The Diffusion Index And More Jobs Report Hand-Wringing

Does anyone really truly know what is going on anymore with jobs and the economy?

As you can see in the screenshot above, “The Diffusion Index” refers to where jobs are coming from. I read that with caution, because warehousing and retail seem to almost always be strong — and if they’ve flattened out, I don’t really know where else jobs are coming from. In a later chart I found, it says the biggest growth is in “business services” (what the f*ck is that?) and “education,” which makes sense, as higher Ed especially loves to hire “account managers” and “marketing growth hackers” instead of, I don’t know, professors.

Every time we get a new jobs report, people go nuts trying to analyze it, and then we discuss the Fed and interest rates and all this other stuff. I’d honestly guess maybe 97 people in America truly understand any given jobs report and what it means. I can tell you as someone who experiences infertility that jobs/employment and infertility are both what we call “zero/one” problems: either you are a parent, or you’re not. Either you have a job or you don’t. That’s how most people approach these issues. Very few understand them at the macro level.

However, I did find this, from the Chief Economist of ZipRecruiter, who I weirdly think slept with one of my high school friends years ago: