Moody's Talks - Inside Economics - Wawa and Women in the Workforce

Episode Date: March 4, 2022

Mark, Ryan, and Cris welcome back Marisa DiNatale, Senior Director at Moody's Analytics to discuss the February U.S. employment report and discuss the Russia-Ukraine war and how that might impact the U.S. economy. They also mix it up and play the statistics game at the end of the show.Full episode transcript.Follow Mark Zandi @MarkZandi, Ryan Sweet @RealTime_Econ and Cris deRitis on LinkedIn for additional insight.  Questions or Comments, please email us at [e-mail]. We would love to hear from you.  To stay informed and follow the insights of Moody's Analytics economists, visit Economic View. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to Inside Economics. I'm Mark Sandy, the chief economist of Moody's Analytics, and today is Jobs Friday, and I'm joined by three of my colleagues, obviously my two co-hosts, Ryan Sweet, Director of Real-Time Economics, and Chris DeReedy's Deputy Chief Economist, and a regular here on Job Friday. That is Marissa. Marissa Dina Talley, it's good to see you all. How's everyone doing? Okay. Hang it in in there. Black.

Good. hanging in there. Yeah, a lot going on in the world. Russia, Ukraine, obviously, still top of mind, just very disconcerting to watch what's going on there. It has all kinds of economic implications, and we will come back to that, obviously, because that is key to the economic outlook. But I do think it's important to start with Jobs Friday and talk about the job numbers. They were really good, I'd have to say. I'm curious what other folks think. And then after we talk jobs, Ukraine, Russia will go play our statistics game. I think that's appropriate, given all the statistics that came out this week, a lot to talk about there.

And we'll talk about, you know, broader labor market issues, a lot of interesting dynamics in the labor market that be good to flesh out. Sound like a game plan, guys? Sounds good. Sounds good. Okay, good. All right. The job numbers for the month of February came out the start. morning Friday March 4th who wants to kind of give us the lay of the land

Marissa do you want to do that or you would like to go first okay yeah I can I haven't had a ton of time to look at it but you guys can jump in if I miss anything critical so but like you know like you're on the West Coast so that's right so you're up at 430 but still I've already run five miles you know swam in the ocean before, you know, you get going. So, okay. Yeah, I was up early. Yes, you and I were just on an hour and a half call that started at my 530.

So if I, so I'm prefaceing this whole podcast performance on that. I'll just say. Okay, very good. Yeah, that's fair. All that's reasonable. Very reasonable. Okay. Okay.

So, so yeah, the jobs report came out this morning. non-farm payrolls rose $678,000 in February, which was, Ryan, correct me if I'm wrong, well above consensus expectations, I believe. That's correct. Roughly $200,000. Okay. And far more than what my guess was. And combined.

You don't guess so, Marissa. I mean, guess has got to be the wrong word. Your estimate. It's certainly a guess. I would say since the pandemic, guessing is an appropriate word. No model is really doing well. That's a reasonable point.

Yeah. So it was a really strong report. And the revisions, there were upward revisions to both January's number and December's number that added over 90,000 jobs combined, another 92,000 combined in those months. So very strong report. The unemployment rate, which is the other headline out of this report, fell two-tenths of a percentage point to 3.8%. So this is a new post-pandemic low on the unemployment rate. It was, what, three, four, right, going into the pandemic. So it's still not back down to that, but it's back down to where it was in early 2019. And just kind of scouring through the report, it is very strong. I mean, almost.

very big industrial gains across most industries. It was really only, I think, the public sector didn't add jobs and maybe information, but everything else did. And one thing I was noting was the diffusion index of employment, the one-month diffusion index, which measures the share of industries, very detailed industries that gain jobs minus the share that are losing jobs. that was the highest one-month reading that we've seen since the late 1990s expansion. By the way, you see Ryan's face?

I think that was a statistic. Yeah, I was wondering if maybe that was my back. When it comes to jobs Friday, I have like tears of numbers, but that one was definitely on my list. That jumped out to me. Yeah. So what was the diffusion index? The one-month diffusion index? What was it?

