Wow, she was like sugar red, qunchy like chips and stuff like that. Actually, the days are crickets. Hello and welcome to Stephanomics, the podcast that brings the global economy to you. What you heard there might well be your Christmas dinner in a few years time. Keep listening to find out what those lucky people were tasting why it might just save the world. We also tell you about a new treasure trove of data showing just how much federal stimulus checks have boosted the spending of black and Hispanic families and how inflation and a slower economy could take them back to square one. But first tune in, drop out, Live flat. Their parents may have worked twelve hour days for decades, supporting China's breakneck economic growth, but a growing number of young people in this famously industrious nation would rather not work at all. You could say it was the Asian counterpart to the Great Resignation that has business executives scratching their heads in the US and Europe. But the life flat movement also tells us quite a lot about how Chinese society has changed, and it could even put the government's grand plans for the future at risk. In a minute, I'll discuss all of that with Bloomberg opinion columnist Truly Rehn. But first here is our Hong Kong based China economy reporter Tom Hancock. In what has been branded as the Great Resignation, US workers are quitting their jobs in record numbers. More than twenty four million did so from April to September this year. Millions have dropped permanently out of the labor force, and similar trends are being seen in parts of Europe. But even in China, where coronavirus has been kept largely under control and the economy has doubled in size in the last decade, people are having similar feelings. The country's live flat movement, jump started by a social media post, is also about opting out. It's a reaction against the system in which are grueling nine six work schedule nine am to nine pm, six days a week is common in industries like technology, so is unrelenting pressure from family, society, and even the government to keep climbing the ladder. In October, thousands of employees at Chinese tech giants, including Ali Baba Group and the owner of TikTok groused about their long work hours in an online campaign called workers Lives Matter and It's not just a white color phenomenon. In the southern city of Shenjen, migrant workers from the countryside, once celebrated for being willing to work tough jobs in manufacturing, are rejecting manual jobs and sometimes prefer to spend their time playing online games, picking up day jobs as needed. Some see parallels between lie flat sentiment in China and similar ideas that emerged in Japan in the ninety nineties after its economic growth slowed sharply, suggesting China might be facing impending Japan style stagnation, but others argue it's more like the nineteen sixties style counterculture movements that cropped up in the US and Europe in a period of affluence, with ordinary people seeking a lower pressure society that's more focused on personal development the material success. That's the view of Chenza Young, a twenty five year old who lives in shen Jen while studying for a master's degree online. The society needs more definition about sucsass at the people around you are doing so well, or you are all competing for the same job or for the same kind of success, so you kind of like fear you are gonna laughed out, so some people just give up. Even though China, the US and Europe are very different economies, we can connect China's lying flat discussion with the concept of the great resignation in developed countries, says Young Bio, director of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Germany. Both are about questioning the pursuit of wealth at an individual and a social level. They emerge at at the same time, and we can make a connection and the even links to bigger idea such as the growths such as a sustainability and this is somehow all related because it is about the overheating about US society. They become a excessively completed too, and just not as sustainable, not only in terms of environmental extraction, but also the mental the mental abendance is not as sustainable. Among the new dropouts is Melana Cooler, a twenty six year old from Germany who lost her job at the height of the pandemic last year. She has chosen to set up an environmentally sustainable commune in the countryside rather than seeking full time work. Am I enough just the way I am? Or do I constantly needs new equipment, new material, new goods in my life, new experiences to feel full in some form. So that's something I've really changed. Here in developed countries, pressure has been building for decades. Incomes of stagnated, job security has become precarious, and the costs of housing and education of sword making it harder to build a financially stable life. Melana story indicates how the pandemic has sometimes converted those simmering concerns into action. Will the Great Resignation and Life Let have a longer term impact. While they are a challenge to conventional ideas about work and consumption, Cimball points out that they seem to lack specific demands about how to change society. Many will be waiting to see if those ideas emerge. For Bloomberg News, I'm Tom Hancock in Hong Kong, so I wanted to talk a bit more about lying Flat and what it tells us about China's future with Bloomberg Opinion columnists Shuli Wren in Hong Kong. Shuli, welcome to Stephanomics. I love the opening line of a columny wrote the other day, China's young people are stressed out. I mean, there are there are concrete forces making young people's lives more stressful in China and the live flat movement, it's just one reaction to that, so tell us more absolutely definitely so so like after the Chinese governments a big tack and big real estate developer crackdown like that actually ruined a lot of the job prospects for China's young people, especially those fresh university graduates. I mean, China has been training about ten million university graduates every year, and in the past they already struggled to find good jobs, and now the jobs are even fewer than before. And then like in the graduating class of only one third decided to go into the job market, with another third saying, oh, I'm just going to try to, you know, go out to grad school because you know, like when there's a reception, everyone applies for grass school, right, some young people they just say, oh, I'm just going to take some time off, lie on my parents cultures, and figure out what they want to do. And I guess one of the one of the things that's happening is that you know, China's getting richer as a country and now it can have dropouts just the way that you know, the US had dropouts in the sixties. Absolutely, I mean being able to life flat, to be honest, it's a luxury good, right. And also like that the cost of of UH consumption for a lot of young people is coming down, like a China's a chancy just like elsewhere in US and then the UK. They don't need very much money or like they spend a lot of time on the internet right