30 December 2018

From Bloomberg: 8 Social Trends For 2019

Gotta wonder exactly what Bloomberg News was thinking for what they said were some of 2018’s hottest social trends that somehow told us about America’s economy.
Hard to believe that e-scooters are #1 at the top of their list that was published online yesterday at 10 pm calling them all a catch-all phrase of recent 'cultural phenomena'.
Notice in the opening image that riders are wearing helmets in the street, not on the sidewalks.
The City of Mesa has still not figured out to regulate the hazards to public safety after 3 Venture Capital-funded start-ups dumped them on the sidewalks here in downtown months ago. . .  note helmets and scooters on the street
There's a lot of these looking-back and looking-ahead stories: 
What Eight Social Trends Told Us About America's Economy in 2018
1. Sidewalk Scooters
. . .the hippest toy circa 2000 staged a comeback among suit-and-tie clad urbanites. Electric two-wheelers are a thing from Washington to Los Angeles. It’s a sign that as the American population shifts away from small metros and toward cities and their immediate suburbs, it’s prompting people to look for new, inexpensive and efficient means of getting around.
2. The Headquarters Showdown
Mark Muro and Jacob Whiton at the Brookings Institution found in a December analysis that job-creation in four key big tech industries -- software publishing, data processing and hosting, computer systems design, and web-publishing and search -- employment is concentrating as it grows. The top 10 metro areas for digital services held 44.3 percent of all jobs in 2017, but captured 49.1 percent of new jobs added in the sector from 2015 to 2017.
3. Adult DormsOne dark side of winner-takes-all metro growth?
See the infographic > Decelerating, Accelerating
Of the 100 largest markets, these ones saw the biggest rent declines or gains
4. Insta-Shopping
. . .  Millennials and Gen Z are far more diverse than prior generations, so it makes sense that they’d reshape commerce in their image.
5. Sneaker Bubble?
. . . while the fate of sneaker speculation remains to be seen, stocks have started coming back to Earth. Equity prices fell late this year after rising steadily following President Donald Trump’s 2016 election.
6. Bitcoins vs. Cash Coins
. . . are we looking at the future of money?
7. Juice and Crystals
When it comes to cash, consumers have been pouring theirs into goods and services loosely labeled “self-care” -- from vitamins to jade facial rollers, plant-based diets to snuggly clothes and blankets. Google searches for the term “self care” headed up sharply this year and last.
8. Ghosting, Quitting, and Moving On
In fact, this was a good year for labor all around, as open positions exceeded unemployed people for the first time on record.
Workers embraced their newfound leverage by bringing an online-dating playbook to the job.
They walked out on unwanted gigs and ignored interview callbacks like a bad Tinder match.
Some even began “ghosting”: simply failing to turn up to work.
It could be that 2018 is peak labor-power this cycle, but most economists project a tight 2019 job market.
So here’s to a prosperous, paycheck-padding New Year.
— With assistance by Reade Pickert, Andrew Mayeda, and Steve Matthews