What percent? What was it? What was it, Ryan? Do you know that? 76.6. So yeah, over three quarters of industries had a job gain on net. The other portion of the report, the household data was really strong. So I mentioned the unemployment rate fell two-tenths of a percentage point to 3.8%.

A couple other things there. The participation rate rose. The participation rate for all workers rose a tenth of a percentage point. The labor force rose 304,000 over the month. And if you look across unemployment rates for all, demographic groups, they were down across the board. So men, women, black, white, Asian, Hispanic, all fell. And also with educational attainment, the only exception there is people with some college or associates degrees, the unemployment rate for them ticked up two-tenths of a percent,

but for every other educational group it was down. So really good overall report. Yeah, really good report. Ryan, any holes to fill in there? And I should ask, you know, any, any blemishes, anything that, you know, was not good in the report? I think the one thing people would say is a blemish is average hourly earnings, which caveat, it's not the greatest measure of wages. Not the greatest. I don't even pay attention to it. Worthless, actually. But okay, fair enough.

You said it. I didn't. I mean, I always view it as worthless. I don't know. But people are going to talk about it and that average hour earnings were basically unchanged between January and February. there's a couple of factors behind that that are technical. So the payroll reference week, which includes the week of the 12, didn't include the 15th. And when that happens, historically, average hourly earnings are weak.

Also the composition of job growth, very heavy in restaurants, leisure hospitality. Those are typically lower paying industries that biases wage growth lower. And it also costs of living adjustments were a lot larger in January. And that kind of set us up for a strong January. week February. So year over year, average average average earnings are up 5.1 percent. So still very strong. It's a blemish that people are going to talk about, but it's something that you and I are going to lose sleepover. Could it also be the case that we saw these minimum wage increases in January? January, yes. Yeah, so the seasonals might, that got, you could really juice things up in January,

so you might not get as much in February just because the seasonals obviously don't reflect that. Okay. Because I think a lot of states and, I mean, municipalities across the country raised minimum wages in January, I think. We did. Yes. Yeah. Okay. I mean, anything else?

I don't want to throw out numbers, but we didn't talk about my favorite number. Which is. Did you see it? Prime Epop. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Right. Prime age employment to population ratio, folks that are 25 to 54.

That's your best barometer of the, where we are relative to full employment. So what did that do? It went from 79.1 to 79.5. Oh, that's a big increase. That's a good. That's a, that's a impressive increase. We got, we got a ways to go. We can still get.

You want to get to 80, right? I'm starting to think we got to get a little bit above 80. Yeah. We can get above 80. Your rule of thumb had been 80% is consistent with a full employment economy. Because if you go back in previous business cycles, every time that's happened, and it feels consistent with the full employment economy. Correct.

But there's some evidence that, you know, like the last business cycle, we were over 80 and we didn't quite get the wage pressures you normally typically see in a full employment economy. So it could be a little higher than that. But no matter how you cut it, we're inhaling distance of full employment now. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Very good.

Chris, anything you want to call out in the report, good or bad? I agree. Generally positive. Really hard to find. something that's negative. I guess one small thing to watch is the motor vehicles, right? We did see some job losses in motor vehicle construction or manufacturing. So that might be something that, as we think, as we talk about Ukraine, Russia and supply chain effects that might feed in. And then just looking at the demographics, agree with Marissa. Lots of positive. You did see a large

improvement in unemployment for folks with less in high school. But if you look at men versus women, women actually took a step back in terms of labor force participation and just the labor force size relative to men. So certainly that continues to underline this recession that has fallen harder on women versus men. I thought that the gap between men and women had in terms the performance in the pandemic had largely closed. Clearly, women got nailed because they worked in health care, government, education, where women participation is high relative to male participation. But that had been coming back. No, do I have that wrong? They're still lagging. So looking at labor force. Okay. Men are with the January report, I'm sorry, with the February report,

We are now up 600,000 in terms of the labor force for men. And then for women, it's still down about 1.2 million. Oh, okay. That's still a big gap. I got that wrong. Yeah, that's a big gap. That's a big gap. Okay.

I didn't realize that. Okay. Very. In terms of, that's in terms of labor force. Correct. In terms of employment, you do know what that? You know, that was my next thing to check. Oh, yeah.

