Derek Thompson

Is it something like that?

And to make it even more literal, maybe, like people have to be familiar with their own companies.

And when your company is growing, it means it's easier to get a raise.

It means it's easier to get promoted.

And when you

leave that particular chair that a younger person is hired to fill it.

And so imagine being in a company where every year the CEO is like, we're growing healthily, everything is great, and also we're not hiring and no one can get a raise and no one's getting promoted.

It's like those things don't tend to go side by side.

Either things are good or things are bad.

But in the US economy right now, in a weird way,

The overall economy continues to be growing at roughly the same pace that it's been the last few years, but the labor market is frozen in this way, which is why you called it the big freeze.

And especially the entire private sector, because those two industries that you correctly said are adding a disproportionate share or over 100% of the total growth of jobs in the last year.

Healthcare is heavily inflected by government spending, Medicare, Medicaid, the VA.

And then you also talked about local government.

And it speaks to an economy where, weirdly, the private sector might be making do with less human labor while more job growth is accruing to the parts of the economy that are more inflected with government spending.

Just something to watch out for, I think.

The final piece of data I wanted to put on the table before we talk a little bit about the reasons why this is happening is that...

Recent college graduates are unusually, and by some measures, like historically despondent about hiring conditions right now in the state of the economy.

Can you just...

Dive into some of these facts here and let me know, how sad are young people right now?