JOLTS and other jobs data both tell us little is happening

The government shutdown in DC kept Jobs Friday from being a thing this week, but that doesn't mean there isn't data we can use to figure out where things stand. For example, we got a surprisingly bad payrolls report for September that came out on Wednesday.

So this not only means that private sector job growth in September was down by 32,000 in the ADP, but there was also 11,000 fewer jobs through August than what was previously reported.

Naturally, the stock market rose on this bad jobs news, and continued to rise for the rest of the week. Likely because a dying jobs market might encourage the Federal Reserve to further cut interest rates, which enables more coked-up traders to throw more money into making the AI Bubble even larger. Not really anything that helps the majority of Americans who make their money in wages.

And that ADP report came on the heels of a just-under-the-shutdown-deadline report that showed a low amount of hiring in the previous month.

Tuesday’s data further confirmed that the US job market has grown increasingly stagnant. Excluding the onset of the pandemic in early 2020, the rate of hiring fell in August to 3.2%, matching the lowest rate since 2013, BLS data shows.

“That’s the worst level since the Great Recession era, when unemployment was 7% or higher, with the exception of April 2020,” Heather Long, Navy Federal Credit Union’s chief economist, wrote in a note on Tuesday. “The job market has been frozen for close to a year now, and it appears to be getting worse for job seekers. Americans feel stuck in this economy without job opportunities or hopes of buying a home. This needs to change.”…

In August, job openings plummeted by 115,000 positions to 188,000 in construction, which logged its second-largest monthly decrease of openings on record.

Hiring [in construction], however, picked up slightly, as did the number of workers who quit. Construction, which is closely watched as an indicator of economic activity, has been dogged by high interest rates, a persistent housing affordability crisis, deportations of workers and tariff-related uncertainty.

Hiring was listless across most sectors, especially white-collar industries where activity was flat in August, according to Tuesday’s report.

As you can see, hiring has trended down, especially since April. But people aren't losing or leaving jobs as much either, and while there is a slight increase in layoffs and decline in quits in 2025, it's not enough to show a full-fledged recession is underway.

And while we didn't get a jobs report for September from the shut-down federal government, we did have a different indicator come out on Thursday that said that even fewer people were landing jobs in September.

U.S. employers announced fewer layoffs in September but hiring plans so far this year were the lowest since 2009, a report said on Thursday, adding to evidence of a labor market standstill as the demand and supply of workers fall because of policy and technology advances.

The report from global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas does not normally attract much attention. But together with other private data, it has become more prominent due to a U.S. government shutdownthat has led to major economic releases being suspended, including the closely watched employment report for September that was due on Friday....

Challenger, Gray & Christmas said planned job cuts dropped 37% month-on-month to 54,064 in September. Employers have so far this year announced 946,426 job cuts, the highest year-to-date since 2020.

Hiring plans so far this year have totaled 204,939, the lowest year-to-date since 2009 when the economy was just emerging from the Great Recession.

And yet we haven't seen too much evidence of a consumer slowdown, or a significant slowdown in activity. Just stall speed and stagnation in some spots, and an absurd amount of investment into a type of technology that doesn't seem to be adding much to people's day-to-day to existence, outside of a lot of bad "art and content" that isn't helping the culture or is interesting to anyone with a mental age above 12.

But hey, as long as people keep pumping money into something that claims it'll lead to even less hiring and even more social and economic inequality, that's all Wal Street and tech oligarchs need to hear! That's a normal and sustainable economy, isn't it?