Stop Blaming AI w/ Allie Kelly

Is AI really slaughtering white-collar jobs… or is it just Wall Street jazz hands? 🤔

This week, Chad & Cheese welcome Allie Kelly, economy reporter at Business Insider, to unpack the real reasons behind the so-called white-collar bloodbath. Spoiler: it’s not ChatGPT, it’s interest rates, tariffs, immigration policy, and the velvet hammer of the Federal Reserve.

From blaming Jerome Powell instead of robots, to why entry-level jobs are evaporating, middle management is getting axed, and healthcare is basically holding the economy together with duct tape—this episode connects the dots no headline wants to.

If you’ve been laid off, stuck job hunting, or told “AI did it,” this one’s for you. Hide your kids. Lock the doors. The economy just got explained

PODCAST TRANSCRIPTION

Joel Cheesman (00:30.51)

Yeah, it's the podcast your sixth grade gym teacher warned you about also known as the chat and cheese podcast. I'm your co host Joel Cheeseman joined as always. Chad. So wash is writing shotgun as we welcome Ali Kelly, a reporter for the business insider economy team and author of the real reason for the white collar bloodbath. Allie welcome to HR's most dangerous podcast.

Chad Sowash (00:41.275)

What up?

Allie Kelly (00:56.304)

Thank you so much for having me.

Joel Cheesman (00:58.286)

Thanks for being with us. Thanks for being with us. So a lot of our listeners won't know you. Maybe they've read your work at Business Insider. what makes Allie tick before we get into the meat of this interview?

Allie Kelly (01:09.084)

Absolutely. I live in New York City and I've lived here for a couple of years. I grew up in Denver, Colorado. So I grew up in the mountains all the time. I grew up in the city, but I grew up in the mountains all the time. I learned how to ski really young. It's kind of our favorite family activity together. So big fan of any kind of powder powder day. And then I, for Business Insider, I've been with the newsroom for a couple of years now and

Chad Sowash (01:17.746)

That's a change.

Allie Kelly (01:36.654)

I really cover how economic policy impacts people's daily lives. And that shows up a lot of the time in social safety nets, things like social security and snap and Medicaid, and how sort of the fabric of our government impact and our economy impacts the life decisions that people make. So I've done a lot of coverage on healthcare policy. I just worked on a big project about the cost of cancer for young people, especially as cases are rising.

Chad Sowash (01:41.137)

There we go.

Chad Sowash (02:06.001)

Mm-hmm.

Allie Kelly (02:06.409)

And I also do a lot of coverage of the job market and I cover the federal reserve for business insider.

Chad Sowash (02:12.721)

Okay, what? Wait, she's a Tar Heel. okay, very nice. Well, basketball season's coming. Or at least the...

Joel Cheesman (02:12.75)

And she's a Tar Heel, Chad. She's a Tar Heel. Yeah. I don't know if she knows Michael Jordan or not. I don't know if she knows Dean Smith or not, but.

Allie Kelly (02:15.034)

I am a Tar Heel.

I have little bit of hope this year. For the first time in a bit. Yeah.

Chad Sowash (02:23.663)

a little bit. Okay, that's good.

Joel Cheesman (02:25.774)

That's a tough because we weren't in. We're in Indiana. A team also with a rich tradition that has fallen from grace recently. Yeah, but now we're a football team. And you guys have Bill Belichick as your coach, which is just a big soap opera. We'll save that. We'll save that for another show with Allie.

Chad Sowash (02:31.951)

Rich football tradition. I mean, no, no.

Chad Sowash (02:40.149)

my god.

Allie Kelly (02:40.508)

Indeed. It has been a lot to watch.

Chad Sowash (02:46.225)

Well, first off, mean, in one of the things we try to do here, Allie, because with HR and talent acquisition and so on and so forth, many times, I mean, the economy is literally, it's kind of like outside of our bubble and it's not. I mean, we call it the workforce economy because the economy doesn't exist without talent, period. You can't make shit, you can't sell shit, you can't service stuff, you can't open wallets, you can't do any of that without talent, right?

You being on the economy beat, I think we just became best friends. I think we just became best friends.

Allie Kelly (03:19.996)

Okay.

Chad Sowash (03:24.337)

What?

It's starting to be your favorite sound effect. so let's go ahead. Joel already talked about it. The real reason for the white collar blood bath. We're always hearing, literally, and it drives me crazy, it's so like simplistic views. Well, AI is killing. AI is killing the workforce, right? It's stealing jobs, it's doing X, Y, and Z. It's always like one thing. But I don't think that's the case. And I bet you can tell us more about that. So dig in if you would.

