The Cracks We Feel Before We See

My friend Mike Oliver has passed me his thoughts once the US employent data has been produced.

Here they are.

The coffee tasted bitter this morning. Maybe it’s the cheap beans I’ve been buying lately, or maybe it’s the taste of uncertainty lingering after yesterday’s job report.

They tell us unemployment rose again in November: 4.6%, up from 4.4%. The highest since the murky days of ’21 when we were all still blinking in Covid’s aftermath. It feels heavier than a decimal point. Behind it: federal workers dropped like autumn leaves after deferred resignations ended. 168,000 jobs lost in two months. The government calling it «efficiency» feels less like policy and more like poetry – a harsh, ironic verse.

64,000 jobs added? A flicker of light. But dig deeper: wages grew at their slowest pace since ’21, just as Thanksgiving turkeys cost more and heating bills bite deeper. Inflation’s ghost still haunts our paychecks. People whisper at the diner counter: Is this what a strained economy feels like? Not collapse, but a slow leak. A tire going flat as you drive.

What unsettles me most:

• 8.7% of us are stranded between “employed” and truly secure – part-timers yearning for full hours, sidelined workers giving up the search. That’s a full point higher than last November. A telltale gap widening.
• Black unemployment: 8.3% – jumping over two points this year. They’re the canary in the coal mine. When Black workers get buffeted first, it’s a storm warning the rest of us shouldn’t ignore.
• Manufacturing bled 5,000 jobs. All those promises of trade wars reviving factories? They echo hollow in hollowed-out towns.

The numbers came late, messy, tangled in shutdown politics – a fitting snapshot of our dislocated times. Policymakers squint for clarity like we do through cracked windshields.

The Fed’s cutting rates, nervously eyeing cracks. Families cut dinners out, nervously eyeing bills. I joke about my cheap coffee… but it’s not really a joke. It’s a pause. A held breath.

We aren’t statistics. We’re the restaurant owner wondering if diners will come. The single mom parsing shifts at the hospital. The contractor whose federal contract dissolved. These numbers are frost on windows we wake to, scrape at, hope thaws.

Spring isn’t guaranteed. But the thawing starts by naming the cold.

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