The cost of wildfires

Summary

Marketplace Podcast Summary Episode: The Cost of Wildfires Release Date: January 8, 2025

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1. Escalating Wildfires in Southern California

The episode opens with a grim report on the wildfires ravaging Southern California, particularly the Los Angeles area. Driven by powerful winds, these fires have resulted in the tragic loss of at least two lives, the destruction of over 1,000 homes and buildings, and the evacuation of tens of thousands of residents. Notably, the occurrence of such intense fires in January signals a troubling shift in the traditional fire season, highlighting the pervasive impact of climate change.

Key Highlights:

• Fire Dynamics: Battalion Chief David Acuna of Cal Fire explains that while local fire departments typically handle fires, larger incidents require the intervention of Cal Fire’s incident management teams, which provide essential logistics and communication support. (02:03)

• Information Management: Cal Fire maintains a comprehensive website offering real-time updates on evacuation orders, shelter locations, disaster relief, wildfire acreage, and containment statistics. This centralized information hub is crucial for managing the extensive resources needed to combat these fires. (02:23)

• Economic Implications: Environmental economist Judson Boomhauer emphasizes that urban fires are particularly costly due to the dense concentration of property and the challenges in steering fires away from structures. “That ability to at least sometimes affect the path of the disaster makes fires different,” Boomhauer notes. (02:53)

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2. Rising Costs and Increased Frequency

The financial strain of combating wildfires has significantly increased over the past decade. Cal Fire's budget has more than doubled to $3.7 billion, accompanied by an 80% growth in staffing. Sabrina Ashton of the American Red Cross highlights that firefighting expenses extend beyond immediate response efforts to include the health impacts of smoke inhalation and the costs associated with post-fire reconstruction. (03:24)

Notable Quote:

“Fire isn't just more expensive, but more frequent, too.” – Judson Boomhauer (03:36)

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3. Insurance Challenges in Wildfire-Prone Areas

The escalating wildfire risk has profound implications for the insurance industry. Roy Wright, CEO of the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety, discusses how the increasing frequency and severity of urban wildfires complicate the insurability of homes. He underscores the necessity for regulatory actions and community-wide risk reduction strategies to ensure long-term home insurability. (09:05)

Key Insights:

• Defensible Space: Homeowners must create defensible spaces around their properties by managing vegetation and other potential fuel sources to prevent ignitions from embers. (08:11)

• Regulatory Measures: While California authorities have taken steps to protect consumers, transforming neighborhood risk profiles remains essential to mitigate extreme wildfire hazards. (09:30)

Notable Quote:

“The market is uncertain about the future.” – Roy Wright (12:48)

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4. Bond Market and Inflation Concerns

Transitioning to broader economic topics, the podcast examines the recent rise in yields on long-term government bonds, reflecting investor apprehension about future economic conditions. Kathy Jones, Chief Fixed Income Strategist at Schwab, attributes the increase to stronger-than-anticipated economic growth and persistently high inflation rates. The concept of the term premium—additional compensation for holding long-term bonds—has also risen due to heightened market uncertainty. (11:16)

Notable Quotes:

“Inflation is an investment killer.” – Kathy Jones (12:00)
“The market is uncertain about the future.” – Roy Wright (12:48)

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5. Declining Gasoline Prices and Their Impact

Gasoline prices in the U.S. have decreased by an average of 21 cents per gallon in 2024 compared to the previous year, primarily due to more stable crude oil prices. Mitchell Hartman from Marketplace elaborates on how lower energy costs can influence overall inflation by reducing operational costs for manufacturers and service businesses. However, experts caution that geopolitical tensions, such as potential conflicts in the Middle East, could disrupt oil supplies and reverse these favorable trends. (15:48)

Key Points:

• Stable Oil Market: Despite geopolitical disruptions, a global surplus and increased U.S. production have kept oil prices relatively stable. (16:51)
• Future Risks: Potential wars could lead to oil crises, threatening economic stability and escalating inflation once again. (17:34)

