Mar 06 2023 16 mins
Dr. Bill Conerly connects the dots between the economy and business. He is a business economics consultant, a Senior Contributor to Forbes, and holds a Ph.D. from Duke University. He has worked in economics and corporate planning at two Fortune 500 corporations and a major bank, where he was a senior vice president.
In this conversation, Nick interviews Dr. Bill Conerly, a business economics consultant who helps business leaders understand how the economy is impacting them. Dr. Conerly works with CFOs in corporate America, providing forecasting and suggesting items that should be on their to-do list, such as addressing the tight labor market. He believes the US is headed for a recession in late 2023 or early 2024, but it will be moderate.
Despite the inverted economic outlook with respect to low unemployment rates, he thinks this supports his thesis as layoffs headlines always come before actual layoffs, and initial claims for unemployment insurance are headed down. Dr. Conerly advises CFOs to think flexibly in an uncertain environment and to be prepared for multiple scenarios.
In Bill's opinion, the institutional knowledge that employees possess is important. This should be accounted for as an asset on the balance sheet.
The cost of labor is also going up, and the cost of technology is coming down. Bill believes that robots may take away mundane tasks from accounting and finance jobs, but human judgment is important in determining the correct numbers and being creative in finding solutions, which cannot be supplanted by technology.