Okay. Just for some reason I thought they had been, I didn't think the gap had closed, but I think it was closing. but okay that you know maybe someone can take a look at some point you know in the podcast because I'm really curious about that um okay anything else about the report you want to call out not before the game yeah okay yeah yeah very good um just a couple things for me uh I do want to call out on the positive side the increase in hours worked right that's a hundred good 10th and uh that's not inconsequential and that you know and also we saw a big increase in temp help

So both those indicators, temp help, hiring, and hours work is a indicator of future job creation. So we might see it does indicate that this job market is, you know, coming into what Russia, Ukraine might do or not due to the labor market, it was coming into that very, very strong, you know, very, very strong. The other thing I noticed is that the number of people who weren't working because of the pandemic, that, you know, rose sharply. in January as we thought it would. Omicron was at its peak at that point, but that came way back in in the month of February. Yeah. Okay. Interestingly, you know, there's this growing gap between jobs and GDP. Have you been noticing that? I mean, that's, you can see in the productivity numbers for the fourth quarter.

So output per employee is essentially productivity. And that took a big jump in the fourth quarter. And year over year, so it abstracts from the quarterly movements, non-farm business is close to 2%. It feels like that underlying productivity growth is actually probably closing in, if not at 2%. Do you guys agree, disagree with that? Which, by the way, that's a big change from where we were.

If you go back, like in the mid part of the last decade, productivity growth was half this. You know, early-longing productivity growth was 1% if we were lucky. At best. Yeah. At best. And now we're two. And by the way, two is the average rate of productivity growth since World War II. So if you go back and calculate over the last 60 years or so, is it 60 or 70 years,

it's just about 2% on the nose. So we're kind of back to typical kind of rates. of productivity gains, which if sustained, and it feels like they're being sustained, is a, you know, pretty big deal. So that's, that's, I thought that was pretty significant. Yeah, you know, I, you know, I have to say, you know, typically, almost invariably in jobs reports, you always find, you know, cross currents, some good, some bad, you know, there's always something that doesn't fit, you know, the narrative. But that wasn't the case here. I mean, everything was, this is a strong job market.

almost to the point where you've got to start worrying about, you know, you mentioned full employment, that, you know, we can't sustain this kind of job growth for, certainly not through the year. I mean, we can't, I don't think we can, if we get 500,000 jobs per month on average like we did last year in 2022, the unemployment's going to be south of 3% by the end of the year. It feels like, even with an improvement. Nothing wrong with that. But isn't that an overheating economy? Isn't that, I mean, what would the Fed do with that?

I mean, the Fed's going to be normalizing. No, they'll freak out, but yeah. They'll freak. Yeah. Would the bond market freak out with that? Yes. Yeah, it would freak out. So when you say what's wrong with that, is that a good answer?

That would be wrong with it? Yeah, yeah. I mean, yes, the overheating concerns, the policy response. But, I mean, there's, you know, we've got to aim for a low unemployment. Because remember, the Fed's aiming for an all-inclusive recovery. Yeah. Well, yeah. Absolutely.

It just has to be sustainable. Sistine, yeah. Yeah, it has to be sustainable. You don't want to push the economy so far that we go back into recession. And, you know, obviously that will hurt those groups we're trying to help the most. I mean, the only way we get $500,000 on average is if labor supply continues to increase. That's the key. It's not a demand.

Like normal recoveries, it's usually labor demand that drives the job market. This time, it's labor supply. I don't know about that. I'm not sure I agree with that. You know, labor demand is very, very significant, right? I mean, we got 500,000 jobs per month on average last year, regardless of labor supply. I mean, it was. It would have more if we had less than the labor supply issue.

I'm not actually not sure about that, right? Because it feels like there's a physical kind of cap on how many people businesses can actually hire bring on board during a given month. Because it was so, you know, after the revisions, we got revisions last month to the data. The monthly job gains last year were incredibly stable. I mean, just looked like, you know, it was almost like a machine turning out jobs every single month. So I'm not, I didn't, you know, I'm sure labor supply is definitely an issue in some industries, pretty good of those, you know, leisure hospitality and retail and that kind of thing. But it felt, you know, it felt like demand was driving the train here.

