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Yeah, it was strange to see the reports.

The numbers were rosy but all the people I knew looking for jobs had a hard time landing things in contradiction of the numbers. People started doubting themselves. But I think to anyone it was obvious the numbers were wrong. In previous years, even 2022 and 2023, there was a constant stream of recruiters who late last year and all this year had dried up...

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These numbers have very little to do with a small sample of people looking for a job. Something like ~5-10 million people are looking for work at any given time, this is changes that by about 0.07 million per month.

What matters to your social circle isn’t overall jobs but how well each sector is doing. LLM’s for example probably have negligible impact on 99% of the economy but that 1% has seen real disruption.

The US economy still added jobs during this period, just fewer than previously calculated.

But what kinds of jobs? Bottom of the barrel jobs, or semi-skilled, skilled and professional? That maters a lot.

I’m not making any claims about the quality or types of jobs added, just that they were. You can read the BLS publication for that kind of information.

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