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We're streaming live on YouTube as well, so you can head over to YouTube dot com and search Bloomberg Podcast. As Amy was just reporting Apple moving higher, it's now intra day all time record. Good for them. It's taken the lead over in Nvidia as the second most valuable company in the world while also reclaiming the three trillion dollar market cap valuation.
So big day for.
Apple stocks shareholders. Good news for them. Let's break it down a little bit here. Angelo Zeno joins US vice president and senior equity analyst at c FR A Research journey US from Nueva York via zoom Angel.
Thanks so much for joining us here.
How did you take How did you interpret yesterday's news from Apple? How big of a deal or not was their announcements?
Yeah?
I mean thanks for having me, guys, So you know, as far as you know how a good deal it is, we think it's a big deal to us. You know, Siri probably just got its biggest upgrade ever since it's you know, original kind of appearance back in twenty eleven. And you kind of look at what they've done across the ecosystem and the new you know, the new AI
capabilities and tools that they're going to push out to developers. Now, there's going to be a lot that they can do with these tools, and you know, in terms of upgrading their apps and providing new capabilities out there to the consumer may not necessarily be something you see over the next kind of three to six months, may take you know, may take some time here. That's why we told investors out there this is going to be more evolutionary than it is some sort of super cycle that you're going
to see later this year. But that said, I mean, I think what's really important here is you kind of look at most consumers out there today. Most consumers aren't using kind of AI in the sense of chat, GPT among other type of you know, large language models out there to the extent that they possibly can. And when you kind of think about what Apple is doing is they're probably they're throwing that kind of you know, ability out there for consumers to have it directly in their hands.
So we think that's a big deal, and we think that's going to cause consumers out there to ultimately upgrade. May not be the sixteen, it might be the seventeen, but ultimately it's a very positive thing for the evolution of Apple.
You maintained a by rating on this stock after yesterday's news following the conference, but then also if you look at the an R function, I know Paul likes to look at this. In the terminal, there's forty buys, fifteen holes, five cells. And Paul and I were just chatting about how this stock when you're looking at Apple up more than two twenty percent, is that April nineteenth low. How much more room do you think the shares have to run now?
Yeah, suggest I think I think that's a great point. So you kind of look at the move that they had going into the announcement here, right, I mean, it's a fantastic move though the stock was actually down I think about fourteen percent on a year to date basis into late April, right, And I think that's kind of the story from January to April was, Hey, listen, we've got some China issues. Expectations in the second half of
this year may not be able to be met. Now you kind of change the narrative around since kind of their earnings were released in early May, as well as kind of the developer's conference here to one, whereas, hey, those numbers may not be attainable to You know, we've gotten now six percent expected growth for the iPhone sixteenth cycle. There's probably upside to that number instead of downsides. So
in argue, the narrative has changed. It's all about whether or not or how much upside can we see from that iPhone sixteenth cycle. At this point in time, we think there's upside to the six plus six percent number, probably at least eight to ten percent. It'll all be sighted also on whether or not Apples can kind of or Apple looks to increase prices in the next cycle.
That remains to be seen. But in our view, there's upside potential that still remains despite the move that we've seen here over the last five to six weeks.
So Angel, I'm out there in the marketplace sporting in Apple iPhone eleven.
So I'm guessing I'm right for the upgrade eleven. Yeah, I guess I have a fourteen.
I guess mine's a few years old.
Here's this sex. It's ridiculous.
So Angelo, do you think there can be people like me that are gonna take this AI features that will be coming out in the in the iPhone sixteen, I guess in mid September. Are there gonna be people like me that are going to go out and upgrade? Is this gonna be a real driver of unit sales?
Do you think?
Yeah?