surfing on the internet, chat rooms and playing video games. It doesn't cost very much money, so they don't need to really earn that much, so they can afford it in a way. And also the parents. China has this major like only child policy, right, so the parents will be like, oh, that's my baby, and what can I do? I have to let them life that I want to get on with two what how the government's responded. But before I get to that, I wanted to ask you about young women facing particular challenges in this labor force. Tell us a bit more about that. So the best jobs for young women are in the services industries such as financial industry like UH and the media industry. And then like in China as in South Korea, like when when the young people apply for jobs they they need, they oftentimes are asked to attach a photo of themselves, right, So so young women start to feel that, oh, you know, if I I look better that that that makes me look a little bit more presentable. So a lot of them start to do a lot of clusters surgery like facelifts, you know, those jobs, so on, so forth, which is quite awful. H A while back, I also wrote about like aesthetics medicine in China, and then most of the demand don't come from older women but from eighteen to twenty four year olds, and it has become such a problem. And then like basically a facelift costs a lot of money and they don't have money for that, right, So so there are e commerce websites such as Ali baba um that uh, that give young women so called consumer loans to do those um a statics medicine procedures um. And then the government is calling a stop to that. They said that, you know, companies can no longer sell asset back securities which are backed by plastic facelift loans. Unbelievable. It's clearly alarming, I would think for China's government that has such big plans to to lead the world in several critical industries and become bigger and better and more skilled as a nation. To have young people dropping out like this, and how's the government responded, I mean present Shinping is very very worried that he he openly talked about like the lying flat problem phenomenon in China. And then like in October, so so like China that the State Council proposed this so called deal training program. It's it's essentially the German model. Like basically, China thinks that that the society is turning out too many fresh university graduates who just don't want to go to the factory flaws because they feel like, oh I I did four years of undergraduate that why do I want to go to the manufacturing sector? Right, So as a result, they decide to life flat and China things that society has too many of these people, and they want to have more young people go into um like so called the vocational training, like you know, you spend a few years learning skills in the school, but also a few more years you know, doing on the job training at the biggest blue chip companies such as Huawei or the China's power grid and that seems to be their their their solutions. They want more young people to go into high end manufacturing that does you know, electric evy supply chains or like chip manufacturing, and the China doesn't have enough of that right now. Is any of that working? Well, this is just a start. They just proposed this so called the German model in October. One problem is like, um, there is a little bit of a stigma when it comes to working on the factory floors, and the China's middle class families they don't really want their children to go into vocational school training, right, I mean the US that that hasn't been very successful either. So so what the state Council proposes that you know, some high, very high end like vocational schools. They should be able to offer bachelor's degrees as well. So so even though you are technically going to you know, um, the German model, you're still have a degree. So perhaps that will persuade the China's middle class families to allow their children to go into this kind of German uh deal track training programs. There's an awful lot of countries that have tried to be more German in particularly this respect. For many decades. Anybody who ever looks at the UK economy always concludes that we should be more German in our approach to education and have exactly this emphasis on technical skills and giving the same amount of esteem and regard to people doing engineering and working on the shop floors to people in universities. And it hasn't worked. They've been trying to do it for decades. Yeah, China will trial as well, I guess, but it certainly seems like the consequence of a new kind of China. When you say that, people say that it is demeaning to work on the shop on the shop floor in factories. Presumibly its people's parents originally did that. I mean, all of this development has happened in very few generations. I mean absolutely. My my father was a chemical engineer and that he did pretty well, like you know, like in the last two decades and basically exporting pollution, like you know, polluting the exporting products and stuff, and he did well. But he absolutely does not want me to go into engineering. He said it's tough work. And then he rather me you know, writing instead. Like the parents, they just don't want their children to go out to factory for and I think it's a sign that China is no longer really the typical virgin market. It kind of has emerged in a way, you know, like and you're and you're part of the problem, it seems, yeah, exactly, And the whole of time, I'm afraid cannot all work at Bloomberg. I'm afraid that Uliman, thank you so much for joining us, Thanks for having me so. Bloomberg has recently published a series of articles under the tagline of Race and Recovery, looking at how America's economic recovery is playing out in minority communities. There's some really eye opening data and stories about life in different parts of the economy in this series, and the final article came out this week and seemed to me particularly timely as the US Central Bank starts to talk about raising interest rates and we enter what feels like a new phase of the recovery. Andre Tartar is a data journalist for Bloomberg based in New York, and he's with me now. And the data you pulled together for this piece with Christopher Cannon this week paid a fascinating picture of US household spending through this pandemic period and particularly impact that government stimulus money has had on particular parts of the population. So just give us some of the big headlines from those numbers, sure thing, and thank you so much for having me. So we got access to spending data for just over a ten million people, a constant sample over time that allowed us to really kind of look for those trends and changes in spending behaviors. And the thing that we really kind of struck us was just how much spending had surged, in particular among black and lower income families, um And we could see the very clear uh impact of those federal stimulus checks, in part because both of those groups, black and lower income groups are much more reliant on debit card spending. And we could see in this data just how