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6. The Shift Back to In-Office Work

Corporate America is witnessing a significant shift as major companies like JPMorgan Chase, Amazon, Walmart, and Dell retract their remote work policies, mandating employees to return to the office full-time. Kristen Schwab of Marketplace explores the dynamics driving this trend, highlighting changes in the labor market where employer power has regained strength due to higher unemployment rates and reduced job openings. (18:24)

Key Insights:

• Labor Market Evolution: The once-dominant employee bargaining power has waned as unemployment rates stabilize at 4.2%, leading companies to prefer in-person work environments. (19:15)
• Future Workforce Flexibility: While current policies favor employers, Schwab warns that maintaining flexible workplace arrangements could be advantageous as labor market conditions fluctuate. (20:26)

Notable Quote:

“The option to work remotely is getting more remote for much of corporate America.” – Kristen Schwab (18:24)

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7. Rise in Multiple Job Holders

An increasing number of U.S. workers are taking on multiple jobs to achieve financial stability. As of November, nearly 5.5% of workers held more than one job, a figure surpassing pre-pandemic levels. Samantha Fields of Marketplace delves into the socioeconomic factors driving this trend, including lingering effects of the pandemic on the labor market and the necessity for additional income to manage expenses like student loans and housing. (21:28)

Key Insights:

• Diverse Motivations: While many pursue multiple jobs out of financial necessity, others seek personal fulfillment or leverage advancements in remote work technologies to balance multiple roles. (24:08)
• Demographic Disparities: Multiple job-holding is more prevalent among women, Black individuals, and those who are single, widowed, or divorced, indicating underlying socioeconomic disparities. (23:50)

Notable Quotes:

“It's not only your bartender and your hotel restaurant worker who may be juggling multiple jobs.” – Roy Wright (24:08)
“We cannot eliminate wildfire. Ignitions are going to happen.” – Roy Wright (08:11)

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8. Future of Jobs: AI and Sustainability

Concluding the episode, the World Economic Forum’s latest Future of Jobs report is discussed, revealing that over 40% of employers plan to downsize their workforce in the next five years due to the increasing adoption of artificial intelligence. However, there is also a significant push to hire individuals with AI-related skills. Additionally, nearly half of employers anticipate that efforts to reduce carbon emissions will necessitate substantial business transformations by the latter half of the decade. (26:23)

Key Points:

• Artificial Intelligence: The integration of AI technologies is expected to streamline operations but also lead to workforce reductions, necessitating a shift in employee skill sets.
• Sustainability Initiatives: Corporate efforts to combat climate change will drive the need for new strategies and business models, impacting employment patterns and industry practices.

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Conclusion

The episode of Marketplace titled "The Cost of Wildfires" provides a comprehensive examination of the multifaceted impacts of wildfires, extending into broader economic concerns such as insurance, bond markets, energy prices, labor trends, and future employment landscapes. Through insightful interviews and expert analyses, the podcast underscores the intricate interplay between environmental challenges and economic stability, offering listeners a nuanced understanding of contemporary issues shaping the business and economic landscape.

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Notable Quotes:

• “The ability to at least sometimes affect the path of the disaster makes fires different.” – Judson Boomhauer (02:53)
• “The market is uncertain about the future.” – Roy Wright (12:48)
• “We cannot eliminate wildfire. Ignitions are going to happen.” – Roy Wright (08:11)

Transcript

[Sponsor Voice]

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[Amy Scott]

New normal for wildfires, a season that lasts year round From American Public Media, this is Marketplace in Washington, D.C. i'm Amy Scott in for Kai Rysdal. It's Wednesday, January 8th. Good to have you with us. The news out of Southern California today is grim. Multiple fires are raging in the Los Angeles area, driven by powerful winds. At least two people have died, more than 1,000 homes and buildings have burned, and tens of thousands of people have evacuated. Fighting these wildfires takes a lot of resources and money, and climate change has made them more frequent and more intense. Just consider the fact that we're talking about this in January. So much for fire season. Marketplace's Kaylee Wells has more now on how that's complicating the response when a.

