Word: retailing
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...skilled workers in developing economies from Asia to Eastern Europe. U.S. executives have taken to talking of global "market prices" for employees, as if they were investing in cattle futures. "We understand it's just business, but it's still awfully demeaning," says Deb Donaldson, a part-time retail sales clerk in Moline, Illinois. Manpower's Fromstein dismisses such complaints of exploitation, pointing out that his own profit margins are razor thin (1.3%). Says he: "We are not exploiting people. We are not setting the fees. The market is. We are matching people with demands. What would our workers...
...though, has a splendid eye for culinary trivia. In the Germanic dukedom of Saxony, noblemen who illicitly married commoners were punished by being force-fed pepper until they died. The builders of Egypt's pyramids were paid off in onions. The Roman scholar Pliny was startled by the high retail prices of the Eternal City -- "Have times really changed?" the author asks -- and believed that the odor of garlic would repel scorpions...
...spate of reports showing a marked early-1993 slowdown was no surprise, it was no cause for joy either. January numbers showing the sharpest plunge in new-home sales in 11 years might be shrugged off, since winter housing figures are notoriously unreliable. Slow February sales by major retail chains are a pattern worsened this year by storms. Drops in January factory orders, the late-February selling pace of new cars and an increase in first-time claims for unemployment insurance were not so easily dismissed. One bit of consolation: the unemployment rate dropped a tenth of a percentage point...
...deductible business meals. In the early 1980s, power lunches were 100% deductible. The Tax Reform Act of 1986 sliced that to 80%. "What's going to happen in five years?" asks Fisher, who adds facetiously, "Why not just knock it out completely and knock out the country's leading retail employer...
...speedup appears to be psychological too. Retail sales rose 1.2% in December, largely because shoppers who had long been too wary to buy more than they could pay for in cash became willing to go into debt again. Consumer credit rose at a 4.1% annual rate in December to $725.9 billion, the fastest rate in nearly two years. It seems no coincidence that surveys showed consumer confidence rising sharply right after Clinton's victory...