I don't know. This year, labor supply is what this year labor supply. Yeah, that's what the point I was making. Last year was, okay, sorry. I was just thinking of fight. business cycles. I was just picking a fight. All right. You want to fight. Most business cycles, though, are, you know, the recovery is driven by demand, not supply this time around. Yeah, fair enough. This year is going to be supply. Yeah. You know, the reason I am picking a little bit of a fight, I do, we do ask listeners for comments. And one of the comments I get is it would be good if you guys disagreed a little bit more. So I'm just going to, I'm going to disagree all the time. Do we? Maybe we're just too nice to each other when we just. Well, maybe we, because we, we stopped talking about interest rates, like the 10 years. That is. That is. true that is true and in your housing starts forecast you know okay that that we're coming back to that at some point that was low yeah that was low a low blow but by the way what is the i i said average

housing starts this is a digression i know but just to make sure that we're on the same page in 2021 and 22 22 the average housing starts would be per ann 1.7 million is that right is that 1.75. I said 1.75. Oh, I did say 1.75? I'm pretty sure. Oh, okay. All right. Well, I stick to my 1.75. And last year, we got 1.6? Yeah. So we need like a 1.85 or something, 1.9. Almost over 1.9, don't we? Yeah. Not going to have it. Yeah, because the supply side. Yeah. All right. Well, we'll see. We'll see. The shadow housing starts. What about 0.9. All right. Make up your own statistic. Yeah. Well, okay. All right.

Okay, so anything else on the jobs numbers that anyone else wants to bring up? Anything else? I thought you brought an interesting point about the disconnect between the employment data and GDP. Yeah. I mean, there's something I always look at as Oaken's Law, a relationship between GDP growth and the unemployment rate. When there's a discrepancy, you know, people like to bash Oaken's Law. They say, oh, it's broken down. GDP revisions always realign it.

So if anything, GDP is like you're going to get revised higher to be more consistent with the labor market data. Interesting point. Yeah, because the employment data got revised, their benchmark revision to actual unemployment insurance data last month. And you're saying the GDP, that comes out in August, the revision, I believe. Yeah. You're saying that likely will get revised up. Interesting. By the way, we've been doing these, started immersed these data deep dives.

So we talked about the jobs numbers in detail. We're going to do GDP next. So I don't know. Yeah, I listened to your CPI one. Oh, did we do CPI? I thought we did jobs. Or did we do? CPA.

You did CPI. Oh, okay. So we got to do jobs too then. Okay. All right. Okay. Let's turn to what's top of mind, obviously. And, you know, critical to the outlook is what's going on in Russia and Ukraine.

the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. And of course, these job numbers we got today for the month of February were before all of this mess really, you know, got going. What do you think? How big a deal do you think the Russian invasion is going to be to the job market, you know, going forward and to the broader economy here in the United States? Anyone want to take the crack at that? We've been talking a lot about this. We've had a couple podcasts on this already. We've had a webinar. We're going to have another one next week.

So a lot of discussion. But in the context of today's job numbers, how worried should we be about Russia, Ukraine? Is that going to have an impact on the jobs numbers or the economy more broadly? Mercedes of view. I can go first. Well, Chris mentioned the auto manufacturing sector and that had lost 18,000 jobs just in February. this is before the invasion. That's kind of one of the two obvious ones that stick out to me that could be impacted by

supply chain issues, although it's not clear to me. That's clearly happening in Europe already that automakers in Europe are being impacted by the lack of or supply chain issues around metals that go into autos. I don't know if we are dependent on, you know, if our automakers in the U.S. are dependent on the same kind of supply chain that European automakers are. Certainly, rising oil prices is the other transmission of this. That could go two ways. I mean, I actually would expect maybe more shale production to kick in in the U.S. as oil prices go higher here, and it makes it actually profitable to extract very expensive oil out of the ground. So we could see a bump in oil production

here. But it could be damaging to the auto sector, not only because of supply chain issues, but also if oil prices remain above $100 a barrel, it could kill demand for certain types of vehicles at least. And then there's obviously the confidence, right? Just if you continue to see corrections in the stock market and people are just generally worried, it could maybe have some secondary effects of pulling back on hiring, but we certainly don't see any evidence of that. And if anything, it seems like employers are just trying to hoard as much labor as they can because the job market is so tight. Yeah, let's pick that apart. So you outlined of three channels through which Russia, Ukraine could affect the economy. Oil, let's bleed with that because that,

