afaik, in the event of a government shutdown, claims won't be published by the DOL next week, but the underlying data will be available from individual states. if anyone is planning to compile this data and is kind enough to share, please LMK!

Claims: 1/ Continuing claims running about 15K above my benchmark. There's residual seasonality in the published series that paints an overly rosy picture of what is going on with this data...

“Why didn’t Greece just walk out of the Euro instead of enduring what it did” is a question people should ask more often

I’ve been skeptical of the cheerleading around Milei’s policies and the probability of their success but the text in the screenshot is a bad take. Argentina was an absolute macro disaster before he came into office, painful adjustments were unavoidable

Thread: 1/ There's a lot of discourse on weakening manufacturing employment but I think there's some interesting nuance in the data. [Note, the employment & hours data here does not attempt to take the negative benchmark revision into account, so it is probably too optimistic]

I'm not a fan of the genre, but you gotta hand it to Judy Andrews, "Wizard of Oz" and "The Sound of Music" are 2 impressive achievements for 1 career in musical comedy

Being impressed by this table requires the reader to know nothing about the living standards of Americans 100, 90, 80, 70, 60 etc years ago

For all the talk about Milei revolutionizing Argentina’s economy, “overvalued real exchange rate” is one of the most cliched ways that an emerging market can get into trouble

One thing I appreciated about Governor Miran’s 1st speech: copious references to government statistics. However, I wish he had also used this opportunity to emphasize the importance of (1) funding our statistical agencies & (2) keeping them independent from political tampering.

Today we got a (very reasonable & completely warranted) explanation from the Bureau of Labor Statistics for why they are delaying publication of the annual Consumer Expenditure Survey (CEX) by about a month. Transparency is good! www.bls.gov/cex/notices/...

folks, in case you missed it late on Friday, I wrote a post pondering the "family feud" inside the Current Population Survey between downbeat stock metrics and upbeat flow metrics

I agree w/Fed Governor Stephen Miran that policies which lower potential economic growth also, ceteris paribus, lower the neutral policy rate

I hope that if the US ends up intervening financially in Argentina, it entails fixing the unsustainable macro policies the current Argentine government is implementing (And yes, the prior Argentine government’s policies were also unsustainable)

7.5 yr old informed me she “gave some feedback” to a player on the opposing AYSO soccer team

FDR was without a doubt an extremely talented politician but a lot of the election-winning genius/wizardry attributed to him was the “luck” of the economy imploding under the preceding administration

It is harder to dismiss worries about tampering than it would have been before August 1st (especially since there is no explanation offered…)

If H1B visas were auctioned under the current cap, what would the market clearing price be? Are there any estimates out there?

Why is labor market turnover in the household survey telling a more positive story than unemployment (from the same survey)? My thoughts. Link: macromostly.substack.com/p/a-survey-d...

Claims: 1/ initial claims back to normal this week after last week's Texan-fraud-induced blip.

A quick claims preview: 1/ Initial claims spiked alarmingly last week to over 260K - the culprit was probably (mostly or entirely) fraudulent filing in Texas. My benchmark for tomorrow's release is ~230K.

Setting aside the dissent distribution, the changes to the statement seem pretty boilerplate given the shift in policy. imho the change to the 2nd paragraph is more important to policy than the changes in the 1st (though 2 is a forecasting output of 1)

Quick labor economist Fed thread: 1/ Since the last set of projections, labor outcomes have actually been a tiny bit better than the Fed expected. (The recently-renewed labor market worries are about the future, not the present.)

Glorious news 🎉 🎉 🎉 www.cnbc.com/amp/2025/09/...

I tend to find these types of arguments to be unpersuasive Seasonal adjustment is extremely useful but not perfect. Sometimes it goes awry, but you need more than “I didn’t like that number”

The Fed’s real economy mandate is “maximum employment”, not X% real GDP growth. I’m not sure reducing interest rates is a good idea given a (probably) persistent inflation problem but strong retail sales are mostly orthogonal to that

Robert Redford’s most underrated role: playing Zach Galifiniakis in this GIF

1/ Rising job search duration for young Americans: a mix of structural and cyclical factors.

Not sure who missed this last week - the big initial claims spike was the result of fraudulent claims. Thanks Courtenay Brown! www.axios.com/2025/09/12/u...

Why did they make a musical comedy out of that Eminem song about a hard knock life

Who remembers SUPER SIV ? We’re approaching its 18th birthday

Underrated band. If you need to feed your early Santana fix… youtu.be/LqqRwFaedlo?...

John Wesley Harding is such a classic. I love this one… Dylan sounds devastated at the end of the song, and the listener feels it too. youtu.be/dF-FY8rqA1I?...

Wonderful news! Hooray.

Cheery Friday afternoon thoughts: layoff edition. substack.com/@macromostly...

50 years of this masterpiece. Parts I & II in particular are among the finest music the band ever did. youtube.com/watch?v=yMnQ...

1/ In a recent article, @conorsen.bsky.social suggested once the pool of unemployed gets big enough, managers will start ramping up layoffs. In the two relevant recessions for which we have JOLTS data, the relevant threshold (to the degree one exists) was around 5%. cc @weisenthal.bsky.social

These are the birds that are good: scrub jay, junco, titmouse, chickadee, towhee This is a bird that is bad: house finch

Question from unemployment insurance experts: Are federal workers who took a voluntary buyout eligible for UCFE? I know for non-federal workers, it depends on jurisdiction - some states allow folks accepting a voluntary buyout to claim UI, and others do not.

Claims: 1/ An extremely concerning jump in initial claims to 263K (highest since the fall of 2021). This data includes Labor Day weekend, so maybe it's holiday noise, but I'm worried. A lot of it happened in Texas (IC there doubled from 17K to 32K).

What a sad day.

"The risk is a lost generation of young people who took a long time to find work... they won't get as high on the pay escalator over the course of their career — unless things turns around." Thanks to @courtenaybrown.bsky.social at @axios.com for talking to me. www.axios.com/2025/09/10/j...

Thanks to @laurenkaorigurley.bsky.social at the @washingtonpost.com for chatting with me about the benchmark revision, & for letting me push data-watching advice: Pay less attention to monthly job growth, & more attention to ratios from the household survey. www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...

Today's benchmark revision does nothing to the orange line, which does a pretty good job of telling you what's happening, and what's happened, in the labor market. Spend less time angsting about which of the blue lines are correct!

Ironic for someone who prefers the CPS to the CES, but I wrote a whole buncha words about today's preliminary benchmark estimate for anyone who wants to read it. macromostly.substack.com/p/recap-ces-...

The final benchmark revision is likely to be less negative than the preliminary benchmark estimate we got this morning (because the QCEW will probably get revised up). Prelim estimate: -911K (-76K/month) Point estimate for final benchmark: -828 (-69K/month)

I enjoyed reading Annie Lowrey's article on this topic, but I'd frame it as: 1/ The primary issue is hiring is very low. It's difficult to find a job, which is annoying for people who already have jobs and really scary for people who don't have jobs but need them.

what's the silliest take I'm going to see about this morning's benchmark revision - please share if you see any good ones

Prelim benchmark to the level of nonfarm payroll employment as of March 2025: -911K

In: therapists Out: chiropractors

It's not good news, but I appreciate @eleanormueller.bsky.social at @semafor.com for chatting with me about August's disappointing jobs report. www.semafor.com/article/09/0...