[Kaylee Wells]

Fire sparks in LA County. Battalion Chief David Acuna, with California's firefighting agency, aptly named Cal Fire, says usually the local fire departments handle it.

[Amy Scott]

But when they have incidents that get out of hand, we'll come in and provide our incident management team, which helps.

[Kaylee Wells]

The local firefighters with logistics and communication. On top of those teams, Cal Fire runs a massive website with up to date fire info.

[Amy Scott]

So we have information on evacuation warnings and orders, which is updated moment by.

[Kaylee Wells]

Moment, as well as shelter locations, disaster relief info, wildfire acreage and containment numbers. It's a lot of work. Environmental economist Judson Boomhauer with UC San Diego says urban fires like the ones burning in LA county can get even more expensive.

[Roy Wright]

A really important driver of how much we spend fighting any given fire is just the amount of property in the.

[Kaylee Wells]

Path of the fire that matters, Boomhauer says. Because it's not like a flood, firefighters can aim to steer the fire's direction away from property.

[Roy Wright]

You know, that ability to at least sometimes affect the path of the disaster makes fires different. And it's also one of the things that adds this sort of hidden category of costs because those response efforts are really valuable, but they're also really expensive.

[Kaylee Wells]

And they've gotten more expensive. In the past 10 years, Cal Fire's budget has more than doubled to $3.7 billion. Staffing also grew 80%. Sabrina Ashton is not surprised. She is a lawyer on the board for the Pacific region of the American Red Cross.

[Sponsor Voice]

We have been responding over the past decade to twice as many extreme weather events.

[Kaylee Wells]

So the fires aren't just more expensive, but more frequent, too. Traditionally, Southern California's fire season happened in.

[Judson Boomhauer]

The fall, and now it's just all year round.

[Sponsor Voice]

We need to be on guard and on watch.

[Kaylee Wells]

Plus, Ashton says the state's fire expenses don't stop at firefighting. There's also the costs of treating and managing the health impacts of smoke inhalation and all the reconstruction that has to happen after the smoke clears. I Marketing I'm Kayleigh Wells for Marketplace.

[Amy Scott]

Kind of a mixed day on Wall street today. One thing traders were looking at the minutes from the latest Fed meeting last month. Most participants saw a higher risk of inflation coming because, in part of, quote, the likely effects of potential changes in trade and immigration policy. We'll have the market details when we do the numbers. As Kaylee said, part of what has made the fires in Southern California so destructive is that they're happening in urban areas where flames can easily spread between closely built structures. That's a scenario the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety has studied in its efforts to make the built environment more resilient to natural disasters. Roy Wright is the institute's CEO and also a former official at fema. He joins me now. Welcome to the program.

[Roy Wright]

Good to join you.

[Amy Scott]

So, Roy, you and I first met a few years ago when you were actually testing some fire safety measures in buildings. And here we have an example of an urban fire with buildings close together. Can you talk about, you know, what you've learned about how that contributes to the spread of wildfires?

[Roy Wright]

When you joined us, we went and looked at what it looks like when the fire moves from structure to structure. And that's the exact phenomena that we were watching. And we know that what's closest to the building matters because when embers pick up and fly and they land, they're looking for something to ignite. You land on a sidewalk, you're going to fizzle out. You land in a hedge or a tree or a bush, you're likely going to ignite and often when those are right next to buildings, you can fully envelop it. Once it's fully enveloped, it is casting off embers that again, might fly a half mile away. But they're also putting direct heat and fire on the structures next door.

[Amy Scott]

How does the urban nature of these fires complicate the effort to both fight them and also evacuate people?

