Heather Long

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

of BLS data, government data, and how reliable it's been, the big revisions that we saw over the summer.

All of these things are kind of adding to this whole question about how useful the data is and how reliable it is as the Fed faces this very difficult policy outlook.

Well, looking into 2026, so far, it looks a lot like 2025 in the sense of, you know, the rich consumers continue to spend and continue to power the economy and the AI boom is contributing to that.

But it remains a K-shaped economy.

And I've been calling this the Costco Christmas.

I think what we're seeing in our data is just huge growth in spending on the wholesale clubs and the discount retailers, whether it's the Amazons, Costco, Sam's Club, BJ's, you pick your favorite one.

That's where people are spending their money trying to stretch their dollars.

That's where the middle class is.

And so they're still spending.

But I wouldn't say you can see the cutback on dining out and travel and the fun stuff.

I think this idea that we are in a low-fire, low-hire environment.

I think Fed officials take a lot of comfort in that, that we aren't seeing a whole bunch of layoffs.

But if you are a person who is looking for a job, there are a lot of signs that it is very, very difficult.

And as we see the unemployment rate tick up and we just

understand, especially in my reporting, I hear it, that it's just really hard to find a job.

That really makes me worried for people, their well-being, and also just what we were talking about, consumer spending, which has been such a big, important part of the overall economic story.

Happy holidays.