Waiting for the report card… All eyes are on the June jobs report, which drops Friday. In May we saw a fork emerge in the labor market as leisure, hospitality, and travel companies couldn’t hire fast enough, while tech companies downsized. On the plus side: nearly 95% of jobs lost to the pandemic have been filled, and unemployment’s low. Not-so-plus side: now that spending’s cooling and recession fears are heating up, job cuts are spreading beyond tech. Last week pharma giant Novartis and JPMorgan announced layoffs, with more cuts expected on Wall Street.
The economy’s gettin’ creaky… but business is runnin’ smoothly at WD-40. Sales of WD’s signature use-it-for-just-about-anything lubricating spray soared last year as people tackled DIY home projects. Then WD used its pandemic profits to grease its global wheels: sales and profits jumped last quarter despite dwindling home-improvement projects thanks to rising sales abroad. The lube legend still expects earnings to rise this year, despite sky-high prices for oil (a main WD-40 ingredient). We’ll see how smoothly things are running when WD reports Thursday.