• In today’s CEO Daily: Diane Brady on that time Jack Welch claimed the job numbers were being manipulated.
• The big story: Trump continues to make false claims about the employment numbers.
• The markets: Recovering from Friday’s collapse.
• Analyst notes from Analysts ING on the Fed, Goldman Sachs on U.S. GDP, and JPMorgan on corporate earnings.
• Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune. 

Good morning. I’ve never liked how the U.S. measures joblessness. The official unemployment rate doesn’t include the number of people who have given up looking for work or are stuck in low-paid jobs that don’t match their skills and aspirations. It doesn’t capture the difference between long-term vs. short-term employment, contract or full-time jobs. Economists at the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) understand that frustration and publish a range of measures to capture the nuance of labor underutilization.

President Trump agrees that the number doesn’t reflect the reality of unemployment, though he reached a very different conclusion last week in deciding the numbers were “phony” and “rigged” to underrepresent the robustness of the labor market. He was so mad about the July jobs report, which showed unemployment ticking up to 4.2%, that he decided to fire BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer on Friday.

I immediately thought about the reaction when former GE CEO Jack Welch tweeted his disdain about the job numbers under the Obama Administration back in October of 2012. Welch, a lifelong Republican, was skeptical that the unemployment rate had fallen below 8% for the first time in four years with an election looming. He tweeted: “Unbelievable jobs numbers..these Chicago guys will do anything..can’t debate so change numbers.”

Welch had been retired from GE for more than a decade at that point and had plenty of opinions as a columnist for Fortune. Nevertheless, there was outrage that a leader of his stature was attacking the integrity of a vital nonpartisan government agency and the integrity of the U.S. itself by suggesting that core economic data was politicized. Welch quit the Fortune gig amid uproar over the tweet.

But he didn’t back away from his assertion. “I’m not the first person to question government numbers, and hopefully I won’t be the last,” he wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed. He likened the blowback he was facing to Soviet Russia and Communist China. What Welch, a man who famously claimed to cut the bottom 10% of GE’s workforce every year, did not do: Call for the BLS commissioner to be fired.

Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at [email protected]

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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• In today’s CEO Daily: Diane Brady on climate change and corporate leadership.
• The big story: It’s Tariff Day! 
• The markets: Down across the board (did we mention it’s Tariff Day?).
• Analyst notes from ING and UBS on tariffs, and Goldman Sachs on expectations for today’s jobs number.
• Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune. 

Good morning. I had hoped to be writing to you from Toronto but my flight was cancelled due to thunderstorms. Storms are nothing new, of course, nor are steamy summers in New York. But 2024 was the warmest year on record and the pattern is continuing this year, impacting every part of the planet. (Japan recorded its highest-ever temperature on July 30 of 41.2 degrees Celsius, or 106.2 degrees Fahrenheit.)

The U.S. Department of Energy recently came out with a stunning report that downplays climate change in an effort to justify rolling back regulations to address it. I would instead suggest readers check out the tools, lessons and insights in Supporting Extreme Heath Risk Governance, released last week on the first anniversary of the UN Secretary-General’s Call to Action on Extreme Heath.

It’s easy to feel powerless against the vagaries of Mother Nature, whether trudging home from LaGuardia after a cancelled flight or trying to flee an impending tsunami. But there’s much that people can do to adapt to the realities of a warming planet and mitigate its effects, especially leaders who are in a position to create new products, policies and practices.

Readers of this newsletter know that I’m a fan of economist Spencer Glendon, who has long tracked the impact of climate change. He often speaks to Fortune 500 leaders and their teams about the path forward for business. We’re hosting a climate dinner for C-Suite leaders on September 23 in partnership with Deloitte, which also sponsors this newsletter. We are also planning to feature more dialogues and reporting on innovation in energy and related issues. My colleague Jordan Blum is helping to lead the way. What’s possible through technology is exciting.

As a college student in Nairobi, I worked part-time as a writer at the UN Environment Programme. When writing my first speech for executive director Mostafa Tolba, his advice was “make it funny.” I spent the night trying to come up with jokes about desertification, only to have him clarify that the goal was to joke about him, not the degradation of fertile land. Such challenges can feel so big and intractable in the abstract. When we connect as human beings, he said, we can get things done.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© Photo by Dominika Zarzycka/NurPhoto via Getty Images

• In today’s CEO Daily: Diane Brady talks to the CEO of Warren Buffett’s favorite sports shoe brand, Brooks Running.
• The big story: Tariff deadline tomorrow.
• The markets: Mostly up except for China.
• Analyst notes from Wedbush on Apple’s AI strategy, Apollo Management on stablecoins, and Parthenon-EY on GDP. 
• Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune. 

Good morning. One of the toughest challenges for any company is making a niche brand feel new and cool. That’s especially tough in a market where costs are rising and consumers are spoiled for choice. And yet Brooks Running has been on a tear, with the Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary reporting it had 15% annual revenue growth in the first quarter.

In the latest episode of Fortune’s Leadership Next podcast, CEO Dan Sheridan talks about turning a favorite among hardcore runners into a broader lifestyle brand. It helps that health and wellness has become a priority for consumers at a younger age when brand preferences have yet to be set.

“Gen Z right now is engaging and running earlier than any other generation in the history of fitness,” he says, noting that many started at the age of 11. “If you put one foot in front of the other, you’re our customer.”

Nike, HOKA and plenty of other brands are chasing those feet, too. One reason Brooks can claim to have No. 1 market share in U.S. adult performance running footwear across national and specialty retail channels is its track record of focusing on performance. That’s a hard-won reputation for a 111-year-old company that once manufactured shoes for a broad range of sports, went bankrupt, overextended, reinvented itself and became part of the Berkshire family in 2006 after getting acquired by Fruit of the Loom. Buffett made it a standalone unit in 2012.

Now, Sheridan is trying to expand into new markets while catering to his core customer and contending with tariffs. “We’re so fortunate. We’re owned by who I would call the GOAT of capitalism,” he says, recalling the Oracle of Omaha’s message when he came to Brooks headquarters in 2014: “He said, ‘Berkshire focuses on the long term, and your jobs are simply this, to make sure the brand is stronger at the end of the year than it was at the beginning.’”

And from the late Charlie Munger, Sheridan says learned the importance of “organizations avoiding the ABCs: arrogance, bureaucracy, and complacency.”

As for his own workout routine, Sheridan is more of a yoga aficionado than a hardcore runner—but he does put those Brooks shoes to use. “I joke that I think I was genetically engineered to plow a field and sit on a bar stool, but I love running. It’s a part of my life.”(Here’s a transcript of the episode. You can also listen to our conversation on Apple or Spotify.)

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

© Courtesy of Brooks Running