A new @epi.org report found that US companies are spending more than $1.5 billion a year on union-busting consultants and lawyers. They’ll spend unlimited money crushing workers’ voices and then claim there’s no money for better conditions.

This is today!

Reminder - this is today!

MAGA promised white men more jobs via attacking (non-Afrikaner) immigrants, tariffs to revitalize manufacturing and rebalance job growth away from healthcare, attacks on DEI, & prosecuting anti-white discrimination cases. How's that working out?

How to destroy real wage growth, in one chart.

Nominal wage growth continued to slow in April. Over the last three months, wages have growth only 2.8% (annualized). The one-month change was even slower (1.9%). As inflation rises, real wages fall as workers and their families find it increasingly difficult to make ends meet. #EconSky #NumbersDay

After finally seeing some reversal of grave losses in recent months, manufacturing employment ticked down again in April. Since January 2025 when Trump took office, the manufacturing sector has lost 77,000 jobs. #EconSky #NumbersDay

Today's jobs report came in stronger than expected as payrolls increased by 115,000 in April. As a result, average monthly growth the last three months was 48,000 jobs. The unemployment rate held steady as both labor force participation and the employment level dropped slightly. #NumbersDay #EconSKy

Good piece by Robert Reich on the folks running the country right now robertreich.substack.com/p/sam-alito-...

Workshop has a new substack about workers' rights! workshop1933.substack.com?r=fstq&utm_c...

A snapshot of Black employment trends under Trump 2.0: Black workers—particularly men—are experiencing lower employment compared with a year ago www.epi.org/blog/a-snaps...

May Day then and now: The ongoing fight for workers’ rights www.epi.org/blog/may-day...

On Workers Memorial Day, we honor workers who lost their lives on the job and recommit to the fight for safe workplaces for all. Every worker deserves dignity, protection and the right to come home safe. We remember. We organize. We fight.

As Jerome Powell steps down as Fed chair, he has a proud record of pushing unemployment down to levels not seen in more than half a century deanbaker22.substack.com/p/jerome-pow...

Gasoline prices rose 21% in March from the prior month. That was the single largest monthly increase in gasoline prices since the series began in 1967

An eye-popping 0.9% *monthly* rise in the CPI was driven mainly by rising energy prices. Core inflation rose a more sedate 0.2% in March.

Excellent thread on what today’s inflation numbers suggest about workers’ real (i.e. inflation-adjusted) wages this year. TL;DR: it’s not good.

Yesterday EPI's @hshierholz.bsky.social joined 🎙️ @the1a.org to discuss what is causing the job market standstill. 📻 Missed the live episode? Catch it here: the1a.org/segments/wha...

Rep. Ted Lieu isn't backing down.

Whatever happens, this is a deeply shameful episode in American history that will leave a permanent stain on the country. Repeatedly vowing to commit war crimes against millions of innocent civilians is beyond the pale.

Folks, today's jobs report is not good. Avg job growth over the last two months was just 22,500. The March drop in unemp was people leaving the labor force—not finding jobs. Wage growth slowed, esp for nonsupervisory workers. And the effects of our war in Iran aren’t even in these numbers yet.

This jobs report does not bode well. Avg job growth over the last two months was just 22,500. The March drop in unemp was people leaving the labor force—not finding jobs. Wage growth slowed, especially for nonsupervisory workers. And the effects of our war in Iran aren’t even in these numbers yet.

Jason Furman does cheap tricks in his NYT column to claim China's admission to the WTO was not a big deal www.nytimes.com/2026/04/02/o... Here's the deal cepr.net/publications...

When I say it's "really tough" for job seekers right now, I mean that the hiring rate hasn't been lower than it is right now since at least *2012*. And these data are from before we launched the war in Iran.

Speaking of public spending on children, here's a great set of scholars with what looks like an important new paper They find that Universal Pre-K increases labor force participation and earnings, which then increases tax revenue such that it more than pays for itself (under reasonable assumptions)

A striking fact I learnt researching my book: For those in the bottom half, much of the real wage growth between 1979 and 2019 happened over just 7 "tight" years. For top wages, full employment wasn't a big deal. For bottom wages, it was the nearly the whole game.

Layoffs aren't elevated, but if you are jobless and seeking work—like many new grads—it's *really* tough out there.

