So, picture this — it’s another Friday, trudging through the usual grind, right? And then, bam! This report drops. The job market, which we were all hoping was just taking a power nap, seems to have hit some kind of invisible wall. It was Daniel Zhao, the big shot economist dude from Glassdoor or something, who said we’re smack dab in the “eye of the hurricane.” I always wondered if hurricanes have eyes… or maybe ears? Anyway, he’s not sounding too chipper. Like, the storm isn’t on the way, it’s kinda parked right over us. Cozy, huh?
So, the job numbers for July? A measly 73k or whatever. If you ask any economist worth their salt, they’ll mumble something about needing 80k to 100k jobs each month because, you know, people keep having babies. And Laura Ullrich, another brainy person from Indeed, says simply, “Yeah, not keeping up with the population, tough luck.”
What’s even crazier? They went back and changed the numbers for May and June too! Surprise, they were way off like, “Oops, my bad” kind of way off. May’s initially cheery 144k jobs magically shrunk to a pathetic 19k. How do you even mess that up? So, in total, we’re down 258,000 jobs from what they first thought. That’s a lot of zeros missing!
Honestly, I think these number fudges are supposed to be normal when folks double-check data. But still, they usually don’t mess up this bad. It leaves everyone scratching their heads, wondering what’s really up. Ullrich summed it up – “Soft market, not disastrous, just underwhelming.”
Oh and the saga continued, because, guess what, tariffs are still a thing. Just like unexpected rain on your picnic day. So, Trump threw a whole heap of new tariffs out there, hitting everything in sight, from handbags to hiking boots. Economists say it’s like a tax, but cooler sounding, right? These tariffs just twist the knife by making stuff more expensive. Businesses don’t like unpredictability, so they hold off on hiring, ’cause who knows what next Tuesday brings.
Add this little nugget — the grand hiring rate hasn’t been this low since 2014, outside of when our pal COVID came to town. But now, with these tariffs hanging over us like a bad joke, there’s a cloud of uncertainty. Companies are just, well, sitting there, confused.
But wait, there’s more! If you’re into participation rates and unemployment figures — okay, maybe not, but humor me — the labor force rate dropped to its lowest since 2022. Could it be Trump’s immigration hoo-ha keeping people away from the workforce? Some think so. We’re at a 4.2% unemployment rate, inching up from last month. Not winning awards here.
Long-term unemployment is creeping back, too, like that smell in your fridge you thought you got rid of. A quarter of the unemployed have been out of work for ages. On the bright side, layoffs are chill, so there’s that. But there’s still this heavy fog over the job market; no one’s really moving around. Total stagnation, man.
So, yeah, in the wild ride of life, the job market seems to have taken a pit stop right when we hoped it would floor it.