January 9, 2026 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
Payrolls were up 50,000 last month and the unemployment rate ticked down a tenth to 4.4% from November’s revised rate of 4.5%. Revisions to payroll growth were negative, with combined October and November totals marked down 78,000. Over the past three months, overall monthly gains have averaged a loss of 22,000 jobs, due to federal government job losses. The private sector jobs market isn’t a whole lot stronger with the comparable average for the private sector at a low 29,000 per month.
December 24, 2025 | Daily JAM |
Initial claims for unemployment fell last week with initial claims decreasing by 10,000 to 214,000, the Labor Department reported Wednesday. The median forecast in a Bloomberg survey of economists called for 224,000 initial claims.
Continuing claims, the number of people already receiving benefits, rose to 1.92 million in the previous week,
December 11, 2025 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
Initial claims for unemployment rose more than expected last week. Initial claims increased by 44,000 to 236,000 in the week ended December. 6. The figure exceeded all but one estimate in Bloomberg’s survey of economists
November 26, 2025 | Daily JAM |
Recent college graduates have a growing employment problem. Young college grads (ages 22–27) now face unemployment rates around 4.6 to 5.3%, up from about 3.2 to 3.3% pre‑pandemic, and higher than the overall unemployment rate increase over the same period. The overall national unemployment rate was 4.4% in September, the date of the last unemployment survey report. The recent‑grad unemployment has also risen faster than that for non‑college peers, and degree‑holders now make up a record share of the total unemployed, signaling that the market is absorbing new graduates more slowly than in the past.​ The total unemployment rate for all recent college graduates has climbed from around 3.25% in 2019 to about 4.59% on average in 2025, a much larger rise than for older college grads or non‑college young workers.​ Projections show recent‑grad unemployment reaching roughly 4.8 to 5.8% by mid‑2025, the highest since the early‑2010s outside the pandemic period.​
November 6, 2025 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
Layoffs accelerated in October from an already alarming level in September, according to newly released data from Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a company that tracks workplace reductions. U.S. employers have announced 1.1 million layoffs so far this year–the worst reading since the pandemic recession and on par with 2008 and 2009 job cuts during the Great Recession. The data includes a recent spate of layoffs at major companies such as UPS, Amazon and Target.
September 18, 2025 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing, Uncategorized |
The Dot Plot economic projections published by the Federal Reserve yesterday are really an extraordinary document.
September 4, 2025 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
Some context on the evening before the 8:30 a.m. ET release of the August jobs report. This begins a two-week period with an extraordinary line-up of potentially economy and market moving events.
August 18, 2025 | Daily JAM |
At just over a 4% rate, unemployment remains low, and it has edged only a bit higher since the start of the year.
So the economy is doing fine, right?
Well, no. Because the labor force is shrinking. If the labor force had increased this year at the pace it did last year, the unemployment rate would be headed toward 5%,
August 11, 2025 | Daily JAM |
Trying to figure out the impact of AI on the job market? Look no further than the market for recent college graduates in computer science.
Among college graduates ages 22 to 27, computer science and computer engineering majors are facing some of the highest unemployment rates, 6.1% and 7.5% respectively
August 2, 2025 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
The economy added 73,000 jobs in July, less than expected. But more shockingly, hiring in May and June was revised lower by a quarter of a million jobs, according to Labor Department data released Friday.
The unemployment rate in July also edged up slightly to 4.2%. Job creation for May and June was revised lower by a combined 258,000 jobs-—bringing June job creation down to 14,000, and May to 19,000.
July 3, 2025 | Daily JAM, Morning Briefing |
The U.S. economy created 147,000 jobs in June, close to the healthy pace of job creation in May, the Labor Department reported today, June 3. (The report was released today since tomorrow is a national holiday.) The unemployment rate ticked down to 4.1%. Average hourly wages rose 0.2% in June and are up 3.7% this year, more than off setting inflation. But much of the increase was driven by a jump in state and local government employment, according to a Bureau of Labor Statistics report out Thursday. Private payrolls rose just 74,000 in June, the least since October and largely due to health care.
May 13, 2025 | Daily JAM, Mid Term |
All estimates of the effect of the Trump tariffs and foreign retaliation are obviously shots at a moving target. But here’s how the Budget Lab at Yale sees the picture now. (This forecast includes all tariffs implemented in 2025 through May 12. It includes the effects of the lower rates with China, the deal with the UK, and the recently announced auto tariff rebate. The analyses assumes that the May 12 rates stay in effect indefinitely.)
