| | | | | | | Presented By Walmart | | | | Axios AM | | By Mike Allen ·Feb 17, 2022 | | Happy Thursday! Smart Brevity™ count: 1,171 words ... 4½ minutes. Edited by Zachary Basu. | | | | | | 1 big thing: CEOs' toughest year |  | | | Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios | | | | 2022 is shaping up to be one of the hardest years ever to run a company — even harder than 2020, when the pandemic first hit, corporate leaders and analysts tell Axios' Emily Peck and Erica Pandey. Why it matters: Uncertainty, which CEOs dread, abounds. Supply-chain snarls, lingering COVID disruptions, labor shortages, inflation, rising pay and soaring demands for new benefits and work flexibility are driving up costs and complexity. - Toss in a surge in individuals starting their own small businesses —and others simply quitting work altogether — and you see why C-suite anxiety is spreading fast.
The Great Resignation is forcing companies to raise wages and beef up benefits to attract talent. America has some 11 million open jobs, but people aren't jumping to apply to them. - The median tech salary in the U.S. increased 7% between 2020 and 2021, per Wired. Some companies are driving pay more aggressively: Amazon just raised its maximum base pay to $350,000, from $160,000.
Reality check: Plenty of companies, especially the big ones, have been able to pass those higher costs, and a bit more, on to consumers who keep spending. Profit margins in 2021 were at historic highs. Smaller businesses don't always have the resources to raise wages. Child-care centers, already operating on razor-thin margins, are struggling to find workers and aren't necessarily able to raise pay. - And juggling the ever-changing landscape of vaccine and mask mandates has been a nightmare.
Inflation and supply-chain issues are driving up the cost of doing business: - The year-over-year change in costs for S&P 500 companies is 13.4%, the highest it's been in a decade, according to research Lisa Shalett, CIO of Morgan Stanley Wealth Management, released this week.
Firms are also realizing they'll have to navigate remote and hybrid work even after the pandemic. That means figuring out new ways to manage teams and rally employees. - So CEOs are scrambling to bring in talent experts who can answer questions about the future of work. Human resources job postings on Indeed are up 133% compared with February 2020.
🥊 Outside recruiters are so busy, some are turning away business. |     | | | | | | 2. 💭 Quote of the day | | Adrian Foley, president and CEO of Brookfield Properties' development group, to the N.Y. Times on builders' absurd supply-chain struggles: It used to take us 20 weeks to build a house. And now it takes us 20 weeks to get a set of garage doors. 🗞️ The Times' great headlines ... Online: "4 Bed, 3 Bath, No Garage Door" ... In print: "Oh, You Want a Garage Door?" | | | | | | | | 3. 🛰️ Satellites show continued Russian buildup | | Satellite image: Maxar Technologies A new military pontoon bridge has been established over the Pripyat River in Belarus, less than four miles from the Ukraine border, Maxar Technologies found. - Satellite images this week continue to show heightened military activity in Belarus, Crimea and western Russia, Maxar said.
Why it matters: The Biden administration told reporters last evening that it now believes Russia's claims of withdrawing troops from near Ukraine are "false," Axios' Zachary Basu reports. - Moscow has in fact increased its presence on the border "by as many as 7,000 troops" in recent days, a senior administration official said.
Get the latest. | | | | | | | | A message from Walmart | | Walmart leads the industry with new emissions reduction program | | |  | | | | Partnering with HSBC and CDP, Walmart is supporting businesses along its supply chain to enact sustainable emission reductions. Read more about the industry-leading action, just one of many from Walmart to avoid 1 billion metric tons of greenhouse gases from the global value chain by 2030. | | | | | | 4. Our weekly COVID map: Cases plummet across U.S. |  Data: N.Y. Times. Cartogram: Kavya Beheraj/Axios COVID cases are plummeting across the U.S., in some places even falling to relatively manageable levels. But deaths remain stubbornly high, Axios' Sam Baker and Kavya Beheraj report. - The U.S. is now averaging 140,000 new COVID cases per day — a 64% drop over the past two weeks. The pace of new infections is declining in every state.