[Roy Wright]

There is no question that the more people you have concentrated in an area, the harder it is to make evacuations succeed quickly and as well as how much more fuel there is to keep propagating advancing that fire. If you're in a more rural area, there could be 30ft, 100ft, even 500ft to the next home. But when we get into these urban areas, it's structure to structure to structure to structure, and the fire is just going to move through the entire block unless the firefighters are able to get to you.

[Amy Scott]

So a lot of folks outside of California are watching this and probably thinking about, could it happen here? Do you expect these kinds of urban wildfires to increase due to climate change?

[Roy Wright]

Simply, yes. We are seeing this. We saw this in Lahaina of Hawaii. We've watched this outside of Denver. We've seen this in New Mexico, in Oregon, throughout the West. But not just there, frankly. We've seen these in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. The nature of very dry land, high hot winds. That combination just puts fire on an accelerator to move through a community.

[Amy Scott]

What have you learned about what homeowners can do and what communities can do to prepare for and mitigate the effects of this kind of wildfire?

[Roy Wright]

We cannot eliminate wildfire. Ignitions are going to happen. And fire has been part of an ecosystem for thousands of years. We can narrow its impact. We can make homes more survivable. It plays really two sides of an equation. Have you created the defensible space and ensured that when embers land, your building cannot ignite? That's about your fences, that's about your bushes. The second piece that is frankly, even harder is you have to take actions across the entire neighborhood. Because even if you did everything perfectly, if your neighbor didn't, they can be the source of ignition that begins the cascade. You've got to make sure that that is cleared, and we've got to find a way so that when embers do invade a community, they don't have a way to propagate.

[Amy Scott]

In advance, we should talk about insurance. Your institute is funded by the insurance industry, am I right? We are, yeah. And many people in California and elsewhere have been struggling to get affordable homeowners insurance because of the increase of hazards like this and the increased cost of replacement, how vulnerable does that leave folks in the areas that are burning?

[Roy Wright]

You know, I think there always be regulatory actions in the immediate aftermath of a fire to protect consumers as they should. California has been making actions to address their marketplace. Commissioner Lahr has taken some very important actions in recent months, but frankly, no regulatory action is going to change the extreme wildfire risk. The only way to do that is to change the profile of our neighborhoods. And now we have to have that kind of risk insurance meet the reduction of risk. And honestly, what's going to make your home more survivable will also give you an enduring path to home insurability.

[Amy Scott]

Roy Wright is CEO of the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety. Thank you so much for your time.

[Roy Wright]

Absolutely.

[Amy Scott]

Turning to the broader economy now, if you've been paying attention to the bond market over the past month or so, you've noticed the yields on longer term government debt, 10, 20 and 30 year treasuries have been rising. They went up sharply in the past week. That's the bond market sending a message. And as Marketplace's Sabri Benishour reports, it has something to do with what the Fed was talking about in those minutes.

[Kathy Jones]

The bond market is in many ways a crystal ball of the economic future because if you think about it, a 30 year bond has to look good for 30 years. So when yields on these investments change, it means the future is changing according or at least investors vision of the future is changing. Some of that is good change.

[Amy Scott]

Economic growth has just been stronger than anticipated and we've seen just a lot of resilience in the economy.

[Kathy Jones]

Kathy Jones is chief fixed income strategist at the Schwab center for Financial Research. Schwab is a marketplace underwriter. The data have come in week by week showing the economy of today and by extension tomorrow are looking stronger. Bond yields have adjusted upward to reflect that future. But that's about where the positives in the crystal ball end.

[Amy Scott]

Secondly, inflation has been a little bit stickier, hasn't come down as much as hoped for.

[Kathy Jones]

Inflation is an investment killer. There would be no point in investing in bonds if inflation ate up all your gains. So bonds have to account for future inflation. That is another reason that yields have moved upwards. But the biggest reason bond yields have been rising recently is just general nervousness about the future for which there is a word in the bond market, the term premium. Steve Laipley is global co head of iShares fixed income ETFs for BlackRock term premium is the extra money you need to be getting. If you're going to go to the trouble of locking up your money for decades in a 10 or 30 year.

