Jared Bernstein

Again, I think you're spot on.

And I'm going to tell you something that I think is really worrisome that I haven't had enough of a chance to talk about.

So I'll get into that in a second, which is related to what you just said.

Look, this job market is often described as low hire, low fire, which is what you just said.

We have a very low hiring rate.

It's very difficult for people coming into the job market to get work.

We're seeing unemployment duration.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You should tell her.

that the unemployment rate for college graduates is still a lot lower than for non-college graduates, although for the newly minted ones, it is too high, for exactly the reasons we're saying.

We haven't seen big layoffs yet, and you can't have a recession without layoffs.

So I think that the uncertainty around both the tariffs, the impact of AI, and also deportations are all one reason we're stuck in a low hire, low fire labor market.

It is the case that when you have fewer people coming into the job market because of diminished immigration, you actually don't need as many jobs to keep the unemployment rate from going up.

That's called the break-even rate.

And when I was in the White House, the break-even rate was, you know, 150,000.

Now it's half of that because the immigration impacts and aging boomers are reducing labor supply.

But we still have labor demand weaker than labor supply, and that's why unemployment has been going up.

Now, on the AI point, here's the thing I wanted to say.