"Bears put up a valiant effort but couldn't quite claim the W in Silicon Valley" really sums up 2025 huh

Wish you all a Merry Christmas. Stay safe and don't forget to check the weather before you head out. weather.gov.

wrote about Kalshi's business being about 5% truth machine/95% sportsbook (even if they refuse to mention it) www.ft.com/content/1ac0...

UMich sentiment still near all time lows--but if you think it is problematic b/c of phone surveys, etc we always have Conference Board and it shows a much less dramatic but still fairly bearish state of consumer confidence, in part because a cooling labor market raises anxiety @ income prospects

CFO survey from Duke, Richmond Fed, Atlanta Fed showed modest decline in economic optimism in Q4 2025, just barely lowest since Q4 2023. Conversely though concerns about tariffs, monetary policy & inflation have all dropped from Q3 2025 to Q4. Source: www.richmondfed.org/research/nat...

BLS extended the collection period as a result of the shutdown, resulting in a somewhat better initial collection rate than has been typical lately (though slightly worse than in September, when the data was even more delayed).

Notable that the big increase in unemployment recently has been among people re-entering the labor force to look for work, not people losing jobs.

Nov #jobsreport today is our first view of job market post-shutdown -Payrolls grew 64k in Nov -Payrolls fell 105k in Oct, driven by 162k federal job losses as the deferred resignation program took effect at end of Sep -Unemp rose to 4.6% in Nov (no Oct data) from 4.4% in Sep #NumbersDay 1/

BLS FAQ on "2025 federal government shutdown impact on the Current Population Survey" tl;dr Do NOT freak out tomorrow. www.bls.gov/cps/methods/...

"Preliminary research, which is not comprehensive and is subject to updates in QCEW data, indicates that the primary contributors to the overestimation of employment growth are likely the result of two sources—response error and nonresponse error." (4/9)

A nice thread from Guy on JP's comments yesterday on NFP growth being overstated. To which I will add a caveat - the birth/death model is not the principal driver of the wedge between CES and QCEW these last two years. (Warning, statistical esoterica ahead) 🧵1/9

Employee sentiment dropped further in the November Glassdoor Employee Confidence Index. 44.6% of employees reported a positive business outlook for their employers in November, down from 45.9% in October. Despite the shutdown ending, worker anxiety remains high. www.glassdoor.com/blog/glassdo...

Initial unemployment insurance claims rose to 236,000 last week, a sharp rebound after an unusual drop the prev week (perhaps due to some unadj. Thanksgiving seasonality). Continuing claims similarly fell sharply, but may be facing the same issue (continuing claims are lagged an extra wk)

Missed this at the time but the Sep jobs report announced changes to the net birth-death model effective with the Jan 2026 report release that seems promising. Should improve the accuracy of the model and hopefully reduce size of benchmark revisions Q9: www.bls.gov/web/empsit/cesbdqa.htm

A nice piece on algorithmic pricing worth your time. A question I got frequently when I led BLS was why the agency went into stores and didn’t just collect prices online. My answer, “prices online are often different than in the store, so we do both” often surprised people.

#JOLTS is back from shutdown with Oct report today including Sep + Oct data: -Hires rate 3.2%, down from 3.4% in Sep flat from Aug -Quits rate down to 1.8% from 2.0% in Sep, 1.9% in Aug -Openings up to 7.67m from 7.66m in Sep, 7.23m in Aug -Layoffs jump to 1.85m from 1.78m in Sep, 1.73 in Aug 1/

In the first six months of congestion pricing, air pollution within Manhattan's toll zone dropped 25%. Pollution fell across the five boroughs and in the suburbs, too. A clean air win all around.

Bank of America payroll estimate has been trending even worse than ADP recently. Latest data from Nov at +0.2% payroll growth year-over-year. *They only produce a 3-month average of year-over-year % change institute.bankofamerica.com/economic-ins...

Advance insight to help you code around a new, stupid issue. How will BLS represent missing data values resulting from the govt shutdown in the #JOLTS data release tomorrow? #NumbersDay cc: @bencasselman.bsky.social @nickbunker.bsky.social @jc-econ.bsky.social

The gender pay gap widened in Q3 2025 to the widest since Q1 2020. The ratio of full-time working women's earnings to men's fell to 80.9% in Q3, a continued deterioration from a record 84.6% in Q2 2023. Source: BLS, www.bls.gov/news.release...

