Is America Going Sober? & The Decline of the Working Man

0:00Tuesday on NBC, Jimmy Fallon and Bozma St John host the highly anticipated new competition show. I hired 10 creatives from all walks of life. They will be battling it out to see who can impress the world's biggest brands. This is a huge opportunity. This is the battle for the next big idea. This is not play play. We're spending millions of dollars. I'm so excited to embark on this adventure with all of you. Make the best idea win! On Brand with Jimmy Fallon. Series premiere Tuesday on NBC.

0:34Good Morning Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, it's a he session. Why men are finding it so hard to land jobs. Then pour one out for the alcohol industry. Americans are laying off the booze in record numbers. It's Thursday, August 14th. Let's ride.

0:55Good morning and happy Thursday. As any visitor to Chicago knows, you simply must snap a selfie in front of The Bean, a famous sculpture in Millennium Park. But are you unwittingly taking a picture of a prison? For the last two weeks, a group calling themselves Man in Bean has been protesting outside the artwork, saying that there is a man trapped in the bean. As one of them said in a now viral video, in 2004, Anish Kapoor, the chief architect of the bean, stole a baby and put that baby inside the bean. We're calling for the immediate release of the man trapped inside the bean. Don't believe these guys?

1:32Well, they say if you look closely when the sun hits the bean just right, you can see the faint outline of the man. Toby, comedy stunt or shocking conspiracy? The man in the bean conspiracy is growing to such a scale that a local councilman had to step in and put an end to the rumors. I am happy to confirm that a man has not been trapped inside Cloud Gate, a.k.a. the bean bath 21 years, Brendan Riley said in this statement. In fact, the man was freed years ago. So further, we can neither confirm nor deny that Soldier Field is actually a flying saucer. So clearly in on the bit. But then he got a little bit more serious and said, I appreciate a lighthearted parody as much as the next guy.

2:09However, this online hoax has led to a heavy uptick in calls to my office. So respect the commitment to the bit, but also respect the dude saying, hey, as soon as it makes my job a little bit harder, the bits got to end. So, yes, there's no one trapped inside the bean, maybe. And now a word from our sponsor, LinkedIn Ads. We talked a lot about bad ads this week. Yeah, mine never calls. Ads, Toby, not dads. I know, I know. I'm kidding. My dad's great. You know who else you can depend on? LinkedIn Ads. They can help you stop wasting resources like money, time, and effort, like 71 % of B2B ads. They can find the right audience for your brand, and they never go out to buy cigarettes for weeks at a time.

2:51They've got over 130 million decision makers, more than 10 million C-suite execs, aka the people you need for your business on their platform, target by job title, industry company, and more. So try LinkedIn ads. LinkedIn will even give you a$100 credit on your next campaign so you can try it yourself. Just go to linkedin.com slash mbd. That's linkedin.com slash mbd. Terms and conditions apply only on LinkedIn ads. Next time you say cheers at a birthday party, look around at the contents of people's glasses. About half of them won't be filled with alcohol. According to Gallup's latest consumption habit survey, only 54 % of Americans reported drinking alcohol over the last year compared to 58 % the year prior and 62 % in 2023.

3:36That is now officially the lowest percentage since Gallup began tracking alcohol drinking habits going back nine decades. The reason for the steady and consistent drop, people know that drinking is bad for you. A majority of Americans surveyed, 53%, say that drinking is bad for your health up from 45 % last year. That's the first time ever in the survey's 90-year history that over half of America agreed with what your doc has long been warning you of. Even moderate drinking is bad for you. That has pushed average intake down to below three drinks a week, the lowest it's been since 1996, while 40 % of people said it's been more than a week since their last drink, the highest percentage since 2000.

4:16This drop-off is happening across all demographic groups too, regardless of age, income level, gender, and even political affiliation. Only 46 % of Republicans reported drinking this past year, a drop of 19 points from two years ago. Democrats, meanwhile, clipped three points off from 64 % to 61 % over that period. Neil, alcohol is tied up with the very fabric of human civilization dating back to the dawn of our species. Are we witnessing the end of drinking here? What's fascinating is that Gallup noted that people aren't shifting to other mind-altering substances to substitute for drinking. They wrote that the decline in alcohol consumption does not appear to be caused by people shifting to other substances, in particular recreational marijuana, which is now legal in about half of U.S.