I mean, listen, I think, well, first off, you know, there's not much of a bar to be here because the iPhone's fifteen cycle is a down cycle. If you actually look at the four teen cycle, it was relative
relatively flat cycle as well as well. So we've kind of had this kind of pause here over the last kind of two cycles in terms of on a unit basis, right, Whereas the twelve and thirteen really took a lot of kind of upside there because of some of the you know, the China market share gains because of the five G cycle,
upgrade cycle and what have you. So as we kind of now here look here into the sixteen cycle, I think a number of things here, as far as kind of the fact that the iPhone twelve was that that last big upcycle. You're now looking at four years past that. So a lot of the twelve consumers out there are going to potentially look to upgrade. But for someone like you or even someone like myself that haven't upgraded in years, this is I mean, forget about the AI capability.
It's just the camera.
Capabilities that we've seen since the iPhone eleven. It should kind of you're going to see some notable enhancements, but I do think kind of that the new AI capabilities out there will drive some of those older consumers to upgrade. I think all so listen, this is these AI capabilities don't work on anything kind of outside of the fifteen uh pro devices kind of, so so you can even potentially see some you know, iPhone thirteen users or fourteen users out there look to upgrade as well.
Talk to us more about when we're saying AI capabilities, what exactly are we going to be able to use on those devices that's going to be different from before.
Yeah, I mean listen, I think most of it is pretty basic in nature versus kind of what we've seen thus far, and some of the announcements we've seen right in terms of what Samsung has announced at the S twenty four, what we've seen Alphabet with the Google Pixel.
And what have you.
But you know, clearly Theories getting its upgrade is the big thing out there. You know, embedding chat GP functionality in there as well as a big deal. But you know, they showcase capabilities, rewrite, summarization, gen Moji might be a cool thing with you know, some of the the younger users out there. They showed some you know, cool stuff
on the photo side of things. So they're going to be incremental additions in terms of AI across their ecosystem that you're going to be able to kind of use and just ultimately kind of make yourself just more efficient in nature. I mean, if there was something in an email that you had forgotten to put in your calendar, that's something that kind of theory is going to be able to help you with, whereas you do no longer have to kind of go back and search that in
your email box. So a lot of kind of small useful information. We'll see how how well this works once it actually comes out and it's exactly in the hands of consumers out there. But that said, you know, I
think a lot of it is incremental. But I think the way Apple kind of markets their iPhone devices and older devices in general, when you kind of throw the Aire storyline on top of it, on top of that, I think that's really what kind of is going to capture the appeal of a lot of those consumers out there.
All right, Angela, thank you so much for joining us. Angelo Zeno us a vice president and senior equity annals at cfr A Research.
I actually think I will go and get a new iPhone.
With the new one in September, look at you, and I'm not for Ai'm not for the camera, and I just I don't know.
I kind of need a new care. I don't know if my mine's a little too fuzzy and granny. However, I have dropped my phone many times, so that's not Apple's pot that's actually my own.
Well, my thing is it's all about the battery.
When the battery starts to die, that's my clue upgrade and it has been kind of losing its right.
I keep having to charge mine multiple times.
So I think that's kind of the way that's historically been so you know.
What, maybe you and I both will have new phones walk over.
I mean, the good news is we have a huge Apple store just you know, right down the block here.
It's right Fifth Avenue.
Across from the plaza, across from the plaza, and I walk past the pen station every day. Sometimes is going there with the other throngs of billions tourists go to that show.
Oh it's it's always packed.
It's always packed. Crazy. So maybe I'll go there.
And that's where Tim Cook comes when he comes into the city. Does some of his product launches there?
That's right, that's stock trading above two hundred and two dollars right now, still trading at an intra day wreck, so clipsing those December all time highs.
Paul, good good news for our friends in Cooper Tina.
You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast. Catch us live weekdays at ten am Eastern on Apple car Play and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business Act. You can also listen live on Amazon Alexa from our flagship New York station, Just Say Alexa, playing Bloomberg eleven thirty.
Tomorrow Again, all eyes turned to the Federal Reserve as it tends to do from time to time. We have the statement coming out of two PM press conference at two thirty Michael McKee, Bloomberg's own Michael McKee probably hopping on the asella later second and hitting down to DC so he can badger FED Chairman Jay Palill in our studio.
