease the pain.
And speaking of shortages, Pennsylvania taverns and restaurants are bracing for a… dear Lord… BEER SHORTAGE, or as we call it, an adult formula shortage. We don’t even want to tell you what would happen at Triad if there were ever a bourbon shortage.
A fairly innocuous 2004 law that gave telephone companies the right of first refusal over municipalities looking to build out internet infrastructure is threatening to really put a damper on those one billion clams we are set to get from the feds to connect every Pennsylvanian to high-speed internet. File that one under something few people saw coming. Except for, you know, some telephone companies.
Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology is set to get some loot from the state for training workers for some of those four million jobs nobody can seem to fill. Expect more on that front when this year’s budget is all said and done.
In this week’s Shameless Client Plug, we give you our retired school employees, who have not had a cost of living adjustment in their pensions since 2001. For those who are good at math (like CBS 21 news reporter Mike Gorsegner), that means the value of these retirees’ pensions is half of what it was back then. Think you can live on that? Give it a run sometime.
Our Shameless Client Plug 2 goes to our friend Angela Bowie at Lyft, who was recently named a Woman of Achievement by our OTHER client, the Philly Tribune! Congrats, Angie!
And in our Shameless President and Managing Partner Plug, we give you our own captain of the S.S. Triad, Roy Wells, who last week was named one of the one hundred most powerful Pennsylvanians. Since Roy steadfastly refuses to take credit for damned near anything, we ask that you reach out and embarrass the crap out of him! Great job, Roy!
In our We Can’t Make This Up segment, we take you to Georgia, where workers at a local Sonic were rather startled to look behind the fryer and find a three-foot python, curled up and waiting for some tater tots or something. The best part of the story is that while employees ran screaming from the building, a local police officer strolled in, saw the snake, popped it on the nugget with a broom, tossed it in a bag and walked out. If this man does not get free Sonic for life, there is no justice.
That’s what passes for news around here on an amazingly beautiful Friday. Make sure to join us next week as the General Assembly returns for the stretch run. That’s when things get really fun! Until then, from all of us at Team Triad, have a great weekend!