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A Very Tame Employment Report [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-05-02
No big changes in April (mid-month) employment, either by the survey of establishments (payrolls, above right) or households (unemployment rate, above left). There were downward revisions to February and March payrolls. The reduction in federal government employment was still small in April, because most of those workers are still on the payroll via severance or continuation of some sort.
So far, we’re still mostly dealing with anecdotes and corporate earnings worries, particularly for companies that serve lower- and middle-income people. The canaries in the coal mine.
Here’s a link to the BLS release: www.bls.gov/...
Here are some anecdotal links:
Economic hazards are piling up. Are they one-offs or something worse? (Wapo gift link)
‘Things Have Ground to a Halt’: Tariff Uncertainty Paralyzes Businesses (NYTimes gift link)
We’ll be watching the weekly unemployment claims, both initial for layoffs, and continuing for slowing re-hiring, for the first signs of an accumulating slowdown over the next month. Both measure spiked up a little in the last week, but are still within a relatively non-alarming range. So far.
PS. I’m not interested in claims that BLS is cooking the books on economic data. At least not yet. It’s certainly possible, but I don’t think these data smell bad. It fits the pattern. The economy is more frozen up than crashing down. For now.
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