Oh so exciting to suspend the soccer.
He must have found the Jersey transit train station which he lost forgot about for a long time. I hered Jersey Chief US interest rate strategies for Bloomberg and College studio in studio with the soccer carball suspenders, which just loves. I guess tomorrow our expectations should be low for market moving news coming from the FED is how we should approach it.
Well, not necessarily.
You know that there's the possibility that the FED will shift its dots not only for this year, but more importantly, at least from my perspective, will be the twenty twenty
five and twenty twenty six dots. So if the FED were to move those up because they think that maybe the economy is going to be a little bit more robust, they won't have to cut interest rates quite as aggressively as the prior top plot from the March meeting, then the back end of the yield curve in treasuries could potentially move quite a bit.
We don't see.
Liquidity isn't great right now in the treasury market, so you can easily have a ten or fifteenity.
Great, it's the biggest market of anything.
Well, but that's the reason, right we've been issuing a whole lot of debt and there's only a limited number of buyers. So you know, just because you have a lot of debt doesn't necessarily mean that there's going to be an equal number of buyers out there. So it's more it's not that the market's not owned, right that So the Treasury Department issues bonds every single almost every week now but but basically all the time, and those
get purchased. Now, the question is in the secondary market, how easy it is to sell those bonds into the into the market and is there a natural buyer on the other side, And the answer is sometimes yes, but but occasionally in order to find those buyers, the price has to move quite significantly to you know, to entice people into the market.
What do you think bond investors want to hear from FED chair pal versus what you think we actually will hear in his commentary.
Well, you know, bond investor, if you're long, you want to hear them say that, hey, we're going to cut interest rates, you know, starting in July, and and you know that that's certainly what what the longs would like to see, right, We're not going to hear hear anything like that. In fact, we might just hear the opposite. And I think that's one of the reasons why the people in the treasury market have been pretty cautious. There's positioning is now much. You had a lot of people
who were short. They kind of exited those positions when we were actually near current levels or even with the yields maybe ten or fifteen base points higher.
But the.
Sell off that they think is constrained because it does seem like the Fed believes and is trying to convince everyone that at some point we're going to cut interest rates. So it's going to be hard for sell offs to be maintained for a very long period of time. Particularly now going back to that supply story, the Treasury Department is not issuing more debt than it had been before.
The issuance pace is basically constant, where as you go back six nine months ago, they were continuing to increase the amount of debt that they were issuing, and that's actually slowed down quite a lot.
What does a government bond trader do today before a FED meeting? Did they make sure they're flat, they're fully hedged?
Do they know? Did they play their gut and go long or short? Here a little bit? What do you tip if you do?
Yeah, I it's a good question. So I've talked to some some folks on the cell side, uh in the last couple of days, and and a lot of them are are dis confused, so they are relatively short or relatively flat, I should say. That being said, if you look at the positioning data, so the Federal Reserve every single week actually pulls the dealers and gets the primary dealer positioning data there.
Are they honest when they're responding to them?
Well, well they have to be, because if they're audited when they're audited annually by the FED, and if they're if they don't do their.
Job there and okay, get in trouble.
So the but but but dealers in aggregate or as long treasuries as they've ever been, it's almost record longs in terms of the notional amount outstanding, So so dealers are long. But on the other sides, they're also not quite record short, but they are. They're hedged a lot with futures, so it's like they're long the cash and they're short to future. So they're in what we call a basis trade where where they're playing some relative value,
not taking a ton of risk. But but but they still have a lot of cash that that they cash, securities that they have on their books.
I track a lot of the big banks and obviously their outlooks for when the potential of the first rate could happen. So gold min Sacks, for instance, over the weekend they still reiterated that they were thinking it was going to happen in September, but then they thought a second cut would happen in December rather than November. When you're looking at the bond market, what is that really telling us as far as what the consensus on the
potential timing is. But because it is an interesting dynamic because you have September and then November, actually that interest rate decision is the same week as the election, so the meeting starts that Wednesday, not that Tuesday.
