Yes, that is a terrible loss!

Except, there are hints that the unemployment rate is staying steady-ish because people are dropping out of the labor market. U4-U6 are rising and labor force participation is down 0.5% over the year. So U3 seems to be understating the changes that are afoot.

For context:

On top of that, the obvious distributional implication of cutting gov't workforce, cutting social safety net, and imposing regressive tax changes. (And let's not forget being generally anti-labor in policy and enforcement.)

They make the same point as I've made, but with more credibility since they are actual macroeconomists: if C is going down and G (together over 80% of agg dem), is it reasonable to expect aggregate demand to go up? Do we really believe I and (X-M) can compensate? Don't think so.

Agreed re: paid leave. I am concerned about the second category: it sounds like former gov't employees who have been terminated but accepted severance are being counted as still employed. (Job is not counted as destroyed.)

Am I reading the sentence wrong?

I realize this wouldn't affect unemployment (HH survey), but might be why overall employment change is ... lagging. It appears to be undercounting reductions that are otherwise being boasted about.

Except that recently this text adds a caveat for gov't employment: "(Employees on paid leave or receiving ongoing severance pay are counted as employed in the establishment survey.)" Appears to be new as of last month's report.

Guess we'll see. I don't have a strong prior between slowdown or full recession, but I think there is good reason to believe the jobs report painted too rosy a picture.

"RECEIVING ONGOING SEVERANCE PAY ARE COUNTED AS EMPLOYED" ... so those dubious buy-out offers: anyone who accepted is not being counted in the BLS numbers, effectively delaying impacts showing up in official stats. Even if 275k boast is BS, job report is significantly undercounting gov't layoffs.

Admin boasts 275k+ of gov't layoffs. In the BLS jobs report: "Within government, federal government employment declined by 4,000 in March, following a loss of 11,000 jobs in February. (Employees on paid leave or receiving ongoing severance pay are counted as employed in the establishment survey.)"

Maybe. Caveats: BLS jobs report is "optimistic" every 2-3 months (might be just noise); downward revisions for prior 2 months of 48k; only showing 4k loss (and 10k in Feb) for government because fed workers on leave count as employed, layoffs held up in courts; waffling on tariff threats. Let's see.

That's right: you ingratiate yourself to cult leader by publicly humiliating yourself to defend their most absurd positions.

Thanks! I had forgotten about this term. Unfortunately, it has proven a winning strategy.

Stability in new jobs came from Gov't, but that's over. I'm no macroeconomist, but if C + G decrease ... I + X make up for it?! Why? How? And other sources of instability: bsky.app/profile/pkru...

I'm just wondering out loud how this all doesn't hit the fan - probably sooner than later.