Steve Rattner

Trump Says He’ll Fire Labor Statistics Head After Weak Jobs Data President Donald Trump said he was directing officials to fire Erika McEntarfer, the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, hours after a report showed US job growth cooled sharply over the l...

Talk about shooting the messenger! Even in a Trump world, this is appalling and almost unimaginable.
www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Despite low job growth, the unemployment has remained between 4 and 4.2% this year.

Payroll growth plunged to 73K in July, undershooting expectations. Revisions also slashed estimates for May and June, from 144K to 19K and 133K to 14K.

We’re starting to see some tariff effects in the inflation data: core goods inflation is at its highest rate in nearly 3 years, while services ex-housing is dropping.

Real consumer spending growth has remained low this year — a sign that Americans are feeling cautious about the economy.

PCE inflation jumped to 2.6% in June, its highest level since February.

Fed governor dissents are not unprecedented, but they’ve been pretty rare in recent history.

The Fed left rates unchanged, as expected.

A lot of economic data this year has shown relatively little reaction to Trump's policies, but consumer spending is decisively weak.

Net exports and inventories are driving the quarterly GDP readings for 2025 Q1 and Q2, as imports were front-loaded into Q1 in anticipation of tariffs.

GDP rebounded to 3% in the Q2, besting expectations.

We still don’t have trade deals for tariffs covering 40% of US imports that are set to go into effect on Friday, but markets don’t seem to mind. (And the China deal expires August 12th)

Hires, quits, and layoffs rates all remain low.

The Conference Board's consumer inflation expectations have dropped back down to February levels: 5.8%

Consumer confidence ticked upwards in July, but is still substantially below January levels.

Job openings dropped to 7.4M in June — the metric has hovered between 7M and 8M for about a year now.

The EU promised a radically high level of US energy imports under Trump’s trade deal — it’s hard to believe they’ll make good on it.

We should be incredibly skeptical when Trump announces big investment promises as part of his trade deals — when China promised to buy more US imports in Trump’s first term, they didn’t even meet baseline levels.

AOC has far outraised other House members so far, raking in 78% more than runner-up Mike Johnson.

Moderate Democrats need to figure out a message as compelling (albeit flawed) as AOCs.

Ending the capital gains tax on home sales (as Trump is considering proposing) would just be another handout to the rich.

The 10% of homeowners that currently pay the tax have 5.5x the net worth of other homeowners and make an average of $431K.

Interestingly, the recent grad employment slump looks very different by gender — the trend is almost entirely driven by young men.

Consumer sentiment remained more or less flat in July, still well below 2024 levels.

Wow — a new survey from @CommonSense found that 52% of teens regularly use AI companions.

This is one AI use case we should be wary of – these types of robot friends have already proven dangerous for kids.

A really interesting chart from @tracyalloway.bsky.social — the share of imputed (instead of observed) prices used in the CPI has shot up from 9% in February to 35% in June. One of the (many) consequences of the DOGE cuts.

Though Congress just passed a budget-busting tax bill, the bond market remains calm.

My @morningjoe-msnbc.bsky.social Chart

Recession odds have come down from their tariff-induced highs, but they’re still a bit elevated.

My @morningjoe-msnbc.bsky.social Chart

The contrast between the market’s tariff-reactions in April versus now are remarkable. Wall Street is now unphased by most of Trump’s utterances.

My @morningjoe-msnbc.bsky.social Chart

The Magnificent 7 is still driving S&P performance, but those without strong AI businesses are starting to lag.

My @morningjoe-msnbc.bsky.social Chart

Since Trump paused his reciprocal tariffs, the market has continued to climb. Wall Street either isn’t scared of tariffs or doesn’t think they’ll actually materialize.

My @morningjoe-msnbc.bsky.social Chart

CPI inflation ticked upwards in June to 2.7%