They actually moved right to avoid the election. So the meeting now the release will be on Thursday, be the first time we've had a Thursday US that I can remember, not.
Quite some time twenty years, so that a lot of people have been looking that far ahead to the calendar, but I have it circled on my desk, so I wanted to ask you your thought process about the timing there.
So I actually suspect at this point that the Fed, you know, unless the CPI data really comes down massively and we start to have job losses in the next two months, which doesn't seem likely, I doubt that the Fed's going to do anything prior to the election. So I think September. While it's not a zero percent probability, I'll almost never say that, but although tomorrow's zero, well, I think that it's very possible that if the FED starts to cut rates, it'll be in November or December.
And there's a growing possibility of my mind that the FED might not start cutting rates at all this year. Right, it might not cut rates until twenty twenty five, because the economy, even though it's slowing, is still reasonably robust, and when you look at a lot of the preponderance of the data that we look at, particularly the hard data like retail sales and even the job market, although you know, Anamog and our colleagues at Bloomberg Economics certainly see some cracks there as well.
What is it about September in particular, while you're seeing kind of more firms expecting it that month in particular versus others.
Because they're just moving it from July, right, you keep pushing it out.
Yeah, they're just.
Pushing it out.
I think that the Fed will still avoid September, even though they'll always say that like, we'll do what we have to do regardless of the election. This would actually be the second closest to an election that they've made an initial move. If they were to move in September, they basically will say it would say to themselves, you know they they'll never say this publicly, but hey, you know,
why don't we just wait six weeks? You know that realistically, we don't have a lot of data, and if the data is not absolutely crashing, there's not a there's not a fundamental need for us to cut this moment. We could just cut a little bit faster later.
Once they do start cutting, what happens then?
Did they cut every month there other than the month twenty five basis points? Fifty basis points? That does the five and a half percent discount rate go to where?
I don't know.
Yeah, well it would depend in the economic situation. But at the end of the day, I think they would like to cut in twenty fives. And certainly that's one big reason to look at the twenty twenty five and twenty twenty six dots because that'll give you a hint test of case. Right, So at this point it looks like every other Ish meeting is what they're thinking that they'll cut.
What's a big soccer story in the world.
Oh, we real Central New Jersey has a home match tomorrow, so we have our beer garden getting ready and where Yeah, we play at Ryder University. Yeah, in Marsville, New Jersey, which is but you know, right in between Princeton and Trent And so we get a pretty we've gotten pretty good crowds. We actually have record attendance this year, so.
He pretty excited about it.
And who do you play tomorrow? We played Lehigh Valley United.
Rush, which is and where do you get players.
Almost all of our players are Division one collegiate athletes.
Okay, Paul, do you want to join in? Might I might join in on the beer bash.
I've been joked around about that, and I'm like, I don't want to pull a hamstring like the first fifteen seconds I'm on the pitch.
Anything on the professional level that reach paint. Well.
You know, one of our local teams here in New York is doing really well in Major League Soccer, Soka New York Red Bulls is doing great. They got a player named Emil Forstburg from from RBI Leipzig and uh and and he's been tearing things up along with some homegrowns.
And then a great stadium, the Red over there in Jersey.
All right, Ira Jersey, thanks so much for joining us, Ira Jersey Chief US Interest Rate Strategic Just Bloomberg Intelligence joining us here on our Bloomberg Interactive Broker's studio.
You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence podcast. Catch us live weekdays at ten am Eastern on Apple car Playing and broud Otto with the Bloomberg Business app. Listen on demand wherever you get your podcasts, or watch us live on YouTube.
Surprising News in the financial markets, and I learned something. You need me to look at the gap between the ten year French yields and their German counterparts to see kind of where the relative risk is in the marketplace, and the gap between the ten year French yields and their German counterparts climb to the highest this year in the wake of Macrone's snap election. I'm not really sure why, but we have somebody who does.