Joel Cheesman (03:56.865)

setup chat.

Allie Kelly (03:58.588)

Definitely. So when we look at the job market, I know that there are so many people that are either in their jobs and feeling really frustrated and maybe they want to quit or they want to jump to the next thing and there aren't a lot of opportunities right now. Or there's job seekers that feel like they have put in hundreds, if not thousands of applications with very little results. And so it's just a really frustrating and slow career landscape in the US right now. And like you're saying, what

we're hearing in kind of all of this AI chatter is chat GPT killed the job market. And in some ways, it is reshaping how, you know, workers do their daily tasks and companies and how some leaders make decisions. But it's a really an oversimplification and kind of a scapegoat for what is actually a much larger economic issue. Like I mentioned, I cover the Federal Reserve

for Business Insider, which, yeah, absolutely. We're best friends. But I mean, for the average person, the Fed feels like some intangible, weird little committee that happens in a back room and doesn't really impact people's lives. And actually, the way that Jerome Powell, who's the chair and the Federal Open Market Committee,

Chad Sowash (05:00.367)

You and Jerome are really tight, right?

Joel Cheesman (05:03.224)

Don't get too close to him. I don't know how much longer he'll be around.

Joel Cheesman (05:13.646)

Yeah, Wizard of Oz.

Allie Kelly (05:27.864)

they set interest rates about eight times a year. And that kind of sets the tone for borrowing money in the US. And so that will trigger down and impact people's mortgages, credit card, auto loans, stuff like that. And for companies, it determines how cheap or expensive it is for them to borrow money. And for so for small businesses, for big companies, what this really means is

Are they spending more money to operate? And with that kind of in, if they have more in the bank, then they usually are able to hire a little bit more. And what we've had in the last several years, coming out of the height of the pandemic is that industry rates have been relatively high and have stayed there. And so what's happening is that companies are saying, you know what, we're leaning into AI.

Chad Sowash (06:17.179)

Mm-hmm.

Allie Kelly (06:25.468)

We're doing a big efficiency push because that sounds really good to investors. And that might be true a little bit. But the real economic reason that we're seeing waves of layoffs in white collar sectors, that we're seeing kind of this really frustrating job search process for, you know, most Americans that are looking for jobs right now, is actually that interest rates are high. And so companies don't

have a lot of extra money to give. But that's just a really kind of, as I said in my story, like it's a very unsexy reason to say, yeah, it's the jazz hands answer. It's the jazz hands answer. We're embracing Chachi BT. We're becoming so much more efficient and productive. And that sounds really good to Wall Street. And...

Chad Sowash (06:57.573)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (07:06.51)

So AI is jazz hands, essentially, for companies to say, we're doing this because of this.

Chad Sowash (07:16.3)

yeah, yeah.

Chad Sowash (07:21.999)

Yes, shareholders love efficiency, right? Yeah.

Allie Kelly (07:24.226)

Shareholders love that. that's something that, you know, maybe that remains that that's something that we'll, you know, see down the line. But right now, the real reason is interest rates and AI always becomes a mistake.

Joel Cheesman (07:40.654)

You had a great quote in the story. said, don't blame the robots, blame Jerome Powell, which I thought sort of summed up everything nicely. But you also talk about a lot of other things that are playing into this. it's a witch's brew of stuff. I don't know how you would rank them or if we even need to talk about that, but you've got the rates at the top of the list. But you also have immigration as one. What impact has closed borders

Chad Sowash (07:51.277)

yeah.

Joel Cheesman (08:08.066)

had on supply of people. And one could argue, well, if people aren't hiring, it would it be a bad thing to have more people? But you found out some interesting data on that as well. Talk about immigration.

Allie Kelly (08:20.934)

Definitely. So there is a lot of instability in the economy right now. And a lot of that is driving, you know, rates staying high is Jerome Powell was like, you know what, even though we can give a little bit of a break to these companies, we have to sort of keep interest rates under control because there's so many factors at play that we really can't control. And tariffs is a big one. Big one being inflation of lowering interest rates has a huge risk of just

Joel Cheesman (08:41.55)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (08:41.723)

Right. And the big one being inflation, right? Yeah.

Allie Kelly (08:51.036)

skyrocketing prices. And from a job market perspective, immigration and these deportation policies is really impacting the US's labor force participation rate. And I know we've seen so many headlines about HB1 visas and there's a lot of these sectors like construction or healthcare where we have a little bit higher of an immigrant worker population.