[Roy Wright]

Bond, you deserve some additional compensation for taking the additional risk of holding long term bonds.

[Kathy Jones]

That risk has gone up.

[Roy Wright]

The market is uncertain about the future.

[Kathy Jones]

Marvin Lowe is senior global Macro strategist at State Street Global Markets. Inflation looks less stable and so does policy.

[Roy Wright]

Mass deportations, full tariffs across the board, universal tariffs. This type of discussion does impact really where prices, wages and potential volatility around that inflation might shake out.

[Kathy Jones]

The crystal ball of the bond market has gotten cloudier in New York. I'm Sabri Benishore for Marketplace.

[Sponsor Voice]

Coming up because there's always a bill for something.

[Amy Scott]

They just don't stop, do they? But first, let's do the numbers. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 106 points a quarter percent to finish at 42,635. The Nasdaq lost 10 points almost 1, 10% to close at 19,478. And the S&P 500 found 9 points 2 10% down end at 59. 18. Goodyear Tire and Rubber, that's the company's full name, is planning to sell its Dunlop tire brand to a Japanese company, Sumito Rubber Industries. In a roughly 700 million dollar deal. Goodyear deflated one and a quarter percent. Competitor Titan International shrank 3. 10%. You're listening to Marketplace.

[Roy Wright]

Foreign.

[Sponsor Voice]

This Marketplace podcast is supported by Odoo. Let's face it, nowadays most companies have to rely on dozens of expensive, disconnected platforms to run their business. And even then, things can get a little, well, stressful. But with Odoo's all in one management software packed with a suite of fully integrated business applications, every process is streamlined, tasks are automated, and success is just a few clicks away. See how Odoo can take your business to the next [e-mail] that's O D.

[Amy Scott]

O O.com this is Marketplace. I'm Amy Scott. Sabri talked about inflation concerns earlier in the show. One product people are paying less for these days is gasoline. The U.S. energy Information Administration just crunched the numbers and says gas prices on average were 21 cents lower per gallon in 2024 than they were in 2023, partly due to lower and more stable crude oil prices recently. Marketplace's Mitchell Hartman has that one.

[Mitchell Hartman]

You might be forgiven for discounting the importance of energy prices in driving inflation. In fact, even the terms economists use suggest energy can be ignored because it's volatile, but that's a mistake, says Jay Hatfield and Infrastructure Capital Advisors.

[Kathy Jones]

Oil is critical not just to headline inflation but even core inflation, which excludes oil prices. Rising oil prices feed through to all prices, Hatfield says.

[Mitchell Hartman]

It impacts manufacturers that use oil to make stuff and service businesses.

[Kathy Jones]

Even a restaurant has substantial energy costs.

[Mitchell Hartman]

From transporting ingredients to cooking the food. We saw this during the pandemic when global oil prices spiked after Russia invaded Ukraine, says Joe Bruceuelis at consulting firm rsm.

[Roy Wright]

An inflation rate that probably would have leveled out between 6% and 7% ended up between 9 and 10%.

[Mitchell Hartman]

But now things are very different, says Stephen Schork, publisher of the Schork Report on the energy industry.

[Roy Wright]

It's been a very stable market for the past year and a half, with prices more or less in the $70 range, plus or minus $10.

[Mitchell Hartman]

The main reason, in spite of wars in Ukraine and the Middle east disrupting supplies, says jobrusuelas.

[Roy Wright]

Globally we have a surplus of oil. There's too much supply sloshing around. For the first time in many years.

[Mitchell Hartman]

The US has ramped up production while weak global growth is keeping demand low. There are risks going forward, says Jay Hatfield.

[Kathy Jones]

The Trump administration has historically been very.

