June 4, 2021 • 20 mins
JBS, the second largest producer of beef, pork, and chicken is now fully operational after being the victim of a ransomware attack by a Russian group named REvil. Luckily the disruption to the food supply will be minimal, but workers going back had to put in some good old fashioned manual labor as many of the operations at these plants are automated. Elizabeth Elkin, agriculture reporter at Bloomberg News, joins us for the latest ransomware attack on critical sectors of the U.S. economy.
Next, as many companies are debating what the road back to the office will look like, they better be prepared to make remote work a part of the equation. A recent survey showed that almost 40% of workers would quit a job if their employers were not flexible about working remotely. Top reasons for wanted to keep that set up is the lack of commute and cost savings associated with that. Anders Melin, reporter at Bloomberg News, joins us for how important remote work has become over the course of the pandemic.
Finally, a lot of people have been lucky enough to hit it big in the markets and come out with extra money. Whether it was company shares, retail or crypto investing some are stressed with what to do with all that sudden money. A couple of things to do immediately would be let your feelings calm down from all that cash and set money aside for taxes. Julia Carpenter, reporter at the WSJ, joins us for tips on how to manage that stress.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's Friday, June four. I'm Oscar Romeiraz in Los Angeles
and this is the daily dive. JBS, the second largest
producer of beef, pork and chicken, is now fully operational
after being the victim of a ransomware attack by a
Russian group named our Evil. Luckily, the disruption of the
(00:21):
food supply will be minimal, but workers going back had
to put in some good old fashioned manual labor in
as many of the operations that these plants are automated.
Elizabeth Elkin, agriculture reporter at Bloomberg News, joins US for
the latest ransomware attack on critical sectors of the U.
S economy. Next, as many companies are debating what the
road back to the office will look like, they better
(00:43):
be prepared to make remote work a part of the equation.
A recent survey showed that almost workers would quit a
job if their employers were not flexible about working remotely.
Honder's Melon reporter at Bloomberg News joins US for how
important remote work has become over the course of the pandemic. Finally,
a lot of people have been lucky enough to hit
(01:04):
it big in the markets and come out with extra money,
whether it was company shares, retail or crypto investing. Summer
stress with what to do with all that sudden money.
A couple of things to do immediately would be to
let your feelings calm down from all that cash and
set money aside for taxes. Julia Carpenter, reporter at The
Wall Street Journal, joins us for tips on how to
(01:25):
manage that stress. It's news without the noise. Let's dive in.
JBS notified the administration that the ransom demand came from
a criminal organization, likely based in Russia. So the White
House is engaging directly with the Russian government on this
matter and delivering the message that responsible states do not
(01:45):
harbor ransomware criminals. Joining us now is Elizabeth Elkin, agriculture
reporter at Bloomberg News. Thanks for joining us, Elizabeth, Thanks
for having me. This past week, JBS, the second largest
producer of beef, pork, and chicken in the US, was
experiencing some troubles due to a ransomware attack. They are
just about back in operation now, ramping up slowly. We'll
(02:08):
talk a little bit more about the hack in a minute,
but workers that we're starting to go back right now.
How to go a little old school with the manual labor.
These companies, these plants like this run heavily on automation
for both food and worker safety reasons. Computers collect data
through multiple stages of the production process, and a lot
of it, as I mentioned, is automated. So workers going
(02:29):
back had to go with a more manual approach when
they went back. So tell me a little bit about
that first. At least some plants, we've heard we're doing
operations manually, and so that means that logistical labor like
packaging and accounting for cattle could be a challenge. One
union that told me that he'd compare it to driving
manual while you're ramping up to get the car back
(02:53):
into full auto. Right. Everything from like knife sharpening to
production line speed all rely heavily on a nation for
their controls, and so with a cyber attack like this,
like that can be a huge challenge. And you know,
we saw all of their beef plants in the US
had to shut down on Tuesday, and which is just huge, right,
(03:14):
like you said, I mean, they're a huge producer of meat,
at the largest meat producer globally, and they supply almost
a quarter of American beef supplies, So that is I mean,
it's huge and it's a lot of work. Some of
the workers are returning were you know, there was concerns
about meat sitting in freezes for too long it could
render it inedible. So we don't know exactly what has
been lost in the last few days that they had
(03:35):
been closed. If you think about this on a larger scale, right,
we had huge closures during COVID, and if you compare
that to this, this is a pretty small blip, right
compared to like COVID closures, but it still was. It
was big, and it's you know, big that this humongous
meat company had to shut down over this. A little
(03:58):
bit more on the actual ransomware attack itself. The FBI
has said that it's been attributed to a Russian speaking
gang Are Evil, pretty sinister name there um. But what
else do we know about this. We don't know of
JBS paid a ransom, how much that might have been.