Joel Cheesman (09:14.966)

Agriculture.

Chad Sowash (09:20.303)

Hospitality, yeah. Yeah.

Allie Kelly (09:21.712)

hospitality. And so it is something that we're seeing show up in the data a little bit of these increased deportation policies having sort of a freezing effect on, you know, people entering those workforces. And it's something that I think we can expect if the Trump administration kind of continues down this road, it will continue to impact the labor force participation rate. Yeah.

Joel Cheesman (09:42.488)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (09:47.015)

So if I'm Hilton, well, it's gonna cost me more money to build a hotel. I may or may not be able to staff it. Who knows what the future holds because things are crazy, tariffs and so just let's just not do anything. And I think you talk about just let's just stop and wait for everything to shake out. How much impact does that have?

Chad Sowash (09:56.209)

Mm-hmm.

Allie Kelly (10:12.474)

Yes, I think that we are, we're absolutely seeing what we call on my team a really sluggish job market. where, when we're looking at how the U S labor force works, I think usually people are thinking about the unemployment rate. That's the first thing that comes to mind, is how many people are out of work right now. And while that is absolutely important to look at, and I know we just had new jobs numbers.

Chad Sowash (10:19.313)

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (10:38.193)

Mm-hmm.

Allie Kelly (10:41.756)

And that's still showing that our unemployment rate is still just above 4%, which is actually historically pretty low. So when we're just looking at the unemployment rate, we're not getting the whole story of the job market. The data points that we also have to kind of take into account is the quit rate is also really low. So people are not job hopping. People are hesitant to retire. So there's less.

kind of movement in people going from company to company or, you know, retiring in general. And also the job vacancy rate is really low, especially in these traditionally white collar sectors like finance and tech. So companies really aren't hiring. And then, you know, we're seeing kind of some challenges in the labor force participation rate. We're seeing more people that want full time jobs that are taking part time work just to pay the bills.

Chad Sowash (11:24.399)

Yes.

Chad Sowash (11:33.712)

Yes.

Chad Sowash (11:38.917)

Yeah, they have to.

Allie Kelly (11:40.22)

and exactly. So there's kind of this more nuanced approach to sure. Our unemployment rate is actually not that bad. and so, so we don't really need to raise this alarm of, you know, some, some major crisis, but when we look at kind of those more micro data points, we see the story that I think a lot of job seekers are telling us, that

It's really, really hard to land any kind of work right now, particularly in those white collar industries.

Chad Sowash (12:16.465)

Well, if you're not in healthcare and hospitality, those are the only two sectors that are growing, right? And think about it. We have probably the greatest workforce imbalance of our lifetimes because immigration, we don't have immigrants actually coming up to do those jobs because those are the jobs, especially the hospitality jobs. That's what they did. And what, what did we do on the federal government side of the house? we laid off, we got rid of over half of a million people, right? And those are white collar people. Do you think they're just going to match?

magically become nurses and, you know, go into the healthcare industry? Or are they going to start picking tomatoes and driving trucks and working the docks? I mean, it's, I think that is one of the stories that we don't think about and even tell about enough is the workforce imbalance. We have all these jobs, these sectors are growing. It's like, but we don't have, we don't have the actual supply to meet that demand. We have huge supply in other areas, right?

But there's no demand, just like you just said. is an AI is the jazz hands. So I mean, when you take a look at that, I mean, how do you, can you articulate that? Are you guys, are you guys focusing on the imbalance to be able to try to help your readers understand a lot of that participation rate is huge because obviously we're getting a lot of women that are staying home instead of getting in, you know, they might be in healthcare, but they just can't, they just can't.

find a job and or they don't have time because they have kids at home, right? So talk a little bit about that. It's just, seems like a mess.

Allie Kelly (13:52.657)

There's a huge labor force imbalance happening right now. That's something that we absolutely talk about as a team is that a college degree and being educated in any sort of business finance tech related fields used to carry a really significant premium in the U S where you have a stable career. You have a cushy salary. You have great benefits and

really solid job security. And what we're seeing is not only is that not necessarily true anymore, we're seeing pretty, well, the overall layoff rate is not actually that high. We're seeing kind of these, like you mentioned, slower movement between companies and slower hiring.

Joel Cheesman (14:39.064)

Mm-hmm.

