Daniel Zhao

New data show intensifying unauthorized immigration decline, with large local variations A sudden reversal in U.S. net unauthorized immigration has important implications for the demographic outlook, labor force participation, employment growth and local labor markets.

Had missed this Dallas Fed look at shifts in unauthorized employment. It suggests that the current breakeven rate for jobs growth is *negative* 10k. IOW today 40k monthly jobs is equivalent (roughly) to a 150k+ print in the late 2010s.

Speech by Governor Barr on artificial intelligence and the labor market Thank you for the invitation to speak to you today. 1 Before I get into my main topic, I wanted to share my current views on the economy and monetary poli

Speech by Governor Barr on artificial intelligence and the labor market: www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/s...

Learn more about Governor Barr: www.federalreserve.gov/aboutthefed/...

The Fed's using AI tools and seeing quantifiable economic gains.

alas, active-duty military are not in scope for JOLTS

But on a % basis, you do see diffs in which occupations are more impacted:
-Construction, production, transportation do worse in 2009 -Healthcare fares better in 2024
-% drop in office & admin is about the same, but worse in 2024 relative to other occupations

Was working on a piece on this that I never finished:

Stepping up to Employment Services to compare vs. 2008 cycle (hope Erika doesn't get mad at me for comparing OEWS across time), 2022-4 drops are still driven by the largest 3 occupation groups (transportation, production, office & admin).

Ohh thanks, looks like I'm still in the minority for my age-income-rural/urban bucket due to not getting delivery often, but I guess plenty of people might get takeout + delivery + cook all within the same week.

I guess I am a weirdo for always doing pickup orders rather than delivery. Being in the city means there are lots of good options within walking distance.

All business applications serieses are still above pre-pandemic, but the higher quality serieses are up a more measured amount:

Business applications: +89% vs Jan 2020
High-propensity: +40%
With planned wages: +6.6%
From corporations: +6.6%

Source: www.census.gov/econ/bfs/ind...

Jan business applications data was released yesterday:

Overall business applications are skyrocketing, up 37% YoY. But Jan's release updates the methodology & excludes internet sales from high-propensity & corporate application serieses and you can see those have been revised down substantially

Initial unemployment insurance claims ticked down to 227,000 from 232,000. Continuing UI claims rose slightly to 1,862,000 from 1,841,000.

Continuing claims are largely unchanged from a year ago, improving from 2025 when it was a little higher than 2024 for most of the year.

BofA: The u-rate has risen half as fast in this cycle vs. any prior cycle. As a result, the economy has avoided a recession.

The more telling picture is what the revised data says about where growth actually came from in 2025.

The revisions flipped two sectors from positive to negative average monthly growth: Construction and Retail Trade. Sectors supposedly adding jobs all year were actually shedding them.

Person who was fired here - you should still trust BLS data. The agency is being run by the same dedicated career staff who were running it while I was awaiting confirmation from the Senate. And the staff have made it clear that they are blowing a loud whistle if there is interference.

I have no reason to believe the BLS data has been interfered with. See Ben's thread on whether to trust the BLS:

bsky.app/profile/benc...

manufacturing and trade job loss during 2025 is even worse than it looked (already really bad)

yes that's right

had to make a scaling choice on getting all these into a single chart; consistent y axes would make smaller industries totally unreadable

Note: household survey response rates were low due to very cold winter weather, so will want to be careful declaring the improvement across the board is a new trend without some more data

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Black unemployment has fallen sharply in the last 2 months from 8.2% in Nov to 7.2% in Jan.

Unclear whether the November spike was driven by knock-on effects from the government shutdown or month-to-month volatility.

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The share of workers part-time for economic reasons also fell, continuing its decline after spiking in November.

Good that fewer workers are being forced to work part-time when they want full-time hours.

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Two other very encouraging data points from the household survey:

Prime-age labor force participation is at its highest level at 2001.

Prime-age employment-population ratio ties its recent peak, which was also the highest level since 2001.

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Short answer is yes, @bencasselman.bsky.social shared a short thread on this topic w/ last month's report:

bsky.app/profile/benc...

Unemployment fell in January 2026 to 4.3%, declining consecutively from November and December. The bump in November may have been driven in part by the government shutdown and improvement since then is an encouraging sign that the job market is not deteriorating sharply.

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Average hourly earnings grew 3.7% year-over-year in January 2026, flat from December. No sign of pickup in wage growth but worth watching to see if it picks up if jobs growth does continue to remain as strong as in January.

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Federal job losses jumped in January, with 34,000 federal workers falling off of payrolls.The DOGE deferred resignation program hit mostly in the October report, but some retirements under the program were allowed to extend thru EOY, which may help explain the bump.

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Good news: Manufacturing broke its 13-month streak of consecutive monthly job losses in Jan

Bad news: Benchmark revisions reveal 2024-5 were much weaker than orig. reported.

2024: -179k annual job losses vs. -105k orig reported
2025: -108k vs. -68k

7/

Great charts on sectoral impacts of benchmark revisions. Really really big hits to retailers, wholesalers, transportation/warehousing, and finance.

Concentration of jobs growth in health care is even more stark post-revisions.

In 2025, payrolls grew 181,000 while health care & social assistance payrolls grew 693,200, implying all other industries lost 512,200 jobs.

Jan 2026 is continuing that trend: HCSA (+123,500) vs. all other (+6,500)

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