Another month, another set of numbers designed to make you feel stupid for struggling.
The unemployment rate dropped to 4.2%. Sounds great. Except it fell because people stopped looking for work. Gave up. Walked away. And once they stop searching, the government stops counting them. Poof — they’re not unemployed anymore. They’re just gone from the numbers that get waved at you on the news.
Employers added 57,000 jobs. Less than half of last month. That’s the number they’re calling a “labor market.” Inflation’s at 3.7%, which means your paycheck buys less every damn week, and the Fed’s plan to fix that is to raise rates again — make it harder for businesses to hire, more expensive to borrow, slower to recover. Their answer to people not getting ahead is to make damn sure fewer of them get hired at all. That’s not a plan. That’s bullshit with a press conference.
This is the game. They cook the headline so “strong economy” stays in the talking points. People dropping out don’t count. Inflation eating your wages doesn’t count. Fifty-seven thousand jobs in an economy that needs multiples of that doesn’t count as a crisis. It counts as “cautious.”
Cautious. They’re cautious with the jobs and generous with the bonuses. They’re cautious with wages and aggressive with the price increases. But sure — tell me again how the economy is working for working people. I’ll wait. I’ve got nothing but time, apparently, because nobody’s fucking hiring.
Source story: Jobless-benefit filings edge higher while layoffs stay low.