Peter's Blog

Jobs: QCEW shows over 2M jobs lost in Q1

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 […]

Fed Governor Concedes Next Rate Move Is a Coin Flip as Inflation Stays Well Above Target

Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller told Reuters on September 3rd that inflation “remains meaningfully above” the Federal Open Market Committee’s 2 percent goal, even as he pointed to what he called recent signs of disinflation. The remarks, delivered at a Reuters NEXT Newsmaker Interview in Washington, D.C., come less than two weeks before the FOMC’s […]

Private Hiring Grinds to a Near-Halt as Job Growth Hits Seven-Month Low

U.S. private employers added just 38,000 jobs in August 2026, according to the ADP National Employment Report released this week, the slowest pace of hiring since January. The report, compiled from aggregated and anonymized payroll data covering more than 26 million U.S. employees in collaboration with the Stanford Digital Economy Lab, showed weakness spreading beneath […]

Labor Market Data Keeps Getting Revised Down

The Bureau of Labor Statistics released its Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) for July 2026 on Tuesday, September 1st, showing job openings “little changed” at 7.3 million. That phrase, along with its close cousins “essentially unchanged” and “held steady,” appeared throughout the report, describing nearly every headline metric. Hires and total separations both […]

Consumer Confidence Slips Again, Future Outlook Darkens

The Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index fell 0.8 points to 89.4 in August, down from 90.2 in July, based on a survey conducted between August 3rd and August 16th. The decline marks the second consecutive monthly drop, though the headline figure masks a sharper divergence beneath the surface. While consumers grew somewhat more upbeat about […]

Fed’s Barkin Describes a ‘Low-Hire, Low-Fire’ Economy That Doesn’t Feel Great

Richmond Fed President Tom Barkin told a business audience in Greenville, South Carolina, this week that the United States has averaged 2.5 percent real GDP growth since 2023 despite the pandemic, supply-chain shortages, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, conflicts in the Middle East, tariffs, and higher interest rates. He credited stout consumption, still nearly 70 percent […]

Household Survey Shows 1.8M Jobs Lost in 2026 so far

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 […]

JOLTS Stalls Again as Gold Hovers Above $4,000

The latest Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) showed little movement across the major measures. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that job openings were “little changed” at 7.4 million in June 2026, a 4.4 percent openings rate that has barely budged for months. Hiring held at 5.3 million, while total separations stayed near […]

Workforce Shrinks by 720,000 While Gold Surges to $4,096

June’s Employment Situation report offered little comfort to households or policymakers. Headline non-farm payrolls grew by a scant 57,000, a figure that arrived alongside a combined 74,000 downward revision to April and May. The official unemployment rate edged down to 4.2 percent, yet that improvement came only because 720,000 Americans exited the labor force. As […]

Job Openings Hold Steady at 7.6 Million, Uncertainty Continues

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%, […]