Heather Long

And so I think a pause in January is very much on the table.

Yeah, it's not exactly an easy time at the Fed.

And I think you layer on top of that one other big issue that's going on, or really two.

How do you read AI's impact on this economy?

And how do you read the big...

decline in immigration that we're living through this year.

And so certainly I'm very concerned about what I'm seeing in the labor market, as many Fed leaders have been.

But you can make a case that most of the reason that there's no hiring right now is because there simply aren't enough workers.

And

We have an aging population and a big decline in immigration right now.

But I will say what troubles me, I'm almost ready to call this a hiring recession.

And that is just how many industries over the past six months are in negative job loss, layoff territory, mining and logging, manufacturing, wholesale trade, transport and warehouse, information, financial services, professional and business services.

of course, government.

That's not just, you know, one or two industries that are cyclically in a downturn.

That's more and more of the economy.

Yeah.

I mean, I think that's going to be a big question going forward.

And I think, um,

at the press conference last week, you heard Chair Powell talk about the fact that these distortions that we have because of the government shutdown mean that, you know, some of these data have to be taken with grains of salt going forward.

And so I think this whole, the jobs report and the inflation report yesterday, all of these things have kind of added to this discussion that we've been having this year about