Allie Kelly (14:42.732)

these kind of college degrees are carrying less of a premium in the hiring process. And there's kind of this imbalance and demand where, like you're saying, somebody can't suddenly go get a nurse, somebody could go get a nursing degree, but we're not going to see a major wave of people switching industries that require really specific training, just for construction or healthcare or these kind of essential industries that we're not

People are always going to need to build houses. People are always going to need to go to a doctor's office. That demand isn't going to go away. But so we're seeing that for all ages. But the other thing we're seeing is younger workers, younger college educated people in their 20s. That unemployment rate is actually rising at a pretty concerning rate. So it's common for young people to be more unemployed than the rest of the economy.

Joel Cheesman (15:29.324)

Mm-hmm.

Allie Kelly (15:41.148)

But usually that gap went away if you had a college degree. And within the last year or two, we're seeing that even with a college degree, lot of these Gen Z years, a lot of these 20-somethings graduate with all of this training and often student loans and aren't able to land a job or they're spending months and doing hundreds of applications. And there really isn't.

Joel Cheesman (15:45.314)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (15:58.908)

Yes.

Allie Kelly (16:09.018)

this demand for entry level talent. And that's kind of where we go back to that, that AI conversation is, is AI really taking all of these jobs? And if so, where is it doing that? And I think entry level talent is something that also comes up.

Joel Cheesman (16:21.71)

And I think that's the narrative is that look, a lot of these inter-level jobs, the jobs that get people's foot in the door are pretty basic things. Now they build up to a career. And I question like, if we're not building the experts of the future, what the hell does the future look like? That's a different topic. By the way, Chad, my plan B is a nurse. So don't worry about the healthcare thing. I've got it covered. I've got my, me and,

Chad Sowash (16:41.969)

You do not have a bedside manner, okay? We've talked about this.

Joel Cheesman (16:48.364)

Yeah, me and a bedpan are best friends. I can tell you that right now. So let's talk about entry level. What I'm hearing you say is it's a greater degree of AI in entry level.

Chad Sowash (16:52.102)

Ha

Joel Cheesman (17:03.79)

Unless so about inch. Okay. Yeah. Talk about that. Like, is it 50 50 and everywhere else it's 10 90 or do you have a sense of that?

Allie Kelly (17:03.804)

I think that that is something that.

Allie Kelly (17:12.088)

In terms of the messaging that we're getting from recruiters or we're getting from companies talking about where they're restructuring their career ladders, there's two stories. There's entry level and a lot of those kind of basic administrative tasks that people are getting their foot in their door, they're learning on the job in these white collar fields. Absolutely. think that a lot of those companies have already said that they're partially replacing that with AI.

we'll see if that's something that continues because like you said, Joel, it's kind of this challenge of like, does that mean for training in the future and having trained professionals in the future? then there's kind of this other story where the middle rungs of the career ladder are crumbling, where we're seeing a lot of middle managers being pushed out and major companies like Microsoft or Amazon, where

you know, people are in their 30s and 40s that are maybe not at the exact peak of their careers, but you know, they're, have direct reports, they have a little bit more training. And that is where companies kind of feel like they're, they're trying to downsize where they think, you know, we don't need these levels of bureaucracy and these levels of red tape. And they're saying we're leaning into big salaries. Right.

Joel Cheesman (18:31.022)

Mm-hmm. These salaries.

Chad Sowash (18:34.597)

Mainly salaries, yeah. Salaries, benefits, yes.

Allie Kelly (18:38.33)

And so they're like, okay, so we can use AI a little bit more. We can cut these costs. And it's kind of framed as as a productivity bet versus a financial issue when what's probably behind it is these high interest rates where companies are just looking at their balance sheet and they're like, where, where can we, we cut headcount? And a lot of that is happening in reduced hiring at the bottom of the career ladder. And also a lot of layoffs.

Joel Cheesman (18:57.688)

interesting.

Allie Kelly (19:07.095)

it's the middle level.

Joel Cheesman (19:08.494)

Because the people writing the checks aren't going to lay themselves off, right?

Allie Kelly (19:11.588)

Exactly.

Chad Sowash (19:12.753)

And they're not gonna take salary cuts. That's for damn sure. Bonuses are still gonna be the same. It's all good. As a matter of fact, it's all about financial engineering nowadays because if you take a look at it, obviously the bottom line looks a hell of a lot better if you get rid of half or middle management. I mean, it's not about driving more revenue. It's about cutting quote unquote the fat. So the big question is, we see this, this is a cycle. It happens. We've seen it before. How long do you think it's gonna take?

