3D chess is... chess...

Initial unemployment insurance claims fell to 218,000 from 232,000 last week, no sign of deterioration after the unusual early-Sep spike. Continuing claims were mostly flat at 1,926,000. Continuing claims are still 5-6% higher than last year, pointing to ongoing slowing but not a sudden stop.

"Economic data delays due to the government shutdown in October 2013"

This morning, the @chicagofed introduced new labor market indicators that combine private sector data with official labor statistics to provide a real-time view of hiring, layoffs and other job separations, and an early forecast of the unemployment rate. www.chicagofed.org/research/dat....

Key chart www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

The CPS (household survey) response rate jumped in August to its highest level since last October. The fog surrounding immigration estimates and survey response rates just keeps getting thicker.

The sudden decline in the pace of job growth also impacted the seasonal factors, pushing back some of the weakness into May

The larger-than-usual downward revision last month was in large part driven by a negative skew in the job growth distribution among late reporting firms. That’s unusual, but it’s happened before when the pace of job growth slows rapidly. This print is more evidence that was the case

Another weak #jobsreport for August: -Payrolls grew by just 22,000, well below expectations -June revised down to -13,000, ending the streak of consecutive job gains at 53 months (Jan '21–May '25) -Unemp rises to 4.3% #NumbersDay 1/

FYI this has happened before with downtime for the site/tools so this is not itself a sign of political interference but obviously the timing is a bad look

IMPLIED CONSUMER PASSTHROUGH. In June alone, we estimate 61-80% of the new 2025 tariffs were passed through to consumer core goods/durables prices, roughly in the middle of prior studies. This suggests US consumers were paying the majority of tariffs by June. 6/13

Over 100 mentions of tariffs, trade policy or trade war in the August Beige Book from the Federal Reserve out today. The tariff impacts have still not been fully realized. This quote from the Richmond Fed highlights some of the varied impacts tariffs are having on supply chains. 1/

The July #JOLTS report shows a job market still in a holding pattern of low turnover from sluggish hiring & quits. Little change from June. -Hires rate flat at 3.3% -Quits rate flat at 2.0% -Openings down slightly to 7,181,000 -Layoffs flat at 1,808,000 #NumbersDay 1/

this nice piece on induction stoves in professional kitchens by @oliviarudgard.bsky.social reminds me of the @weisenthal.bsky.social & @tracyalloway.bsky.social Odd Lots intv w/ Impulse Labs. green tech doesn't have to be worse than carbon-based and in fact shouldn’t be if you want to drive adoption

A US appeals court ruled that most of Donald Trump's tariffs are illegal, undercutting the Republican president's use of the levies as a key international economic policy tool. The case is widely is expected to be appealed to the Supreme Court reut.rs/47l6pz9

“A respected network of hospitals and cancer centers is halting enrollment in clinical trials for children with brain cancer after the federal government said it would no longer provide funding to the group”

if I had a nickel for every time a Dallas sports team traded away their superstar this year, I'd have two nickels which isn't a lot but it's weird it's happened twice

Thread: 1/ What explains the rising prevalence of disability in the US? Over the past years, we've seen the share of over-16 Americans with a disability rise by ~1 percentage point, according to the Current Population Survey. Most of this increase has come in the last few years.

The Glassdoor Employee Confidence Index fell in August, partially erasing the July rebound. 44.5% of workers had a positive business outlook for their employers, only slightly above the revised record low of 44% in June. Worker sentiment about the job market remains sour.

Just received this statement from Lisa Cook: "President Trump purported to fire me 'for cause' when no cause exists under the law, and he has no authority to do so. I will not resign. I will continue to carry out my duties to help the American economy as I have been doing since 2022."

For all the hay that has been made about the reliability of nonfarm payrolls, economists at JP Morgan find that these data experience the smallest revisions of any U.S. economic releases when compared to the overall size of the labor force.

UI claims rose in latest report: Initial: 224k -> 235k Continuing: 1.942m -> 1.972m Initial claims are up from mid-July lows though are still in normal range. Continuing claims are growing a little faster, above +5% year-over-year now rather than below.

Huh. www.wsj.com/tech/ai/meta...

omg not the hong bao

The director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency is urging Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook over a pair of mortgages.

Nice piece on how firms are responding to coffee tariffs. Lots of representative stories like waiting to see how tariff policy changes, using built-up inventory, shifting imports to other countries, considering lower-quality alternatives, and ofc higher ☕ prices www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Bravo, @colbylsmith.bsky.social. Bravo. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/15/b...

Chicago Fed CARTS nowcast of July retail sales ex auto (official data due tomorrow) is +0.1% MoM below the +0.3% consensus estimate CARTS report link: www.chicagofed.org/research/dat... Credit: Scott Brave from Chicago Fed, www.linkedin.com/posts/scott-...

