Mike Hosking

But yeah, when you look at it, Mike, there's certainly some resiliency.

There's over 300,000 jobs added in two months.

It's the strongest run since 2020.

just remember there was basically no jobs added last year.

So online retail, that's a big driver.

Speaking of retail, they did 22,000.

That's seen 340,000 jobs have actually gone since 2022.

Overall unemployment rate, 4.3%.

But, Mike, the participation rate...

fell to 61.8%.

Okay, and then we come to the confidence, and like everywhere around the world at the moment, we're not particularly upbeat.

Yeah, you're absolutely right there.

So jobs market's holding up, but that's not how consumers feel.

So this is the Michigan survey.

So sentiment's dropped again, 48.2 in early May.

That's a record low, and that's actually a risk to hiring ahead when you think about just talking about retail and the consumer.

So it reflects a bit of a growing split.

We've got hard data, which is stable, but sentiment's collapsing, as you point out.

And if you're driving around in California, you're paying over $6.

So they've got a lot of taxes there.