Joel Cheesman (19:15.351)

huh. Yep.

Chad Sowash (19:40.114)

before we start getting back to the bloat because we got bloat, we got bloated, we got big, we got on the ozembic, we started losing the weight, right? We got started slimming down, but that's not gonna last forever. We're gonna start to kind of like staff up again. How long do you think that's gonna take? Do you think it's gonna take a couple of years? Hopefully not 10.

Allie Kelly (20:01.51)

There's a couple of things here. I think, like we're saying, this framing that AI is taking all of these jobs and replacing a bunch of these jobs and they're not coming back is probably not entirely true. yes, exactly. And it's something that, yes, this is really hard to measure from a data standpoint, but we also know that the real reason that companies are cutting costs like that is not actually because of AI.

Chad Sowash (20:15.011)

It's probably bullshit, kids.

Allie Kelly (20:31.244)

and we can think back to cell phones or email or any of these kinds of technologies, the way that it reshapes the workforce takes way longer than people kind of assume that it is. So we're looking at years, we're looking at decades to really see the full impact of that. But I think that the other thing is just we're looking at a situation where monetary policy could change in the next year.

Joel Cheesman (20:40.782)

Mm-hmm.

Allie Kelly (21:00.748)

Jerome Powell has been chair of the federal reserve since 2018 and his term is up this coming May. And he has been known as a fairly conservative head of monetary policy where he is just, he's looking at tariffs. He's looking at, you know, these Trump administration immigration policies, a slower job market, higher prices. He's looking at all of this in his...

Joel Cheesman (21:06.594)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (21:26.193)

Chaos.

Joel Cheesman (21:29.23)

inflation.

Allie Kelly (21:30.308)

response to it has largely been smaller interest rate cuts or no cuts at all, particularly within the last year of the Trump administration. And one of the things that's going to happen, we're probably going to hear in the next couple of weeks in mid to late January is President Trump will get to pick who the next chair of the Federal Reserve is. And in all likelihood,

Joel Cheesman (21:50.894)

Mm-hmm.

Allie Kelly (21:55.972)

it's going to be somebody that has a little bit more of an aggressive approach to interest rates. And what that will mean is that I think based on who the front runners are, and also, you know, the narrative that we've gotten on White House, which is, you know, threatening to fire Powell all the time, is this kind of approach where let's free up

Joel Cheesman (22:02.188)

You think? That's a bold bet, Allie. That's a bold bet that Trump will replace Powell with. Yeah.

Allie Kelly (22:26.692)

more kind of borrowing money for these big companies, even if it, risks rising inflation. And that could be good news for job seekers because it could get the job market turning, and turning a little bit more. the risk of that is, is not only inflation, but also if we go back to hiring a bunch over the next several years, if interest rates kind of go lower, companies have more resources.

they're going to increase their headcount a little bit. We could see kind of what we saw coming out of the early pandemic, which is over hiring and then waves of layoffs and then over hiring and waves of layoffs. So it could just be a cycle that sort of goes back and forth every couple of years, depending on where interest rates are at and company resources are.

Chad Sowash (23:08.176)

Yes.

Chad Sowash (23:18.481)

Let's talk really quick about the elephant in the room tariffs. We've had Beth Benekion, who is the CEO of Busy Baby, right? And small company, couldn't get the manufacturing done in the United States at the scale that she needed it because she's a small business, right? So she went to China.

Now instead of it costing, you know $30,000 it now costs 150 or $200,000 for her to actually bring her product in and she can't she can't do it. So therefore Guess what she had to do. She had to cut staff, right? She had cut staff and then she actually had to go look at Selling the product globally instead of in the US which means the prospect of jobs there not here so

That's one company, but you take a look at small business as a scale and how many companies, many companies have products that are definitely not manufactured here and they can't afford to start up manufacturing here. How does that impact this entire white collar, even blue collar side?

Allie Kelly (24:30.012)

Tariffs are a huge part of the economic narrative right now and have been for the last year where one of the things is it's created so much uncertainty because, and you know, I think what a lot of investors like to refer to as the taco trade, like Trump always chickens out, where we see a lot of these sweeping tariff announcements. Sometimes they go into effect, sometimes they don't. And it's really hard for companies, whether it's a small business.

Joel Cheesman (24:42.776)

Bingo.

Allie Kelly (24:58.646)

or a big corporation to plan. Because in the event that these tariffs are put into place and they're seeing increased costs of their products, either that has to be paid by somebody. And so either they're passing that on to the consumer and then people are frustrated that prices are higher for things that they have been buying for a long time.