much the debit card usage kind of rows around the time of the stimulus checks because you're already spending what you have. You can only spend what you have in your account because you don't necessarily get credit exactly right. Whereas whereas, for instance, if you look at higher income spenders or you know, which you know also will capture a large portion of white and agent spenders, their use of credit is much much higher. They were clearly in this data and and other research has shown that they that those groups were much more able to hold back spending right in those first few months waiting this out, which is much harder for those groups which live a bit tighter, you know, month to month. What kind of numbers are we talking about in terms of just the impact of the of the stimulus packages relative to what they would have spent would have been spending in say, in the case of say spending by the black people in our sample, it was up almost um this past kind of spring and summer compared to twenty m minting levels, which is, you know, a trend that would not be seen normally, you know, even factoring in just normal economic growth, normal inflation, that is a really significant bump up um, you know, and there certainly are other factors at play, but you know, given kind of this, given the scope of that of that injection of cash really into into parts of economy, it was significant, and across the sample, I think it was even it was increase in spending, which only which only came back a certain amount when things like the unemployment benefits ran out in in the full absolutely, I mean as of October, which was the last month that we had data for overall spending across this group of about ten million Americans was still up about fifteen compared to twenty miniting levels. And we should just say briefly what this what this data was? Where did you get hold of these numbers? So this DADA comes from from a company called Affinity Solutions, Inc. Which have been incredibly generous in working with us and often partner with the FED academics to provide access to their data, which nationally covers more than a hundred million debit and credit cards UM and has an incredible amount of depth to it. So you know, it was really great Chricket access to this UM and being able to also use the data that they have linking demographics and income into this data, which is a very kind of complicated process that they undertake UM on their end, so you know, it really gives a lot of insights that otherwise are hard to get at that at that level of detail. It's so exciting when you get hold of a big, meaty data set like this and to have it been relatively timely as well as going through to October. And I have to say you do a fantastic job of making it come alive with some really lovely colorful graphics, which we're not doing justice too on the podcast. Right a shout out to Christopher Cannon on the graphics who made all those beautiful graphics and definitely recommend folks to go and a metical look. I mean, inflation poses a risk to this big increase in spending power. Right when we look forward to next year, are we potentially seeing this big improvement in in particularly black and Hispanic households spending power being being really hit by both inflation and potentially a slowing economy. I mean absolutely right. So this really kind of that injection of that federals federal simulus really closed a huge consumption gap and also showed us the kind of untapped potential right that exists in those communities who who just tend to have lower incomes and lower access to credit. So both so both kind of the fact that now most of that you know, additional cash has have been spent, and as you mentioned, inflation is going to begin to eat in to some of those core spending staple groups that just can't be avoided. Certainly foods, certainly gas are ones where you know, groups who have to go physically into work, who don't have a lot of ability to hold off spending or access credit. I think we will certainly see a very you know, a very likely a kind of a tempering or even a full on slow down of the spending recovery, which as we know, powers the vast majority of the U. S economy. So you know, it both has implications for the kind of equity side of the picture, but also just for the recovery more broadly. Yeah, and there's certainly a lesson if you if you want to stimulate the economy and get people to spend, give it to pull people who don't have enough money to buy the things they want to buy. There actually are some fascinating studies out there which have really shown though that that stimulus money, if you were a wealth your household, you basically saved it all right, So I mean, really it wasn't doing what it was meant to do. Of course, for reasons of you know, of efficiency, the idea was to just give checks all around. But as you mentioned, I mean, this data really shows that you can get the biggest bang for your stimulus buck by really sending it to those lower income households and communities of color, you know who kind of aren't being able to tap into their full consumption potential. It's a difficult challenge for the Federal reserver, right because they're supposed to be they're supposed to be focused on both stable inflation and full employment. They've said they're going to focus more on everybody's unemployment rate, not just the headline rate, and of course on black unemployment is still quite a lot higher, um than the than the average for the rest of the country, but they're kind of weighing up. Inflation hurts poor people, digs into their spending power, but not getting those jobs created, not bringing down unemployment hurts them too. It's a difficult challenge absolutely, um, I mean, and on top of that, there's also you know, there's a machine momentum that um, we are in where we have I think it's something like a ten million unful jobs, and yet we're still not seeing really that broad based, you know, decline in unemployment. So it really does present a very difficult obstacle course for the Fed policymakers, but also fantastic time to be doing data journalism. Thanks so much, Thank you, definitely, I really appreciate it. M H. Finally, at the start of the program. I think I promised to you the future of food is Hong Kong reporter Juan ha. It has the rain natty taste. That's Malaysian entrepreneur Kevin Wou describing the perfect burger that he wants to put into restaurants and grocery stores. So we added some spices to give it that kind of familiar beefy taste, the grounded beef taste. And we've added certain kind of hats like mushroom seasoning to give you that umami flavor. And the secret ingredient. We've perized our crickets, you heard right, crickets roasted and processed into a fine brown powder, and then we mix it with other plant based protein source. I think it's pretty tasty, especially when you when you look at the burglar, it looks at normal burger, small, normal burger, even sizzles like a normal burger. Who's the founder and CEO of Ento based in Kuala Lumpur. He's an evangelist for protein made from insects, and he's not alone. Startups