What caught my eye this week was the fight between Google and Uber. First Google announced it was looking into ride-sharing, something apparently its employees already do. Then Uber announced a partnership with Carnegie Mellon University to develop a driverless car, something Google has been working on for some time, and says it is as close to two years away from having driverless cars on public roads.
The two aren’t unrelated. The belief is that with driverless cars more people will ride share.
But apparently, according to Quartz, the Western world’s love affair with cars is coming to an end. But don’t tell Mercedes-Benz that. They had record sales in January.
But no one has apparently rented a Tesla on offer through Airbnb. It’s only for sleeping. You don’t get to drive the car.
Labour numbers also caught my eye because they were so different than expected. With the price of oil dropping there have been lots of stories of projects in Alberta being put on hold, and people out of work. Well, in fact, that doesn’t seem to be the case. Employment actually jumped 13,700 in Alberta and the province continues to lead the country with 3 per cent job growth year over year, “the strongest pace by a wide margin,” according to BMO Capital Markets senior economist Robert Kavcic. Who really suffered was Saskatchewan, with its unemployment rate increasing eight points to 4.5%. Yes, 4.5% which, when I went to school, meant full employment – ie the only people unemployed were those that were briefly in between jobs. British Columbia’s unemployment rate fell to 5.6%.
But are we overly-obsessed with jobs? A U.K. writer says perhaps we should change our thinking, and focus on anti-work. Not a bad idea in North America where we work as much as 500 more hours a year than Brits and Europeans (notably the French).
And women often work even harder than their male counterparts, especially when it comes to doing work for the team, like organizing the staff Christmas party or training new hires, according to Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant. And they benefit less from it.
So all you women out there have a shot of Canadian whiskey, if the thought doesn’t make you gag. Apparently it’s getting pretty good.