Joel Cheesman (25:01.422)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (25:18.466)

you

Chad Sowash (25:22.715)

Yeah. Yeah.

Allie Kelly (25:27.74)

and we could go into a rabbit hole about the affordability crisis right now. But also companies could have to take that on where they're having to pay thousands, millions, billions more in fees, in taxes, in tariffs. And I think one thing that people don't always connect is that tariffs aren't something that the other...

that the country that the tariff is placed on pays. That's something that the consumer or companies pay. And that money goes to the US government. So, right.

Joel Cheesman (25:57.869)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (26:05.009)

Well, the companies won't pay it for long. They will try and we've heard companies say, hey, look, we're going to try to cushion this a little bit, but they're going to leak it out and start to slowly leak it out. So it's not just one big price hike of their product. is, you're going to feel it over time. And that time might be a few months, might be a year.

Joel Cheesman (26:09.794)

Yeah, boiling the frog.

Joel Cheesman (26:22.798)

Boilin' the frog, Chad. Boiling the frog.

Allie Kelly (26:23.032)

Exactly. we don't have the manufacturing infrastructure in the US to change that. It's impossible for a lot of these bigger or companies and especially smaller businesses to suddenly start making their product in the US because we don't have the factory infrastructure that somewhere like China has. People love the idea of making things in America.

But when you kind of look at the polling or whether people want to take manufacturing jobs, people want other people to do that job.

Chad Sowash (27:00.121)

Yes, yes is so much bullshit. It's like I want manufacturing here, but I don't want to do it. It's like what the hell, dude?

Joel Cheesman (27:01.036)

And we're not letting those people in.

Allie Kelly (27:04.451)

Right.

Joel Cheesman (27:08.422)

Close borders. Yeah, and I don't want to do it. Allie, we talked about entry level kids, you know, kids with college degrees. We talked about middle management. Am I hearing that you think it's more of sort of a speed bump, sort of a like, let's just wait this out. Things will go back to a more normal state. Or I think the narrative is like, hey, you got to get new lane. Like forget speed bump. You got to like change direction, pivot, do something else or figure this whole new world out.

I just want to clarify that you're saying this is more of a speed bump, which I think is a bit of a silver lining to the narrative that is in headlines every day. But I want to verify that with you. Are you saying that, Hey, hey, call it. Hey, 24 year old college kid. I know it's tough now. Give it some time. Things will go back to normal.

Allie Kelly (27:56.582)

Definitely, it's something where, you know, new news is coming out of the White House every day. And there's, you know, all of these different factors at play that it is hard to predict exactly. But at the same time, what we're seeing right now, whether are unprecedented things like, you know, flip-flopping tariffs at the level that we're seeing them, that hasn't happened before.

Joel Cheesman (28:22.456)

Mm-hmm.

Chad Sowash (28:22.513)

Mm-hmm. Right.

Allie Kelly (28:24.678)

But at the same time, seeing a sluggish labor market, seeing these rounds of layoffs, seeing higher interest rates, that is something that has historical precedent. And the economy is, I think, a lot more resilient than people give it credit for. So it's both. We might see some turbulence right now. We're feeling a lot of turbulence right now.

Joel Cheesman (28:34.413)

Yeah.

Chad Sowash (28:52.561)

Mm-hmm.

Allie Kelly (28:53.914)

Will we see some things come back around in the ebb and flow of how things kind of happen in years long or decades long segments? Yes. Do we know how much AI is really going to impact the workforce in the long run, even if it's not taking jobs right at a large scale right now? We don't. And so I think that that is something to watch. Exactly.

Joel Cheesman (29:17.592)

So same shit, different day, basically. Like we've heard this story before. It's not different this time, everybody. Because I mean, from my perspective, we could wake up a year from now and there's an election coming up and I think things are going to change. But I we could look up and gas is still cheap. Tariffs have been rolled back by the Supreme Court and Trump gets a pass on like, it's not me, but everyone gets cheap prices again. Stimmy checks are going out. Veterans are getting money.

Everyone's getting money from tariffs. Money becomes cheaper because Trump has a new Fed chair that's lowering rates. It could be good times again before we know it. Yes or no?

Allie Kelly (30:03.388)

absolutely possible. But I think that when we're... But I also...

Chad Sowash (30:06.705)

I think you're on crack.

Joel Cheesman (30:12.172)

Which of those things will not happen or are definitely not gonna happen?

