The Books Are Cooked

The job market does not seem good.

That screen shot is from The New York Times this AM. Job reports are often cooked-book nonsense, as is the unemployment rate — these are things guys who don’t really understand finance talk about at parties while mentioning “The Fed” sixteen times. It’s kinda all bullshit, and most people these days are getting jobs on a wing and a prayer (have you scrolled LinkedIn at all recently?), but one thing in this shot is relevant. The job gains from the last two months were revised down by almost 300K jobs. Now we’re just cooking the books out in the open. It’s the equivalent of this same newspaper missing a huge story, then offering a correction on said story on page A26, nine days later.

There is going to be a reckoning around jobs and AI. We have mostly buried our heads in the sand about this and talked about how we are “people-first!” or “Ha, good luck automating what I do!” But it’s coming for a lot of people, probably self-included. My difference is that I don’t really give much of a shit about working in a warehouse, even though I had a semi-”elite” upbringing. I just like the sense of getting the check.

These reports are the first canaries in the coal mine of where we’re headed.

And now, attempt to have a nice FriYAY.