from Europe, Asia and North America are joining the race for alternative proteins and say bugs are making their way to our dinner plates. It's the next big frontier for planet friendly sustainable protein after fake meat. If you were to compare one kilogram of beef versus one kilogram of cricket powder um, it will require tolf times last feet, twenty times less land, two thousand times less water, and amid two thousand times less greenhouse gas emissions. So, in its most natural form, insect based protein has already high enriched levels of proteins and other macro nutrients. And in an into promotional video, taste testers who tried the company's cricket snacks gave it a thumbs up. There's like sugars, red clunchy like chips and stuff like that. Actually thottle taste are crickets. There's also a sustainability reason why edible bugs are on the menu. Constant Tetter is CEO of Fly Farm. You know protein is needed, It's going to be an increasing need as the human population expands. His company is setting up industrial farms to harvest black Soldier fly larvae. You know that those needs cannot be met sustainable, and so insect farming has a giant potential to be able to alter that entire protein landscape, whether that use is going directly to humans, or whether it's going to feed that then go to animals that then go to humans. Tedder and other industry insiders say insect protein is gaining momentum. The industry was worth just a little under a billion dollars in nine and Barclay's estimates it will be an eight billion dollar market. Still, there's a lot of ketchup that bug protein needs to do to challenge the plant based protein industry that's now thirty billion dollars strong. The market has matured massively in the last couple of couple of years. Katharina Unger's company Live in Farms is building industrial scale automated factories that grow and harvest the larvae of black soldier flies. The CEO says, one of the biggest obstacles standing in the way of insect protein being accepted as food is the yuck factor. I didn't grow up loving insects or loving the idea of eating insects. On the contrary, my hands were shaking when I was first doing doing it, you know, and I really had to also myself get over this. This concept of eating a larva. Larvae is the industry's preferred term for what most people would describe our living writhing maggots. So far, many of those willing to try larvae and other critters are young consumers looking to make planet friendly choices. Here's wu from into our current segments, mostly urban, affluent millennials, who are aware about the negative impact that traditional agriculture and meat based production has on our planet. Some of the world's major producers are betting on that sustainability value proposition. There are now investing millions of dollars to help bring crickets, beetles, meal worms, and fly larvae to mouths around the world, and the market may not need that much prodding. Globally, more than two billion people already eat insects. According to the United Nations, nearly two thousand types of bugs are edible, and that's catching the attention of food producers. The company Chicken of the Sea Tuna Thai Union launched a thirty million venture fund to invest in alternative proteins. It's invested in three insect protein startups so far, including an Israeli company that's working on tuna from fruit fly larvae. Antoine Hubert is CEO of insect in France. So the two main trends are execually meat replacements and false in efficient serial or an eergy drinks, which was the first market before it would be the first grow where it's more about performance and not about tastes. The company is building some of the biggest industrial insect farms after attracting millions of dollars in investments from venture capitalists and Hollywood star Robert Downey Jr. Who Bear says the industry got a big boost when European Union lawmakers passed legislation this year to allow insects to be fed to farm animals. Last week, crickets were approved as food for humans. They joined meal worms and locusts to get the green light to be marketed in Europe. Lawmakers are also considering nearly a dozen other insects seeking approval to be sold as food. Clearlier, the Europe is a more advance framework there, which is then helping companies to innovate Row, which invests with the visibility and investors that there are more stronger insurance of success because the markets are there. The company is selling burger patties made from buffalo meal worm protein that's being offered in restaurants and grocery stores in Austria and Denmark. Meal worm protein has a nutty mild taste and it's being used in baked goods and pastas. But the company's bigger business now and for the next few years is selling bug protein as feed for animals. Food giants from Cargil to Archer Daniels Midland are putting money into such initiatives. Katharina Unger of Living Farms sees that as the low hanging fruit, turning insects into pet food or as feed for farm animals and fish, our customers in the food and feet industry. They typically make six digit losses on their food waste, disposing it at a cost to biogas digestors. A new planet friendly regulations to cut waste and emissions in Europe and elsewhere put insects front and center to upscale organic food waste. Anger's company has contracts to build three plants next year in Europe and Asia for food and beverage companies. Live in Farms plans to work with the likes of breweries, bakeries and juice makers that produce tons of organic waste. With our solution, they can produce higher value products that they can sell so they turn their losses into revenues and into an emission saving process. We save about sevent of emissions turning the waste into insect proteins. The bug protein will be sold to pet food producers, while insect oil and excrement called frast is sold as fertilizer. Who bear of insect also sees more our money and investment over the next few years for bug protein and more acceptance by consumers. So we will have thousands of in six months in the world. That's that's supporting this more fest nipple food system. You will see insect on the menu everywhere. It would be a normal You won't eat it every day, of course, but it will be no more to sit on the menu in the restaurants, no more to sit in the supermarkets. The company's third factory comes online next year near Paris. It says that will be the world's largest insect farm in the world. For Bloomberg News, I'm one hard. That's it for this episode of Stephonomics. Will be back next week with a special Christmas episode of Stephonomics featuring the one, the Only Larry Summers. In the meantime, if you like the program, please rate it and follow at economics on Twitter for more news analysis from Bloomberg Economics. This episode was produced by Magnus Hendrickson. As we mentioned earlier, Christopher Cannon worked with Andrew Tarter on that report on US household spending. Special thanks also to Shulei Wren, Tom Hancock, and Juan Haa. Mike Sasso is executive producer of Stephonomics and the head of Bloomberg Podcast is Francesca Levy.