You know, what do we know about that attack specifically?
(04:19):
We don't know a lot, which has been I think
frustrating for a lot of people. G b S has
been pretty quiet about updates, and we again asked them
for any updates that that might have today and haven't
received any. We're we're in a waiting game. We like
you said, we don't know whether they paid the ransom.
We don't know really any details about that beyond just
(04:41):
that the FBI has come out and confirmed that it
was this Russia linked group. I think in this case,
some of the backup servers were not affected. That's kind
of how they were able to get back up so quickly, thankfully, right.
I think some reporting I saw said back in October
there was a representative from this gang are Evil who
said that the agriculture sector would now be a main
(05:02):
target for them. And obviously we see that now, and
we saw with the Colonial pipeline hack, bigger infrastructure areas
are being targets for this ransomware attacks. And that's the
concern that the attacks like this will grow. And really
the cyber security set up in a lot of these
companies just isn't up to protecting themselves from these attacks.
This really up ended the agriculture markets and it did
(05:25):
raise a lot of concerns about food security. We're seeing,
like you said, increasing targets of this critical infrastructure, and yeah,
the wholesale meat prices are at the highest level since
the early days in the pandemic. Last year, cattle futures
swung wildly. This is really a concern, and the White
House did come out and say that corporate leaders should
(05:46):
immediately developed plants to try to counter these attacks like
offline backups to a critical information And there are no
Department of Agriculture cybersecurity regulations or requirements for meat packers
we've discovered. What are we hearing from employees? I know
JBS said that there was an evidence that any customers
(06:07):
or supplier or work or data had been leaked, but
that's always the concern when servers and and things are
attacked like that. Absolutely, and we've been hearing a lot
from employees that they are really concerned about this. And
I mean if you were in employe there, I am
sure that this would be a concern for you to
We're hearing, you know about some of those challenges that
(06:27):
people have faced as they go in, Like we discussed
some of the things that are having to be done
manually that usually wouldn't be Now most of the plants
are back up and running pretty good capacity. I don't
know that we have been in touch with like unions
looking at you know, as they're trying to get people
(06:47):
back in the door here, like what does that look like?
There's some concern, but also pretty much everyone who has
spoken with thinks that, you know, JBS will be able
to come back up to the full capacity of doing
all of of things that they usually do, and other
companies have kind of been encouraged to come in and
help fill this gap. So you're seeing some of that too.
(07:08):
Elizabeth Elkin, agricultural reporter at Bloomberg News, Thank you very
much for joining us. Thanks again for having me. So
we spoke to experts that say that there's a reason
to believe that this might continue into the summer and
into the fall, as well of people shifting jobs because
(07:31):
there's a lot of preferences to working from home for
many people, and some companies are willing to grant those
additional flexibility, and those that don't might have a hard
time keeping their people. Joining us now is Anders Melon,
reporter at Bloomberg News. Thanks for joining us, Anders, Glad
to be with you. You know, one of the big
conversations that a lot of companies are having right now
(07:53):
revolves around getting workers back into the office or what
they're gonna do letting them work remotely either someday is
completely you know that. That's what the discussions are right now,
is people are starting to get back to work. Companies
are trying to get back to normal. But for some
employees that have been doing remote work throughout the pandemic,
it's become an important part of their lives and they
(08:14):
don't want to let it go to the point that
some are quitting their jobs instead of giving that up. Andrews,
tell us a little bit more about what we're seeing
with this. Like you said, last year, we went through
essentially this grand national experiment of making millions of white
color workers work from home or work from somewhere else
than then their office. And you know, the economy is
(08:35):
still humming. Companies are still making money and productivity is
still high. So people are looking at that and saying,
why can't we keep working from home also now? And
that's happening to an extent that some of the folks
that we talked to they have simply just left their
old jobs and found new ones that would allow them
to work remotely full time. And we spoke to experts
(08:57):
that say that there's a reason to believe that this
might continue into the summer and into the fall as
well of people shifting jobs because there's a lot of
preferences to working from home for many people, and some
companies are willing to grant those additional flexibility, and those
that don't might have a hard time keeping their people.
