Topic
Economic indicators—payrolls, unemployment, wages, job openings—that track employment trends and shape monetary policy and market expectations.
Amazon is recruiting laid-off staff again and Deel says its boomerang hires have doubled. In the national data, returners went from 3.1% to 3.4% of US new hires over two years. The measured reversal is 0.3 percentage points.
Reality
South Korea's chip recovery arrived in the Bank of Korea's 2024 input-output tables as more output, much more value added and a slightly smaller payroll. The tables attribute the boom to a recovery in chip demand.
Reality
Of the 21% of first-half 2025 layoffs Gartner could link to AI at all, 17 points were legacy units cut to pay for AI engineers, salespeople and data center staff. Cuts from AI productivity gains stayed near 1%.
Reality
Maria Black's read of payroll data from more than 1 million clients moves the problem from headcount cuts to skills-based team design. ADP also happens to sell the remedy.
Reality
Christophe Kolb argues that the first memo and the first reconciliation shipped work and taught judgment at once. The payroll number he cites measures hiring among 22- to 25-year-olds, and nothing more.
Reality
The staffing industry's own chief economist says contingent work is now structural. The counts he cites are real; the share flatters them.
Reality
Headline CPI eased a tenth to 3.4% and core held at 2.5%. Neither number pays for a nine-percent monthly rally; the consensus that the Fed does nothing does.
Reality