Summer usually signals the start of theme park season, when adventure-seekers line up for the adrenaline rush of their favorite roller coaster and its ups and downs. Labor market watchers can relate to those ups and downs – maybe too much, lately. It’s clear that employers, workers and jobseekers are more than ready for some stability. The labor market’s high-speed airtime cost more than 19 million workers their jobs at the beginning of the pandemic. Since then, we’ve recovered, but that ride has been bumpy and uneven.

I spend a lot of time talking about small employers because they punch above their weight when it comes to the economy. Companies with fewer than 500 employees created two-thirds of net new jobs leading into the pandemic, and they led the recovery afterward. Each quarter, we at the ADP Research Institute survey our small company clients to gather their insight on the business landscape. This quarter, they wanted to talk about the macroeconomy and – no surprise -- inflation. Here are three things clients are telling us.

Last week I joined the World Economic Forum meetings in Davos, Switzerland. After a two-year hiatus from in-person events, world leaders, CEOs, international investors, and nonprofits reconvened at a time of great risk to global growth. This week, on the occasion of the Davos meetings, I’ll review the promise, the perils and the possibilities of globalization from the perspective of Main Street.

Last week I spoke at the World Data Summit in Amsterdam, a conference at which experts from across the globe met to discuss the most pressing data issues of our time. As the name suggests, data is fast becoming the universal language of business. For that reason, in this week’s blog I thought we’d talk about why data is important to Main Street.

One of my family’s favorite pastimes is playing board games. Our faves include chess (which my teenage boys dominate), Scrabble (my husband’s the GOAT on this one) and Monopoly (the most frequent victor is me, obviously). But not all games are quite so fun. My least favorite, when it comes to the economy, are guessing games. Wall Street right now is in the midst of a guessing game on key economic data. I call this game “peak or plateau”. This week, we examine three elements of the economy to determine if we’re at a peak or a plateau.

The truly great always make it look easy, don’t they? Be it Meryl Streep or Michael Jordan – no matter how hard, no matter what the feat – they make it look so easy. The Fed is trying to do something now that’s really hard: Rein in inflation without choking growth. Last week, the central bank announced its intention to raise short-term interest rates by a half percentage point. In this week’s blog we share three things to keep in mind as the Fed tries to pull off one of the trickiest maneuvers in modern monetary history.

This week, all eyes will be on new labor market data. On Tuesday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics shares its latest on the great resignation and job openings. On Wednesday, the ADP Research Institute offers the first read on April employment numbers, and official government jobs data is due Friday. Hirings, job openings and quits provide a snapshot of the labor market. But like other snapshots of life, like holiday photos, vacations or the kids’ sporting events, they don’t tell the whole story. The pandemic has affected more than just monthly hiring – the changes we’re living through now are likely to persist well into the future. Here are three enduring changes wrought by the pandemic.

For the third year in a row, the ADP Research Institute surveyed 30,000 workers in 17 countries to understand their views on the workplace. The negative effects of the pandemic still linger, and the workforce is evolving as it adopts new priorities