Who can talk to us about this.
Ashworth.
He covers all that European stuff with an acerbic wit and that I mean that the nicest way. But we love talking to Marcus because he spares, you know, note bones here, Marcus, what was your reaction to what we saw out of the European Union and then the subsequent decision by mister Macron?
Hi, guys, I was thinking that, you know, this was a long time coming, but it was worse than perhaps everyone including Macrol, had expected, and therefore it put him in a very difficult situation with I guess his main opera opposition holding more than twice which his party got.
Then he got like fifteen percent or something.
So though he had another three years as president, if he wants to, I don't think he'll resigned, but there was some question about that.
Today he means he won't.
Have the ability to a quim of Congress to be able to do very much.
He can still do a lot of.
Presidential decrees, but nonetheless it's boxed him in, and more importantly he can he can't run again. His by then, you know, in by twenty twenty seven is ten year leg would be pretty poor. So I think what he's decided to now is gamble on a political swing which has gone to the right wing that perhaps the French people they're challenged again may.
Push back against that.
But the consequence of this is that the bomb market in particular and the stock market and some degree the economy is going to have to take a little bit of a how can we say this bit of a shakeup, because politically this is a very aggressive move and it also puts into very much sharp contrast the financial fiscal situation of France, which is rising ever an extorably higher in debt and particularly it's budget Deficits annual spend is
much more than it takes in. It's five and a half percent last year, which is pretty shocking and not likely dropped much by next year, and I think the European Union could put it into the double secret probation. They call it an emergency deficit procedure. Really what it means is that in the sin bin, and that's hugely embarrassing for MAC or any government. But the point is the rating agency, the credit rating agencies we saw S and P at the end of May knock France down
to double A minus. Fitch are already there, and Moodies today came out and basically said they're one notch up at double A two, but they may be having a look at it. So it's all about a worsting credit of France, a worstening political regime, which makes the European Union very nervous because you know we've seen with the previous situations with Greece and Italy. You know they'll they'll turn the blind eye to most things, but they want
everyone to be very much pro Europe. And Marie la Penn's right wing party, which is the National Rally, though they no longer argue for Frexit or France exit.
They once did and then Resa.
Pretty long in Brussels. So the last thing they want is a non fully backing Year style prime minister even under Mackrell's president, that will be very out and settling.
For Brussels, that means us very unsettling. For credit rating agencies, panic, panic, panic.
It means that French debt is perhaps a little bit more risky, still pretty safe, but a little bit more risk than it.
Was before weekend.
You were talking about how France has seen a sustained deterioration its fiscal position, particularly when you're looking at its debt looad. How did France get into this position.
They spend more than they had or.
The reason is I mean, Macrol was elected on reforming the fiscal situation, and principally one of his key things was raising the retirement age, which he raised from sort of really sixty sixty two up to about sixty four. He wanted to get it up to about sixty seven, which for instance where the UK is, but massive pushback and the fact he very basically couldn't get it through unless he pushed it through by this as I mentioned before,
presidential decree worried some of the raising ainsties. Then now the fact that he has gotten really nowhere of getting stuff through the National Assembly, the Parliament or Congress is a really scary situation. So you know, that means there's even less chance of any form of fiscal improvement of getting that budget deficit down and reducing the overall debtness of France. And that's a pretty difficult situation, complete gridlock.
Because if the National Rally were to become the person the party to have the Prime.
Minister and try and form some form of.
Coappitatial cohabitation, I think it's a in English, is that they won't get it. They won't allow any form of spending cuts or anything to reduce the benefits that a lot.
Of French people.
Fifty eight percent of the French economy is state spending. It's a very socialist driven state, and they don't like their benefits getting touched, which means nothing will happen at least twenty twenty, no improvement on the fiscal outlook. That's very bad news for bondholders, for credit radio season, indeed probably for European Union cohesion.
