Labor market flashes "everything is the same" signals

The gap between perceptions and reality continues to yawn

• JOLTS says, “no change”

• hiring intentions do get a bit softer (as they were just a few months ago)

• ISM survey hollering “stagflation” (as it has for 26 months)

• college wage premium still very high, but shrinking

• the only group to get richer since the pandemic began

• the top skill for ex-federal workers is what now?

• visualizing talent clusters

---

👉👉👉Reminder to sign up for the Weekly Recap only, if daily emails is too much. Find me on twitter, for more fun. 

---

Labor market flashing a five-alarm “more of the same” signal

I can’t keep doing this, but I will.

We’ve got slowing, but it’s got nothing to do with tariffs—those appear to have made little or no difference, at all. This time, with evidence from the labor market (and other labor desiderata).

JOLTS is “no change”

JOLTS (“job openings and labor turnover survey”) came out yesterday, and it’s a five alarm fire of nothing.

Ahhh why did Trump do this to us?!!!

Indeed via BLS

The job openings rate continues to be exactly as mediocre as it’s been since the Summer.

Yes, hiring has slowed to a crawl. Yes, it’s a cause for concern. No, it hasn’t gotten better or worse since the Great Tariff Uncertainty Crisis. The reason that job growth is slowing is because it was never strong to begin with. “Where will job growth come from (and who will do the work)?” has been a pressing question for well-over a year.¹

Nothing has changed, except maybe people thought that Trump was going to lower interest rates and let the good times roll, and now they realize it’s not so simple.

The very even-keeled Guy Berger says “it’s not a bad picture,” but nonetheless, this is the chart that terrifies him:

Guy Berger

Hiring intentions went down, and firing intentions went up . . . and both returned to where they were ~4 months ago.

Is that a welcome trend? No. Is that a big inflection? Also no. Has it manifested in any meaningful changes in hiring behavior? Not yet, apparently.

The ISM manufacturing survey is so bad it’s almost like the 26 proceeding months

I feel like I’m going out of my mind.

Literally every chart or data release is accompanied with commentary like this: “OMG TARIFF UNCERTAINTY IS RUINING EVERYTHING, and to prove it, here’s some data showing a steady decline of everything for the past year that appears to have little or no bearing with tariffs or uncertainty.”

The ISM manufacturing survey is yet another example.

The normally quite reasonable Joe Weisenthal of Odd Lots called it “one of the ugliest, most stagflationary ISM-manufacturing reports we’ve seen in a long time.”

Yes, I’ll concede the selected comments frequently reference tariffs and uncertainty, but look at the actual survey results:²