Merry Christmas from the BEA 🎄

Community college enrollment has been declining since 2009/10. The optimal policy response to this depends on the root of this decline. I'm thrilled @nber.org today released my working paper with Harvard PhD Joe Winkelmann titled: "Labor Market Strength and Declining Community College Enrollment"

Paid my rent today and got a sports gambling ad afterwards 🤔

BofA: We think tighter immigration policies will reduce the breakeven pace of employment growth to about 20k

Latest ICE deportation data through mid-November suggest Trump and Miller are at half their desired pace of deportations (one million annually)

BREAKING: BLS says it will not publish an October CPI. November CPI will be delayed to Dec. 18, meaning too late for the FOMC meeting the previous week. #NumbersDay #EconSky www.bls.gov/bls/2025-lap...

Hey, #EconSky! The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics is here @usbls.bsky.social! bsky.app/profile/usbl...

So great to see BLS back to work measuring and informing us about our large and dynamic economy. It’s a great institution full of dedicated civil servants deeply committed their mission. They have had a tough year, and everyone is covering for someone who left. I thank them all for their service.

The delay in the data did have one benefit: more survey responses! The collection rate for the establishment survey topped 80% in September, far above the recent average for the first release. Though still below the ~90% that is typical for the second release. #NumbersDay

Mixed Sep #jobsreport today, as jobs data starts flowing again post-shutdown -Payrolls grew by 119k in Sep, above expected -Aug was revised down from +22k to -4k, a 2nd negative month following June's -13k job loss -Unemp rises to 4.4%, highest since Oct 2021 #NumbersDay 1/

‼️As expected, we won't ever get complete data on the labor market from the BLS for the month of October due to the government shutdown, including the key statistical indicator for unemployment. Nov data now scheduled for 12/16, after the Dec FOMC mtg ‼️ #bls #fomc #data

*US NOV. JOBS REPORT RESCHEDULED FOR DEC. 16

BLS: October JOLTS report has been rescheduled for December 9th.

There's been this idea of a "low-hire, low-fire" job market floating around and I think it's mostly fair but with some nuance: 1) Economy-wide, "low-hire" is true. In Aug, the hires rate was 3.2%, just barely above the Covid low of 3.1% and consistent with levels last seen pre-pandemic in Mar 2013.

It’s happening… www.sfgate.com/centralcoast...

Economist/YouGov Nov 15-17: Trade and tariffs % who think tariffs imposed by Donald Trump have increased | decreased the prices they paid for things that they bought U.S. adult citizens 73% | 3% Democrats 92% | 1% Independents 72% | 3% Republicans 56% | 4% today.yougov.com/politics/art...

September PPI to be released Nov 25, September import/export prices on Dec 3 www.bls.gov/bls/2025-lap...

Professional forecaster's unemployment forecasts worsened slightly in projections released today, but most of the shock to unemployment expectations happened earlier in the year. Reduced expectations for workforce growth are now dominated by continually-shrinking immigration projections.

Amidst rising unemployment & decreasing immigration, professional forecasters are cutting their estimates for US job growth—projections released today expect the American workforce to be 850k people smaller in mid-2026 than they did six months ago

I wrote about the stomach clenching reality of work now -- where rolling layoffs are the norm and no one feels secure in their job. Happy Monday! www.axios.com/2025/11/16/r...

September jobs day will be Nov 20

Breaking News: The New York City Council overwhelmingly approved a rezoning on Wednesday that could transform an industrial stretch of Queens into thousands of apartments — private development aimed at addressing the city’s affordable housing crisis. nyti.ms/4p71Cqv

My guess (emphasis guess) is that we might see CES and PPI numbers for October but rolled into the November release

Situation is more complicated for the unemployment rate but if the WH is saying it’s not possible that means BLS/Census told them it isn’t

All of BLS has been furloughed since October 1st. That means no one was collecting data in Oct. You can’t just walk into a Costco in mid-November and find out what the price of a good was in October. That’s why an October CPI isn’t possible.

The White House is suggesting October CPI and employment reports will be skipped entirely. That has been our assumption. Collecting the CPI and HH survey are simply infeasible. Oct NFP can be collected and folded into the Nov report which almost surely will also be delayed by a week or more...1/2

...(so released after the Dec FOMC meeting). The survey week for the Nov HH survey will still be Nov 2-8 when the govt was shut down so we should still see a spike in the UR from furloughed workers (as @econberger.bsky.social has pointed out) 2/2

Oof *OCTOBER CPI AND JOBS DATA LIKELY WON'T BE RELEASED: WHITE HOUSE

More color from JPMAM Kelly: Of the -35k Oct payrolls drop, there was likely a 120k decline in the federal workforce.