I think, is the most important. Second, supply change, and you kind of focused on the impact on the vehicle industry because that obviously was an industry that got very disrupted when Delta hit and shut down chip production. And Russia does, and Ukraine produce things that go into the chip manufacturing process that could reverberate around the world. And as you said in Europe, there are a number of European vehicle makers that get other parts from factories in Ukraine and they can't get them. Like Volkswagen, I believe, is an example of that.

That was in the Wall Street Journal, or F.T. And then the third channel was through sentiment, and that can be reflected through the stock market. So let's take each one of those in turn. And I think that's a pretty good summary of the key. There's lots of other channels that are, I think, less significant, but those are three key ones. The first is oil and gas prices. And there, the impact on net to the U.S. economy is a small negative. Ryan, I know you've done a lot of simulations of our global model to try to assess that impact, that small negative impact.

Can you describe those results and maybe give a little more granulary around how that works and how it impacts our economy? Yeah, so what I did is I ran two, which at the time were hypothetical scenarios, one where West Texas, Texas intermediate oil prices averaged $100 per barrel this quarter and next and then, you know, reverted back to. to our baseline forecast. Typically, that's what you see when oil supply shocks. It's several months. It's not just really quick. And then did one where it's $150 per barrel on average. So in the first scenario where we average 100,

which we're currently above that right now, it shades a couple tens of a percentage point off GDP growth this year. But the economic costs increase quite significantly as you go from 100 to 150. And it really bites into consumer spending. but that's offset by an increase in business investment, like Marissa pointed out, more shale production, investment in mining shafts and wells. That's going to offset some of the hit to consumer spending. So when you net it all out, it's going to sting, but it's not going to derail the recovery.

So, okay. So oil before this mess was, say, as measured by West Texas Intermediate or Brent was $7580. bucks. And now I looked this morning, we were over 110, I believe. You know, 113. 113. 115 for Brent for 1. But you're saying if we kind of settle in, you know, obviously that's a risk premium built into price. Correct. In anticipation of a potential disruption to supply, which hasn't happened yet, but it could. But let's say we don't, you know, actually see a disruption and the risk premium comes in a little bit and he's settled in around 100 bucks a barrel, which is kind of sort of close to our kind of baseline view of how this is all going to play out. You're saying that for the U.S.

economy, that shaves a tenth or two off of GDP growth in calendar year 2022, something like that. Yeah, a couple of times. Yep. Because there's a hit to spending, but, you know, the model doesn't, is not going to capture the $2.5, $2.6 trillion we have in excess savings. So there's a little bit of a cushion there for consumers. But it does pick up, you know, the boost to business investment in energy-related segments. Right. So prices for oil go up, gas prices go up, that hits real income, meaning if I have to shell out more money to fill my gas tank, I have less to spend on everything else. So particularly lower income households that don't have much of that cash cushion you just talked about would probably have to pull back a bit on their spending,

at least relative to what it would have been. That's a clear negative, you know, for the, for that, for those groups, obviously, and then for the economy. But, you know, the higher prices means that these frackers, shell companies can make a boatload of money. They are, and they are ramping, you could see they were ramping up before all this, the rig, you know, the rigs out there in operation. That's going to now take off and increases activity. And the net of all that is a small negative for the economy. But you're saying, if we get into, for whatever reason, a darker scenario here, and prices go to 150 per barrel, which would be a new, I think the all-time high, I think it was 140, wasn't it?

