OK, so I imagine everyone has moved on from this by now, but since I finally have a few minutes, I thought I'd do a quick thread explaining this, since it is FAR from intuitive.

https://twitter.com/TheStalwart/status/2001784445389680932

The question @TheStalwart is asking here is very reasonable. If year-over-year inflation is calculated by measuring the price level in November 2025 and comparing it to the price level in November 2024, then nothing that happens in the middle should matter.

It's #jobsday! Except it isn't, because of the government shutdown. Which means that we're left sifting through alternative data sources to try to figure out what's going on in the labor market.
So, what are those sources telling us? A 🧵: (Prefer your jobs day news in story form? I got you: )nytimes.com/2025/11/07/bus…

A few quick #JOLTS 📈:
Starting with: Job openings are way down from their peak, but they've fallen slowly if at all in recent months. No obvious sign that labor demand is falling off a cliff.

https://twitter.com/bencasselman/status/1973026386115002691

But it IS getting harder to find a job. There is now less than one job opening per unemployed worker. Not a low rate by historical standards, but definitely weaker than just before the pandemic (and way weaker than at the peak of the reopening boom).

President Trump didn't like the jobs numbers, so he fired the person responsible for producing them.
It's a move that has been tried before, by leaders of countries from Argentina to Greece to the Soviet Union. It rarely ends well.
(Link at end of thread) Janet Yellen, not a person prone to hyperbole, put it this way: “This is the kind of thing you would only expect to see in a banana republic."

CBO is out with its final cost estimate of the tax-and-spending bill passed by the House.
- Revenue ⬇️ by $3.7 trillion over 10 years
- Spending ⬇️ by $1.3 trillion
- Debt ⬆️ by $2.4 trillion over 10 years
- Uninsured pop. ⬆️ by 10.9 million in 2034
Full analysis: cbo.gov/publication/61… The spending cuts mostly come from Medicaid ($344 billion over 10 years), food stamps and related programs ($295 billion) and the Affordable Care Act ($132 billion).

So this was an interesting finding from @NateSilver538, but one I found odd because @BLS_gov publishes CPI for regions (and for some metro areas) but not for states. So I dug into it a bit, and there's less here than meets the eye.

https://twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1852915210845073445

Nate's data is coming from this tracker from the @JECRepublicans. They don't have a state-level inflation estimate either, though. They just use BLS's estimate of regional inflation and apply it to an estimate of household spending when Biden took office.
jec.senate.gov/public/index.c…

I hate that @ellawinthrop is leaving us, but I'm so glad I got to work with her on her last piece for @nytimesbusiness. She's the best, most collaborative, most creative visual journalist I've ever worked with. A thread with a few of my favorite Ben-and-Ella collabs:

https://twitter.com/ellawinthrop/status/1828791325740986422

1. This iconic chart showing the scale of the pandemic job losses:
nytimes.com/interactive/20…

Good news on inflation! U.S. consumer prices FELL 0.1 percent in June, and were up just 3 percent from a year earlier. "Core" prices, stripping out volatile food and fuel, were up 0.1 percent from May and 3.3 percent from last June. Data: …Live coverage: bls.gov/news.release/c…
nytimes.com/live/2024/07/1… This is the second straight month where there has been effectively no inflation on a month-to-month basis. Prices were flat in May, and down in June.

Job openings ticked up in May (but only because April was revised down). Layoffs edged up. Quits basically flat. All consistent with a gradually slowing, but not collapsing, job market. #JOLTS
Full data: bls.gov/news.release/j… There were 8.1 million job openings on the last day of May. That's up from 7.9 million in April, revised down from the 8.1m originally reported.
Larger story here is that openings are clearly falling quickly, even if they're still high in absolute terms. #JOLTS

The U.S. economy slowed in the final three months of the year, but only because the Q3 number was so strong -- the 3.3% growth rate in Q4 was well above expectations and certainly offered no hints of a brewing recession. (Belated charts thread)

https://twitter.com/bencasselman/status/1750512251415461975

This is not a case where the volatile components of G.D.P. made a weak quarter look strong, as sometimes happens. Measures of underlying demand were also very strong.

