Emily Flippen

But employers typically don't like to lay people off this late into the year because it's a bad look to do so during the holidays.

But this year tends to be or seems to be the exception.

And even Paycon themselves are going through the process of laying people off.

And it seems like AI is this broad excuse for why people are doing that.

It's kind of like, oh, well, we're automating.

But in reality, I have to wonder how much of that is actually true.

If there already wasn't a lot of influx of hiring coming out of the pandemic, and if companies aren't already looking to just kind of cut costs right now, it seems like given the economic environment we're living in, it makes a lot of sense that layoffs are happening right now.

We probably haven't seen the worst of tariffs.

Inflation is still a big question mark.

And heading into what seems to be a potentially weak holiday season, I'm not surprised at all that the market is finally down.

Yeah, these quarters of everything and the kitchen sink, let's just throw all the bad news off at once.

But the problem is that I don't feel like the bad news is all encompassed in these quarters.

I actually feel like it's more this trickle-true thing, where I'm getting a little bit of the bad news.

And if it was a case where

we're blaming AI and we're getting it all done in the third quarter.

And then fourth quarter is going to shape up to be a lot better.

I would agree, Travis, but I actually a little bit worried that we're going to see a continuation of this, not just in the third quarter results that we've for the most part already seen, but through the fourth quarter and maybe into the first quarter of next year as well.

Yeah, that's a great question.

And let me start off by saying, I acknowledge that my first thoughts when talking to you earlier, Travis, was, of course, I don't think there's going to be a rally towards the back half of the year.

But I want to also acknowledge there could be.