5:05states. They also called out GLP-1 drugs like Wegovy and ZepBound and said that's not really influencing this decline in consumption of alcohol that we are seeing. It does seem to have to do with the changing scientific consensus. A few decades ago, there were a few papers published that said one to two glasses of red wine was actually good for your heart. Now scientists are realizing that that is not true. The outgoing Surgeon General Vivek Murthy earlier this year recommended we put labels on bottles of beer, wine and liquor similar to cigarettes, showing that there is a well-established preventable cause of cancer responsible for about 100 ,000 cases of cancer and 20 ,000 cancer deaths annually linked back to alcohol.

5:53And economics probably plays a role as well because, you know, over the past few years, if people have gotten more squeezed, discretionary spending is going to fall a little bit and a lot of that money would go to alcohol. And the type of alcohol that's getting hit the worst seems to be beer. Gallup said that there was a record low number of people who claimed beer was their alcoholic beverage of choice. In the early 90s at the peak, 47 % of respondents said beer was their drink of choice. Now it's down to 34%, which is on par with wine and beer companies are getting smacked. AB InBev, which is the biggest beer company in the world, has reported beer sales are falling for nine consecutive quarters.

6:34The guy hopped on the earnings call, the CEO, and one of the things he touted was that non-alcoholic beer revenue was up by 33%. So clearly people are shying away from those IPAs. And if I was being dramatic, saying like, are we witnessing the end of drinking? This stat alone probably shows that it is a real possibility that it will be a long and slow decline because 66 % of 18 to 34-year-olds, you know, kids who technically should be the ones who are getting into drinking, they believe that drinking in moderation is bad for your health as well. So that is, you know, two-thirds of kids growing up now are not saying we're going to go the abstinence route instead.

7:12We know it's not good for us. So if you wanted a data point that says maybe drinking is on this long, slow decline, that's probably your data point. And much of the global population growth is happening in countries and areas where people don't drink their Muslim majority. So I would say that's maybe another data point to show that perhaps we have reached peak booze. There's a strange and concerning dynamic going on in the labor market. If you are a young guy who just graduated college, you are less likely to have a job than a guy who doesn't have an undergrad degree. An NBC News analysis found that the unemployment rate for men ages 23 to 30 with bachelor's degree has risen to 6%, which is higher than the unemployment rate for young men with high school diplomas.

7:56And compared to young women, it's not a fair fight. Young women with bachelor's degree have a low 3.5 % unemployment rate. Plus, they are likelier to be employed if they graduated from college than women who didn't. The evaporation of what's known as the college employability premium. The idea that if you went to college, your job prospects should increase is alarming economists who are scrambling to figure out why men and young men specifically are falling behind in today's labor market. Because it's a clear pattern that's showing up in other data. Young men are likelier than young women to be financially dependent on their parents.

8:31According to a Pew survey last year, 74 % of women say they're mostly financially independent compared to 62 % of young men. And male participation in the labor force has been declining significantly since the Great Recession. Toby, labor experts have been flummoxed by a recent spike in joblessness for recent grads. And it's become clear that the unemployment rise is almost entirely concentrated among young men. They're calling it the he session. The he session. Part of the reason behind the he session is that tech has been kind of getting wrecked over the past few years. Tech is traditionally male dominated as a field in general.

9:08and they've just been hit by heavy periods of layoffs. I mean, in 2025 alone, 132 ,000 tech workers have been laid off. That's on top of 238 ,000 being laid off in 2024. And now the easy explanation for that is, oh, that corresponds perfectly with the rise of generative AI. These entry-level coders are being replaced with AI. That's a lot of the headlines we've been seeing, but the evidence doesn't necessarily super support that era. A lot of what you're seeing is just a contraction from that massive hiring spree that a lot of big tech went on during the pandemic and coming out of the pandemic.

