The Daily Feather — A Super Twist on the Irish Flu
Call in sick with the flu today? You’re not alone. According to Axios, the Irish Flu, from which I often suffered in my 20s on Wall Street, has a kissing cousin: “The day after Super Bowl LVIII, about 16.1 million employees are expected to come down with ‘Super Bowl Flu,’ according to the UKG Workforce Institute. So many employees call in sick on ‘Super Sick Monday,’ petitions and even state lawmakers are trying to make it an official holiday.” While we empathize with the spirit of lawmakers in the Volunteer State, we Italians at QI take issue with a bipartisan effort in Tennessee to “scrap” Columbus Day. That would be the tradeoff in legislation introduced last week. Per CBS Sports’ reporting, there is sound logic to declaring a national holiday: “If you turn the day after the game into a holiday, then people can get as crazy as they want at their Super Bowl party and not have to worry about working the next day. Also, kids would be able to watch the entire game and not have to worry about attending school the next day.”
From a pure productivity standpoint, employers should be heartened that absences are expected to decline to 16.1 million from last year’s 18.8 million who said they wouldn’t show up for work. Economically speaking, this reflects the withering of the Great Resignation, which has been replaced by the Big Stay, a term coined fittingly by ADP economist Nela Richardson into today’s deepening layoff cycle. Last week, PYMNTS reported that 38% of workers expected their inflation-adjusted earnings to rise in 2024, down from 43% last year. Bucking their nihilist reputation, “Among millennials, 48% expect a real increase in their earnings in 2024, down from 61% last year. Gen Z consumers mirror those expectations, with 46% expecting a real increase in their earnings in 2024, a drop from 54% in 2023. We note that these are the age groups that are finding the most difficulty in meeting the burdens of their card obligations, as measured in the delinquency rates just published by the Federal Reserve.”