WCA January 2018

From the Americas A monthly jobs report from Washington is based in part on a survey of some 60,000 American households. Ben Casselman of the Times noted that one of the questions asks whether people who normally have jobs were not at work because of bad weather. In a typical September, around 30,000 workers fall into that category; last year, the number was 1.5 million. Another nearly three million people reported working part-time because of the weather. (“How Hurricanes Skewed September’s Job Numbers,” 6 th October) According to Mr Casselman it is a near-certainty that, had it not been for the hurricanes, job growth would have been positive for a record 84 th consecutive month. Jonathan Wright, an economist affiliated with the Brookings Institution, a public-policy think tank, told him that the government report would have shown a 67,000 increase in jobs had it not been for the hurricanes. “The good news is that the storm effects are likely temporary,” wrote Mr Casselman. Most of the workers kept home by the storms were back on the job when he wrote, or would be by the time October’s jobs numbers came out. The storms were even likely to bolster employment temporarily, at least in the affected states, as the recovery effort created jobs for construction workers, among others. It was clear that the storms did not affect all industries or workers equally. Jed Kolko, chief economist at job-search site Indeed.com, told the Times that the declines of September were concentrated in low-wage industries. Employment in the leisure and hospitality sector, for example, which includes hotels, restaurants and other weather-dependent businesses, was cut by 111,000 jobs. Elsewhere in telecom . . . While enthusiasm for tablets is falling off in the USA, consumers are increasingly receptive to smartwatches According to market research from Parks Associates (Addison, Texas), although not yet mainstream, smart- watches are gaining in popularity with Americans. The firm’s report “360 View: Mobility & The App Economy” found that smartwatch adoption has been steady among USA broadband households since 2016, reaching 14 per cent in the second quarter of 2017. And Carl Weinschenk of Telecompetitor (4 th October) called attention to a forecast by NPD Group (Port Washington, New York) that smartwatch penetration will grow quickly in the USA over the next few years. On 17 th August the firm reported that, as of June, almost nine per cent of American consumers over the age of 18 owned a smartwatch. That represents an increase of almost 1.5 per cent in six months’ time. Tablets, however, may have reached their high-water mark in the USA, with a penetration rate of 72 per cent during the first quarter of 2016. Additional findings from the Parks Associates research include:

 Tablet adoption declined to 67 per cent in Q2 2017, down from 72 per cent in Q1 2016;  In 2016, 12 per cent of the USA population owned a smartphone but did not have fixed home broadband;  While 40 per cent of consumers show interest in connected cars, only two per cent of families with a shared data plan report having a connected vehicle on their plan;  Loyalty programmes and value-added services have an extremely positive effect on net promoter scores (NPS) for operator brands, potentially raising NPS by 15-30 points. New York City bids goodbye to the original Kosciuszko Bridge, a long-time feature of the view from Manhattan’s East River On the morning of 2 nd October, in plumes of smoke, 11,000 tons of an iconic old steel structure that had linked Brooklyn and Queens for 78 years was razed in seconds. The demolition is another step in an $873 million project to replace the Kosciuszko Bridge with a pair of cable-stayed successors scheduled for completion by 2019. As reported in MetroUSA , according to the US Department of Transportation the method employed was “energetic felling”, in which a series of strategically placed explosives immediately dismantle a structure, sending it safely straight to the ground. According to DOT this process was much to be preferred to a slow disassembly of the Kosciuszko, accomplishing in mere seconds what could have entailed seven months of work. (“Tons of Steel Fall as Old Kosciuszko Bridge Goes Out With a Bang,” 2 nd October) A span of one of the new bridges was opened last April, marking the end of the $555 million first phase of the construction plan and permitting the destruction of the old suspension bridge. This latter event inspired Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York to a flight of soaring rhetoric. Said Mr Cuomo: “After years of stagnation and stunted ambition, we are building across the state bigger and better than before, and the energetic felling of the old bridge to make way for the new, on budget and ahead of schedule, showcases our renewed commitment to building new, inspiring infrastructure for the future.” Some three million immigrants (over 37 per cent of residents) live in New York City, more than in any other city in the world; and a high proportion of foreign-born arrivals settle in Brooklyn and Queens. Perhaps with this in mind, the governor went on to declare, “The new cable-stayed bridge is a monument that brings people together, straddling two boroughs that have welcomed generations of immigrants from all over the globe.” Steel

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Wire & Cable ASIA – January/February 2018

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