Show Me the Money — Everybody's getting rich. Not necessarily by investing in stocks, and definitely not in crypto lately, but through wage growth. Despite the pandemic ruining everything from countless proms and sweet 16 parties to our children’s cognitive development, there were some bright spots.

One of those can be found in wage growth. In the ever raging battle between capital and labor, it looks like the pandemic has forced conditions in which labor has the upper hand for the first time literally since ‘Nam. Just look at the wage growth chart below. Low-income earners are seeing their pay grow at the fastest rates since the late 70's and early 80's.

While this is great news for those earners, rapidly rising wages only adds confusion to the already jumbled mess of (useless) theories in the minds of economists. “Full employment” describes an economy in which anyone who wants a job can get one. Like most things in economics, it’s difficult to know when you’re in it, but one indicator is great at showing when we’re past full employment: rapidly rising wages. 

Given our 3.9% unemployment rate, an annual CPI jump of 7%, and wages rising the fastest they have since the days of Jimmy Carter and perms, it’s not exactly a hot take to think we’re past full employment. Still, there is no neon sign screaming “full employment” once we hit a certain unemployment number, so economists have a tough time agreeing on what exactly defines full employment in the moment. Disagreement in economics, what else is new?

School Spirit — College is for losers, looks like the vibe we’re getting from America’s youth. According to a report from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center (wow, long name), there are currently 1.2mm less enrolled students in U.S. colleges than there were in 2019.

This, for lack of a better word, is weird. College enrollment in the U.S. has ben falling for at least a decade, but the rate at which its falling has hit a 50-year high since 2019. 2020’s steep enrollment decline was initially thought to be a COVID fluke, but it looks like that fluke is becoming a broader trend. Costs are likely the primary driver, but many speculate cultural changes on campuses and the availability of online learning programs are top contributing factors as well.

Although, not all falling enrollment numbers are made equal. Community colleges are getting it the worst, losing 15% of their student body since fall 2019. Private 4-year institutions saw one of the worst year-over-year declines in 2021, losing 11% of new students. As far as majors go, construction trades saw the steepest decline of 16.3% while others like communications exploded, growing 18.7% from 2020. And I know you're dying to know, so fine I’ll tell you, business majors fell by 3.6%.

Perhaps the most striking part of the decline in college enrollment is that it’s literally going in the opposite direction of the job market. In 2019, estimates said that only 36% of jobs required no more education than a high school diploma, meaning almost 2/3 of jobs require at least some college. Yeah, not a great omen for the future of the U.S. workforce.

I get it. Homework sucks and making money rather than bricks of debt out of high school is a logical move for a lot of people. We’ll see if this trend continues, but for now, college is for losers.

Netflix and Bill — New Girl and Ozark just got more expensive. That’s right, Netflix announced on Friday a price increase for customers in the U.S. and Canada and Wall Street is loving it, sending shares up 4% intraday on Friday.

Subscription prices rose across all plans. The basic plan got a $1 boost to $9.99 while the price for a standard plan (the most popular options) was increased by $1.50 to $15.49 and the premium plan got a premium price hike of $2 to $19.99. The official statement justifying the price increase said “we’re updating our prices so that we can continue to offer a wide variety of quality entertainment options.” That’s nice, but what I think they meant to say was “we’re updating our prices because we’re rapidly losing our first mover advantage and watching subscriber growth fall off a cliff, so this is literally the only way we can make more money.” That’s better.

Although somewhat exaggerated, the modified statement is all too true. The streaming industry is no longer laden with a bunch of feeble competitors boasting weak content and even weaker user interfaces. Now, Netflix is playing with the big dogs like HBO Max, Disney+, Amazon Prime, basically all the biggest and scariest companies. Netflix hopes this mild price hike will keep both customers and investors happy, allowing the firm to continue to plow hoards of money into content after spending $17bn in 2021. We’ll see how that $17bn worked out on Thursday when earnings drop.

Now, the only question is, how does a Netflix subscription factor into the CPI?