Business is bad? Blame the millennials

Everything's bigger in Texas, including hyperbole over the challenges of managing millennials.

On Tuesday morning, the Dallas Federal Reserve released its monthly manufacturing outlook survey, which came in far lower than expected, at -20.8.

Quite a few companies cited the new Department of Labor overtime rule that makes more salaried workers eligible for overtime pay as a future headwind for their businesses, many of which are still reeling from the collapse in oil prices. One company said its younger employees don't deserve overtime pay because they slack off far too much through the regular workday.

"We have a serious productivity problem with office workers and estimated that less than 50 percent of their time is spent on value-creating business activities," wrote one respondent. "The younger workers are often off task, engaged on social media, on the internet, texting on phones and other unproductive activities."

The company took a dim view of the overtime rule's likely impact on its staff, and on the nation.

"The Department of Labor must realize that if we are supposed to pay them overtime for work they should do during normal work this will make us have to focus on micromanaging employees and reducing compensation to reflect actual productivity of a mandated 40 hour or less workweek," it warned. "All the government regulations and Department of Labor rules are doing is making our country less competitive, creating more part-time workers, reducing workers to a max of 35–39 hours, creating divisions and demotivating the top achievers."

George Pearkes, macro strategist at Bespoke Investment Group, brought these comments to our attention and highlighted them on the firm's blog.

"Anecdotal data aren't data," he cautioned.

This article originally published at Bloomberg here. 

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