Allie Kelly (30:14.812)

think that at the same, like we can't have affordable prices and a really fast job market at the same time. It's really hard to balance that, which is really what the Federal Reserve has sort of what they call a dual mandate. And so they're looking for employment stability and then they're looking for, you know, really stable prices.

Joel Cheesman (30:22.925)

Okay.

Joel Cheesman (30:31.15)

Mm-hmm.

Joel Cheesman (30:42.699)

huh.

Allie Kelly (30:45.112)

It is very difficult, particularly within the last year, everything that's happening with the Trump administration, to have that in balance, where we have both affordable prices and a fast job market because...

Joel Cheesman (30:59.022)

You're talking about a Powell Fed. Are you saying that no matter what Trump does, someone's going to come in with a rational line of thinking and saying, we can't have high inflation and

Allie Kelly (31:03.494)

Great.

Allie Kelly (31:09.001)

No, I don't. I think I'm hesitant to say that because...

If we cut rates really quickly, if we have a new Fed share who is looking to really slash interest rates, could that be good news for big companies in terms of the rate of borrowing and could that maybe lead to more hiring? Sure. I think that also runs a huge risk of skyrocketing consumer prices.

Chad Sowash (31:17.36)

rational.

Joel Cheesman (31:19.254)

Uh-huh.

Joel Cheesman (31:33.326)

Okay.

Allie Kelly (31:44.59)

which is an issue. And I think that we're already in a situation where a lot of the middle classes are living paycheck to paycheck. So there's, right. So there's, there's.

Joel Cheesman (31:52.875)

it's a house of cards, Alley.

Chad Sowash (31:54.937)

Allie Kelly (32:00.22)

Could things get better? Yes. Could things get worse? Yes.

Joel Cheesman (32:05.858)

Just, we'll just off, stay tuned to find out what the fuck is gonna happen tomorrow.

Allie Kelly (32:09.82)

But it's really hard for, it's impossible for everything to get better at once with, you know, a simple solution like changing interest rates. There's so many kind of dominoes that have to hit one another and fall into place for that to happen. we're seeing, you know, unemployment is still pretty low, but the job market added

Joel Cheesman (32:16.312)

Uh-huh.

Joel Cheesman (32:33.902)

huh.

Allie Kelly (32:39.234)

less jobs than we expected last month by a decent rate. And every time they do jobs revisions, it's a little bit lower.

Chad Sowash (32:51.865)

It's good, it's bad. It's good, it's bad.

Allie Kelly (32:51.876)

It's interesting, I think the economy is tricky because we're trying to sort of analyze and guess the speed of a moving train. And

Joel Cheesman (32:52.33)

well, we'll pivot. We'll pivot here real quick.

Chad Sowash (33:02.385)

Well, and the collision course of possibly bricks or something of that nature. And then the, I mean, there's just so many global, I we even really gotten into the global aspect of it and how many other countries are literally trying to press and take a look at the dollar right now. Dollar's down, pisses me off. I'm trying to push it over to euros for goodness sakes. The euros killing the dollar, you know? I mean, so.

Allie Kelly (33:07.9)

Right.

Allie Kelly (33:14.3)

I

Joel Cheesman (33:14.679)

Right.

Chad Sowash (33:27.427)

As an American, and again, I'm more well-to-do than the kids that are living in mom and dad's basement, you're looking at all these things, not just local, but also globally, and it's like, holy shit, this is, as Joel had said, this is not just a house of cards, this is a goddamn mansion of cards, or whole development.

Joel Cheesman (33:46.968)

Jenga.

Allie Kelly (33:54.264)

Yeah, it is very fragile. I think that there are part of the problem right now is just the level of uncertainty and how quickly these kind of trade deals and interest rate decisions and all of that can truly impact the job market. And really the only growth that we're seeing is in healthcare and construction like we talked about. And so

Joel Cheesman (34:13.518)

Mm-hmm.

Allie Kelly (34:25.134)

it kind of think about, you know, where, where can we see some recovery? How quickly can we see some recovery? Are all of these like is AI something that is just kind of the jazz hands headline or and some big bubble? Or is it something that we're really going to see completely reshaping the workforce? We're not sure yet. And I talked to, I've talked to a lot of economists, I've looked at a lot of data. And I think

Joel Cheesman (34:42.733)

Mm-hmm.

Allie Kelly (34:54.79)

you know, every economist I talk to has a slightly different take on it.

Chad Sowash (34:58.513)

I'm sure, I'm sure. And I love Joel, that Allie is like, she's grasping for rays of sunshine. And I love that, because we need it.