9:45And actually, recruitment of entry-level software developers is now rebounding from the trough that it hit post-pandemic. So AI is not taking all the coding jobs. Tech has suffered a contraction of workers, but it does look like that hiring is rebounding. This is a broader story than just AI replacing jobs. And let's look at women. Why are women doing so well or much better than they had been in the current job market? Well, all virtually all of the net job growth in the United States in the past few years has come from one sector, and that is health care. And women account for 80 percent of health care and social services work.

10:23So wherever the jobs are growing, women are taking more of that share compared to men are in more cyclical sectors like tech, like construction, like manufacturing. So those their job prospects rises and falls with the ebbs and flows of the economy. Meanwhile, sectors where women account for the majority of the workforce, things like education and health care and social services, those are more recession proof or economic downturn proof. And that's why you're seeing this huge delta in job prospects between men and women. Moving on, Amazon has taken its fight with Walmart to the perishable aisle, rolling out same day fresh food delivery to more than a thousand cities and towns yesterday.

11:02That means you can mix in some fresh strawberries and avocados while you're shopping for books and bedding. As of now, shoppers in cities from Phoenix to Raleigh to Tampa can get doorstep delivery right from the dairy, meat, seafood, baked goods, and frozen foods departments within a few hours. Amazon plans to expand to over 2 ,300 cities by the end of the year. Before, if you had the munchies while shopping in the Amazon ecosystem, your order would be fulfilled through Amazon Fresh or Whole Foods. But now Amazon's logistics locations for same-day goods will handle your fresh foods as well. Amazon is also offering free same-day delivery for its Prime members on orders over$25.

11:42That is a pretty low minimum order threshold, which allows customers to make quick one-off purchases at their whim, a major threat to a competitor like Instacart, for instance, who thrives on those same type of orders. You could see shareholders thinking along the same lines. Instacart stock fell 12 % yesterday. This also sets up a full-on grocery brawl with Walmart, who has the biggest grocery business in the country, a position that Amazon has tried to chip away at. Walmart also offers free delivery, but with a$10 higher minimum order threshold than Amazon. Neil, now that Amazon customers can order bananas alongside their batteries and milk next to manga novels, the fresh food fight is on.

12:22I mean, watching Amazon try to crack grocery has been like watching a little baby trying to walk. They stand up a little bit, stumble, get back up, bruise their knee. And you're just saying, come on, can you guys figure this out already? You're a massive$2 trillion company and they do so many things well. But they've had such struggles getting grocery off the ground. They bought Whole Foods. They tried rolling out physical grocery stores and Amazon Fresh. Now, I think based on what they've seen in all their various failed experiments is that when people go straight to the Amazon app and order fresh food, they will be repeat customers and keep coming back.

13:01And that might be what they're zeroing in on is just keep everything in-house under the Amazon.com marketplace. Yeah, they've already seen in test locations people adding fresh fruit to their orders. And then once they become first time, they're twice as often to do same day delivery going forward. So once you have that magical moment of going, oh, I can get strawberries to my house in hours, that is a wonderful experience for them. But they also, the reason why they've stumbled and walked and crawled or whatever you want to say into the grocery business is they see it as a growth area for their company.

13:34Because right now, cloud computing, which was the growth engine over the last decade for Amazon, that's been petering off a little bit. So they have their eyes set on the U.S. grocery delivery market. They think it's an$800 billion market. So, yes, it's a tough nut to crack, but it's one that they think they need to crack because their growth prospects elsewhere are dimming a little bit. Though it is a much, much lower margin business than cloud computing. But they are looking at various consumer trends and saying, well, people started to order delivery, grocery delivery a ton during the pandemic, and they still are doing that.

14:10That hasn't gone back to pre-pandemic levels. If you look at earnings reports recently from other delivery companies like Uber, DoorDash, and Instacart, they all say demand is booming. And so Amazon sees this as a growth area. Even if it's a low-margin growth area, it's a way to lock people into your ecosystem so that when they add stuff like blueberries and strawberries, they'll also add maybe higher-margin goods as well. I think it's so funny that Amazon and Walmart are just slowly converging to become the same company because Amazon's diving deeper into grocery. They're making more rural investments, whereas Walmart is trying to build up its advertising verticals.

