Last edited Fri Jan 16, 2026, 08:58 PM - Edit history (4)

Most Recent First (reverse chronological order)

FRIDAY, JANUARY 9

# Big BLS jobs report : +50,000 non-farm payroll jobs, unemployment rate ticked down from 4.5% to 4.4%. A LOT more to this story, for example, thanks to downward revisions of October and November, there are actually 26k fewer non-farm payroll jobs than were reported in the previous (December 16) report. AND , didya know, in December actual (meaning not-seasonally adjusted) jobs fell by 192,000, but seasonal adjustment turned that to a positive 50,000? Could YOU use a seasonal adjustment like that? AND, President literal asswipe posted several jobs numbers 12 hours before the 8:30 AM ET release time (did you know that they show the president and the entire Council of Economic Advisers the jobs report the evening before it is released?). AND there is probably a couple other things to say, I'll have to review the thread...
the LBN thread link, full of information, is https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143595598

# Consumer Sentiment - a slight improvement but graph still looks awful
https://www.sca.isr.umich.edu/
GRAPH: https://www.sca.isr.umich.edu/files/chicsr.pdf

THURSDAY JANUARY 8

# Unemployment insurance claims: 208,000, an 8,000 increase over last week

# Q3 Productivity - I haven't looked at it, but from a headline I saw, it's a big jump thanks to the 4.3% Q3 GDP (annualized rate) reported in December,

WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 7

# ADP private payroll employment, +41,000 PRIVATE payroll jobs (by the way, in comparison the BLS jobs report that came out Friday 1/9, with the headline +50,000 jobs number, had a private payroll jobs increase of +37,000, a very unusally close match to the ADP number). (ADP has payroll data for about 20% of the private work force, and somehow they estimate the other 80%)
https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143594195
https://adpemploymentreport.com/

# ISM Services,

# JOLTS Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, - kinda bad report. lowest job openings in over a year for one thing. The number of job openings fell in November, while the hiring rate was a paltry 3.2%. There were 1.1 unemployed people for every available job, the highest level since early 2021. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/layoff-plans-for-december-hit-lowest-monthly-level-since-2024-in-positive-sign-challenger-says-131808125.html (the article is almost all about the Challenger, Gray, and Christmas report, but the above blurb is in reference to the JOLTS report)


TUESDAY, JANUARY 6

* S&P Services PMI -- shows sector grew at slowest pace in 8 months in December
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/live/stock-market-today-dow-crosses-49000-sp-500-jumps-to-new-high-in-record-setting-start-to-year-194907643.html
(and scroll down that page)

MONDAY, JANUARY 5

* ISM Manufacturing -- US Factory Malaise Continues as Gauge Drops to One-Year Low, Bloomberg 1/5/26
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/us-factory-malaise-continues-gauge-152835595.html
head count shrinks for 11th straight month. (weren't tariffs supposed to fix that?)


FRIDAY, JANUARY 2

* S&P Manufacturing - I haven't seen the report

WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 31

* Weekly unemployment insurance claims, 199,000. It was 214,000 in last week's report
https://www.dol.gov/sites/dolgov/files/OPA/newsreleases/ui-claims/20251646.pdf

TUESDAY DECEMBER 30

* Case-Shiller home prices index - I saw a headline: home prices up for a 3rd straight month, and up 1.4% since October 2024


MONDAY DECEMBER 29

* Pending home sales - I saw a headline: up 3.35% from November and up 2.6% year-over-year (non-govt, National Association of Realtors)


WEDNESDAY DECEMBER 24

* Weekly unemployment insurance claims - 224,000 was reported December 18. 214,000 was reported today, December 24, a drop of 10,000 . But continuing claims rose by 38,000 to 1.92 million (govt)