Share this map. | | | | | | | | 5. 🚗 Charted: What Uber drivers think |  Data: Uber. Chart: Axios visuals You love it when your Uber driver says: "You are my 5-star passenger." But they don't always. Uber released these city rankings, based on how many stars drivers give riders. - Uber announced that beginning this week, every rider (and driver) will be able to see their rating and information about exactly how it is calculated, via the new Privacy Center in the Uber app. Details here.
| | | | | | | | 6. David Axelrod: "Mr. President, it's time for a little humility" | | President Biden speaks about Ukraine in the East Room on Tuesday. Photo: Alex Brandon/AP David Axelrod, top campaign and White House strategist for President Obama, has an essay in the N.Y. Times with this advice for President Biden ahead of his State of the Union address on March 1: - "The state of the union is stressed. To claim otherwise — to highlight the progress we have made, without fully acknowledging the hard road we have traveled and the distance we need to go — would seem off-key and out of touch."
- "You simply cannot jawbone Americans into believing that things are better than they feel. ... They will want to hear less about his 'transformative' legislation than the specific, practical steps Mr. Biden has taken, and is recommending."
This should come naturally to Biden, Axelrod adds: - "Biden's great strength has been his preternatural empathy, born of his personal tragedies and his ability to speak in authentic, resonant ways about the everyday challenges facing people in working class communities like Scranton, Pa."
- "Many national politicians speak the language of Washington. Mr. Biden, at his best, speaks American. Now, he needs to find that voice."
Keep reading (subscription). | | | | | | | | 7. Meta reorganizes comms to go on offense |  | | | Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios | | | | Facebook parent Meta is reorganizing its communications and public affairs team to combat an onslaught of negative press and try to repair its reputation, Axios Media Trends author Sara Fischer reports. - Why it matters: The new structure, according to internal memos obtained by Axios, gives communications and public affairs executives more power across the organization to respond to P.R. crises.
In an internal note to employees posted Monday, Nick Clegg — Facebook's newly promoted president of global affairs — said the communications team will be restructured to be more "cross-functional … to make sure our product and innovation story is heard loud and clear by the audiences we need to reach." - The team will be led by David Ginsberg, a senior product executive who's been with Facebook since 2017. Ginsberg's new title will be V.P. and global head of communications and public affairs, and he will report to Clegg.
In another staff memo, Ginsberg said the new team will be renamed "Communications and Public Affairs" — and will focus not just on a new communications structure, but also on getting employees and external stakeholders excited about the metaverse. - As part of that mission, the company will build a new global public affairs team under Tucker Bounds, a former political operative who is currently a vice president of communications.
The big picture: The new structure gives Clegg full responsibility for making policy decisions for the company, absolving CEO Mark Zuckerberg from that duty on a day-to-day basis. | | | | | | | | 8. 📷 Parting shots: Rams' day | | Rams celebrate at the L.A. Memorial Coliseum. Photo: Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP Exposition Park was a sea of blue and gold as L.A. Rams fans lined a parade honoring the Super Bowl champions, the L.A. Times reports. Four words rang repeatedly: "Whose house?" Photo: Allen J. Schaben/L.A. Times via Getty Images Above: Aerial view of downtown L.A. (corner of Jefferson and Figueroa), as crowds cheer buses carrying Rams players, coaches and families. | | | | | | | | A message from Walmart | | Walmart supports small- and medium-sized suppliers in climate goals | | |  | | | | Did you know 80% of a company's carbon footprint resides in its supply chain? Support for smaller suppliers is essential to meet the urgency of climate action. Learn how Walmart is taking on this challenge with an industry-leading program supporting small businesses in emissions reduction. | | | | 📬 Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up here for your own personal copy of Axios AM and Axios PM. |  | Bring the strength of Smart Brevity® to your team — more effective communications, powered by Axios HQ. | | | |
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