Some of the polls that just came out, I think
(09:17):
it was about that said they'd quit if they couldn't
continue to work remotely, and the top things that they
say why they want to keep doing that is lack
of commute and the cost savings associated with all that. Nobody,
i think really wants to go back to the commute
that we had pre pandemic, whether that was on trains
or or whether that was driving. One important factor that
(09:37):
also plays into this is the relative strength in the
labor market in terms of for the employees. There was
not a ton of movement throughout the pandemic because of
the uncertainty, So now you have a bunch of pent
up job moves that probably would have happened last year,
but that is now instead coming. And then you add
that to the trend that we're starting to see the
(09:58):
beginnings of just wanting to keep that remote work, and
given that it is a good job market for job seekers,
there's reason to believe that it might actually be to
their advantage also continuing this year, and that companies might
actually just have to start adapting or risk to see
(10:20):
some of their people leaving. Some of the workers you
spoke to also said that they feel that managers, you know,
employers just want tighter controls over the workforce as well.
But what is what have corporate leadership, what have business owners?
What have they said about this? How do they feel
about having workers work remotely? So it's been a bit
of a mixed message. Bloomberg's being largely focused on the
(10:43):
financial industry. There, we've seen some ceo is coming out
quite strongly advocating for and in office culture. Jamie Diamond
of JP Morgan said a few weeks ago that remote
work does not work for those who want to hustle,
and said, if you don't want to commute, then you know,
it's too bad. That's just how it's going to be.
Whereas in other sectors, including tech, remote work and then
(11:06):
flexibility has been you know, a thing for years and
over there more corporate leaders have already last year came
out very early and said we're just going to be
fully remote, or we're gonna give workers the opportunity to
choose how they want to do. So it's it's a
mixed landscape. And I think also at this point, many
corporate leaders are kind of waiting to see what everybody
(11:27):
else is doing, and also particularly waiting to see what
the rivals are going to do, and may have to
adapt accordingly in order to stay competitive and make sure
that people don't affect two rivals. So it's still a
bit of a waiting game, and I think a lot
of it is going to shake out over the summer,
and particularly as we head into the fall, when summer
vacations are over and people come back from where they
(11:48):
might hang out during the warmer months and call back
to offices might actually be in full swing, so to say,
towards the end of the summer. Even on this kind
of hybrid model, in the way it is, everybody's kind
of on along the same lines, at least from what
I've seen. You know generally that the magic number is
probably three days in the office, two days working from
(12:08):
home if they're going with that model, you know, staying
away from the complete remote working models. That seems to
be agreeable by both sides. In a lot of cases,
it does. Yeah, that's a survey that we cited by
p w C by It looked at the US executives,
and those bosses said precisely that three days a week
was kind of the magic number. I think the larger
(12:30):
theme that we heard and saw in the conversations that
we had was just that people feel like last year
it worked, and when companies were forced to empower workers
to work from home and trust them that things would
get done, it largely worked, and people just don't really
want to give up the flexibility and and perhaps having
the option to work from home and have it not
(12:52):
necessarily be a big deal or look down upon or
have to ask for permission. So I think just the
sense of freedom and then greater come role is really
what people would like and not necessarily just a certain
number of day in the office. Ponder's Melon reporter at
Bloomberg News. Thank you very much for joining us. Thank you.
(13:20):
There's responsibility to managing that money as well. I also
spoke with people who said, you know, this is my shot.
This is money I never expected to have. This is
money I never expected to have. This soon. I don't
want to mess it up. I don't want to see
it disappeared. Joining us now is Julia Carpenter, reporter at
the Wall Street Journal. Thanks for joining us, Julia, Thank
you so much for having me. I wanted to talk
about people coming into a lot of money recently, especially
(13:43):
when it comes to uh the stock market. You know,
a lot of people were investing in their stocks, they
saw their portfolios go up. A lot of people were
investing in cryptocurrency. I know that was a huge one
throughout the pandemic, and some of these other meme stocks,
things like AMC, which is doing really well right now.
Game Stop was hot for a moment, you know. But
a lot of people came into a lot of money
(14:04):
and you don't know what to do with it sometimes,
so you spoke to a lot of experts on on
what to do. One of the first things they say is,
you know, if you're coming into a lot of money,
put your long term goals in focus, so you know
what you're gonna end up doing with all of it. Absolutely,
I think something a lot of people have seen in
the last years because the market has been so volatile,
especially people want to have a plan for where their
(14:28):
money goes and how they'll be using it for the future,
whether they leave that money somewhere, whether they take it out,
whether they have an immediate goal that they're gonna be
playing for something that gives a bit more of a
focus in a direction and taking a step back real
quick on that, one of the experts you spoke to
said people that benefited from the market searge fall into
three categories. Can you explain that real quick? So this
(14:49):
is how uh he's the founder of Myra Wells. They're
a personal finance fin tech company. He was talking specifically
about three categories of people who've benefited from this huge urge.