14:44They're trying to build up its online marketplace as well. So slowly but surely, these two companies that are competitors are just becoming the same company. Next thing you know, Walmart's going to be launching a cloud computing division as well. Up next, it's Thursday, which means it's time for News Numbers. This message is a paid partnership with Apple Card. I'm a person who really appreciates simplicity. And when it comes to credit card rewards, the simpler, the better. That's one of the many reasons I have an Apple Card. The rewards are super straightforward. I earn up to 3 % daily cash back on my everyday purchases.

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16:58friend Travis Kelsey and his brother Jason to discuss her upcoming album, The Life of a Showgirl. And when you combine the most famous couple in the country with exclusive details about new music, you get what analysts predict will become one of the most popular podcast episodes of all time. New Heights began in 2022 as two brothers yapping about football and life, but over time it's grown into an audio juggernaut. Last year, Travis and Jason signed a deal worth more than$100 million with Amazon's podcast company, Wondery. They have the Taylor Swift halo effect to thank. After Travis and Taylor made their relationship public in the fall of 2023, the podcast's weekly reach quadrupled and the share of female listeners rose from 32 % to 50%.

17:42You have to expect the numbers from last night's episode to trounce anything that came before it. Toby, this isn't only huge for new heights, but also the podcast industry in general that someone like Taylor Swift would go on a podcast, not late night TV or another old school platform to hype up a new album. New Heights Taylor version was a smashing success. The comment section was insane. People were saying this is proof my attention span is just fine. Honestly, props to Jason for doing one of the best Taylor Swift interviews ever, which I mean, just an insane sentence. If you go back even five years ago, they finally mix business with business.

18:16There's been plenty of jumbotron features of Kelsey at a concert or Taylor Swift at a game. but now they're joining their money-making apparatus. And I do think one plus one here is clearly gonna equal three. This was a very opportune moment because you were timing up a new album rollout with the new NFL season simultaneously. So it was a very savvy moment to actually do this. It was the opportune moment to do this. And yes, this feeds into that cultural commentary of, hey, late night TV shows are not what they used to be. Traditional media is not what they used to be. Taylor Swift used to announce albums at the MTV Music Awards.

18:53Now she goes on her boyfriend's podcast to do an album rollout. So a lot of factors combined into this. My butt was seated in the couch last night, put it on the big screen, doing my research by watching this whole podcast. And it was quite compelling to hear Taylor Swift just talk off the cuff like that for so long. Seemed like that was one of the big responses to this was that we'd never heard Taylor Swift, who is this mega superstar, just talk candidly and openly about her life, about how much she likes sourdough baking baking for two hours nonstop, clearly in an environment that she was comfortable with.

19:25Let's talk about this new album. I know you are desperate for details, or at least some of you. It's going to be released October 3rd, and she said it will only include 12 songs, which is huge, after the 31 track Frankenstein of the Tortured Poets Department. And Sabrina Carpenter is going to be featured on the new album's title track. It's going to be an upbeat album, according to Travis Kelsey, who said you will dance a lot. My next number is about the rock that broke the internet. And by rock, I mean the massive diamond engagement ring that Portuguese soccer icon Cristiano Ronaldo gave to his now-fiancé, Georgina Rodriguez.

20:02Rodriguez posted a picture of the ring on Monday that went mega viral. And Toby, no offense to your recent engagement, but Ronaldo won up to you. Jewelry experts estimate that the ginormous ring, which covers about one-third of her finger, cost at least$5 million and weighs 35 carats. Influencers were foaming at the mouth to analyze its every last detail. One remark, to wear this stone regularly, you're going to need finger reconstruction surgery. Just imagine wearing a 100-pound kettlebell on your finger all day every day. Painful, but worth it. There are few comparisons in history for a ring that big, that expensive, and that in your face.

