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Employment Softness in Tech May Be Leading Indicator of Asset Disposition Activity

The latest U.S. labor data provides useful context for how enterprise technology environments are evolving, with some downstream implications for IT asset disposition and electronic recycling.  In November, the U.S. economy added 64,000 jobs. Total employment reached 163.7 million, while unemployment rose to 4.6%, up from 4.4% in September. The Bureau of Labor Statistics did not […] Continue reading below.
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The latest U.S. labor data provides useful context for how enterprise technology environments are evolving, with some downstream implications for IT asset disposition and electronic recycling.  In November, the U.S. economy added 64,000 jobs. Total employment reached 163.7 million, while unemployment rose to 4.6%, up from 4.4% in September. The Bureau of Labor Statistics did not publish an October report due to the government shutdown, making November the first full snapshot of late-2025 labor conditions.


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Book Analyst

Author: David Daoud | Principal Analyst

David Daoud has researched the mainstream IT hardware market since 1996 and expanded into hardware disposition research in 2003. He has spearheaded the creation of IDC’s GRADE certification. Since then, David has been providing consulting and expert advice to companies looking to establish best practice in their IT equipment decommissioning and helped leading ITAD service providers assess demand, understand competition, and forecast what’s to come. David is currently the Principal Analyst at Compliance Standards, which focuses entirely on the end-of-life of IT equipment. He can be reached at 754-229-0095 or at ddaoud@compliance-standards.com
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MORE ANALYSES:

Corporate Strategy: Inside ERI’s Global Playbook. What Vietnam Reveals About the Company’s Next Moves

Aug 12, 2026

ERI is betting on Asia because the region combines fast-growing IT hardware volumes with a shortage of formal, enterprise-grade disposition infrastructure. After expanding its U.S. footprint, ERI’s next growth opportunity lies in markets such as Japan and Vietnam, where data-center buildout, electronics manufacturing and digitalization are increasing equipment retirements faster than secure, transparent ITAD capacity. By partnering with ITOCHU and VSD Holdings, ERI gains local market access while bringing its own data-security, traceability and closed-loop recycling model to markets still shaped in part by informal recycling.

ITAD M&A Activity: Transaction Trends, Buyer Strategy and Market Direction

Aug 11, 2026

Twenty-two ITAD transactions closed between October 2024 and July 2026. Deal frequency held flat year over year, but composition shifted: private equity platforms moved from opportunistic bolt-ons to stated, multi-deal roll-up programs, buyers began acquiring governance and program-management capability alongside processing capacity, and materials companies with no prior ITAD history took equity positions tied directly to data-center hardware lifecycle value.

Intel’s CapEx Tops $20B on Server Demand While PC Volume Shrinks: ITAD Firms Should Plan for Two Separate Asset Cycles

Jul 28, 2026

Intel’s second quarter added a concrete data point to what has otherwise been a quarter of announcements: the company is raising 2026 capital spending to more than $20 billion, roughly $3 billion above its prior plan, and told investors that 2027 spending will go significantly higher still. This capital plan carries more weight for the end-of-life sector than the earnings beat. It points to the size of the fleet now entering production.

Alphabet’s 2Q2026 Results: More Capital Spending and Cloud Backlog

Jul 27, 2026

Alphabet’s Q2 2026 earnings call put a number on the AI buildout: $44.9 billion in quarterly capex, with guidance raised to $195–$205 billion for the year. For ITAD and recycling providers, the real story isn’t the revenue growth, it’s the asset volume that spending signals down the line.

Corporate Strategy: Blancco Bets on the Drive, Not the Device, as It Chases a Recover-First IT Market

Jul 13, 2026

Blancco is rebuilding its business around the ‘drive’, not the device, betting that surging AI infrastructure and component scarcity are pushing ITAD from “destruct-first” to “recover-first.” The company’s new strategy centers on data-bearing drives, data center decommissioning, and mobile, positioning certified erasure and diagnostics as the backbone of a market where assets move fluidly between enterprises, processors, and secondary channels.

IBM’s 2025 Breach Data Puts ITAD Providers Inside the Vendor-Risk Perimeter

Jul 8, 2026

The global average breach cost at $4.44 million, according to IBM. Healthcare leads all industries at $7.42 million, followed by financial services at $5.56 million, industrial at $5.00 million, energy at $4.83 million, and technology at $4.79 million. Supply-chain compromise, where ITAD sists, ranks as the second-costliest attack vector at $4.91 million per incident, trailing only malicious insider incidents at $4.92 million. Phishing averages $4.80 million and stolen credentials $4.67 million. For ITAD providers, the supply-chain figure is the number that matters. Enterprise procurement teams now treat disposition vendors as part of the same risk perimeter as any other third party with access to sensitive data. Governance maturity, documentation quality, and audit readiness are becoming primary evaluation criteria, alongside processing capacity and recovery rates. Providers serving healthcare and financial services face buyers with the highest breach-cost exposure and the strongest incentive to demand governance-mature partners.

M&A: Telamon acquires 21-year-old ITAD consultancy Retire-IT, retaining founder Kyle Marks

Jul 8, 2026

Telamon Corporation has acquired Retire-IT, with founder Kyle Marks staying on as VP of ITAD services under Telamon’s enterprise services division. The deal follows Telamon’s 2025 hire of Mark Vander Kooy, a former ITAD executive whose earlier company was acquired into what became CloudBlue — a sequence that reads as a company using an experienced operator to identify a target before buying one.

What makes this deal notable is that Retire-IT doesn’t process equipment; it’s a managed-service and tracking layer that oversees roughly three dozen certified processors on clients’ behalf, a model Marks calls “defensible IT disposition.” Marks argues the acquisition points to a broader shift in enterprise ITAD, away from processors vouching for their own compliance and toward separating execution from independent oversight, though whether that’s an industry-wide trend or one operator’s thesis remains to be seen. Full analysis, including Telamon’s revenue and customer figures, sourcing details, and the two open questions likely to matter most to clients of both firms, available to Compliance Standards subscribers.

Client Brief: Samsung Just Posted the Largest Tech Profit Yet Reported: Old Memory Now Costs More Than AI Chips

Jul 8, 2026

Samsung’s Q2 2026 operating profit of roughly KRW89.4 trillion (~$58.4 billion) is attributed almost entirely to its memory business. The South Korean tech giant has not yet disclosed a divisional breakdown but market expectation is that the Device Solutions (DRAM, NAND, HBM) division carried the bulk of the profit, while the consumer electronics division posted comparatively weak results due to its own rising component costs.
The mechanism behind that is directly relevant to component pricing in the ITAD channel. DRAM contract prices are up 58–63% quarter-on-quarter and NAND Flash up 70–75% QoQ. Legacy memory has been hit hardest by scarcity, with DDR4 spot pricing running above even advanced HBM3e, which is a real inversion where end-of-life memory costs more per gigabit than the chip industry’s most advanced product.

That inversion is the number to watch. It means components pulled from older, decommissioned enterprise hardware are sitting on unusually strong resale value right now. Industry commentary places relief no earlier than late 2027–2028, so this is a multi-quarter pricing environment, not a one-time spike, though it is a window, not a new floor.

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