***SPOILER FOR “STRANGER THINGS” FINALE*** It was all a dream

I’ve been informed this isn’t a Disney movie. Sorry folks!

It’s weird that there is a Disney Princess movie about the Romanovs of all people

Discussing Monty Python with my brother in law, just remembered my favorite Economist cover assets.bwbx.io/images/users...

Really easy to get an ADU in southeast Florida #YIMBY

Checkmate, AGI doubters

My kids are watching the 90s remake of Miracle on 34th Street - the idea that different stores might charge very different prices for the same good still made sense in the pre internet era

the Q3 gap between personal consumption growth and disposable personal income growth is normal and not really reflective of what’s going on in the economy

Claims: 1/ Initial claims at 214K, showing no perceptible increase in layoffs. My estimate is the peak impact of the layoffs announced in October/November will be small, about +12K per week, materializing in early 2025.

Trolling people who like key lime pie by calling it “mayonnaise pie” - funny or unforgivable?

I'm not a GDP guy but real economic growth over the past 3 quarters has been 2.5% annualized; 2.3% annualized over the past 4. I'd be hesitant to put a lot of weight on the 3rd quarter number in isolation >2% is quite strong in an environment with negligible labor input growth

The last unemployment rate missive of 2025 from the folks at Morning Consult ... no signs of deterioration as of 12/20.

Synthesis: Homer is actually John Candy

Out of all the artistic works inspired by John Hughes’s “Planes, Trains and Automobiles”, Homer’s Odyssey may be the most culturally significant

The ongoing gap between industrial policy wonkery and non-wonkery: A lot of normies unrealistically think “industrialization” is labor-intensive activity

Love this tune (and performance) youtu.be/FqRsttu94TY?...

I think this is a nuttall’s woodpecker?

1/ I strongly endorse this op-ed by @marthagimbel.bsky.social of @budgetlab.bsky.social in @theargumentmag.bsky.social . open.substack.com/pub/theargum...

The Duke of Braintree

We got the Q2 2025 QCEW today, *as expected* the Q1 value (which is the primary input to the NFP benchmark revision) was revised up (by about 100K). So the final benchmark revision to March 2025 NFP will be very negative, but less than previously reported.

Young people unemployment updates: 1/ After a brief respite earlier this year, the unemployment rate for BA grads in their early 20s is pretty clearly headed upward again. It's now the highest since early 2015. We're also seeing slower upward creeps for older BA grads.

ADP continues to sine-wave around zero private sector employment growth

Indeed job postings still slowly decline, but *new* postings (which have a higher beta, and are noisier) are growing Y/Y for the first time in a long time

Claims: 1/ Initial claims at 224K. This is a little bit on the high side. Given all the noise with the holidays I'd wait to draw any conclusions, but it's the kind of number I would expect if layoffs are starting to show up in the data (fwiw, I expect the ultimate layoff increase to be small...)

Thanks to Rachel Ensign at @wsj.com for chatting with me about why scary (and perhaps overly doomerish) layoff headlines spooked white collar workers… even if layoff risk is relatively low, if you’re unlucky enough to lose your job, it’s really hard to find a new one. www.wsj.com/economy/jobs...

For tomorrow's claims release: 1/ The IC print 2 weeks ago (192K) was absurdly low, and the print 1 week ago was absurdly high (236K), I imagine we end up somewhere in the middle. The main reason layoff increases haven't clearly shown up in this data->they're relatively small

One of the challenges the BLS's nonfarm payroll estimate faces: substantially more job creation and destruction in the 2020s is occurring via business births and deaths than in the 2010s. This is the kind of environment that would lead to bigger revisions.

A quick post on the Sahm Rule: substack.com/home/post/p-...

In my latest post, I discuss data from @guildeducation.bsky.social and Lightcast on internal mobility. Despite internal mobility dominating thought leadership, it's fallen in tandem with external turnover since 2022. Link to my post: substack.com/home/post/p-...

My recap of the November jobs report. We only have to wait 3 weeks until the December data! substack.com/home/post/p-...

There is no actual "rise in native-born employment", but folks who erroneously claim there is one based on a misunderstanding of BLS/Census data also unwittingly believe President Obama generated a large positive impact on birth rates early in his 1st term

To give a flavor of what happens during a "mild" recession like 1990-91 and 2001, the unemployment rate both times went up by something like 1.2-1.3pp over 8 months, or 0.16pp per month. About twice the pace we've seen from June to November

I didn't see anything in today's jobs report that surprised me much, given the alternate data (+claims) that we got for October and November "Not good, it could have been worse"

Disclosure Day? The day that the BLS disclosed its post-shutdown methodology for the Current Population Survey?

One quick, easy way to boost employment growth and lower unemployment (though it might also increase inflation0: Cancel the IEEPA tariffs ASAP and refund revenue collected-to-date

My general take is this is a bad, not horrible, report - a lot like the last two, maybe a little less bad. At least some of the badness is a temporary result of the federal government shutdown and should reverse next month.

One possible shutdown effect - an increase in the number of people on temporary layoff. Should reverse next month, added about 0.05-0.10pp to the unemployment rate

BLS charts from a broadly glum report: 1/ Unemployment rate ticks up to 4.56% in November from September's 4.44%. Slower increase in the UR over the past 2 months than over the prior 3. Note where we are relative to the Fed projections.

I’ll be live with Jonathan Levin and @kedseconomist.com shortly here: www.youtube.com/live/ZAwXZ2g...

@petereharrell.bsky.social is not very active here, so this is worth cross posting. Seems like an upside risk for the 2026 outlook…

We should have an award for creative imputation of missing October CPS data

1/ I owe this thinking to two folks I'll keep anonymous (unless they are willing to reveal themselves), but the 2014 Krueger/Mas/Niu paper on rotation bias shows this "month-in-sample" effect for the unemployment rate

My preview of the November jobs report. Your baseline coming into it should be "gradual cooling", or "not good but it could be worse". Link: macromostly.substack.com/p/bls-jobs-r...

1/ The BLS has published an FAQ about the November Current Population Survey (CPS data). bls.gov/cps/methods/... (Recall, in his press conference Powell mentioned "technical" issues with some November surveys.)

Is Polar Express the first holiday-themed horror movie

1/ This is imho a bad but surprisingly common argument. As long as inflation is anticipated it’s “priced in” to debt arrangements. It *is* true that higher-than-expected inflation redistributes from creditors to debtors and this is unfair, but…

Since it’s that time of year, I strongly recommend Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn’s arrangement of “The Nutcracker Suite” youtube.com/playlist?lis...

The Home Alone family is indeed very wealthy, but a lot more families can afford their lifestyle in 2025 than in 1990 (when Home Alone came out)