20:40Some were reminded of Mariah Carey's 35-carat engagement ring in 2016, given to her by James Packer, her billionaire ex-fiance. others brought up elizabeth taylor's 33 carat stone from her ex richard burton in 1968 which was sold for 8.8 million dollars at auction in 2011 if you're wondering whether ronaldo can afford it yes the man gets paid more than 210 million dollars per year to play soccer for a saudi arabian club and brings in lots more from promoting brands on his instagram account the most followed in the world so if you follow the three months salary rule he's actually being super cheap.

21:16Yeah, what the heck, Cristiano? You're cheaping out. I think we've reached peak ring. I mean, we just came off Lauren Sanchez and Jeff Bezos with another gargantuan ring. And if you look back to the early 2000s at what was kind of considered a big ring during that time, Jennifer Lopez got an eight and a half carat radiant cut green diamond from Ben Affleck. Victoria Beckham got a 10 carat one from David. Angelina Jolie's had 16 carats. Beyonce's, which seemed huge at the time, was 18 carats. And now we're getting into the 30-carat threshold. It is pretty insane. But also it kind of ends a saga of an interesting relationship between Cristiano and his now fiancé because technically in Saudi Arabia, you are not allowed to live with an unmarried woman over that time.

22:04They kind of lax those rules or interpret them differently to allow an order to come because they've been trying to show a different side to the world and bringing in Cristiano Ronaldo has been a big part of that because he's one of the most visible sports figures in the world. So just a fascinating kind of culmination of this relationship that necessarily wouldn't be always allowed in Saudi Arabia, accumulating into a gigantic diamond being gifted. Just a fascinating, flashy end to this whole saga. Let's head to my final number, which I readily admit is not relevant to this week's news, but it is an amazing piece of trivia I just heard and you need to hear it.

22:42Across the state of Wyoming, there are just two escalators. They're both in banks in Casper. One is at the main branch of Hilltop National Bank and the other at the downtown branch of First Interstate Bank. Wyoming used to have three escalators with one located at the JCPenney building in Cheyenne, but that was removed when the building was renovated. And not only does Wyoming have just two escalators, it hasn't felt the need to add one in 46 years. The one at Hilltop Bank is the most recent, opening in 1979. The first escalator was constructed in 1958. But why does Wyoming have as many escalators as senators?

23:20Don't think too hard. It's simply because it has a ton of land and virtually no people. With a population of nearly 600 ,000, Wyoming is the least populated U.S. state and has the second least dense population behind Alaska. It doesn't need to build up since there aren't many people around to fit into buildings. In fact, the tallest building in the state is a dorm at the University of Wyoming at 12 stories. So if you have escalophobia, maybe consider moving to Wyoming. Yeah, take the stairs. Escalators in architecture occupy this middle-of-the-road status because a lot of places, stairs will do just fine, and then they're less expensive than going and installing an entire elevator.

24:03So typically they occupy places where there's a lot of foot traffic and they have high occupancy rates, which doesn't describe a lot of places in Wyoming. Which is funny, too, is that escalators are pretty expensive. They're not expensive as elevators. But if every Wyoming resident gave a dollar, they probably wouldn't be able to muster enough money to build a single escalator because, you know, there's just under 600 ,000 people in the whole state. So this is just one of those trivia facts that you got to bring up late night at bar trivia. Like, hey, do you know that Wyoming has two escalators?

24:37So thank you for surfacing it again on this podcast. Two other interesting Wyoming stacks while we're on the subject. It is fewer residents than any of the 31 most populous U.S. cities. And there is only one area code for the entire state, which is 307. Doesn't look like Wyoming is going to get a new escalator anytime soon, which they're probably OK with. let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines one of the world's most famous restaurants is putting meat back on the menu in 2021 the three michelin star 11 madison park in new york city went completely vegan for environmental reasons stunning the culinary world who could not conceive of such a thing but four and a half years later chef daniel hum is reversing himself come october 14th the new menu at emp as it's known among regulars like myself will include some fish and meat options for diners who want them while staying mostly veggie.