Maybe on a quarterly basis, maybe on a daily basis that got to 150 back during the financial crisis. That would be a different kind of ballgame. The impact would be much more significant. And, of course, if you get to 150, it's not just about oil prices. Is something caused those oil prices to rise that is probably undermining sentiment equity prices, leading to more global supply chain disruptions and everything else. Yeah, I think Marisa brought a good point about sentiment, and we can get there. But, you know, if you look back, the impact of hitting $3, $4 per gallon diminishes

because the first time we hit it, there was a big psychological impact because we haven't seen it before. But we've hit it before in the past. So the impact on consumer confidence is muted. That's a good point. So, you know, a hundred bucks a barrel feels like the gas, the cost of a gallon of regular and lead, it's going over $4. I think we're sitting at $3.70 now.

Oh, in Westchester, we're over $4.00. Oh, is that right? No, really. $4.4.14 at Wawa. At Wawa, $4.15? That's unusual that we're so far ahead of the national price. I saw the national price at $3.73. or something last week, the AAA.

There it is. Oh, Chris just pulled out his iPhone and he took a picture. Whoa. This morning. Not even going to tell you what gas prices are in Southern California. Tell us. Well, I paid, let's see, I paid on Saturday, 496 here. And then I went up to the central coast of California to visit friends over the weekend.

There were two gas stations across the street from each other. I paid $4.76 at the one, you know, on the one side of the street. Across the street was a Chevron and it was $5.15. And this is for 87, regular unleaded. Wow. And there was someone there getting gas, which is very strange. Here we go. Not Ryan's what?

Not Ryan's fancy, schmancy high octane gasoline. Oh, yeah, right. Did I tell you? I got to the bottom of this. Yeah. No, you didn't tell us. I didn't. Yeah, so I was misled that you can put any type of gap.

I can go to Wawa and put it in the car. Is that a nice way of saying you were duped? Bambusal. Yeah, I was bamboozled. I was bamboozled. By woo. I'm not going to say, just people that work on the car, the mechanic. Okay.

But they specifically work on this car to the dealership. And they're like, oh, you do not go to Wawa, like gas. And then I asked somebody else and they're like, no, it doesn't matter. My brother-in-law's gas station down the road here, not Wawa. Right, exactly, yeah. Do you understand what they're talking about, Marissa, brother-in-law? What are they talking about? I think Chris is making a joke.

The auto dealer said, oh, go to my brother-in-law's. Oh, yeah, station down the street. I am so slow on the update. Did you have your Wawa coffee today? I did. And actually I got a 20 ounce right here. See that? Yeah. What's the price increase there? Coffee prices are up. Any flow through? You don't really pay attention. I have no price elasticity of the name.

Yeah, there's no, it's completely in a lot of demand. It doesn't matter. They can charge me 25 bucks for that coffee after drinking that coffee. It doesn't matter. I don't want to look. Okay, so let's talk about, about sentiment in the stock market. Ryan makes a good point, Chris, that, you know, we've been at $4. You know, we're going to go there now it feels like with $100 barrel oil. If we get to $150, then that means at least, well, that, you know, that's $5.50, you know, something like that. If you kind of do the back of the annual calculation per gallon, that feels pretty scary, you know, at least in terms of what it means.

And you in California, we'll be paying $8, you know, for a gallon gasoline. Yeah, I mean, I can't even imagine. Oh, by the way, I looked up the pre-dollar. previous high in, you know, July of 2008 was 146. Yeah. 145.66. Yeah. Yeah.

And that's WTI, not Brent. Yeah. And Brent's usually three, four, five bucks higher just because, yeah. So, Chris, any comments about that? I mean, what it means for the, you know, I'll tell you one thing. It surprised me a little bit on the equity market, at least so far, the stock market, is that, you know, some days it's up. Some days it's down.

And when I say up or down, a big up, big down. And actually intraday, because I look intraday, you know, the swings are massive, massive. And it's like this pitched battle between the bulls and the bearers, it feels like, you know, at times. And but yet when you look through the volatility, I think stock prices today are not that much different than they were a week or two ago. You know, maybe today they're down a little bit, but they're not that much different. So I think the stock market or investors are kind of where we are that so far at least, this isn't going to be that big a deal for the economy, I think. Is that consistent with your thinking, Chris?

And how big a deal do you think the stock market is in terms of overall the economy, consumer spending, the economy and the prospects for growth? I think it's a big deal. Well, first I'll, I'll, uh, I'll, uh, push against Ryan's claim that, you know, 420 oil doesn't, or 420 gas doesn't matter. My experience yesterday was, right, because I passed by the gas station multiple times a day, taking my son back to school. So you got more depressed every time you passed by.

