According to Greg Ip, Chief Economics Commentator at the Wall Street Journal, “we’ve been simply defining affordability too narrowly. It is not just the prices we pay but the means in which we pay them. There has been too much focus on the first and not enough on the second. Business leaders I’ve talked to are optimistic about growth, but pessimistic about hiring, especially their own.”
Avison Strategies argues the affordability crisis has more to do with job insecurity than prices. Mainly because we’ve been relying on an unreliable source of information that defines unemployment too narrowly. Official statistics show unemployment is the highest it has been in 4 years at 4.6% and earnings growth is slowing, but the more real unofficial measure of unemployment is around 24.9%, and higher for some other demographic groups. Source: https://www.lisep.org/
Economic anxiety is holistic. People talk to one another and anecdotally feel greater income inequality and diminished opportunity. They feel the economy is working for some, but isn’t working for them, and that focus is on income security.
The Business Roundtable found that more CEO’s plan to cut than add jobs for the third straight quarter, the lowest three-quarter reading since the Great Recession. Stock prices, earnings reports, and cash on hand is high for many companies because business owners are trimming headcount. A bigger, more permanent headwind is AI, which is moving to a primary driver of job replacement.
SOLUTIONS
Avison Strategies has long recognized these shifting dynamics and developed solutions that create peace of mind to ease these anxieties. People worry about their finances during a unknown period of career transition, many who will need to acquire new skills or obtain additional education to stay relevant and marketable.
We work with insurance underwriters to offer several career interruption insurance products directly to consumers or through their employer as part of a voluntary supplemental benefit.
Relying on a state UI system alone during job loss is unreliable, with bureaucratic hurdles and weekly income replacement amounts that just aren’t enough.
We have a private insurance market that provides products to protect our valued assets from many types of perils, from health, auto, home, natural disasters, etc. Why is something so important as the investment in one’s career not one of them more readily available? Products on the market now from Rhino, and before them, SafetyNet and IncomeAssure, have shown promise.
Avison Strategies is bringing the company, CareeResilient LLC, to the individual and corporate market as a B2B2C third party administrator benefits company. It will enable career professionals greater access to education and training resources AND income protection solutions to sustain uncertain career transition periods.
Contact Avison Strategies and get started working with us today!
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