And we're seeing that in people who were given company shares,
this compensation shares in their company and then they saw
those shares zoom, or people who all of a sudden
(15:09):
started retail investing. Last year, we saw a lot of
a lot more participation in the market for people who
were amateurs or how have been investing previously. And there's
also people who have invested in cryptocurrency. And if you
invested early on in encryptocurrency, the surge we've seen in
coins like bitcoin this year has really benefited those early investors,
and a lot of them are very young, between the
ages of forty five. And that's kind of what the
(15:32):
purpose of this article was that you wrote, is you're
young and you come into this stuff. You know, you
want to be smart about it. You don't want to
waste it. Uh, you don't know if you should continue
to invest or get out, you know, So all of
these questions kind of come once you start hitting it big.
There's caavillion anxiety to it, I think, you know, especially
in the in the midst of this last year, we've
seen this key shaped recovery benefit some people her other
(15:54):
people were definitely not out of the looks yet, even
though we have this successful vaccine rollout continuing. So there's
some anxiety a day from people who say, wait, wait, wait,
has happened too quickly or I wasn't expecting it this much.
There's a responsibility to managing that money as well. I
also spoke with people who said, you know, this is
my shot. This is money I never expected to have.
This is money I never expected to have this soon.
I don't want to mess it up. I don't want
(16:16):
to see it disappear. Taxes. Taxes is such an important
component to this, and you know, the experts say you
should start sitting aside money for that immediately. That's something
that has to be one of the first lines of
action because especially we've we've now seen that the last
tax season past, but especially for people who were trading
and the last year, or maybe had never traded previously,
(16:39):
they're going to be unfamiliar with things like the capital
gains tax. They're not going to understand how the profits
on these assets and you know, how long they've had them,
what works their tax, how all of that comes together.
So something especially with cryptocurrency, that people recommend is that
you go ahead and set aside the money on the
front end so that when your tax will comes, you're
not going to be shocked, you're not going to be surprised,
(17:00):
you won't have to borrow from other parts of your portfolio.
You'll be able to handle it and try to minimize
it for the next year. Even paying quarterly, they said,
might be smart that way, you just get ahead of
it and you don't have to do it all at once.
At the end multiple adviser as I SAI you said,
you might even have to pay quarterly. It might be
something that's mandatory. It depends on your own personal situation,
but paying quarterly also allows you to not find yourself
(17:21):
with a huge ability enterfe or you're able to keep
that in mind and handle it as it comes. One
of the next steps after preparing for your taxes and
everything is to start handling those immediate needs. So pay
off those big things your mortgage, your car, other debt.
That way, you know you have a little bit less
money to play with, but you know you don't have
those other worries lingering around. And this is something that
(17:44):
I think actually comes pretty naturally to people. The tax
stuff is confusing for people. Thinking long term can be
scary for people, but thinking immediately understanding that, for example,
you could wipe out your student loan, or you could
pre pay rent was another suggestion, or all of a
sudden own your home outright. Then things that handling them immediately,
(18:05):
thinking of them as some of the more pressing needs
actually gives you way more flexibility and freedom to tackle
the other things on the list. One of these tips
that is so important is seeking advice in the right places.
You know, for a lot of people that were at
home during the pandemic and just kind of investing their money,
playing a little bit of a so to speak, right,
investing in cryptocurrency as volatile as it is, and you know,
(18:27):
you kind of hit it big with certain things. You know,
maybe you were doing it by yourself, maybe you didn't
have any financial assistance advice at least going on at
that time. But if you do come into money, it's
important to get the right kind of advice. You know,
my wife was playing some of these stocks during it,
and she'd asked me a question. I'm like, I don't
know what I'm doing with this, you know, So making
sure you're asking, making sure you're asking the right type
(18:48):
of questions and advice from people is important, right. You know.
I spoke with one advisor who joked that these personal
finance black channels that pop up in different company workspaces
are sin of her existence because it's so much chatter.
You know, people are just throwing tips out, linking to things.
You don't know if their experiences is rooted in anything
related to your experience. You don't know if their advice
(19:09):
is valid or where where it's coming from. So finding
someone that you can talk to that you can ask
the quote unquote stupid questions of that you can trust
will be acting in your best interests is absolutely key.
