They’re telling me the job market is fine. Four point two percent unemployment, they say. Tight labor market, they say. Great economy, they say.
You know what I see? I see wage growth at three and a half percent — down from where it was in 2022. Three and a half percent. That’s not a raise. That’s a slow leak. By the time the grocery bill catches up, my paycheck is already behind.
I see quits at three million, down from over four million in 2022. Three million people walking away from a bad job used to mean workers had options. Three million now means people are scared shitless to move. They can’t find better. They’re stuck.
I see labor force participation at sixty-one point five percent. Before the pandemic it was sixty-three. That means working-age people have just… disappeared from the count. They’re not unemployed. They’re gone. They’re caring for somebody. They’re sick. They gave up. And the headline still says everything’s fine.
I see the Black unemployment rate still running about double the white rate. Two-to-one. Every damn month. Structurally. While some suit on TV tells me the labor market is tight.
Tight for who? Tight for the donor class. Tight for the Fed chair engineering a soft landing for Wall Street. Tight for corporate America, which raked in record profits while workers lost the leverage to ask for a goddamn raise.
Four point two percent unemployment is not a victory. Four point two percent is what the count looks like when people have been priced out, worn out, and pushed out of the labor market — and the system calls it a win.
This isn’t a tight labor market. This is a labor market that’s been cooled on purpose so the people who own everything can keep owning it. We did everything we were told. We went back to work. We showed up. And this is what we get.
Four point two percent. Bullshit.
Source story: U.S. unemployment holds at 4.2% in June; quits and wage growth signal cooling.