Peter's Blog

The Bureau of Labor Statistics released its latest Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) on Tuesday, and the report offered little new for markets to digest. Total openings in May held at 7.6 million, hires came in at 5.2 million, and separations totaled 5.1 million. The underlying rates (openings at 4.6%, hiring at 3.3%, […]

The analysis below covers the Employment picture released on the first Friday of every month. While most of the attention goes to the Headline Report, it can be helpful to look at the details, revisions, and other reports to get a better gauge of what is really going on. Current Trends The jobs report showed […]

The analysis below covers the Employment picture released on the first Friday of every month. While most of the attention goes to the Headline Report, it can be helpful to look at the details, revisions, and other reports to get a better gauge of what is really going on. Current Trends The jobs report showed […]

Most careers today have some possibility of being diminished or replaced by artificial intelligence. This has sparked great fears among many citizens and academics that most people will end up without a job and business elites will keep getting richer. They believe that there will be a vast structural surge of unemployment in which the […]

Trump’s tariff regime has led to an extremely unique economic situation. While inflation for some goods is high, many other goods have little inflation, and new job creation is lagging. Any Keynesian economist could weasel their way around this, but it gives compelling evidence against the assumptions of their most revered models. The Phillips curve […]

To the relief of many market-movers, last week the FOMC voted to cut rates for the second time this year and announced that the Fed will begin maintaining its balance sheet starting in December. With this return to easy-money, Powell and the Fed are again attempting to paper over economic fault-lines created by their own […]

With another round of jobs data released last week, another revision to June’s numbers reveal two startling truths. First, jobs actually decreased in June, contrary to the initial estimates. Second, and arguably worse, the Trump administration’s cover-up of these numbers is as bad as critics thought. The following article was originally published by the Mises […]

The Bureau of Labor Statistics dropped a quiet bombshell on September 9, unveiling a preliminary benchmark revision that erased 911,000 jobs from March 2025 payroll tallies. The 0.6% markdown is roughly triple the average adjustment of the past decade and instantly casts doubt on months of breezy “resilient labor market” headlines. Almost the entire shortfall […]

Hiring hit the brakes in June, with the ADP National Employment Report showing U.S. private-sector payrolls shrinking by 33,000 positions—the first monthly contraction of 2025. Goods makers managed to eke out modest gains, but service industries bled jobs, and small businesses took the biggest hit. Wages, meanwhile, kept climbing faster than the official inflation gauges, […]

New York’s manufacturing sector faced another difficult month, marking a consistent four-month decline according to the recent Empire State Manufacturing Survey released by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The general business conditions index fell sharply to -16.0 in June, emphasizing the continued contraction in regional economic activity. Despite the deteriorating conditions, there is […]