Julia Carpenter, reporter at The Wall Street Journal, Thank you
very much for joining us. Thank you so much for
having me. That's it for today. Join us on social
(19:38):
media at Daily Dive Pod on both Twitter and Instagram.
Leave us a comment, give us a rating, and tell
us the stories that you're interesting. Follow us on I
Heart Radio, subscribe wherever you get your podcast. This episode
of The Daily Divers produced by Victor Wright and engineered
by Tony Sarrantino. I'm Oscar Ramirez and this was your
Daily Dive. The Bride Back
It's Friday, June four. I'm Oscar Romeiraz in Los Angeles
and this is the daily dive. JBS, the second largest
producer of beef, pork and chicken, is now fully operational
after being the victim of a ransomware attack by a
Russian group named our Evil. Luckily, the disruption of the
(00:21):
food supply will be minimal, but workers going back had
to put in some good old fashioned manual labor in
as many of the operations that these plants are automated.
Elizabeth Elkin, agriculture reporter at Bloomberg News, joins US for
the latest ransomware attack on critical sectors of the U.
S economy. Next, as many companies are debating what the
road back to the office will look like, they better
(00:43):
be prepared to make remote work a part of the equation.
A recent survey showed that almost workers would quit a
job if their employers were not flexible about working remotely.
Honder's Melon reporter at Bloomberg News joins US for how
important remote work has become over the course of the pandemic. Finally,
a lot of people have been lucky enough to hit
(01:04):
it big in the markets and come out with extra money,
whether it was company shares, retail or crypto investing. Summer
stress with what to do with all that sudden money.
A couple of things to do immediately would be to
let your feelings calm down from all that cash and
set money aside for taxes. Julia Carpenter, reporter at The
Wall Street Journal, joins us for tips on how to
(01:25):
manage that stress. It's news without the noise. Let's dive in.
JBS notified the administration that the ransom demand came from
a criminal organization, likely based in Russia. So the White
House is engaging directly with the Russian government on this
matter and delivering the message that responsible states do not
(01:45):
harbor ransomware criminals. Joining us now is Elizabeth Elkin, agriculture
reporter at Bloomberg News. Thanks for joining us, Elizabeth, Thanks
for having me. This past week, JBS, the second largest
producer of beef, pork, and chicken in the US, was
experiencing some troubles due to a ransomware attack. They are
just about back in operation now, ramping up slowly. We'll
(02:08):
talk a little bit more about the hack in a minute,
but workers that we're starting to go back right now.
How to go a little old school with the manual labor.
These companies, these plants like this run heavily on automation
for both food and worker safety reasons. Computers collect data
through multiple stages of the production process, and a lot
of it, as I mentioned, is automated. So workers going
(02:29):
back had to go with a more manual approach when
they went back. So tell me a little bit about
that first. At least some plants, we've heard we're doing
operations manually, and so that means that logistical labor like
packaging and accounting for cattle could be a challenge. One
union that told me that he'd compare it to driving
manual while you're ramping up to get the car back
(02:53):
into full auto. Right. Everything from like knife sharpening to
production line speed all rely heavily on a nation for
their controls, and so with a cyber attack like this,
like that can be a huge challenge. And you know,
we saw all of their beef plants in the US
had to shut down on Tuesday, and which is just huge, right,
(03:14):
like you said, I mean, they're a huge producer of meat,
at the largest meat producer globally, and they supply almost
a quarter of American beef supplies, So that is I mean,
it's huge and it's a lot of work. Some of
the workers are returning were you know, there was concerns
about meat sitting in freezes for too long it could
render it inedible. So we don't know exactly what has
been lost in the last few days that they had
(03:35):
been closed. If you think about this on a larger scale, right,
we had huge closures during COVID, and if you compare
that to this, this is a pretty small blip, right
compared to like COVID closures, but it still was. It
was big, and it's you know, big that this humongous
meat company had to shut down over this. A little
(03:58):
bit more on the actual ransomware attack itself. The FBI
has said that it's been attributed to a Russian speaking
gang Are Evil, pretty sinister name there um. But what
else do we know about this. We don't know of
JBS paid a ransom, how much that might have been.
You know, what do we know about that attack specifically?
(04:19):
We don't know a lot, which has been I think
frustrating for a lot of people. G b S has
been pretty quiet about updates, and we again asked them
for any updates that that might have today and haven't
received any. We're we're in a waiting game. We like
you said, we don't know whether they paid the ransom.
