The story of fast food in the United States isn’t just mega chains like McDonald’s and Burger King anymore. Higher quality fast casual restaurants, which put more emphasis on food quality and less on speed and price are growing the fastest, according to a breakdown of the industry by Morgan Stanley analysts.
A look at enrollment data from US News shows that American law schools are in rough shape. Enrollment has plunged from a high point about four years ago, and is now at its lowest since the 80s. And things won’t get much better in the immediate future as fewer and fewer students take the LSAT admissions test.
Last year saw the biggest overall increase in prescription drug spending in the US since 2003, according to an annual report published by the pharmacy benefit manager Express Scripts.
After a stellar run of predictions at the World Cup and a fairly good run during American football’s NFL season, Microsoft’s Bing prediction team rolled out an extremely helpful tool for the many people out there who want to enter the US’s national college basketball tournament (NCAA) bracket office pool, but have only seen a few of the 68 teams play.
Asking for a raise is one of the most fraught parts of a working life, a process maniacally Googled and agonized over with friends. Advice is often conflicting. Don’t give your number first, or always do. Start with a number you don’t really expect to get, or ask for nothing at all.
For years, drug makers have feared an onslaught of competition from “biosimilars,” the generic version of drugs that are made by living organisms. It finally arrived last week when the FDA approved Novartis’s Zarxio, a near copy of Amgen’s blood cancer drug Neupogen and the first biosimilar in the US.
As part of its annual US graduate school rankings, US News has released data that tracks enrollment and tuition growth for the schools it ranks.
McDonald’s big moves in the last few weeks—appointing a new CEO and announcing it will cut down on antibiotic use in its chicken—come amid real trouble for the company. McDonald’s announced today that sales at stores open at least a year were down more 1.7% worldwide, and dropped 4% in the all important US market.
For all the focus on the job environment for college grads, millions of US workers have “middle skill jobs,” roughly categorized as jobs for those with more than a high school degree, but less than a bachelor’s. The fastest growing and best paying of those jobs don’t often hire the computer-averse.
It’s been more than 10 years since Google went public, but the way the company did so is still having an impact. Founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin wrote a long and personal “owner’s manual” for shareholders detailing their hopes and worries about going public, and sharing the company’s ethos.
America doesn’t particularly value its vacation time. Most employees are guaranteed a certain amount of paid time off every year, but many feel pressured to take fewer days, or are simply too busy. On average, companies owe workers nearly $2,000 worth of accumulated paid vacation time, according to a study by Oxford Economics (pdf) done for the US Travel Association and highlighted by the Wall Street Journal (paywall).
McDonald’s is asking chicken suppliers to its US locations to phase out the use of antibiotics important to human medicine, addressing concerns that current practices (pdf) in animal husbandry increase the risk of dangerous, drug-resistant infections.
This post has been corrected.
Marissa Mayer has been criticized for a number of management issues at Yahoo, including instituting a version of stack ranking and changing the company’s remote work policy.
12 of the companies that produced the 25 best selling drugs in the world last year got more than 10% of their revenue from one blockbuster.
Most business school rankings have one of Harvard or Stanford on top, their graduates command the highest salaries, and benefit from particularly powerful networks. But a report from student lender M7 Financial puts them below Brigham Young’s Marriott School, and alongside less prestigious schools including Ohio State’s and the University of Washington’s, while Bloomberg Businessweek’s top-ranked program, Duke’s Fuqua School of Business, is in the second-lowest tier.
The long takeover battle for Allergan, the maker of Botox, ended late last year with Actavis beating out a Bill Ackman-backed Valeant with a $66 billion bid. Now Actavis is preparing to pay up—its acquisition of Allergen is expected to close in the next few weeks—and the result is an absolute whale of a secondary stock offering.
It’s a familiar online job search story. You find a dream position, agonize endlessly over a perfect cover letter, attach it to your resume, then hear nothing back. Sheer volume and a preference for referrals are part of the story. But people also overestimate their writing, and underestimate how effective actually speaking to someone is when looking for a job.
For all the talk about declining R&D spending, excessive pricing, and overvaluation, drug companies still make plenty of money on their blockbusters. The top 25 best selling drugs in the world, as tallied by industry publication Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News (GEN) from company filings, press releases, and conference calls, accounted for a massive $145 billion in revenue last year.
Most interactions with Facebook are as simple as thumbing through the Newsfeed. Behind that is an enormous amount of technology, like the algorithms that serve up carefully curated ads and information. The company takes a similar approach to management, building tools to make simple tasks as efficient as possible, according to a Wall Street Journal interview (paywall) of CIO Timothy Campos.
Whole Foods Market is finally coming to terms with its image problem. The notion that its food is too expensive has kept a certain segment of grocery shoppers at bay, limiting the company’s growth. In 2013 and 2014, sales and growth went from stagnant to outright bad. The company lowered growth forecasts three times in one year, putting the stock price in a rut that it’s only now beginning to overcome.
The mass adoption of the open office killed off walls for most workers, and even the cubicle. Now, its evolution is shrinking employees’ desks. One reason, unsurprisingly, is to save on rent in expensive markets by packing more people into smaller spaces, according to The New York Times (paywall).
In the immediate aftermath of the financial crisis, things were truly dicey for America’s freshly minted college graduates. Many had a tough time finding employment of any kind, let alone in their chosen field of study. A few years makes a big difference, though. Unemployment is falling for recent US grads, and though a full recovery remains elusive, it’s getting closer.
Fresh off of reports that Apple plans to challenge Tesla in the electric car market, prominent electric car battery maker A123 Systems is suing the company for poaching its top engineers, Reuters reports. The complaint alleges that the company started aggressively going after critical employees in the summer of 2014. In addition to Apple, it’s suing five ex-employees.
