Paul Krugman

And that is happening.

That's happening despite the fact that the shutdown is over.

So that's a pretty big factor.

That's a pretty big hit, certainly, to the finances of a lot of families and probably some knock-on effects on the economy as a whole.

The other thing you see is that people are really, really down on the economy.

I mean, we talked about a vibe session under Biden, but the vibe session now, I mean, the economy ain't as great as Trump claims.

Grocery prices are not, in fact, way down.

But people are really, really negative.

We have the worst consumer sentiment about current economic conditions basically ever.

Not just worse than 2022 when we had 9% inflation, but worse than the aftermath of the financial crisis, worse than the stagflation of 1980.

People are really, really down on this economy.

And I have to say, I don't think that the way this drama has been playing out is going to change that.

If anything, we're likely to see, you know, I was just hearing the tail end of what you're saying.

Ordinary people, people who are not in on the stock market are hurting and feeling extremely stressed.

Yeah, we're going to have a ghost month.

It appears that on labor market data, there will simply be a month that we know anything could have happened in there.

The BLS will never be able to catch up on that lost data.

And we do worry a lot.

I mean, there's been a problem with declining response rates and understaffed BLS even before.

So the data quality is going to be a real issue.