The U.S. job market hasn’t collapsed, but is no longer overheating, snapping back, or even cooling in a conventional sense. It’s simply stuck.
When a delayed jobs report finally dropped Tuesday, economists and investors got their first real look under the hood of the U.S. labor market, and the engine is stalled. Payroll growth was modest in November at 64,000, while October showed a net decline of roughly 105,000 jobs, and the unemployment rate rose to a four-year high of 4.6%. Payroll growth hasn’t collapsed, but it hasn’t meaningfully advanced, either. The result is a labor market that’s drifting sideways, quietly losing momentum beneath the surface.