TUESDAY DECEMBER 23

* GDP Q3 first estimate (delayed report, normally released late September). (govt) -- it came in at a 4.3% annualized rate, well above the 3.3% rate economists were expecting. Various factors cited in media: an acceleration of EV purchases prior to the Sept 30 expiration of tax credits. A lot of spending by big tech companies on AI (investment spending boosts the GDP number). A substantial rise in exports (up 8.8% annualized rate) and a small drop in imports -- both these boost the GDP number, Federal spending also played a sizable role, a reflection of the large uptick in defense spending as well as buyouts for federal workers. Also, it reflects the "K-shaped" economy -- higher-income people flush with growing stock market wealth increased their spending, while lesser-income people struggled with higher prices and a weakening job market.
LBN thread: https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143587157 ## From the source: https://www.bea.gov/news/2025/gross-domestic-product-3rd-quarter-2025-initial-estimate-and-corporate-profits

* Consumer Confidence (Conference Board, non-govt) - result: the 5th straight month of decline. The worst since April, and at about the same level as seen in the 2020 pandemic year. Except there is no microbe-driven pandemic, it's all Trumpdemic now. Consumers’ assessments of their current economic situation tumbled 9.5 points to 116.8.
LBN thread (see graph in reply #2) https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143587258

* Durable goods orders - I haven't looked at yet

* Industrial production and capacity utilization - I haven't looked at yet


FRIDAY DECEMBER 19

* Existing home sales (non-govt) - I haven't looked at yet

* Consumer Sentiment final (non-govt) - here's an article:
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/consumer-sentiment-shows-substantial-decline-from-last-year-amid-higher-prices-tough-job-market-160618145.html

THUR DECEMBER 18:

* Weekly unemployment insurance claims for the week ending Dec 13 (it was 236,000 for the week ending Dec 6) - In the week ending December 13, the advance figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 224,000, a decrease of 13,000 from the previous week's revised level. The previous week's level was revised up by 1,000 from 236,000 to 237,000. (govt)

* Consumer price index for November (govt) (note: the one for October was cancelled. The November one was originally scheduled for December 10 before the Fed's rate-setting meeting, but alas was delayed until 8 days after the meeting) - result: 2.7% year-over-year, a cooling from the 3.0% year-over-year reported in the September report, and a 0.2% increase over the last 2 months. LBN thread: https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143584377


TUE DECEMBER 16:

* The long-delayed big Jobs report (featuring the headline non-farm payroll jobs and unemployment rate) (govt). Expected: +50,000 jobs in November and 4.5% unemployment rate. Actual: -105,000 in October and +64,000 in November for a net drop of jobs over these 2 months of 41,000. Nonfarm payroll jobs averaged only 17k/month over the last 7 months and 22k over the last 3 months. These are seasonally adjusted numbers. The raw numbers (i.e. not seasonally adjusted numbers) are 204k/month and 416k/month respectively. And the unemployment rate is 4.6% in November, up from 4.4% in September. LBN thread: https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143583215

There was not, and never will be a separate October jobs report. The payroll stuff Establishment survey was taken and will be included in the November report (as it was in the Decmber 16 report). The household survey that produces the unemployment rate was not done in October, and so the October unemployment rate will be a blank in the records forever.

More details: https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143583215#post19

The LBN thread: https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143583215 .

Please disregard all the comments about "Christmas hires" and "seasonal hires" - those have been adjusted for.

TUE DECEMBER 16 Continued:

There's another jobs report that came out -- the ADP report on PRIVATE sector payrolls:
16,250 private jobs/week for 4 weeks ending 11/29/25 (so roughly +65,000 private sector jobs in the month of November)
LBN thread: https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143583228
Again, ignore the comment about seasonal hiring. The ADP reports seasonally adjusted numbers
Also realize that The ADP numbers cover only about 20% of the nation's private workforce. They have to estimate the other 80%.
https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1014&pid=3506135

The retail sales report that came out December 16: Sept: +0.1% and October: +0.0%. Those are nominal dollar increases. After adjusting for inflation, which was 0.3% month-over-month in September, and an unknown amount in October, those are declines of real spending of 0.2% and 0.3%, assuming that October also comes in at 0.3% month-over-month inflation. Yes, they are seasonally adjusted.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/retail-sales-flat-in-october-as-uncertainty-tempers-consumer-spending/ar-AA1SsP9b

S&P flash U.S. services and manufacturing PMI's (non-govt) - I haven't looked at this yet

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General Comments

Please don't believe the fabrication that Fed Chair Powell said, or implied, that the jobs numbers are "fudged". He did not. The person posting that claim included no excerpt that one can read to judge what exactly he said, and that was deliberate. When confronted, that person expressed some other reasons (again without supporting information) for believing the numbers are fudged. That may be so, But that does not excuse very deliberately misleading one's fellow progressives about what Powell said.


