E86: Macro outlook: jobs, housing, inflation + Dutch farmers protests & EU climate missteps

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (0:00)
You're seeing now the fresh summer collection of Lora Piana. This, Jason, is the thin summer gilet.
Okay. Really beautiful cashmere.

**Jason Calacanis** (0:09)
Continue.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (0:10)
It's called like the King's cashmere or something. And then this is called a lovely yellow boating sweater.
Anyways, I took Sacks to my tailor and I took him to Lora Piana. And then at some point, I just fucking lost him and then I haven't seen him since.

**Jason Calacanis** (0:24)
So you took him to your tailor and to Lora Piana. Great that the show remains accessible to the every man and woman.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (0:34)
They're Sacks.

**David Friedberg** (0:45)
It's like twins.
Italy. He was the Sherlock and Duke. Wow.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (0:52)
Oh my God. You guys have an announcement today.

**Jason Calacanis** (0:56)
Third announcement. Good to see everybody's focused on what matters. Okay, everybody. Welcome to All-In Episode 86, end of the world, except for these two douchebags.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (1:05)
We thought it'd be really funny to find the exact same outfit at Laura Piana.

**David Sacks** (1:10)
I feel fully styled.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (1:12)
What a great look.

**David Friedberg** (1:14)
You guys look so good.

**Jason Calacanis** (1:35)
Hey, everybody. Welcome to Episode 86 of the All-In Podcast. We're not dead yet. Still publishing with us from Italy, the Rain Man and the Dictator in matching outfits. Gentlemen, how is Italy?

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (1:51)
It's fantastic.

**Jason Calacanis** (1:52)
And also with us, the Sultan of Science himself, David Friedberg from an undisclosed conference somewhere, which we can't talk about. How are you doing, buddy?

**David Friedberg** (2:02)
I'm off the record this week.

**Jason Calacanis** (2:04)
Off the record this week and a little hungover, it seems.
You need a cup of coffee. Are you drinking a little scotch last night? A little scotch?

**David Friedberg** (2:12)
I went scotch and beer and it was a late night.

**Jason Calacanis** (2:15)
All right, everybody, we got a lot of news to get through. Let's just parse through some of the data because data has been coming in and the minutes from the June Fed are out. The key quote, significant risk that elevated inflation could become entrenched if the public began to question the resolve of the Fed. So they went from transient to now fearing entrenched.
Jobs have slipped a little bit. This is something we've been talking about. But just to give some context here, we're still a historic number of job openings. We peaked in March, 11.9 million. In May, we dropped down to 11.3 and 11 million for six straight months. It's just extraordinary. If you look at this Fred chart, it's just astounding to think that this many jobs are available, two for one in the United States. There are two jobs available for every one person who needs a job.
And they're just absolutely stunning. If you look at the...

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (3:11)
What do you think this is a precursor to?

**Jason Calacanis** (3:14)
Dropping down dramatically in the white collar sector is what the data is showing.

**Chamath Palihapitiya** (3:21)
Or major wage inflation. I mean, that work clearly has to be done. And if you lay people off, the number of unemployment unemployed will go up. But at the end of the day, the thing that we know here is we have a structural unemployment problem, as you said, two openings for every person, which means those openings aren't paying enough for people to leave the sidelines and get on the field.

**Jason Calacanis** (3:45)
Yeah, or...

**David Sacks** (3:46)
Or they've been incentivized to be on the sidelines. Exactly. So these job openings might actually be indicative of the opposite of what the Fed is telling us, right? The Fed wants us to believe that they can just keep jacking up rates, and then we're not going to go into recession because we have all these open job wrecks. But what if we should see the labor market as really two separate markets? They're sort of white collar professionals.
And you're seeing all of these tech companies that were involved in slam on the brakes really quickly right now. So we're going to see greater unemployment there. And then on the blue collar side, you have this issue of record low labor participation.
And so you still have inflation there because they can't fill all the jobs because there's all these like warped incentives around that.

**Jason Calacanis** (4:35)
There are to just put a number on it, Sacks. We're 10% off the peak in terms of participation.
And if those folks would participate, it would really fill a lot of these jobs.

**David Sacks** (4:45)
That would increase the production of goods and services that might take some of the pressure off inflation.