In February, there were 275,000 new jobs, but the two previous months were revised lower, by 167,000. That means that the originally reported robust results in December and January look a little less strong than previously thought.The unemployment rate edged up to 3.9%, as more people entered the labor force. Anything under 4% is low, but we are at the highest level in two-years .
Jeffrey Roach, chief economist for LPL Financial, believes the latter. “Firms will likely slow the pace of hiring in the coming months and shrink payrolls as indicated in the recent layoff announcements,” but that doesn’t mean that a jobs recession is afoot. Amid the transition, some firms are keeping staff, but reducing hours worked, a form of “labor hoarding” according to Roach.
Both CPI and PCE have been steadily declining since peaking in the summer of 2022. But a larger question is vexing some economists: What if both ways that we look at inflation are wrong? The paper’s thesis is that the culprit is borrowing costs, “which have grown at rates they had not reached in decades.”