We don't know really any details about that beyond just
(04:41):
that the FBI has come out and confirmed that it
was this Russia linked group. I think in this case,
some of the backup servers were not affected. That's kind
of how they were able to get back up so quickly, thankfully, right.
I think some reporting I saw said back in October
there was a representative from this gang are Evil who
said that the agriculture sector would now be a main
(05:02):
target for them. And obviously we see that now, and
we saw with the Colonial pipeline hack, bigger infrastructure areas
are being targets for this ransomware attacks. And that's the
concern that the attacks like this will grow. And really
the cyber security set up in a lot of these
companies just isn't up to protecting themselves from these attacks.
This really up ended the agriculture markets and it did
(05:25):
raise a lot of concerns about food security. We're seeing,
like you said, increasing targets of this critical infrastructure, and yeah,
the wholesale meat prices are at the highest level since
the early days in the pandemic. Last year, cattle futures
swung wildly. This is really a concern, and the White
House did come out and say that corporate leaders should
(05:46):
immediately developed plants to try to counter these attacks like
offline backups to a critical information And there are no
Department of Agriculture cybersecurity regulations or requirements for meat packers
we've discovered. What are we hearing from employees? I know
JBS said that there was an evidence that any customers
(06:07):
or supplier or work or data had been leaked, but
that's always the concern when servers and and things are
attacked like that. Absolutely, and we've been hearing a lot
from employees that they are really concerned about this. And
I mean if you were in employe there, I am
sure that this would be a concern for you to
We're hearing, you know about some of those challenges that
(06:27):
people have faced as they go in, Like we discussed
some of the things that are having to be done
manually that usually wouldn't be Now most of the plants
are back up and running pretty good capacity. I don't
know that we have been in touch with like unions
looking at you know, as they're trying to get people
(06:47):
back in the door here, like what does that look like?
There's some concern, but also pretty much everyone who has
spoken with thinks that, you know, JBS will be able
to come back up to the full capacity of doing
all of of things that they usually do, and other
companies have kind of been encouraged to come in and
help fill this gap. So you're seeing some of that too.
(07:08):
Elizabeth Elkin, agricultural reporter at Bloomberg News, Thank you very
much for joining us. Thanks again for having me. So
we spoke to experts that say that there's a reason
to believe that this might continue into the summer and
into the fall, as well of people shifting jobs because
(07:31):
there's a lot of preferences to working from home for
many people, and some companies are willing to grant those
additional flexibility, and those that don't might have a hard
time keeping their people. Joining us now is Anders Melon,
reporter at Bloomberg News. Thanks for joining us, Anders, Glad
to be with you. You know, one of the big
conversations that a lot of companies are having right now
(07:53):
revolves around getting workers back into the office or what
they're gonna do letting them work remotely either someday is
completely you know that. That's what the discussions are right now,
is people are starting to get back to work. Companies
are trying to get back to normal. But for some
employees that have been doing remote work throughout the pandemic,
it's become an important part of their lives and they
(08:14):
don't want to let it go to the point that
some are quitting their jobs instead of giving that up. Andrews,
tell us a little bit more about what we're seeing
with this. Like you said, last year, we went through
essentially this grand national experiment of making millions of white
color workers work from home or work from somewhere else
than then their office. And you know, the economy is
(08:35):
still humming. Companies are still making money and productivity is
still high. So people are looking at that and saying,
why can't we keep working from home also now? And
that's happening to an extent that some of the folks
that we talked to they have simply just left their
old jobs and found new ones that would allow them
to work remotely full time. And we spoke to experts
(08:57):
that say that there's a reason to believe that this
might continue into the summer and into the fall as
well of people shifting jobs because there's a lot of
preferences to working from home for many people, and some
companies are willing to grant those additional flexibility, and those
that don't might have a hard time keeping their people.
Some of the polls that just came out, I think
(09:17):
it was about that said they'd quit if they couldn't
continue to work remotely, and the top things that they
say why they want to keep doing that is lack
of commute and the cost savings associated with all that. Nobody,
i think really wants to go back to the commute
that we had pre pandemic, whether that was on trains
or or whether that was driving. One important factor that
(09:37):
also plays into this is the relative strength in the
labor market in terms of for the employees. There was
not a ton of movement throughout the pandemic because of
the uncertainty, So now you have a bunch of pent
up job moves that probably would have happened last year,
but that is now instead coming. And then you add
that to the trend that we're starting to see the
(09:58):
beginnings of just wanting to keep that remote work, and
given that it is a good job market for job seekers,
there's reason to believe that it might actually be to
their advantage also continuing this year, and that companies might
actually just have to start adapting or risk to see
(10:20):
some of their people leaving. Some of the workers you
spoke to also said that they feel that managers, you know,
employers just want tighter controls over the workforce as well.