"The overall slowdown in national job postings...does not appear to be driven (even modestly) by AI."

Bad immigration economics assumes every extra person is one less seat. Good economics notices they also bring a seat, a side dish, and demand for the bloke selling drinks. The first story is fear; the second is how economies work.

Love this: a "universal basic neighborhood."

Happy birthday to the Washington Metro, which opened 50 years ago today with service on 4.6 mi of Red Line between Rhode Is. Ave & Farragut N. System now serves 130 mi. The DC Metro shows that, with good planning & enough investment, the public sector can succeed & build something extraordinary.

In spite of all the talk of Claude Code and Codex meaning the end of humans writing code, software job adverts are actually going up, according to @jburnmurdoch.ft.com's crunching of millions of job ads for this week's The AI Shift www.ft.com/content/7325...

Today is #EqualPayDay, but there's no cause for celebration. This is how far into 2026 women would have to work on top of the hours they worked in 2025 simply to match what men were paid in 2025. Emma Cohn and I detail changes in the pay gap and what we can do about it. www.epi.org/blog/the-gen...

146 workers died in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire on this day in 1911. The bosses responsible were never held accountable for the awful working conditions that sparked the blaze. Remember this today as politicians and their corporate backers attack workplace safety.

The “big beautiful bill” greatly expanded SNAP work requirements for parents In my paper with @jasonbcook.bsky.social, forthcoming at JPUBE, we ask what similar, existing requirements do SNAP work requirements for parents deny vulnerable parents SNAP benefits and do not increase their employment

U.S. consumer prices rose 0.3% in February and were up 2.4% from a year earlier. "Core" prices, excluding food and energy, were up 0.2% month/month and 2.5% year/year. But remember that all these numbers are from before the war in Iran sent gas prices soaring. #NumbersDay

ICE has arrested and detained a Nashville journalist who reported stories critical of ICE. She’s married to a U.S. citizen and has been seeking asylum here after fleeing death threats in Colombia because of her journalism there. They’ve already sent her to Louisiana.

Government job cuts are part of the story, but nowhere close to all of it. Even looking just at the private sector, job growth has slowed to a crawl.

Between the decline in employment in February and the downward revision to December, job growth has now effectively slowed to zero. #numbersday

A SNAPSHOT OF TRUMP'S ECONOMY—judged by his own goals: manufacturing jobs are down 100,000 since Trump took office, private-sector job growth is the weakest we’ve seen outside a recession in more than 20 years, and the unemployment rate for U.S.-born workers has increased.

While employment in health care shrank this month, it continues to account for more than all of the jobs created over the past year.

This is not good.

Manufacturing jobs fell again, down 12,000 between January and February 2026. Since January 2025, the manufacturing sector has lost 100,000 jobs. I repeat: The manufacturing sector lost 100k jobs since Trump took office. #EconSky #NumbersDay

Today's jobs report was much weaker than expected. Payroll jobs fell 92k in Feb, and revisions to Dec data show a loss of 17k jobs. Average job growth over the last 3 months now under 6k. Household survey population controls indicate a significant drop in the labor force. #NumbersDay #EconSky

I continue to be gobsmacked at 1) how common this formulation is 2) how antisemitic and generally bigoted it is 3) and how for all the talk of anti-semitism this is never cited as an example even though it’s quite literally the original incarnation.

Finally got to @gelliottmorris.com's piece this week on how poll question wording dramatically affects responses. It's excellent. This is classic stuff in the political behavior subfield of poli sci, but we don't hear enough about it in punditry. www.gelliottmorris.com/p/many-ameri...

The FBI being on high alert for terrorist actions is important right now. Too bad they fired and gutted their counterterrorism capacity

The central constraint on public-sector performance is not the power of unions—it is chronic underinvestment. @hshierholz.bsky.social + @joshbivens-econ.bsky.social: If we want a high-functioning public sector, we need to pay for it. There is no shortcut.

Need to answer a question about labor law? @mattbruenig.bsky.social built a Claude skill that writes a legal memo on any NLRA/NLRB-related topic with specific links to decisions, court opinions, manuals, and agency memos

This really feels like an Orban/Erdogan situation in which the aspiring dictator is making sure his friendly oligarchs control as much media as possible www.cnbc.com/2026/02/26/w...