Kathryn Anne Edwards

I thought it was a report that reminds us that good and bad news is relative.

Two years ago, we would have been alarmed at a jobs number this low.

Given the tumult of 2025, I think it gave a sense of relief to see even 130,000 jobs added.

In some ways, it's indicative of the last year.

The majority of job growth came from health care, education, and social assistance.

These are industries that do not reflect the strength of the economy.

They don't reflect investments in businesses.

They don't reflect opportunities for hiring and expansion.

They reflect a kind of permanent, acyclical need to service the human population.

And in that sense, they're adding jobs because of the composition of our population.

And we have a lot of old people.

We need to educate young people.

But they don't reflect that our economic policies are being successful, that the market is positive and is enabling economic activity.

And in some ways, it's a ballast to a bad economy that is large enough to keep it afloat.

But that's...

I mean, it's comfort, but I don't know if it's cold comfort or just depressing.

It depends really on how you think about it.

I mean, I'm glad that we have it.

I'm glad that we have this ballast, that there's an anchor to keep us from having, you know, very drastic economic policies pull us quickly into a recession like what we've seen come out of the administration over the past year.

But at the same time, it is almost enabling this bad activity because it's propping up the economy.