Economy

Last edited Fri Jan 2, 2026, 08:09 PM - Edit history (3)

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FRIDAY DECEMBER 19

* Existing home sales (non-govt) - I haven't looked at yet

* Consumer Sentiment final (non-govt) - here's an article:
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/consumer-sentiment-shows-substantial-decline-from-last-year-amid-higher-prices-tough-job-market-160618145.html

THUR DECEMBER 18:

* Weekly unemployment insurance claims for the week ending Dec 13 (it was 236,000 for the week ending Dec 6) - In the week ending December 13, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 224,000, a decrease of 13,000 from the previous week's revised level. The previous week's level was revised up by 1,000 from 236,000 to 237,000. (govt)

* Consumer price index for November (govt) (note: the one for October was cancelled. The November one was originally scheduled for December 10 before the Fed's rate-setting meeting, but alas was delayed until 8 days after the meeting) - result: 2.7% year-over-year, a cooling from the 3.0% year-over-year reported in the September report, and a 0.2% increase over the last 2 months. LBN thread: https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143584377


TUE DECEMBER 16:

* The long-delayed big Jobs report (featuring the headline non-farm payroll jobs and unemployment rate) (govt). Expected: +50,000 jobs in November and 4.5% unemployment rate. Actual: -105,000 in October and +64,000 in November for a net drop of jobs over these 2 months of 41,000. Nonfarm payroll jobs averaged only 17k/month over the last 7 months and 22k over the last 3 months. These are seasonally adjusted numbers. The raw numbers (i.e. not seasonally adjusted numbers) are 204k/month and 416k/month respectively. And the unemployment rate is 4.6% in November, up from 4.4% in September. LBN thread: https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143583215

There was not, and never will be a separate October jobs report. The payroll stuff Establishment survey was taken and will be included in the November report (as it was in the Decmber 16 report). The household survey that produces the unemployment rate was not done in October, and so the October unemployment rate will be a blank in the records forever.

More details: https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143583215#post19

The LBN thread: https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143583215 .

Please disregard all the comments about "Christmas hires" and "seasonal hires" - those have been adjusted for.

TUE DECEMBER 16 Continued:

There's another jobs report that came out -- the ADP report on PRIVATE sector payrolls:
16,250 private jobs/week for 4 weeks ending 11/29/25 (so roughly +65,000 private sector jobs in the month of November)
LBN thread: https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143583228
Again, ignore the comment about seasonal hiring. The ADP reports seasonally adjusted numbers
Also realize that The ADP numbers cover only about 20% of the nation's private workforce. They have to estimate the other 80%.
https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1014&pid=3506135

The retail sales report that came out December 16: Sept: +0.1% and October: +0.0%. Those are nominal dollar increases. After adjusting for inflation, which was 0.3% month-over-month in September, and an unknown amount in October, those are declines of real spending of 0.2% and 0.3%, assuming that October also comes in at 0.3% month-over-month inflation. Yes, they are seasonally adjusted.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/retail-sales-flat-in-october-as-uncertainty-tempers-consumer-spending/ar-AA1SsP9b

S&P flash U.S. services and manufacturing PMI's (non-govt) - I haven't looked at this yet

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General Comments

Please don't believe the fabrication that Fed Chair Powell said, or implied, that the jobs numbers are "fudged". He did not. The person posting that claim included no excerpt that one can read to judge what exactly he said, and that was deliberate. When confronted, that person expressed some other reasons (again without supporting information) for believing the numbers are fudged. That may be so, But that does not excuse very deliberately misleading one's fellow progressives about what Powell said.


Please don't believe reports that 1 million or 1.1 million jobs were lost in 2025 so far, implying these are net job losses (jobs lost minus jobs gained). This is based on Challenger, Gray, and Christmas that reported 1,170,821 job cuts were ANNOUNCED. And they are just layoff announcements, and they are not net of hiring announcements or any actual hiring. As the monthly JOLTS (Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey) shows, there are a lot of layoffs (and voluntary leavings of jobs) and a lot of hiring every month. The excuse that media misreports the Challenger report too is not an excuse for deliberately misleading one's fellow progressives, after being presented with the information about what the Challenger etc. report actually said.

The media mis-reports a lot of things like Hillary's email and Hunter Biden's laptop with cherry-picked misleading factoids, but that is never an excuse for echoing those reports here after being made aware of the factual record.


There's another myth that's spreading: that the new head of the BLS (Bureau of Labor Statistics) is a Trump appointee, E.J. Antoni. However, his nomination was withdrawn due to too many controversies.

The current head is Acting Commissioner, William J. Wiatrowski, who has served in this role twice previously, the first time from January 2017 to March 2019, and the second time from March 2023 to January 2024
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureau_of_Labor_Statistics