Please don't believe reports that 1 million or 1.1 million jobs were lost in 2025 so far, implying these are net job losses (jobs lost minus jobs gained). This is based on Challenger, Gray, and Christmas that reported 1,170,821 job cuts were ANNOUNCED. And they are just layoff announcements, and they are not net of hiring announcements or any actual hiring. As the monthly JOLTS (Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey) shows, there are a lot of layoffs (and voluntary leavings of jobs) and a lot of hiring every month. The excuse that media misreports the Challenger report too is not an excuse for deliberately misleading one's fellow progressives, after being presented with the information about what the Challenger etc. report actually said.

The media mis-reports a lot of things like Hillary's email and Hunter Biden's laptop with cherry-picked misleading factoids, but that is never an excuse for echoing those reports here after being made aware of the factual record.


There's another myth that's spreading: that the new head of the BLS (Bureau of Labor Statistics) is a Trump appointee, E.J. Antoni. However, his nomination was withdrawn due to too many controversies.

The current head is Acting Commissioner, William J. Wiatrowski, who has served in this role twice previously, the first time from January 2017 to March 2019, and the second time from March 2023 to January 2024
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureau_of_Labor_Statistics

See OP for the statistics.

See OP for details

see OP for details.

Details in OP.

See OP for details, and a graph of the DOW.

Details in the OP.

Details in the OP.

Details in OP.

Details in OP.

Details in OP. ATH is All Time High. I don't kick this every market day, but it's been several days, and it's gotten well down on the listings, so I decided to kick it. It looks like the Trump slump since election day is about at an end, only 0.1% down since election day, and with 3 straight market days of gains. Since inauguration day, its down 3.7%.

ATH is All Time High. Details in OP including more comparisons like down 5.4% since pre-inauguration day, and down 3.6% year-to-date.

I don't kick this every market day, but it's been several days, and it's gotten well down on the listings, so I decided to kick it. Note this closing is moments before the announcement of "Liberation Day" tariffs, so it's a good benchmark to compare to what follows in the next few days.

Trump’s bill could soon trigger a repo market crisis and push America and much of the world—toward bankruptcy. Something massive is on the horizon. Get ready.

Paul Krugman is deeply concerned about the uncontrolled rise in debt, which could sharply push up interest rates leading to bankruptcy.

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/trumps-big-beautiful-debt-bomb

I look at it often.

Crypto has taken over the last week or so. BTC $120K to ~ $97K.

I'm seeing that proclaimed in a couple of articles in the yahoo.finance.com page today.

It's all-time high in October was over $126,000. Right now as I post this, it's 96,277, down 23.6%

I've been reporting Bitcoin near the top of my OP each time I update anything, along with the 10-year Treasury yield. I'm not sure why, but a lot of people are interested in it. Actually, it's kind of against my "religion", given the amount of electricity and water that bitcoin "miners" consume. I read recently that just ONE Bitcoin transaction uses as much electricity as does the average U.S. household over 38 days (more than a month!)

I might buy the Bitcoin evangelists' argument that bitcoin's high value (still) is that they keep the bitcoin supply very limited. But there are all kinds of new cryptocurrencies being created and eventually the amount of money available from people willing to support this ever-expanding ocean of speculative crypto-investments will reach a peak. (And besides, rarity doesn't guarantee high value).

If I had a nickel for every time I’d said that.

I am far from liking anything about crypto. I try to avoid things that are easy to buy and difficult to sell. I do monitor it, tho. Due to its position in the techbro’s DOW -> AI -> Crypto financial ouroboros.