Wow, she was like sugar red, qunchy like chips and stuff like that. Actually, the days are crickets. Hello and welcome to Stephanomics, the podcast that brings the global economy to you. What you heard there might well be your Christmas dinner in a few years time. Keep listening to find out what those lucky people were tasting why it might just save the world. We also tell you about a new treasure trove of data showing just how much federal stimulus checks have boosted the spending of black and Hispanic families and how inflation and a slower economy could take them back to square one. But first tune in, drop out, Live flat. Their parents may have worked twelve hour days for decades, supporting China's breakneck economic growth, but a growing number of young people in this famously industrious nation would rather not work at all. You could say it was the Asian counterpart to the Great Resignation that has business executives scratching their heads in the US and Europe. But the life flat movement also tells us quite a lot about how Chinese society has changed, and it could even put the government's grand plans for the future at risk. In a minute, I'll discuss all of that with Bloomberg opinion columnist Truly Rehn. But first here is our Hong Kong based China economy reporter Tom Hancock. In what has been branded as the Great Resignation, US workers are quitting their jobs in record numbers. More than twenty four million did so from April to September this year. Millions have dropped permanently out of the labor force, and similar trends are being seen in parts of Europe. But even in China, where coronavirus has been kept largely under control and the economy has doubled in size in the last decade, people are having similar feelings. The country's live flat movement, jump started by a social media post, is also about opting out. It's a reaction against the system in which are grueling nine six work schedule nine am to nine pm, six days a week is common in industries like technology, so is unrelenting pressure from family, society, and even the government to keep climbing the ladder. In October, thousands of employees at Chinese tech giants, including Ali Baba Group and the owner of TikTok groused about their long work hours in an online campaign called workers Lives Matter and It's not just a white color phenomenon. In the southern city of Shenjen, migrant workers from the countryside, once celebrated for being willing to work tough jobs in manufacturing, are rejecting manual jobs and sometimes prefer to spend their time playing online games, picking up day jobs as needed. Some see parallels between lie flat sentiment in China and similar ideas that emerged in Japan in the ninety nineties after its economic growth slowed sharply, suggesting China might be facing impending Japan style stagnation, but others argue it's more like the nineteen sixties style counterculture movements that cropped up in the US and Europe in a period of affluence, with ordinary people seeking a lower pressure society that's more focused on personal development the material success. That's the view of Chenza Young, a twenty five year old who lives in shen Jen while studying for a master's degree online. The society needs more definition about sucsass at the people around you are doing so well, or you are all competing for the same job or for the same kind of success, so you kind of like fear you are gonna laughed out, so some people just give up. Even though China, the US and Europe are very different economies, we can connect China's lying flat discussion with the concept of the great resignation in developed countries, says Young Bio, director of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Germany. Both are about questioning the pursuit of wealth at an individual and a social level. They emerge at at the same time, and we can make a connection and the even links to bigger idea such as the growths such as a sustainability and this is somehow all related because it is about the overheating about US society. They become a excessively completed too, and just not as sustainable, not only in terms of environmental extraction, but also the mental the mental abendance is not as sustainable. Among the new dropouts is Melana Cooler, a twenty six year old from Germany who lost her job at the height of the pandemic last year. She has chosen to set up an environmentally sustainable commune in the countryside rather than seeking full time work. Am I enough just the way I am? Or do I constantly needs new equipment, new material, new goods in my life, new experiences to feel full in some form. So that's something I've really changed. Here in developed countries, pressure has been building for decades. Incomes of stagnated, job security has become precarious, and the costs of housing and education of sword making it harder to build a financially stable life. Melana story indicates how the pandemic has sometimes converted those simmering concerns into action. Will the Great Resignation and Life Let have a longer term impact. While they are a challenge to conventional ideas about work and consumption, Cimball points out that they seem to lack specific demands about how to change society. Many will be waiting to see if those ideas emerge. For Bloomberg News, I'm Tom Hancock in Hong Kong, so I wanted to talk a bit more about lying Flat and what it tells us about China's future with Bloomberg Opinion columnists Shuli Wren in Hong Kong. Shuli, welcome to Stephanomics. I love the opening line of a columny wrote the other day, China's young people are stressed out. I mean, there are there are concrete forces making young people's lives more stressful in China and the live flat movement, it's just one reaction to that, so tell us more absolutely definitely so so like after the Chinese governments a big tack and big real estate developer crackdown like that actually ruined a lot of the job prospects for China's young people, especially those fresh university graduates. I mean, China has been training about ten million university graduates every year, and in the past they already struggled to find good jobs, and now the jobs are even fewer than before. And then like in the graduating class of only one third decided to go into the job market, with another third saying, oh, I'm just going to try to, you know, go out to grad school because you know, like when there's a reception, everyone applies for grass school, right, some young people they just say, oh, I'm just going to take some time off, lie on my parents cultures, and figure out what they want to do. And I guess one of the one of the things that's happening is that you know, China's getting richer as a country and now it can have dropouts just the way that you know, the US had dropouts in the sixties. Absolutely, I mean being able to life flat, to be honest, it's a luxury good, right. And also like that the cost of of UH consumption for a lot of young people is coming down, like a China's a chancy just like elsewhere in US and then the UK. They don't need very much money or like they spend a lot of time on the internet right