Buying cheap tchotchkes on the internet (reprise)

Jobs, spending, wages all keep mucking along, but that's better than outright retreat. On the plus side, it's never been a better time to sell cheap stuff on the internet.

• labor market slows, but it’s not all bad

• ecommerce firing on all cylinders

• why the cautious consumer loves buying things on the internet

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Buying cheap tchotchkes on the internet (reprise)

Quickly review your yiddish phrase book, while we start with some macro context on the middling state of things, for the unintiated

A middling state of affairs, but no more cause for alarm than a year ago

Cautious consumerism has been a thing now for about a year.

Hiring has been slowing for a while, wage growth has been slowing for a while, and consumer spending has been slowing for a while.

That should give you comfort if you’ve only just noticed—things are no more going to hell than they were 9-12 months ago—but it’s still possible that things are going to hell, it just takes 9-12 months to get there.

Idk.

Proceed with caution and hedge your bets, but don’t freak out, either.

In case you missed it, there wasn’t too much job growth in the most recent print:

BLS

Payrolls increased by 142K, which is about 20K less than what folks were expecting.

I was rooting for some optimism to the upside, but it wasn’t in the cards.

Unsurprisingly, healthcare led the way:

Healthcare makes all the jobs is just a feature of the new normal.

Otherwise, it wasn’t all bad.