Howard Marks Memo - The Winds of Change

To sum up, many workers experienced a “timeout” during the pandemic – not working, working parttime, working from home, and/or certainly not traveling on business. For many, this may have occasioned a reset, giving them an opportunity to conclude, “You know, my career isn’t everything;

• The unemployment rate is quite low, even as millions of jobs are unfilled. Per the October Institute for Supply Management report on services: “Labor is still an issue, as it’s hard to find and get people who want to work, especially in services, trucking and warehouse fulfillment.”

• Millions of people have left jobs over the last year as part of the “Great Resignation”: 4.4 million in September alone.

• Many people seem to attach less importance to lifetime careers and advancement.

Today, unlike in the 1950s and ’60s, everything seems to change every day. It’s particularly hard to think of a company or industry that won’t either be a disrupter or be disrupted (or both) in the years ahead. Anyone who believes all the firms on today’s list of leading growth companies will still be there in five or ten years has a good chance of... See more

We don’t hear much these days about the possibility of deflation, and it certainly seems unlikely to arise. We also don’t hear much about the deflationary impact of technology, but we shouldn’t dismiss the idea

The result is very harmful. It’s bad enough that some cable news stations and social media sites deliver only one side of the argument on many issues. But increasingly, they provide “alternative facts” that allow Americans to inhabit different realities. This leads to further polarization and to hostility toward those with whom one disagrees. It do... See more

That one is the fact that as technology and information play a bigger role in business and our lives, labor becomes less necessary

The optimists say, “some new need for labor always pops up” (as it did in manufacturing between 1920 and, say, 1970). But (a) you can’t see much sign of that in the tech-based industries that are on the rise – they’re just not labor-intensive – and (b) the workers that technological industries require are generally better educated than those cut ad... See more