Joel Cheesman (34:59.319)

Is it?

Joel Cheesman (35:06.526)

She was, I thought she was on the road to optimism for a second. And then I think she kind of, I think she kind of, isn't it ironic that we spent all this money on healthcare and employing healthcare professionals to keep alive the people that are keeping the economy down, but also keeping it afloat? Like it seems like this weird cycle, circle of life. I'm going to let you add on this one, Allie. It wasn't part of the story, but I'm curious if you found this in any of your other reporting. The, think there's a large contingency of

Allie Kelly (35:14.332)

Thank you.

you

Joel Cheesman (35:36.397)

people who are retirement, let's call them boomers that have a lot of money in the bank, a lot of 401k money. And with high interest rates comes these checks, dividend checks every month and it's free money and I can spend it I get social security, but I'm not, I want to be safe in my investments. And in the nineties, two thousands, that age group was huge and had a lot of money to put into startups, which obviously grew into Google and other companies that we know and love today. I have a fear that

those folks are not going to be allocating risky capital into startups anymore. And I don't know where that's going to come from. And if we're talking about higher interest rates and borrowing money is too expensive, like the startup ecosystem to me is in trouble from that perspective. Any thoughts or anything that you found in your, in your research on that?

Allie Kelly (36:27.108)

I think that that would be very interesting to follow. We're absolutely seeing this kind of baby boomer generation is really the biggest generation to come of age for social security and exit the workforce simultaneously that we've ever seen. And so that has a whole host of implications in terms of what positions they're leaving open, what kind of

you know, caregiving needs they'll, they'll need, have the most, the biggest pool of people claiming social security simultaneously than we've ever seen. and you know, exactly. And a lot of the seniors I've talked to, it is their primary source of income. I think that we would be surprised, a lot of Americans don't have retirement savings at all, or don't have enough. so

Joel Cheesman (37:04.974)

Yeah, and fewer people to pay for that than we've ever seen.

Chad Sowash (37:08.261)

Yeah

Joel Cheesman (37:17.71)

I agree.

Chad Sowash (37:22.193)

You don't have a nest egg. No, no.

Joel Cheesman (37:23.662)

totally agree.

Allie Kelly (37:26.052)

You know, in terms of startups for the future, I think that people are really going to have to get creative. know that we've seen kind of this, we saw a huge spike and, you know, it's leveled off a little bit in terms of a lot of these startups happening from like a private equity or VC backing standpoint. So, you know, we could continue to see that.

Joel Cheesman (37:47.95)

Mm-hmm.

Allie Kelly (37:54.812)

I know that we're also seeing the US government becoming more involved in the corporate sector than we've seen. So, you know, I think that that's a whole other topic that's happening with bigger companies right now. So that's that is something that we really haven't seen before that will be really interesting to follow. Less so for startups, but more just for like how corporate America operates.

Joel Cheesman (38:02.53)

That's a whole other topic, yeah.

Chad Sowash (38:05.551)

Moving toward communism.

Joel Cheesman (38:13.739)

huh.

Chad Sowash (38:18.833)

Joel Cheesman (38:24.677)

huh.

Allie Kelly (38:24.988)

But yeah, you bring up a really good point and I think that there's a lot of threads to pull there.

Joel Cheesman (38:31.928)

Damn it, Allie, I was feeling good for a second, and damn it.

Chad Sowash (38:35.739)

But that's okay. We're all good. We're all going to, you know, do a little meditation after this together. The Chad and Cheese Meditation app, which is now available on Apple and Play. No, it's not. That's Allie Kelly from Business Insider. Allie, if somebody wants to read more of your stuff, where are you going to send them? Or if they want to connect with you and talk more about all this wonderful economic stuff that you write about and I'm sure do deep research about on every single day, where can they find you?

Allie Kelly (38:36.294)

Thank

Joel Cheesman (38:39.488)

I know. I'm gonna take a nap.

Allie Kelly (39:05.776)

Absolutely. I love to hear from people and talk about the economy. You can find me on Business Insider's website. My author page is under Allie Kelly, and that also has all of my contact information for my email, my LinkedIn, and my signal.

Joel Cheesman (39:21.142)

It's the end of the world as you know it, and I feel fine, Chad. Allie, thanks for joining us today. Chad, that's another one in the can. We out.

Chad Sowash (39:23.238)

Ha

Chad Sowash (39:29.852)

We out.

Allie Kelly (39:31.644)

Thank you for