The Recession That Isn’t…and Other News of the World

Posted by: madamab on: February 5, 2023

• In: Breaking News | Democratic Values | Democrats | Donald Trump | SCOTUS | Ukraine | Womens' Rights | Zelenskyy
• 128 Comments

Last Friday’s jobs report absolutely floored pundits and economists who have gloomily been predicting a recession for, oh, about a year now.

The employment picture started off 2023 on a stunningly strong note, with nonfarm payrolls posting their biggest gain since July 2022.

Nonfarm payrolls increased by 517,000 for January, above the Dow Jones estimate of 187,000 and December’s gain of 260,000, according to a Labor Department report Friday.

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“Today’s jobs report is almost too good to be true,” wrote Julia Pollak, chief economist at ZipRecruiter. “Like $20 bills on the sidewalk and free lunches, falling inflation paired with falling unemployment is the stuff of economics fiction.”

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Growth across a multitude of sectors helped propel the massive beat against the estimate.

Leisure and hospitality added 128,000 jobs to lead all sectors. Other significant gainers were professional and business services (82,000), government (74,000) and health care (58,000). Retail was up 30,000 and construction added 25,000.

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“Today’s report is an echo of 2022′s surprisingly resilient job market, beating back recession fears,” said Daniel Zhao, lead economist for job review site Glassdoor. “The Fed has a New Year’s resolution to cool down the labor market, and so far, the labor market is pushing back.”

Jeff Cox, CNBC, February 3, 2023

As someone that’s tech-industry-adjacent, I’ve been tracking the big layoffs that have been happening over the past few months. Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Twitter – they’ve all been cutting back on their workforce, adding to the atmosphere of fear and anxiety around a potential recession. While I understand that inflation has been very worrisome, and we’re living in unprecedented times, CEOs and analysts have made a lot of mistakes in their economic predictions – and are still making them. They have bought into trickle-down economics for so long that they can’t see what’s right in front of their eyes. Democrats are, and have been for decades, the best stewards of the economy. Investing from the bottom up is the only way to build a strong and durable economy, not giving tax cuts to the super wealthy. The Biden/Harris administration has taken the approach of spending money where it’s needed to put us back on the map of being competitive with other superpowers, and it has worked. Go Joe and Kamala!

By the way, I’m afraid those tech industry titans are going to regret their layoffs. It is a lot riskier to lay off highly skilled tech workers (as Twitter has already found out) when there are literally two jobs for every job seeker, than it is to invest in your company and hire the people you need to get the work done.

As usual in these tumultuous times, this has been a very busy couple of weeks. Some of the other things I’ve been thinking about are:

The Chinese spy balloon and Drumpf’s fauxrage about it

The horrifying, but conversation-changing, death of Tyre Nichols

Mike Pence’s classified documents

Ukraine getting more long-range missiles from the US and determinedly fighting on

The Supreme Court, as usual, supporting violence against women

Record-breaking cold weather across the US

So many mass shootings already in 2023

What’s on your mind, Widdershins?

Tags: Open Thread