surfing on the internet, chat rooms and playing video games. It doesn't cost very much money, so they don't need to really earn that much, so they can afford it in a way. And also the parents. China has this major like only child policy, right, so the parents will be like, oh, that's my baby, and what can I do? I have to let them life that I want to get on with two what how the government's responded. But before I get to that, I wanted to ask you about young women facing particular challenges in this labor force. Tell us a bit more about that. So the best jobs for young women are in the services industries such as financial industry like UH and the media industry. And then like in China as in South Korea, like when when the young people apply for jobs they they need, they oftentimes are asked to attach a photo of themselves, right, So so young women start to feel that, oh, you know, if I I look better that that that makes me look a little bit more presentable. So a lot of them start to do a lot of clusters surgery like facelifts, you know, those jobs, so on, so forth, which is quite awful. H A while back, I also wrote about like aesthetics medicine in China, and then most of the demand don't come from older women but from eighteen to twenty four year olds, and it has become such a problem. And then like basically a facelift costs a lot of money and they don't have money for that, right, So so there are e commerce websites such as Ali baba um that uh, that give young women so called consumer loans to do those um a statics medicine procedures um. And then the government is calling a stop to that. They said that, you know, companies can no longer sell asset back securities which are backed by plastic facelift loans. Unbelievable. It's clearly alarming, I would think for China's government that has such big plans to to lead the world in several critical industries and become bigger and better and more skilled as a nation. To have young people dropping out like this, and how's the government responded, I mean present Shinping is very very worried that he he openly talked about like the lying flat problem phenomenon in China. And then like in October, so so like China that the State Council proposed this so called deal training program. It's it's essentially the German model. Like basically, China thinks that that the society is turning out too many fresh university graduates who just don't want to go to the factory flaws because they feel like, oh I I did four years of undergraduate that why do I want to go to the manufacturing sector? Right, So as a result, they decide to life flat and China things that society has too many of these people, and they want to have more young people go into um like so called the vocational training, like you know, you spend a few years learning skills in the school, but also a few more years you know, doing on the job training at the biggest blue chip companies such as Huawei or the China's power grid and that seems to be their their their solutions. They want more young people to go into high end manufacturing that does you know, electric evy supply chains or like chip manufacturing, and the China doesn't have enough of that right now. Is any of that working? Well, this is just a start. They just proposed this so called the German model in October. One problem is like, um, there is a little bit of a stigma when it comes to working on the factory floors, and the China's middle class families they don't really want their children to go into vocational school training, right, I mean the US that that hasn't been very successful either. So so what the state Council proposes that you know, some high, very high end like vocational schools. They should be able to offer bachelor's degrees as well. So so even though you are technically going to you know, um, the German model, you're still have a degree. So perhaps that will persuade the China's middle class families to allow their children to go into this kind of German uh deal track training programs. There's an awful lot of countries that have tried to be more German in particularly this respect. For many decades. Anybody who ever looks at the UK economy always concludes that we should be more German in our approach to education and have exactly this emphasis on technical skills and giving the same amount of esteem and regard to people doing engineering and working on the shop floors to people in universities. And it hasn't worked. They've been trying to do it for decades. Yeah, China will trial as well, I guess, but it certainly seems like the consequence of a new kind of China. When you say that, people say that it is demeaning to work on the shop on the shop floor in factories. Presumibly its people's parents originally did that. I mean, all of this development has happened in very few generations. I mean absolutely. My my father was a chemical engineer and that he did pretty well, like you know, like in the last two decades and basically exporting pollution, like you know, polluting the exporting products and stuff, and he did well. But he absolutely does not want me to go into engineering. He said it's tough work. And then he rather me you know, writing instead. Like the parents, they just don't want their children to go out to factory for and I think it's a sign that China is no longer really the typical virgin market. It kind of has emerged in a way, you know, like and you're and you're part of the problem, it seems, yeah, exactly, And the whole of time, I'm afraid cannot all work at Bloomberg. I'm afraid that Uliman, thank you so much for joining us, Thanks for having me so. Bloomberg has recently published a series of articles under the tagline of Race and Recovery, looking at how America's economic recovery is playing out in minority communities. There's some really eye opening data and stories about life in different parts of the economy in this series, and the final article came out this week and seemed to me particularly timely as the US Central Bank starts to talk about raising interest rates and we enter what feels like a new phase of the recovery. Andre Tartar is a data journalist for Bloomberg based in New York, and he's with me now. And the data you pulled together for this piece with Christopher Cannon this week paid a fascinating picture of US household spending through this pandemic period and particularly impact that government stimulus money has had on particular parts of the population. So just give us some of the big headlines from those numbers, sure thing, and thank you so much for having me. So we got access to spending data for just over a ten million people, a constant sample over time that allowed us to really kind of look for those trends and changes in spending behaviors. And the thing that we really kind of struck us was just how much spending had surged, in particular among black and lower income families, um And we could see the very clear uh impact of those federal stimulus checks, in part because both of those groups, black and lower income groups are much more reliant on debit card spending. And we could see in this data just how