But what is what have corporate leadership, what have business owners?
What have they said about this? How do they feel
about having workers work remotely? So it's been a bit
of a mixed message. Bloomberg's being largely focused on the
(10:43):
financial industry. There, we've seen some ceo is coming out
quite strongly advocating for and in office culture. Jamie Diamond
of JP Morgan said a few weeks ago that remote
work does not work for those who want to hustle,
and said, if you don't want to commute, then you know,
it's too bad. That's just how it's going to be.
Whereas in other sectors, including tech, remote work and then
(11:06):
flexibility has been you know, a thing for years and
over there more corporate leaders have already last year came
out very early and said we're just going to be
fully remote, or we're gonna give workers the opportunity to
choose how they want to do. So it's it's a
mixed landscape. And I think also at this point, many
corporate leaders are kind of waiting to see what everybody
(11:27):
else is doing, and also particularly waiting to see what
the rivals are going to do, and may have to
adapt accordingly in order to stay competitive and make sure
that people don't affect two rivals. So it's still a
bit of a waiting game, and I think a lot
of it is going to shake out over the summer,
and particularly as we head into the fall, when summer
vacations are over and people come back from where they
(11:48):
might hang out during the warmer months and call back
to offices might actually be in full swing, so to say,
towards the end of the summer. Even on this kind
of hybrid model, in the way it is, everybody's kind
of on along the same lines, at least from what
I've seen. You know generally that the magic number is
probably three days in the office, two days working from
(12:08):
home if they're going with that model, you know, staying
away from the complete remote working models. That seems to
be agreeable by both sides. In a lot of cases,
it does. Yeah, that's a survey that we cited by
p w C by It looked at the US executives,
and those bosses said precisely that three days a week
was kind of the magic number. I think the larger
(12:30):
theme that we heard and saw in the conversations that
we had was just that people feel like last year
it worked, and when companies were forced to empower workers
to work from home and trust them that things would
get done, it largely worked, and people just don't really
want to give up the flexibility and and perhaps having
the option to work from home and have it not
(12:52):
necessarily be a big deal or look down upon or
have to ask for permission. So I think just the
sense of freedom and then greater come role is really
what people would like and not necessarily just a certain
number of day in the office. Ponder's Melon reporter at
Bloomberg News. Thank you very much for joining us. Thank you.
(13:20):
There's responsibility to managing that money as well. I also
spoke with people who said, you know, this is my shot.
This is money I never expected to have. This is
money I never expected to have. This soon. I don't
want to mess it up. I don't want to see
it disappeared. Joining us now is Julia Carpenter, reporter at
the Wall Street Journal. Thanks for joining us, Julia, Thank
you so much for having me. I wanted to talk
about people coming into a lot of money recently, especially
(13:43):
when it comes to uh the stock market. You know,
a lot of people were investing in their stocks, they
saw their portfolios go up. A lot of people were
investing in cryptocurrency. I know that was a huge one
throughout the pandemic, and some of these other meme stocks,
things like AMC, which is doing really well right now.
Game Stop was hot for a moment, you know. But
a lot of people came into a lot of money
(14:04):
and you don't know what to do with it sometimes,
so you spoke to a lot of experts on on
what to do. One of the first things they say is,
you know, if you're coming into a lot of money,
put your long term goals in focus, so you know
what you're gonna end up doing with all of it. Absolutely,
I think something a lot of people have seen in
the last years because the market has been so volatile,
especially people want to have a plan for where their
(14:28):
money goes and how they'll be using it for the future,
whether they leave that money somewhere, whether they take it out,
whether they have an immediate goal that they're gonna be
playing for something that gives a bit more of a
focus in a direction and taking a step back real
quick on that, one of the experts you spoke to
said people that benefited from the market searge fall into
three categories. Can you explain that real quick? So this
(14:49):
is how uh he's the founder of Myra Wells. They're
a personal finance fin tech company. He was talking specifically
about three categories of people who've benefited from this huge urge.
