Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Mira Murati is warning that AI could wipe out some creative jobs, Hillary Clinton is writing another memoir, and TikTok star Kyla Scanlon is here to teach Gen Z about the economy. Have a wonderful Wednesday!
– Good vibrations. If you’ve paid attention to U.S. financial news in the past two years—or simply been on TikTok— chances are you’ve heard of the “vibecession,” or the disconnect between peoples’ malaise about the economy and rosy official metrics like GDP growth and the low unemployment rate. The term has resonated so deeply with so many that you can now find it on Dictionary.com; explainers have appeared in CBS News, the New Yorker, and Oprah Daily.
“Vibecession” wasn’t coined by a news outlet, politician, or think tank; instead it was Kyla Scanlon, 27, who first used the term in her 2022 Substack post. After it took off online, Scanlon expanded on it in the New York Times, and the financial press ran away with the buzzword. The vibecession has been part of the national discourse ever since.
Scanlon has become one of Gen Z’s leading economic commentators, writing for Bloomberg and creating content for her own YouTube page with over 42,000 followers, TikTok account with nearly 180,000, and Substack, called, simply, Kyla’s newsletter. She recently published a book—which she also illustrated—entitled In This Economy: How Money & Markets Really Work.
The multi-hyphenate’s interest in finance began young. At 16, she signed up for a children’s E*Trade account and her dad taught her how to trade options. When she got to college at Western Kentucky University and realized she could major in finance and econ, she never looked back.
After school, she worked for an asset management company in Los Angeles but quickly realized “making rich people richer” wasn’t her calling; her true passion is education, she says. During the pandemic, she began making videos about the Gamestop meme madness and eventually left her job to pursue content creation and writing full time. Her goal is to explain important concepts about the economy in ways young people can understand.
“The reason people are freaked out is because they don’t understand the world around them,” Scanlon told me. “I try to cut through the noise.”
Given her age, gender, and background, Scanlon knows she’s not your typical econ talking head. But that’s what makes her work appealing to her younger audience. She can understand and articulate what the average Gen Zer is feeling—and find a way to get important information through to them.
“It helps to have a unique perspective and a diverse voice, as much as I can bring. It helps people feel more comfortable,” she says. “But the field needs more beyond me, there needs to be more representation across the board.”
Eventually, Scanlon would like to get more involved in developing and implementing policy. For now, she’s happy reaching as many people as she can with her book, videos, newsletter musings, and tweets.
“Baby boomers are running the world right now. You don’t often have the youth voices represented,” she says. “I’m trying to elevate what young people care about.”
Alicia Adamczyk
[email protected]
The Broadsheet is Fortune’s newsletter for and about the world’s most powerful women. Today’s edition was curated by Joseph Abrams. Subscribe here.
ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
- Halfway mark. Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser says she feels “uncomfortable every single day” as she reaches the halfway point of a year she described as crucial to turning around the struggling bank. Some critics say that layoffs and reorganization are happening too quickly at the oversized institution, while others say Fraser isn’t moving fast enough. Wall Street Journal
- AI anxiety. OpenAI CTO Mira Murati warned that “some creative jobs maybe will go away” due to AI automation and that “maybe they shouldn’t have been there in the first place.” In a Dartmouth University interview, Murati declared that “strictly repetitive” jobs would be the most prone to AI replacement. Fortune
- Fox-hole. A Reuters investigation into Foxconn discovered that the iPhone manufacturer doesn’t hire married women at its main plant in India because of their family responsibilities. Foxconn “vigorously refutes” the allegation and said it corrected hiring lapses that occurred in 2022. Apple defended itself as having the “highest supply chain standards in the industry."
- Hitting the shelves. Former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is releasing a new memoir in September titled Something Lost, Something Gained: Reflections on Life, Love, and Liberty. The memoir will cover Clinton's personal and political life and arrive weeks before the November election. Washington Post
- Assange avoids allegations. Women's rights advocates in Sweden are disappointed that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will avoid decades-old sexual assault accusations after reaching a plea deal with the U.S. over espionage charges. In 2019, Swedish prosecutors said too much time had passed to continue an investigation into sexual assault allegations from multiple Swedish women made nine years earlier. Assange denied the allegations. Reuters
ON MY RADAR
Are young men really becoming more sexist? The Atlantic
AOC is getting too mainstream for her progressive base Bloomberg
Why one 69-year-old woman initiated a ‘gray divorce’ Fortune
PARTING WORDS
“As if you could only have one woman who is successful. What the hell is that about?”
— Singer Cyndi Lauper on being pitched as the next Barbra Streisand or Madonna when she was younger