Jeanne Whalen

I don't know.

I assumed someone on the other side, a human, was watching it, but maybe not.

I mean, so much of it now is automated that young people think about it as, well, let's just throw out 300 applications today through Indeed and whatever other sites because...

It's just a game now, and they never have contact with a hiring manager or a human.

And so that also feels very soulless and discouraging for them.

But there has been a big bright spot in the economy.

That's after the break.

The stock market has done really well this year.

The Nasdaq is up about 15% this year, thanks in large part to just seven tech companies.

So how do you make sense of this just up and to the right in the stock market amid uncertainty in the economy?

It almost feels like the stock market is becoming like an economy unto itself.

So many people are investing in it and so many people continue to invest in it and they're making so much money that they're putting back in the stock market that it's just becoming this like self-sustaining beast.

Where it's become a force that actually can like propel economic activity just by the fact that it's like continuing to be positive.

I heard that recently from a real estate agent when I was writing about housing on the North Shore of Chicago, you know, really high-end housing above $4 million, just that she felt she was seeing more people bidding a lot on houses, partly because their stock portfolios were doing so well.

It gave them a lot of confidence to go out and spend.

Another economic indicator that is strong?

Consumer spending.

The National Retail Federation is expecting consumers will spend more than a trillion dollars this holiday season.

Ho, ho, ho.

But the caveat here is that the bulk of consumer spending is coming from a small group of people at the very top of the economic ladder.