much the debit card usage kind of rows around the time of the stimulus checks because you're already spending what you have. You can only spend what you have in your account because you don't necessarily get credit exactly right. Whereas whereas, for instance, if you look at higher income spenders or you know, which you know also will capture a large portion of white and agent spenders, their use of credit is much much higher. They were clearly in this data and and other research has shown that they that those groups were much more able to hold back spending right in those first few months waiting this out, which is much harder for those groups which live a bit tighter, you know, month to month. What kind of numbers are we talking about in terms of just the impact of the of the stimulus packages relative to what they would have spent would have been spending in say, in the case of say spending by the black people in our sample, it was up almost um this past kind of spring and summer compared to twenty m minting levels, which is, you know, a trend that would not be seen normally, you know, even factoring in just normal economic growth, normal inflation, that is a really significant bump up um, you know, and there certainly are other factors at play, but you know, given kind of this, given the scope of that of that injection of cash really into into parts of economy, it was significant, and across the sample, I think it was even it was increase in spending, which only which only came back a certain amount when things like the unemployment benefits ran out in in the full absolutely, I mean as of October, which was the last month that we had data for overall spending across this group of about ten million Americans was still up about fifteen compared to twenty miniting levels. And we should just say briefly what this what this data was? Where did you get hold of these numbers? So this DADA comes from from a company called Affinity Solutions, Inc. Which have been incredibly generous in working with us and often partner with the FED academics to provide access to their data, which nationally covers more than a hundred million debit and credit cards UM and has an incredible amount of depth to it. So you know, it was really great Chricket access to this UM and being able to also use the data that they have linking demographics and income into this data, which is a very kind of complicated process that they undertake UM on their end, so you know, it really gives a lot of insights that otherwise are hard to get at that at that level of detail. It's so exciting when you get hold of a big, meaty data set like this and to have it been relatively timely as well as going through to October. And I have to say you do a fantastic job of making it come alive with some really lovely colorful graphics, which we're not doing justice too on the podcast. Right a shout out to Christopher Cannon on the graphics who made all those beautiful graphics and definitely recommend folks to go and a metical look. I mean, inflation poses a risk to this big increase in spending power. Right when we look forward to next year, are we potentially seeing this big improvement in in particularly black and Hispanic households spending power being being really hit by both inflation and potentially a slowing economy. I mean absolutely right. So this really kind of that injection of that federals federal simulus really closed a huge consumption gap and also showed us the kind of untapped potential right that exists in those communities who who just tend to have lower incomes and lower access to credit. So both so both kind of the fact that now most of that you know, additional cash has have been spent, and as you mentioned, inflation is going to begin to eat in to some of those core spending staple groups that just can't be avoided. Certainly foods, certainly gas are ones where you know, groups who have to go physically into work, who don't have a lot of ability to hold off spending or access credit. I think we will certainly see a very you know, a very likely a kind of a tempering or even a full on slow down of the spending recovery, which as we know, powers the vast majority of the U. S economy. So you know, it both has implications for the kind of equity side of the picture, but also just for the recovery more broadly. Yeah, and there's certainly a lesson if you if you want to stimulate the economy and get people to spend, give it to pull people who don't have enough money to buy the things they want to buy. There actually are some fascinating studies out there which have really shown though that that stimulus money, if you were a wealth your household, you basically saved it all right, So I mean, really it wasn't doing what it was meant to do. Of course, for reasons of you know, of efficiency, the idea was to just give checks all around. But as you mentioned, I mean, this data really shows that you can get the biggest bang for your stimulus buck by really sending it to those lower income households and communities of color, you know who kind of aren't being able to tap into their full consumption potential. It's a difficult challenge for the Federal reserver, right because they're supposed to be they're supposed to be focused on both stable inflation and full employment. They've said they're going to focus more on everybody's unemployment rate, not just the headline rate, and of course on black unemployment is still quite a lot higher, um than the than the average for the rest of the country, but they're kind of weighing up. Inflation hurts poor people, digs into their spending power, but not getting those jobs created, not bringing down unemployment hurts them too. It's a difficult challenge absolutely, um, I mean, and on top of that, there's also you know, there's a machine momentum that um, we are in where we have I think it's something like a ten million unful jobs, and yet we're still not seeing really that broad based, you know, decline in unemployment. So it really does present a very difficult obstacle course for the Fed policymakers, but also fantastic time to be doing data journalism. Thanks so much, Thank you, definitely, I really appreciate it. M H. Finally, at the start of the program. I think I promised to you the future of food is Hong Kong reporter Juan ha. It has the rain natty taste. That's Malaysian entrepreneur Kevin Wou describing the perfect burger that he wants to put into restaurants and grocery stores. So we added some spices to give it that kind of familiar beefy taste, the grounded beef taste. And we've added certain kind of hats like mushroom seasoning to give you that umami flavor. And the secret ingredient. We've perized our crickets, you heard right, crickets roasted and processed into a fine brown powder, and then we mix it with other plant based protein source. I think it's pretty tasty, especially when you when you look at the burglar, it looks at normal burger, small, normal burger, even sizzles like a normal burger. Who's the founder and CEO of Ento based in Kuala Lumpur. He's an evangelist for protein made from insects, and he's not alone. Startups