Jobless Claims, PPI, Home Sales, Retail Sales, Mechanics, Zoomers, Billionaires, and Butcher Boy!
It’s the Week After Thanksgiving…
And new jobless claims were lower than expected. They came in at 216,000 versus 222,000 the week before; expectations were for it to increase to 225,000.
The four-week average is 223,750. Lower is good.
Total number of unemployed people receiving benefits is at 1,960,000, up 7000 from the week before.
Folks that are unemployed total 7,600,000, up 700,000 from a year ago.
Total job openings are 7,215,000.
The Producer Price Index – PPI - numbers are out. This is what manufacturers receive for the goods they have produced when they sell them. It basically reflects inflation at the production level rather than at the retail level, which is reflected in the Consumer Price Index.
At any rate, year over year, the PPI stayed at 2.7%.
The core PPI came in at 2.9%, also the same as the month before.
And pending home sales were up 1.9% - there was no increase the month before.
Finally, retail sales for September increased 0.3%, down from 0.6% the month before.
We’ll see how Black Friday came out soon enough.
Jobs, anyone?
The CEO of Ford Motor was on a podcast. No headlines there.
What should be the headline is what he said.
Ford cannot find enough mechanics for their dealerships.
That’s 5000 jobs that pay $120,000 per year.
But it does take 5 years to learn how to pull a diesel engine out of a pickup.
There are not a lot of jobs coming out of college that pay $120,000 a year.
I’m guessing shop class will be getting a second look.
Under the category “There is hope yet”…
@AskCatGPT aka Catherine Goetze, is a Los Angeles TikToker. So?
She threw a Y2K throwback party in L.A. Yeah, I had to read that twice, also.
No phones allowed. Really.
700 people showed up in Y2K clothes/styles, whatever those are, and without their phones.
Pictures were taken with actual cameras. And phone numbers were taken with pen and napkins. No one could hide behind their phones. They actually had to be a wallflower or be social.
The best part? Goetze is a Zoomer. That would be a Gen Zer.
She also took an old landline phone known as the Trimline model, adapted it for Bluetooth and showcased it on her TikTok, offering it for sale. She did $118,000 worth of orders in 72 hours.
That’s called a supply problem.
Well, if you think vinyl and cassettes are cool, next in line would be a phone with a cord.
Can the Zoomers pull their heads out of their phones? I’ll have to ask the Magic 8-Ball.
The Forbes 400 Richest People in America
All 400 are billionaires.
The Inland Empire has its own, Jack Dangermond, ranked 77. A Redlands, California resident, he founded ESRI, a mapping software company, and is worth a reputed $14.1 billion. And he has a name right out of a James Bond movie.
Another local is Lynsi Snyder in Glendora, California, the owner of the In-n-Out hamburger chain. She is ranked 153 but will soon be a resident of Tennessee. Her estimated worth is $8.7 billion.
Some background on a few billionaires:
Jeff Bezos, Amazon: a 16-year-old Bezos clocked in for 20 to 30 hours a week at a Miami-area McDonald’s in the early 1980s, cracking 300 eggs a day, flipping burgers, and cleaning bathrooms. “No job is beneath you,” he says.
Jensen Huang, Nvidia: After emigrating from Taiwan, Huang took a job at an Oregon Denny’s when he was 15. He bused tables, washed “the living daylight” out of dishes, and cleaned the bathrooms before eventually moving up to pouring coffee and waiting tables.
Russ Weiner, Rockstar energy drinks: Embarrassed to be seen in his Wendy’s uniform, a 15-year-old Weiner would change at the restaurant just before his $3.50 -an-hour shifts. He regrets his early shame: “Never be too proud to work.”
Butcher Boy, a frozen burrito, The Mission Inn, and Duane Roberts
It was 1956. The Butcher Boy Company was a meat processor in Riverside, California, that sold frozen hamburger patties to a new type of restaurant called fast food, one of which was a small joint called McDonald’s in San Bernardino.
Harry Roberts was the owner, and his son was Duane, 19 years old, who had just come home from giving UCLA a shot. Duane was hungry to make a difference.
Get it? “hungry”? I digress – too much tryptophan.
Duane was looking for other frozen products to sell to his customers and was talking to employees. One of the Hispanic butchers suggested a burrito.
Duane had never heard of it.
Still, he tinkered with it and developed a burrito that could be flash frozen.
Duane Roberts had invented the frozen burrito.
When he sold Butcher Boy in 1980, the company was making 1,000,000 burritos each day.
He then bought Fernando’s Foods and sold that company in 1998.
In 1992, he bought The Mission Inn, then a run-down, but prominent hotel, put $55,000,000 into it (when $55,000,000 was actually a lot of money), and restored it to prominence.
All $55,000,000 gets you these days is the ability to fire your head football coach. But I digress. Back to the Mission Inn.
If you haven’t been to the Festival of Lights, put that on your holiday to-do list. It’s well worth it.
If you go, you’ll be where the Nixon’s got married, the Reagans honeymooned, and past guests include Teddy Roosevelt, Ginger Rogers, Harry Houdini, Cary Grant, Barbara Streisand, Drew Barrymore and many others.
Nationally, he was known as the man who invented the frozen burrito. Locally in the Inland Empire, he was the man, along with his wife Kelly, who reinvigorated the city of Riverside with the rebuilding of the Mission Inn.
Duane Roberts passed away on November 1, just four days shy of his 89th birthday. His net worth is estimated to be between $600,000,000 and $1,500,000,000.
Riverside will miss him.
It’s December 1, folks. If you're behind on your budget, it’s a bit late to make up for it now, but you can always start on next year’s goals.
If you haven’t set the date for the company holiday party, you really are behind the magic 8-ball, but it’s never too late to show your employees that you care about them. Book your holiday party now and make sure everyone walks away with a raffle prize.
Pro Tip: Never, ever, fire an employee after November 15. It’s not a good look, and unless it’s for blatant cause, i.e., theft or assault, you will look like a dufus. Kind of like giving everyone a subscription to the dessert-of-the-month club when you’ve always had a cash bonus. “I should beat you with a rubber hose, mister!” - Name that movie and get a shout-out next week!
24 more shopping days until Christmas!!
