Labor

First McDonalds, then Wendy's, soon Carl's Jr., and now KFC. The minimum-wage-driven automation of the lower-end of the workforce is accelerating...

Submitted by Nick Bernabe via TheAntiMedia.org,

Colonel Sanders is raising a robot army to serve fried chicken at a restaurant near you. KFC’s first automated restaurant, called Original+, went live in Shanghai on April 25th, complete with an artificially intelligent robot manager named “Du Mi” who works at the front counter.

Submitted by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

In direct response to higher wage prices and the firming of commodity prices, Wendy’s is going to install self-service ordering kiosks at 6,000 locations. McDonald’s is expected to follow at a slower pace.

Investors Business Daily reports Wendy’s Serves Up Big Kiosk Expansion As Wage Hikes Hit Fast Food.

Tax revenues for the state of California have come in nearly a billion dollars below projections, which is causing Governor Jerry Brown to amend his $171 billion spending plan that was just proposed in January.

As Reuters reports, California's tax revenues came in $869 million less than forecast for the first four months of the year. Governor brown is now expected to cut some of the proposed spending increases in education, healthcare and infrastructure as a result of the miss.

The last great hope indicator of the bullish narrative appears to have broken as today's initial jobless claims soars 20k to 294k - the highest since Feb 2015. Seemingly confirming the dismal payroll print, one can only wonder how long before this catches 'down' to the weakness in PMI/ISM survey employment data and the hard macro data. The last 3 weeks have seen initial claims soar by the most since 2005...

This is the first time claims have risen YoY since Nov 2012...

Catch 'up' time...