Guy Berger
@econberger
Senior Advisor on Labor Markets at Access/Macro; Workforce Economist in Residence at Guild; Senior Fellow at the Burning Glass Institute. I tweet a lot about labor markets, macro, and (sorry) music! Tweets represent my own views.
I did this for financial services yesterday, here's the same thing for information services, where people often attribute the employment decline to AI. The correlation within the sector runs contrary to that story: the higher AI adoption is, the smaller the job losses.
Businesses still in a (slightly) more net expansionary headcount mode than they were a year ago - mostly due to fewer of them cutting headcount.
3/ One set of job postings that are almost back to pre-COVID levels: human resources (which includes recruiting). In the past this has occasionally been a leading indicator for overall hiring. (Though not consistently/reliably.)
2/ After a brief period of slower growth, software development job postings have reaccelerated. Still about 2 years from returning to pre-COVID levels.
Indeed job postings: 1/ Flat since last fall. Still down a little year-over-year. No sign of either a labor market boom or a deterioration here. (There was a brief and mild soft patch in June)
3/ The insured unemployment rate is starting out July flat relative to June, though down from a year earlier.
2/ Continuing claims well below 2025 levels, a hair below 2024 levels, and a hair above 2023 levels. Not much change here either for the better or the worse. (Unlike earlier this year when it was clearly for the better.)
Claims: 1/ Initial claims were below 2023-2025 levels. Layoffs are very low, though not necessarily getting any lower.
Job losses in finance are happening where AI adoption is lowest; job growth is strongest where AI adoption is highest.
The unemployment rate index from Morning Consult is running slightly above year-ago levels... things took a very slight turn for the worse (or less good) in late May across a wide range of data.
Another week of high frequency data suggesting the minor labor market recovery of H1 is running out of juice... ADP job growth still positive as of late June, but not much above where breakeven probably is.
Which of these countries validates your ideological priors about macroeconomic policy?
3/ No data yet for a July nowcast of unemployment due to permanent layoff.
2/ Continuing claims well below 2025 levels, slightly below 2024 levels, and slightly above 2023 levels. Unlike initial claims even if you squint really hard you can't find signs of things getting worse. (Though they're probably not improving anymore.)
Claims: 1/ Initial claims still running below 2023-25 levels, though the relative outperformance is a little smaller than it was a month or two ago. Keeping an eye on this as another potential sign that the mini-recovery of early 2026 is ebbing.
ADP's data has softened further as we move through June (though for the time being I'd still characterize it as decent) Very early but I wonder if July's jobs report will be as blah as June's, or even genuinely soft
I've seen a lot less Argentina economic content from either Milei skeptics or Milei superfans. Economic growth is OK, inflation is still very high and rising. (>30% annualized; obviously much better than it was pre-Milei but still bad)
The Morning Consult unemployment rate index is back to signaling that the labor market is getting slightly worse, as of early July. One of our more downbeat indicators
People like to use labor force participation to poo-poo improvements in the unemployment rate, but... If you include "people not in the labor force who want a job", the labor market has improved by (very slightly) *more* than the unemployment rate itself indicates.
Don Edwards National Wildlife Refuge - highly recommended if you like the outdoors and you live in the Bay Area One of the trails is dog friendly
15/ We're also seeing an ongoing deterioration in job finding for people who are not in the labor force and want a job.
14/ Hiring and job-finding rates out of unemployment didn't look good in June. The job finding rate in particular is on a steady slide downward
12/ Unemployment rate fell for white Americans, was flat for black/African Americans, and rose for Hispanic/Latino Americans.
3/ And of course, the unemployment-due-to-permanent-layoff nowcast... we finally saw a decline here. I still think continuing claims exaggerate the degree of improvement, but the parallel BLS series has stopped rising.