December’s employment report is the first uninterrupted one since the government shutdown. Jeffrey Cleveland and Ken Kim break down the numbers. Ken characterizes the labor market as “coming to a standstill,” noting that 2025 hiring was the weakest since Covid. Additionally, most of the jobs added were in January-April. Jeffrey calls the labor market “soggy” and thinks policy makers should be mainly concerned about it unless they expect inflation to suddenly return. He also comments on the impact of AI: it depends on what level people are working at.

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