So I know in your column, Marcus, perhaps one of the rationales for Mark Crohn's boldness here is that will actually force Marine la Penn to maybe reveal what her plans for the economy are.
What do we know or what don't we know?
Well, we they deliberately a bit like the Labor Party it's about to take power in the UK. They've been very should we say, with shurchet In telling us what they are actually going to planning to do, and Marilla Penn has basically said no to many things but hasn't told anyone really what they're they are planning to do, how she would sort the pension situation out.
But the one thing we know for.
Sure they are pretty anti immigration and they are pretty anti the pension changes in any other form of benefit changes. So it's gonna be almost impossible for the government to stop its welfare spending bill, and that you can only mean you know, essentially this would be a deficit and debt to GDP ratio negative scenario.
I would think it'd be very hard for.
But you know, Mackerel's gamble is precisely as you laid out, is that if they put them in power, at least nominally, the Prime Minister doesn't have anything like as much control as you would think, but they have ability to.
Try and put some things through.
If they turn out to be incompetent and they turn out not to do what they said they would go to do or anything like this. It would make the presdential elections in twenty twenty seven a bit of a little bit more anti the National Rally and approach we say Mackerels or more of more.
Centrists the huge gambles. It could go the other way. These guys could turn out to be very good in power.
In fact, the center right are already talking about maybe teaming up with the National Rally of the far right and creating an anti Macron coalition that can become very popular. And we could see it would be a very stupid gamble that Macrol's taken. We just don't know the is If you're a bondholder, and indeed, as you seem to, the French banks like sock Gen got hit really hard yesterday.
You know, why would you want to take the risk and perhaps go to somewhere a little bit more safe like Germany or I don't know, somewhere.
Else in Europe.
So Mark, as you were just bringing up Shausgen, what other parts when you're looking at French equities have been hit hardest. We're other ones have been maybe more shielded right now?
Well, yeah, but the banks got hit hard as they always tend to. Partly that's because you know a lot of international investors, particularly American investors, they're invested in Europe, they tend to light the banking sector mores more.
Banks for the butt.
They understand and can play that game much more cleanly. So you know, you should be really worrying if you start seeing things like insurance companies going because that's a credit issue. But banks are an easy, easy sell, highly liquid. I would expect if if things do calm down and the by July seventh, you know, the actual results, they aren't perhaps as bad as people expected. I wull think
the banks would probably therefore do the best. But you know, industrial sector in all of Europe is in a pretty tough time at the moment. France is world leader in luxury goods, so LVMH things like that.
These are companies keep us post is on.
But they are right perhaps less suspect to these politics, but still not great for anyone.
All right, very good, Marcus Ashwer, thank you so much. We appreciate it, folks. Marcus is a calumnist covering European markets for Bloomberg Opinion. Check out his column today. Macrome plays fast and loose with investor Faith.
So very interesting. There.
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Just meant sitting in for Alex steel On Paul Sweeney.
We are broadcasting live from the Bloomberg and Actor Brokers studio in.
New York City.
We're streaming live on YouTube, So hit over YouTube dot com search Bloomberg Podcast and that's where will find us. Well, despite the US labor market remaining tight, a new survey reveals that the recruitment and retainment challenges facing businesses have eased a little bit. So let's break that down with Robin Ericson, Vice President and Human Capital for the Conference Board, joining us.
Via zoom from Chicago.
So Robin talked to us about the labor market out there from the employer's perspective, how tough is it to attract and retain talent these days?
Thanks so much for having me today. We did find that the challenges of recruiting and retaining employees have eased significantly. As you can imagine, during the great resignation of twenty one and twenty twenty two, it was very difficult to recruit and retain workers. But we did find that while finding talent is a challenge for more than fifty five percent of respondents, this number has decreased from a high
of eighty three percent and twenty twenty two. And then retaining workers is less challenging because we found that only forty one percent of human capital leaders reported difficulty retaining workers compared to a high sixty six percent in twenty twenty two. So those are big changes.
