Mark Zandi

But nonetheless, that's true.

So the kind of the so-called break-even policy

monthly job growth, the amount of jobs you need to maintain stable unemployment is probably somewhere around 50 to 75K per month.

So, but we're at zero, you know, just around zero.

And that's why the unemployment rate's been drifting higher, more or less.

So my sense is the job market is fragile, you know, very fragile.

One of the things about the job market that everyone knows, but I'll just state it, is that all the weakness is because of a lack of hiring.

Businesses have stopped hiring.

And that might go back to the uncertainty.

That might be one of the manifestations of the uncertainty we're talking about.

They're not laying off.

They're sitting on their hands too, right?

They're not making big moves.

They're not adding to payrolls.

They're not cutting payrolls.

And that's the firewall between – no layoffs is the firewall between the economy we have, the job market we have, which is struggling, fragile, and a recession.

If we do start to see layoffs, if, for example –

The higher gas prices, the higher food prices cause consumers to become more cautious.

If the decline in the equity market causes high-end consumers to become more cautious in their spending, not that they'll pull back, but they become more cautious.

And businesses take from that that, oh, I need to reduce my payrolls and start laying off.