And we're seeing that in people who were given company shares,
this compensation shares in their company and then they saw
those shares zoom, or people who all of a sudden
(15:09):
started retail investing. Last year, we saw a lot of
a lot more participation in the market for people who
were amateurs or how have been investing previously. And there's
also people who have invested in cryptocurrency. And if you
invested early on in encryptocurrency, the surge we've seen in
coins like bitcoin this year has really benefited those early investors,
and a lot of them are very young, between the
ages of forty five. And that's kind of what the
(15:32):
purpose of this article was that you wrote, is you're
young and you come into this stuff. You know, you
want to be smart about it. You don't want to
waste it. Uh, you don't know if you should continue
to invest or get out, you know, So all of
these questions kind of come once you start hitting it big.
There's caavillion anxiety to it, I think, you know, especially
in the in the midst of this last year, we've
seen this key shaped recovery benefit some people her other
(15:54):
people were definitely not out of the looks yet, even
though we have this successful vaccine rollout continuing. So there's
some anxiety a day from people who say, wait, wait, wait,
has happened too quickly or I wasn't expecting it this much.
There's a responsibility to managing that money as well. I
also spoke with people who said, you know, this is
my shot. This is money I never expected to have.
This is money I never expected to have this soon.
I don't want to mess it up. I don't want
(16:16):
to see it disappear. Taxes. Taxes is such an important
component to this, and you know, the experts say you
should start sitting aside money for that immediately. That's something
that has to be one of the first lines of
action because especially we've we've now seen that the last
tax season past, but especially for people who were trading
and the last year, or maybe had never traded previously,
(16:39):
they're going to be unfamiliar with things like the capital
gains tax. They're not going to understand how the profits
on these assets and you know, how long they've had them,
what works their tax, how all of that comes together.
So something especially with cryptocurrency, that people recommend is that
you go ahead and set aside the money on the
front end so that when your tax will comes, you're
not going to be shocked, you're not going to be surprised,
(17:00):
you won't have to borrow from other parts of your portfolio.
You'll be able to handle it and try to minimize
it for the next year. Even paying quarterly, they said,
might be smart that way, you just get ahead of
it and you don't have to do it all at once.
At the end multiple adviser as I SAI you said,
you might even have to pay quarterly. It might be
something that's mandatory. It depends on your own personal situation,
but paying quarterly also allows you to not find yourself
(17:21):
with a huge ability enterfe or you're able to keep
that in mind and handle it as it comes. One
of the next steps after preparing for your taxes and
everything is to start handling those immediate needs. So pay
off those big things your mortgage, your car, other debt.
That way, you know you have a little bit less
money to play with, but you know you don't have
those other worries lingering around. And this is something that
(17:44):
I think actually comes pretty naturally to people. The tax
stuff is confusing for people. Thinking long term can be
scary for people, but thinking immediately understanding that, for example,
you could wipe out your student loan, or you could
pre pay rent was another suggestion, or all of a
sudden own your home outright. Then things that handling them immediately,
(18:05):
thinking of them as some of the more pressing needs
actually gives you way more flexibility and freedom to tackle
the other things on the list. One of these tips
that is so important is seeking advice in the right places.
You know, for a lot of people that were at
home during the pandemic and just kind of investing their money,
playing a little bit of a so to speak, right,
investing in cryptocurrency as volatile as it is, and you know,
(18:27):
you kind of hit it big with certain things. You know,
maybe you were doing it by yourself, maybe you didn't
have any financial assistance advice at least going on at
that time. But if you do come into money, it's
important to get the right kind of advice. You know,
my wife was playing some of these stocks during it,
and she'd asked me a question. I'm like, I don't
know what I'm doing with this, you know, So making
sure you're asking, making sure you're asking the right type
(18:48):
of questions and advice from people is important, right. You know.
I spoke with one advisor who joked that these personal
finance black channels that pop up in different company workspaces
are sin of her existence because it's so much chatter.
You know, people are just throwing tips out, linking to things.
You don't know if their experiences is rooted in anything
related to your experience. You don't know if their advice
(19:09):
is valid or where where it's coming from. So finding
someone that you can talk to that you can ask
the quote unquote stupid questions of that you can trust
will be acting in your best interests is absolutely key.
Julia Carpenter, reporter at The Wall Street Journal, Thank you
very much for joining us. Thank you so much for
having me. That's it for today. Join us on social
(19:38):
media at Daily Dive Pod on both Twitter and Instagram.
Leave us a comment, give us a rating, and tell
us the stories that you're interesting. Follow us on I
Heart Radio, subscribe wherever you get your podcast. This episode
of The Daily Divers produced by Victor Wright and engineered
by Tony Sarrantino. I'm Oscar Ramirez and this was your
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