Break down what specific industries and job positions are most vulnerable right now when you're trying to find qualified workers, but they're not there to match that up.
Yes, So we did look at the workforce in two categories. We looked at the workforce of mostly professional and office workers. We had about sixty percent of our respondents from that industry or those industries. And we also then looked at mostly those organizations that had mostly industry and manual service workers, and it's definitely more difficult to recruit and retain talent in those organizations. With mostly industry and manual service workers.
If you think about the difficulties that hospitality that the hospitality industry is having, especially with you know, hotels and restaurants do also have issues trying to find the you know, truck drivers remains the more difficult job to recruit for.
So Robin, I guess one of the big issues that everybody's trying to continue to come to groups with is where are people working? Is it back in the office five days a week, is it hybrid? Is it work from home? How is this kind of shaking out, you know, several years past the pandemic.
So obviously with the spike in remote work, there was sorry, obviously there was a big spike in remote work during the pandemic, and so we actually started with our Reimagined Workplace study looking at how many employees or workers were remote, how many were hybrid, and how many were fully on site. Interestingly, the rate of hybrid workers has remained very similar. And
so what do I mean by that? It's the in our survey, we found that fifty six percent of the workers in the organizations that we surveyed are either hybrid and remote, so they're either working part time in the office and part time at home or they're full time at home. That's fifty six percent. That's down from sixty one percent, which is a difference of only five percent. And the number of workers who are fully on site has only risen by five percent since twenty twenty two,
from thirty nine percent to forty four percent. And we've also done some other studies here at the Conference Board and have found that flexibility is the number one request of employees after a competitive salary.
Do you find that employers are getting more strict to try to get employees back into the office. It was interesting hearing some of the stats you were just mentioning, because some of that seemed to be like potentially, but it still seemed like there still was a good amount of people working from home for various reasons.
Obviously, yes, so in the conference So the Conference Board has a flagship survey and in twenty twenty four we found that only about four percent of CEOs were concerned about mandating returned to the office, so they were much
more concerned about making hybrid work work for their organizations. Obviously, there are some well known organizations that have come out mandating returning to the office But one of the other interesting things that we found in our study was that those organizations that allowed their employees to choose where they
worked had three times less difficulty retaining workers. So those organizations that mandated their workers to go into the office, forty five percent of our respondents said it was difficult to retain workers. Well, only fifteen percent of those organizations that had employed choice about whether or not they went into the office said it was difficult to retain workers. So clearly there is a business case for hybrid and more flexibility and more employee choice where it's possible.
How about AI.
A lot of folks will talk about AI in so many different parts of this economy and what it means for not just economy, but for society as well. One of the concerns is what will AI do to kind of the workforce? Well, we need fewer workers in different jobs. I know that was a big issue, for example, for the writer's strike in Hollywood. They want a language in their contracts that protected them from AI. Writers and actors talk to us about how employers think about AI, So we know that.
The majority of organizations are interested in AI in some fashion. They've either adopted it already in their organizations or they're planning to adopt it. AI is here to stay and organizations can actually be more productive and more efficient with AI. To answer your question Paul around whether or not we would need fewer employees, I don't know that we will need fewer employees, but I definitely think that employees will
need to have different skills. So one of the things in our survey that we found is that the majority of surveyed human capital leaders said that they were experimenting with AI pilots at not focusing on long term strategies like the job displacement that might come from AI, but the reskilling for roles that are different.
Very good, Robin, thank you so much. Really appreciate getting your thoughts at Robin Rickson. She's a vice president for Human Capital at the Conference Board, joining us from Chicago here.
This is the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast, available on apples, Spotify, and anywhere else you'll get your podcasts. Listen live each weekday, ten am to noon Eastern on Bloomberg dot com, the iHeartRadio app, tune In, and the Bloomberg Business app. You can also watch us live every weekday on YouTube and always on the Bloomberg terminal