It’s funny, as someone who looks at seasonally adjusted data all the time, Nate Silver ‘s convention bounce adjustment makes strong methodological sense to me

Never good to see the increase in unemployment that we've witnessed recently, but the underlying mix is dissimilar from (and better than) you'd see in a pre-recessionary period:

My overall take: 1/ The good news: worries about a recessionary step change in the labor market are unwarranted, so far. 2/ The bad news: no signs that the gradual-but-already-substantial cooling in the labor market is slowing down.

Thanks to Lauren Kaori Gurley for including me in her jobs day roundup: "It’s not a spectacularly good labor market. If this was a steady state, that’d be fine. The problem is that it’s not a steady state. Things are still cooling.” washingtonpost.com/business/2024/…

Subtle point about this chart: 1/ Recessions are driven mostly by an increase in unemployment due to permanent layoff. 2/ BUT this increase is caused primarily by a decline in hiring. Even without a pickup in layoffs, hiring declines lead UPL to increase.

Fwiw, claims are doing a good job of detecting fluctuations in the portion of unemployment that is the most aligned with recessions:

x.com/i/spaces/1DXGy…

My official moniker for the state of the labor market: OK (derogatory)

Hey folks, I'm trying something new - a LinkedIn audio event to talk about the jobs report, at 930 AM PST: linkedin.com/events/7237853…