Americans' optimism on the job market is starting to wane
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One of the real issues for the Federal Reserve, putting inflation aside for a moment, is what is going to happen for the labor market. Of course, that's the other big part of their dual mandate. And we've had an increasing number of fed officials themselves as well as economists who have been pointing to maybe some underlying signs of weakness in the labor market. One of those signs is made evident in survey data that came out from the conference board and it showed the so-called labor differential. This is the difference between those who were surveyed who said jobs were plentiful or easy to get and those who said jobs were hard to get. The difference between those, again, referred to as the labor differential, 11.1 percentage points was the lowest that we have seen in more than four years since March of 2021. Now, again, this is what some economists will call soft data versus hard data, right? It is what someone is saying they think or feel versus what is actually happening in the labor market, say the uh the monthly jobs report, for example. But nonetheless, it is yet another sign that some economists are pointing to. One of them is Neil Dutta. Uh he says consumers do not seem to share with the characterization that labor market conditions are solid. That is the way that some officials, including J. Powell of the Fed have been characterizing those labor market conditions. So this is something that we are going to continue to watch and see if it does start showing up in that hard data.
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