[Amy Scott]

Tough on Iran, so they're likely to.

[Kathy Jones]

Try to constrain their exports all out.

[Mitchell Hartman]

War in the Middle east would spell big trouble, says Joe Bruce.

[Roy Wright]

We would have a global oil crisis that could put at risk the current business expansion and result in much higher inflation.

[Mitchell Hartman]

But for now, says Stephen Schork, we.

[Roy Wright]

Have kind of a Goldilocks market where the producer is making money, the consumer is not getting banged, as it were, at the pump.

[Mitchell Hartman]

With the average price of gas right now at 306 a gallon, a penny less than this time last year. I'm Mitchell Hartman for Marketplace.

[Amy Scott]

The option to work remotely is getting more remote for much of corporate America. Today, Bloomberg reported that JPMorgan Chase, whose CEO Jamie Dimon has been an outspoken critic of remote work, plans to bring its workers back to the office five days a week. The bank joins Amazon, Walmart, Dell and other big companies that have rolled back remote work policies. Marketplace's Kristen Schwab has more on the push pull between workers who want more flexibility and employers who want them on site.

[Kristen Schwab]

If you look at what's changed most since remote work's peak a few years ago, it is the labor market. Back in 2021 and 22, we'd coined phrases like the great resignation and quiet quitting. Employees had had power. Harry Holzer is former chief economist for the Department of Labor.

[Roy Wright]

We're sitting on a big wad of cash. So that gave them a confidence, you know, if I get fired for this, that's okay.

[Kristen Schwab]

Fast forward to today, and while unemployment is still low at 4.2%, it's higher than it was a couple years ago. And job openings have come down.

[Roy Wright]

So that incredible bargaining power that workers had a couple of years ago is not nearly as strong.

[Kristen Schwab]

A recent survey by KPMG says nearly 80% of CEOs envision employees back at work in person in the next three years. Erica Groschen, former commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, says data from the BLS shows that though more people are still working from home than they did before the pandemic, the number of hours.

[Amy Scott]

That people who could work from home did work from home, that seems to be declining.

[Kristen Schwab]

Thing is, employees do not like back to office mandates, says Melissa Jesior, CEO of Eagle Hill Consulting. And she warns that because of how the labor market ebbs and flows, there will be labor shortages someday in the future. So companies that keep flexible workplace policies.

[Amy Scott]

That could keep you as a competitive employer when the power dynamic shifts back to the employee.

[Kristen Schwab]

Right now, though, the dynamic still favors employers and employees know it. That's one reason why the number of people quitting their jobs is much lower than it was in 2022. And if you're an employer, sometimes you need workers to leave.

[Amy Scott]

Perhaps you wanted to drive more attrition. Perhaps you wanted to drive more turnover. For whatever reason, you could think about.

[Kristen Schwab]

Employing a policy like this, employees quitting on their own instead of forced to leave through layoffs. I'm Kristen Schwab for Marketplace SA.

[Amy Scott]

Wherever they work. One interesting finding in the latest employment data is that more people in the US These days find it necessary to do multiple jobs. We'll get an update on Friday when the report for December comes out from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. As of November, nearly five and a half percent of workers held down more than one job. That number has been growing. It's now higher than it was before the pandemic. Marketplace's Samantha Fields looked into it.

[Judson Boomhauer]

Last spring, Ariel Clark moved from New York to Tulsa, Oklahoma, for a job as a program manager at a local nonprofit. Within the first few months, even though she was working full time, she felt like she was living paycheck to paycheck.

[Sponsor Voice]

Just having money for rent, then making sure that I had money for groceries, then making sure that I had money to travel here and there.

[Judson Boomhauer]

Clark is 23 and recently graduated with both a bachelor's degree and a master's. And she's paying off her student loans now, too. After a few months of intense budgeting, she decided to take on a second job as a part time peer health educator.

