They keep calling the job market resilient, so let’s read the goddamn receipt.
Openings slipped to 7.36 million in June, down from 7.54 million in May. Layoffs sit at 1.8 million — little changed, they say, as if a million eight isn’t a city’s worth of people getting handed their box. Hiring bumped to 5.3 million, still nowhere near the six-million months this country used to call a boom. Quits rose a little, and the Labor Department wants you to read that as confidence. Confidence. Motherfucker, people quit on hope because the future isn’t safe, not because the future is fine.
The whole report lands while the economy absorbs a shock from fighting in Iran and a closed Strait of Hormuz, and the wire service still calls it resilience. Resilience is a word for people who never have to pack up their desk. The rest of us see a 1.8-million-person layoff ledger and call it a goddamn national emergency wearing a necktie.
Look at where the openings are: warehouses, trucks, utilities, federal agencies. Not the main street factory. Not the shop that makes things. Wholesalers and nondurable goods manufacturers are falling. That’s the whole American story in one graph: the moves are up where the boxes move, and down where the work makes something.
Call it resilient if it helps you sleep. Me and Cinder call it bullshit.
Source story: US job openings slip to 7.36 million in June, near forecasts.