Mark Zandi

I mean, some months you get a pop-up, some months you get a pop-down.

I mean, the 178, as you said, came after a decline of, I think, 133.

I'm getting the numbers wrong, but, you know, roughly speaking—

And that goes to things like weather.

I didn't experience the weather in the Northeast, but apparently it was pretty bad in February.

It goes to strikes.

There was a big strike at Kaiser Permanente in California.

A lot of technical issues involved, the birth-death models, that kind of thing.

So you abstract from the vagaries of the data.

I just don't see the job market

going anywhere since this time last year, since Liberation Day.

In fact, you can do it yourself.

You can do a nice chart, monthly job gain, payroll job gains, January 2024 through March of 26.

You can kind of see the strong growth back in 2024, started to come in a little bit coming into 2025.

But in April of 2025, boom, you're at zero.

And that's where we've been

since, you know, again, up a little bit, down a little bit.

So I don't think the economy is creating any jobs of consequence, you know, at this point.

Now, you hear the argument that, well, the economy can't create a whole lot of jobs because there's no labor supply, you know, because of the immigration policy, which, you know, there's truth to that.

I don't know why one would take any solace in that, but, you know, that doesn't sound like a healthy economy.