Job openings, quits and layoffs all edged down slightly in November. Consistent with a gradually cooling labor market, but definitely no sign things are falling off a cliff. #JOLTS
Data: bls.gov/news.release/j… There were 8.8 million job openings on the last day of November. That's down a touch from October, but only because October was revised up. Big picture: Openings are trending down (and quite quickly, at that), but are still high by historical standards. #JOLTS

The U.S. economy added 187,000 jobs in August and the unemployment rate rose to 3.8%.
Data:
Full coverage: bls.gov/news.release/e…
nytimes.com/live/2023/09/0… June/July revised down by combined 110,000 jobs.

The U.S. economy added 209k jobs in June and the unemployment rate edged back down to 3.6%.
#jobsday
Data:
Full coverage: https://t.co/JfXzKGVrCqbls.gov/news.release/e…
nytimes.com/live/2023/07/0… Modest downward revisions to both April and May, by a combined 110k jobs.

U.S. employers added 253k jobs in April, defying (yet again) predictions of a slowdown. The unemployment rate ticked back down to 3.4%.
Data: bls.gov/news.release/e…
Full coverage: nytimes.com/live/2023/05/0… Notably February and March both revised down, by a combined 149k jobs.

As expected, the Fed raised interest rates by another quarter point, its tenth increase in a bit more than a year. Rates are now the highest they've been since 2007, before the global financial crisis.
Statement: federalreserve.gov/newsevents/pre…
Full coverage: nytimes.com/live/2023/05/0… March statement: "The Committee anticipates that some additional policy firming may be appropriate..."
May statement: "In determining the extent to which additional policy firming may be appropriate to return inflation to 2 percent over time..."

Was tied up this morning, but #JOLTS looks interesting enough that it's worth a belated/abridged charts thread. I'm sure lots of others have already hit many of these points (looking at you, @nick_bunker, @DanielBZhao) but I can't resist. Labor demand is clearly cooling. Job openings fell for the third straight month. Still high by historical standards, but now clearly falling (and quite rapidly).

For weeks now, I've been thinking about what to make of the U.S. economy right now. The job market is good -- historically good. Inflation is cooling. So why does it feel like another shoe is about to drop?
In the @nytimes today, I try to make sense of it
nytimes.com/2023/04/14/bus… Let's start here: The recovery from the pandemic recession has been nothing short of remarkable. Three years ago this month, the unemployment rate was nearly 15 percent. We'd lost 22 million jobs in a matter of weeks.

Consumer prices rose 0.1 percent in March, and were up 5.0 percent from a year earlier.
Core price (ex food/energy) up 0.4 percent from Feb., 5.6 percent from a year ago.
Data: bls.gov/news.release/c…
Full coverage: nytimes.com/live/2023/04/1… The 5% increase in overall consumer prices is the slowest pace of year-over-year inflation since April 2021. Core inflation, though, has declined more slowly, which is part of why the Fed remains concerned.

U.S. employers added 311k jobs last month. The unemployment rate rose to 3.6%.
Data: bls.gov/news.release/e…
Live coverage: nytimes.com/live/2023/03/1… Lots of talk (including by me!) that we might see a big downward revision to the January figure, but no: January revised down by a modest 13k, to +504k. December revised down by 21k to +239k.

There were 10.8 million job openings at the end of January, down slightly from an upwardly-revised 11.2 million in December.
Layoffs up slightly. Quits down slightly. All consistent with a gradually cooling (but still hot) labor market. #JOLTS
bls.gov/news.release/j… The exception, of course, is hiring -- way up in January, to 6.1 million from 4.6 million in December. (Remember, these are gross figures, not net like in the monthly jobs report.) Consistent with the big gain we we saw in the jobs report last month.

WOW: U.S. employers added a whopping 517,000 jobs in January. The unemployment rate fell to 3.4%, the lowest since 1969.
Data: bls.gov/news.release/e…
Full coverage: nytimes.com/live/2023/02/0… November/December both revised up, by combined 71k. That's separate from the benchmark revisions throughout 2022.