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Comment by bdcravens | Hacker News Reader

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bdcravens·

> down 38,000 jobs since the start of the year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics

That's 0.3%.

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Feels like Milton from Office Space: I was told there would be a manufacturing boom.

There might have been. Labor in manufacturing is way down - a trend going back to the 1950s. However manufacturing in the US has been booming all along. What used to take 2000 people in manufacturing now takes less than 200.

thats not true. in most manufacturing industries we produce fewer units than we did 20 or 30 years ago, and in most of those industries the total value produced has been pretty flat. this is something a lot of economists have known about all along. you can read about it here:

https://www.palladiummag.com/2025/10/03/how-gdp-hides-indust...

You can show any number in isolation and it can mean anything.

Now try presenting it the distribution of typical job gains/losses!

The reason the percentage was included was to take the number out of isolation. What can mean anything is when people tell you to ignore the numbers, because they could mean anything.

> Now try presenting it the distribution of typical job gains/losses!

You first!

> You first!

In any honest conversation, the person presenting the numbers will provide this, but I'll bite:

How many years are cumulative negative in this table?

https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/ces0000000001?output_view=ne...

(I guess the correct way to model this would be as the difference of Poissons between hires and separations, but a student-t should do just fine since we don't have separations)

down is down

Hardly a boom.

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