[Sponsor Voice]

Honestly, it is financial stability, I will say that first and foremost and also just allowing myself to feel comfortable because there's always a bill for something or just to have, I guess, cushion money if something were to come up.

[Judson Boomhauer]

Clark says a lot of people she knows in Tulsa are working more than one job to get by. So are a growing number of people around the country.

[Amy Scott]

I think some of it is just that the labor market has taken a while to fully recover from the pandemic.

[Judson Boomhauer]

Emma Harrington is an assistant professor of economics at the University of Virginia. Before COVID she says the percentage of people working multiple jobs had been on an upward trajectory for years, then really.

[Amy Scott]

Took a nosedive during the pandemic, and then have been sort of ticking up towards the pre pandemic trend for a while now.

[Judson Boomhauer]

You can see this clearly if you look at a chart. There's a steep drop off in the spring of 2020, then a slow rebound that more or less tracks the economy's recovery. Julia Pollack, chief economist at ZipRecruiter, says more people working multiple jobs is actually a sign of a healthy labor market.

[Roy Wright]

Many people refer to this number as evidence that the labor market is under strain and that workers are struggling to make ends meet. But historically, the number of people holding multiple jobs tends to be high when there are multiple jobs to be had.

[Judson Boomhauer]

When the economy is strong, women, black people, and those who are single, widowed or divorced are more likely than others to work multiple jobs.

[Roy Wright]

And that does suggest perhaps that some of this is driven by need and by low wage work.

[Judson Boomhauer]

But Pollock says not all of it.

[Roy Wright]

It's not only your bartender and your hotel restaurant worker who may be juggling multiple jobs. Often it is white collar workers, too, doctors who are also professors and who are also consultants. It is not just one thing, and.

[Judson Boomhauer]

There'S not just one reason people take on more than one job at a time. Lonnie golden is a professor of economics and labor human resources at Penn State University, Abington. And in a survey he did, when.

[Roy Wright]

We ask people, why are you holding multiple jobs? About half say they just want to make some additional money. But there's a significant minority that say they can't find a suitable full time job or they're not able to make ends meet with just their one job.

[Judson Boomhauer]

There are also others who do it because they're just interested in the work or want something else to do. These days, Emma Harrington at UVA says technology and the rise of remote work have also made it easier to both find and juggle multiple opportunities.

[Amy Scott]

Work from home makes it more feasible to do multiple jobs at once. Like it's easier to have two jobs if you don't have to also do two commutes.

[Judson Boomhauer]

Easier, but not easy, harrington says. It's often a strain.

[Amy Scott]

A lot of people when they're surveyed, they often say that they would prefer a more stable, traditional work arrangement.

[Judson Boomhauer]

That's true for Arielle Clark in Tulsa, even though she likes both of her current jobs.

[Sponsor Voice]

It's exhausting. It very much so can feel like a burden at times.

[Judson Boomhauer]

Clark's goal is to become a lawyer and eventually just have one job and.

[Sponsor Voice]

Not even think twice about it just being enough.

[Judson Boomhauer]

Though she says it's entirely possible if she does become a lawyer that she'll end up working just as many hours at one job as she does now with two. I'm Samantha Fields for Marketplace.

[Amy Scott]

This final note on the way out today, continuing with the working theme, the World Economic Forum is out with a new Future of Jobs report. More than 40% of employers said they planned plan to downsize their workforce in the next five years as artificial intelligence takes over more tasks, though most also plan to hire new people with AI skills. Also worth noting in that report, nearly half of employers expected efforts to reduce carbon emissions to transform their business in the latter half of this decade. Our media production team includes Brian Allison, Jake Cherry, Jessyn Dooler, Drew Jostad, Gary O'Keefe, Charlton Thorpe, Juan Carlos Tirado and Becca Weinman, with help today from Alexander Simpson and Jess Berg. Jeff Peters is the manager of media production. I'm Amy Scott. We'll be back tomorrow. This is APM.