from Europe, Asia and North America are joining the race for alternative proteins and say bugs are making their way to our dinner plates. It's the next big frontier for planet friendly sustainable protein after fake meat. If you were to compare one kilogram of beef versus one kilogram of cricket powder um, it will require tolf times last feet, twenty times less land, two thousand times less water, and amid two thousand times less greenhouse gas emissions. So, in its most natural form, insect based protein has already high enriched levels of proteins and other macro nutrients. And in an into promotional video, taste testers who tried the company's cricket snacks gave it a thumbs up. There's like sugars, red clunchy like chips and stuff like that. Actually thottle taste are crickets. There's also a sustainability reason why edible bugs are on the menu. Constant Tetter is CEO of Fly Farm. You know protein is needed, It's going to be an increasing need as the human population expands. His company is setting up industrial farms to harvest black Soldier fly larvae. You know that those needs cannot be met sustainable, and so insect farming has a giant potential to be able to alter that entire protein landscape, whether that use is going directly to humans, or whether it's going to feed that then go to animals that then go to humans. Tedder and other industry insiders say insect protein is gaining momentum. The industry was worth just a little under a billion dollars in nine and Barclay's estimates it will be an eight billion dollar market. Still, there's a lot of ketchup that bug protein needs to do to challenge the plant based protein industry that's now thirty billion dollars strong. The market has matured massively in the last couple of couple of years. Katharina Unger's company Live in Farms is building industrial scale automated factories that grow and harvest the larvae of black soldier flies. The CEO says, one of the biggest obstacles standing in the way of insect protein being accepted as food is the yuck factor. I didn't grow up loving insects or loving the idea of eating insects. On the contrary, my hands were shaking when I was first doing doing it, you know, and I really had to also myself get over this. This concept of eating a larva. Larvae is the industry's preferred term for what most people would describe our living writhing maggots. So far, many of those willing to try larvae and other critters are young consumers looking to make planet friendly choices. Here's wu from into our current segments, mostly urban, affluent millennials, who are aware about the negative impact that traditional agriculture and meat based production has on our planet. Some of the world's major producers are betting on that sustainability value proposition. There are now investing millions of dollars to help bring crickets, beetles, meal worms, and fly larvae to mouths around the world, and the market may not need that much prodding. Globally, more than two billion people already eat insects. According to the United Nations, nearly two thousand types of bugs are edible, and that's catching the attention of food producers. The company Chicken of the Sea Tuna Thai Union launched a thirty million venture fund to invest in alternative proteins. It's invested in three insect protein startups so far, including an Israeli company that's working on tuna from fruit fly larvae. Antoine Hubert is CEO of insect in France. So the two main trends are execually meat replacements and false in efficient serial or an eergy drinks, which was the first market before it would be the first grow where it's more about performance and not about tastes. The company is building some of the biggest industrial insect farms after attracting millions of dollars in investments from venture capitalists and Hollywood star Robert Downey Jr. Who Bear says the industry got a big boost when European Union lawmakers passed legislation this year to allow insects to be fed to farm animals. Last week, crickets were approved as food for humans. They joined meal worms and locusts to get the green light to be marketed in Europe. Lawmakers are also considering nearly a dozen other insects seeking approval to be sold as food. Clearlier, the Europe is a more advance framework there, which is then helping companies to innovate Row, which invests with the visibility and investors that there are more stronger insurance of success because the markets are there. The company is selling burger patties made from buffalo meal worm protein that's being offered in restaurants and grocery stores in Austria and Denmark. Meal worm protein has a nutty mild taste and it's being used in baked goods and pastas. But the company's bigger business now and for the next few years is selling bug protein as feed for animals. Food giants from Cargil to Archer Daniels Midland are putting money into such initiatives. Katharina Unger of Living Farms sees that as the low hanging fruit, turning insects into pet food or as feed for farm animals and fish, our customers in the food and feet industry. They typically make six digit losses on their food waste, disposing it at a cost to biogas digestors. A new planet friendly regulations to cut waste and emissions in Europe and elsewhere put insects front and center to upscale organic food waste. Anger's company has contracts to build three plants next year in Europe and Asia for food and beverage companies. Live in Farms plans to work with the likes of breweries, bakeries and juice makers that produce tons of organic waste. With our solution, they can produce higher value products that they can sell so they turn their losses into revenues and into an emission saving process. We save about sevent of emissions turning the waste into insect proteins. The bug protein will be sold to pet food producers, while insect oil and excrement called frast is sold as fertilizer. Who bear of insect also sees more our money and investment over the next few years for bug protein and more acceptance by consumers. So we will have thousands of in six months in the world. That's that's supporting this more fest nipple food system. You will see insect on the menu everywhere. It would be a normal You won't eat it every day, of course, but it will be no more to sit on the menu in the restaurants, no more to sit in the supermarkets. The company's third factory comes online next year near Paris. It says that will be the world's largest insect farm in the world. For Bloomberg News, I'm one hard. That's it for this episode of Stephonomics. Will be back next week with a special Christmas episode of Stephonomics featuring the one, the Only Larry Summers. In the meantime, if you like the program, please rate it and follow at economics on Twitter for more news analysis from Bloomberg Economics. This episode was produced by Magnus Hendrickson. As we mentioned earlier, Christopher Cannon worked with Andrew Tarter on that report on US household spending. Special thanks also to Shulei Wren, Tom Hancock, and Juan Haa. Mike Sasso is executive producer of Stephonomics and the head of Bloomberg Podcast is Francesca Levy.