GLP-1 and women, the AI office boom, and RTO: CEO ego?

“If you think about a woman who isn't working, she starts taking a GLP-1 and loses weight, and then maybe she makes a really good first impression at a job interview, you know, a better impression than a woman of similar qualifications who is in a larger body.” That line from Harvard economist Rebecca Diamond captures the central finding of a new working paper that made waves among economists this week: women who take GLP-1 drugs to lose weight see a 26.9 percentage point increase in their employment rate a year and a half after starting treatment. That number is the first of three indicators on this episode of The Indicator from Planet Money, which also covers the AI-driven revival of New York City office leasing and a study linking CEO narcissism to return-to-office mandates.

The weight-loss drug employment effect

The 26.9 percentage point figure comes from a working paper by Diamond, who analyzed a dataset of about 10,000 U.S. residents. She compared two groups: women who had started taking a GLP-1 drug to lose weight, and women who wanted to start but had not yet done so. The groups were otherwise similar in income, employment status, body mass before treatment, and other factors. Even after accounting for unmeasurable differences between the groups, the employment effect remained dramatic.