🏘️ WFH hot spot → company town
![A Tennessee town near Dollywood, which is building more housing for theme park employees [George Rose/Getty Images]](https://cdn.robinhood.com/static_content/mwphzyq69oso/en-US/assets/files/3j4FmQyNpvUk8QVIuM94k7_1_GettyImages-619022526.jpg)
Hey Snackers,
Enjoy your unblemished bracket while you can: the opening round of March Madness kicks off this afternoon. BTW: the odds of acing a bracket? Roughly 1 in 9 quintillion. G’luck.
Stocks rallied after the Fed raised interest rates by a quarter point — and signaled that up to six more hikes could be in the works this year to check inflation.
Ukrainian President Zelensky addressed the US Congress yesterday, invoking Pearl Harbor and 9/11 as he pleaded for more help defending against Russia. The White House is sending Ukraine an additional $800M in aid, for a total of $2B so far.
Daylight-saving time could become permanent, but the economics are a mixed bag
Bipartisanship lives… Hold your clocks: This week, senators made a unanimous vote: to make daylight-saving time permanent (starting next year). Now the bill heads to the House, where its fate is uncertain. President Biden hasn’t weighed in over whether he’ll sign it.
- Oven clock, still wrong: Nearly half of US states already passed laws to make DST (the “spring forward” period we’re in now) permanent if Congress allows it. (FYI: Arizona and Hawaii are the only states that don’t observe DST.)
- Ripples: The outcome has implications on everything from productivity and mental health to retail revenue.
Walking on sunshine… In the 1900s, a British architect first floated the idea of shifting clocks so that summer days could be longer. But it wasn't until WWI that it caught on: Germany was the first to adopt DST, touting its "energy-saving" benefits. The UK, France, and the US followed. But messing with the clocks has consequences:
- Closing time: For retailers, when the clocks turn back so do profits. Some studies have found that shoppers spend nearly 4% less in the month following DST.
- In the spring: By one account, losing an hour of sleep adds up to nearly half a billion dollars in lost productivity.
- In the fall: Studies also found that SAT scores dropped 2% when taken after the time change — and the extra hour of darkness can increase depression by more than 10%.
Lighter later has pros and cons… 70% of Americans say they hate changing the clock. But we’ve been here before: during the energy crisis of 1973, the US made DST permanent, hoping it would save energy (later sunset = less need for electricity). But after pre-sunrise car accidents increased and energy savings weren’t huge, Congress nixed it nine months later. Fifty years on, it’s popular to want a single time system — but there’s disagreement over which one.
Vail Resorts vows to build more worker housing as WFH hot spots become the new company towns
No room at the inn… Resorts have a new customer: their own employees. It’s so hard for mountain residents to find affordable housing that resorts are building their own apartments for workers. Publicly listed ski biz Vail Resorts said yesterday that it plans to “aggressively” build affordable housing for its lift operators and other employees. The ski biz is also bumping wages for hourly workers by 30%.
- Ski bum-mer: Vail already had 7K corporate beds across its 37 mountains. But after rent prices in many ski towns spiked 20%+ during the pandemic, it needs more. Ultrawealthy Aspen, Colorado, has 3K affordable housing units in a town of 7.5K — including hundreds owned by Aspen Ski Co.
- Not just the slopes: An auto-shop owner in Breckenridge built apartments on top of his garage. Employers in FL, WI, and TN have also developed staff housing.
Last resort… In the past two years, high-earning remote workers have ditched big cities for the mountains, beach towns, lakeside spots, and other desirable WFH destinations. The result: rental prices in attractive locales have soared, pricing out the lower-paid service workers who keep those economies humming.
- From mountains to sea: Colorado ski town Crested Butte declared a housing emergency in June, and rents in warmer resort hotspots in Hilton Head, SC, and Orlando, FL, surged 24% in the past year.
Not all services work on Zoom… Many companies are offering remote options to keep workers through the Great Resignation. But hospitality businesses like Vail need IRL staff. So Vail’s becoming a landlord to hold on to talent, not to create a new revenue stream. It’s a throwback to the early 1900s, when big employers like Hershey, Steinway, and Kohler built entire “company towns” to house workers, though with mixed results.
What else we’re Snackin’
- Reshuffle: Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson is retiring after five years on the job, and former chief exec Howard Schultz is filling in temporarily. It’s the third time Schultz will run the coffee colossus.
- Go: EU regulators greenlighted Amazon’s multibillion-dollar purchase of MGM, the movie studio behind James Bond. Now it’s in the hands of the FTC, which must thumbs up or challenge the deal on antitrust grounds within days.
- Ring: 5G phones are the norm now, officially making up more than half of global cell sales thanks largely to iPhone sales. 5G optimists say the tech will enable autonomous driving, factory automation, and the Internet of Things.
- Charge: Mercedes-Benz is opening a $1B EV battery plant near its Alabama factory, which the German lux giant will retool to make electric SUVs, the latest in a wave of EV investments in Southern states.
- Logan: Bernard Arnault, the 73-year-old billionaire chief of LVMH, raised the company’s CEO age limit to 80 from 70 so that he stays in charge. The move appears to be teeing up a “Succession”-like showdown among his five kids.
Thursday
- Weekly jobless claims
- St. Patrick’s Day
- Earnings expected from: Accenture, FedEx, Dollar General, Warby Parker, and Scholastic
Authors of this Snacks own: shares of Starbucks, and Amazon
ID: 2084282