I continue to think the labor supply story is *far* more important and has far greater impacts on wages/inflation than is currently internalized by the market. There was no way we were going to create jobs at a solid pace in Q2 with this many people being forced out of work.

Musalem gets it (he's a voter btw) *MUSALEM: REASONABLE TO EXPECT PAYROLL BREAKEVEN RATE BELOW 50K *MUSALEM: DEMAND FOR LABOR HAS DECLINED BUT SO HAS SUPPLY *MUSALEM: REASONABLE POSSIBILITY TARIFF IMPACT MORE PERSISTENT

Okay so PPI. PPI Final Demand +0.9% MoM (+0.2% est), ex food/energy +0.9% MoM (+0.2% est), ex food/energy/trade svcs* +0.6% MoM (+0.2% est) The broad Other Services category (excludes transport/warehousing & trade services*) was +0.7% MoM. Core Goods +0.4%. *retailer/wholesaler profit margins

A recent viral chart from the New York Fed pegs unemployment for computer engineering grads at 7.5 percent. But Connor O'Brien finds that the margin of error ranges from 4 to 11 percent, making firm conclusions unsensible. Learn more: agglomerations.substack.com/p/a-viral-ch...

Per Friends of BLS, Bureau of Labor Statistics has lost 20% of its staff since Jan, including 1/3 of leadership. As I wrote in July, I requested these figures at least a dozen times from BLS/DOL. They blew me off. Other agencies have sustained similar losses www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/202...

State of the tech job market halfway through 2025? Still stagnant, still not much better than the last 2.5 yrs. Tech employment has dropped modestly from its Dec 2022 peak, falling 1.9%, or 76,000 jobs, with no improvement in 2025, despite the hype around AI + data center investment. 1/

yikes

One specific example of how the Trump administration's policies are affecting immigrant workers and employers. TPS revocation means potentially 100,000s of workers losing their jobs + work authorization. Credit: @andreahsu.bsky.social, @npr.org www.npr.org/2025/08/11/n...

The shock jobs report divided Wall Street into two camps: One that sees a plunge in hiring as not much to worry about because it reflects an immigration crackdown reducing labor supply, and another that views it more as a more concerning sign of waning labor demand www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Anybody who has worked hands-on with private sector data understands it cannot replace government statistics. Look no further than the National Association of Business Economist's statement from last week for what practitioners think: files.constantcontact.com/668faa28001/...

Sex toys are being hurled on the court at WNBA games. A cryptocurrency group says they're behind it – and planning for more. The group says the acts are "pranks" intended to draw attention to their crypto meme coin and not meant to disrespect women athletes.

Still no job switcher wage premium as soft hiring reduces opptys for wage growth. On a 3-month trailing avg basis, job switchers saw slower wage gains than job stayers for the last 6 months in a row, the longest streak since 2010. Source: www.atlantafed.org/chcs/wage-gr...

i see ppl around me (including myself!) skip clicking through in favor of just skimming the AI overview. and i just cannot imagine every single 3rd party report showing a negative impact on traffic is wrong

Initial unemployment insurance claims rose last week to 226,000 up from 219,000 the week prior. Still low by recent standards. Continuing claims jumped to 1,974,000 from 1,936,000, perhaps pointing to softer hiring again after a slight reprieve in July, though more data is needed.

Data revisions are a normal, necessary part of trying to measure a $30 trillion economy in real time. They can also be jarring, especially for people who don't obsessively scrutinize every jobs report. So I dug into the how and why of revisions. A few big takeaways: #EconSky

similar deal with the job market. quits are low for now but workers are unhappy. turnover is going to spike once the market heats up again

The Glassdoor Employee Confidence Index rebounded slightly in July, rising to 45.9% up off the record low of 43.9% in June. Overall, employee sentiment remains weak by historical standards. And the sequential record lows in May & June mirror the post-revision weakness seen in the July jobs report.

Automated enforcement works: "Seven weeks after the cameras started issuing warnings, they recorded an average of 31% fewer speeding incidents than before, SFMTA data shows." sfstandard.com/2025/08/04/s...

President Trump didn't like the jobs numbers, so he fired the person responsible for producing them. It's a move that has been tried before, by leaders of countries from Argentina to Greece to the Soviet Union. It rarely ends well. www.nytimes.com/2025/08/03/b... #EconSky

Goldman: “The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) will publish a preliminary estimate of the benchmark revision to March 2025 nonfarm payrolls on September 9th. We estimate a downward revision on the order of 550-950k”

Statement from the largest economics association about the BLS firing As context: AEA approximately never makes such public statements This is a big deal

“The National Association for Business Economics (NABE) strongly condemns the removal of Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Commissioner Erika McEntarfer and the unfounded accusations leveled against the work of the agency… A totally apolitical group. files.constantcontact.com/668faa28001/...