Jobs

Labor Day: Hiring is strong enough to worry the Fed

Blowout jobs, tighter Fed

The job numbers, rewritten again

The job market's confusing signals

The release of the November employment report, showing the national unemployment rate ticking up to 4.6 per cent, sent a wave of confusion through quantitative modeling desks.

Flying blind: no jobs report

For the first time in modern monetary history, the first Friday of October arrived without an official Employment Situation report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

911,000 jobs that never existed

The Bureau of Labor Statistics released its preliminary annual benchmark revision to payroll employment, revealing that non-farm employment for the twelve months through March 2025 had been overstated by an astonishing 911,000 jobs.

Just 22,000 jobs

The August employment report delivered a stunning, unequivocal confirmation of labor market exhaustion: the US economy generated a meager 22,000 net non-farm jobs, while the national unemployment rate ticked up to 4.3 per cent.

Labor Day: Hiring has stalled

As the nation marked Labor Day, the domestic employment landscape settled into an uncomfortable macroeconomic condition: a widespread hiring freeze operating without large-scale corporate layoffs.

How 258,000 jobs disappeared

The quiet erasure of 258,000 previously reported non-farm jobs across two consecutive monthly revisions exposed the structural flaws embedded in modern economic surveying.

Trump fires the jobs data chief

The sudden dismissal of the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics on 5 August shattered an unwritten norm of sovereign governance: the operational independence of official economic statistics.

600,000 jobs erased from the record

The Bureau of Labor Statistics delivered its annual benchmark revision to non-farm payrolls, officially subtracting nearly 600,000 jobs from the previously reported employment ledger for 2024.

Great jobs data, bad news for bonds

A headline non-farm payrolls gain of 256,000 for December delivered a resounding blow to bond investors betting on a rapid Federal Reserve easing campaign.

Just 12,000 jobs: what storms and strikes hide

The October employment report delivered an astonishingly weak headline print, with non-farm payrolls expanding by a negligible 12,000 jobs.

254,000 jobs, despite the hurricanes

The September employment report delivered an astonishing, market-rattling surprise: non-farm payrolls surged by 254,000 jobs, while previous months were revised upward by 72,000 and the unemployment rate retreated to 4.1 per cent.

The jobs numbers keep getting revised down

The August employment report delivered 142,000 new non-farm jobs—missing consensus expectations—while the previous two months were revised downward by an additional 86,000 positions.

Labor Day: Is the job market cracking?

As American workers celebrated Labor Day, the domestic labor market stood at a precarious cyclical crossroads.

America had 818,000 fewer jobs than we thought

The recession alarm goes off

The July employment report delivered a severe shock to financial markets, with payroll growth decelerating to 114,000 and the national unemployment rate jumping to 4.3 per cent.

Immigration changes the jobs maths

The March employment report delivered another blowout figure, with non-farm payrolls expanding by 303,000 jobs and unemployment ticking down to 3.8 per cent.

Why job numbers keep getting revised down

Macroeconomic forecasters have noticed a troubling pattern in the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ monthly payroll releases: initial blockbuster figures are routinely followed by substantial downward revisions.

353,000 jobs and no March cut

The January employment report delivered an absolute shock to the macro consensus, as non-farm payrolls surged by an eye-watering 353,000 jobs, while December’s figures were revised sharply higher.

The recession rule that's flashing amber

Macroeconomic forecasting is littered with flawed empirical heuristics, but the Sahm Rule has earned a near-sacred reputation among monetary economists.

Strong jobs, falling bonds

The September employment report delivered an absolute blowout, with non-farm payrolls expanding by an astonishing 336,000 jobs—nearly double consensus forecasts.

Unemployment rose, for a good reason

When the headline unemployment rate climbed from 3.5 to 3.8 per cent in August, knee-jerk commentary warned of cyclical deterioration.

Labor Day: The job market is cooling the right way

For eighteen months, monetary orthodoxy insisted that cooling inflation required engineering a painful surge in unemployment.

The jobs report that disagrees with itself, again

Few macroeconomic rituals generate as much cognitive dissonance as the monthly US employment release, and the May figures were a masterpiece of statistical contradiction.

OPEC just made the Fed's job harder

On Sunday, 2 April, the OPEC+ alliance delivered an unexpected geopolitical thunderbolt across global commodity markets, announcing a surprise production cut of 1.16 million barrels per day.

Are bank failures doing the Fed's job for it?

As the dust settled on the frantic weekend that dismantled Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, Federal Reserve policymakers confronted a radically altered macroeconomic calculus ahead of their March FOMC meeting.

517,000 jobs and the end of the rate-cut dream

The January establishment payroll report was a devastating reality check for the global bond market.

Wages are rising — by how much depends on who you ask

The release of November's average hourly earnings—advancing at a vigorous 0.6 per cent month-on-month—sent fixed-income algorithms into a defensive crouch.

The jobs report that contradicts itself

The release of the October employment situation report presented macroeconomic analysts with an institutional contradiction so pronounced that it resembles two entirely separate economies operating within the same borders.

Two jobs reports, two stories. Which one matters?

Every first Friday of the month, financial markets assemble to dissect the official US employment situation summary, treating the release as a unified economic transmission.