Yeah, so AM 380. Oh. I come back home $3.99, $4.4. Oh. And then this morning, 420. So, you know, that's that about? That is really. Maybe it's my local station just catching up.

But it was really within a day. You saw this significant jump. And it was changing throughout the day. So I think that wears on consumers much more than, yeah, sure, we've been at $4 before, but we haven't been there for a while. And seeing that. That's a good point. Acceleration, I think that is going to have an effect on people's behavior and spending patterns going for.

If it continues, certainly. And then the stock market, oh, go ahead. Go ahead. No, go ahead. Oh, before you the stock market on that point, I argue, and I'm curious whether you think this is a reasonable argument, that oil plays gasoline prices, play an outsized role in people's thinking about future inflation. And they literally forecast with a ruler, meaning they take the price they just saw. They remember the price they saw the last time they looked in the case of you, it went up a lot. And then if they have another, if they can think back one more time, they'll take that data point.

And then you've got two, three data points. You just draw a line through that. And then you look out into the future. And, of course, no one's doing this on a piece of paper. They're doing it in their mind, you know, as they're doing it by. Yeah. And they say, oh, my gosh, you know, I'm going to be paying, you know, a lot higher prices. Therefore, inflation is their inflation expectations start to rise.

And that's when we get into a big, that's when things, you know, really can go off the rails. because that's interest rates, it's monetary policy and everything else. Yeah, and you're seeing that there and you're seeing at the grocery store too, right? Right. Whose prices are rising rapidly as well. So I think the confidence, I don't think this is a normal shock either. So I worry that this is going to have a bigger bite than what we might expect based on previous data. And the same thing.

Yeah, go ahead. I was just going to push about the relationship between confidence. in spending in the short run is very, very loose. So, you know, people can say that, you know, they're pessimistic, but they'll come, continue to go out and spend. Yeah, I guess I'm, I'm assuming some type of revealed. I think as these prices go, you are going to see people pulling back and thinking twice about spending on other activities.

They've got the savings kitchen, so it might not be immediate, but I worry that it's going to be a bigger bite here. And then the stock market, same thing, right? I do think there's this push and pull, but I don't know that we've fully digested. I guess it largely depends what your outlook is for the conflict itself. But I see it as a long-term siege that goes on for a long. And I think that is going to, that is eventually going to weigh on investors. And I do expect the bears are probably going to have their day here.

Oh, I see. So I think it's going to go down. Yeah, go down and that will take the spending down with it. Right. So you're kind of paying a picture. Our model would say GDP, $100 oil, GDP declines one, two-tenths of a percent compared to what it would have been otherwise. You're saying it feels like in the circumstances that we are in today, given everything

that's going on, it's going to be meaningfully more than that. That's what it feels like. That's my, yeah, that's my, you want a little, uh, yeah, spice this up a little bit. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the, uh, the opposing view here that. Yeah. I don't know, we fully digested it yet.

Yeah. Uh, and of course, I'm assuming a hundred dollar oil. If it's, you know, 110 or if it stays where it is now, 115, then, you know, that just adds to it. Uh, okay. Uh, third channel, Marissa mentioned was supply chains in, uh, poster child for potential problems with the vehicle industry. Any comments on that? How are people thinking about that?

Any other reviews? So I worry more about, from a Russian export, I perspective, I worry more about the other non-energy commodities, right? So palladium is a large component in catalytic converters. Russia is the main supplier of that. So any disruption there, I think, is going to translate through and affect all manufacturers. So I don't, I don't, I don't,

I might have some inventory. I don't know, like Marissa, I don't know how much inventory we have on hand, but I think that would start to impact production going forward. Right. Marissa, Ryan, anything else said on supply chain issues? You mentioned, was it in the podcast last week, about neon, right, being used in semiconductor,

And again, like, you said 70% of the global supply comes from Russia? Yeah, that's right. And I also learned that 90% is of so-called semiconductor-grade neon, the U.S. semiconductor plants use come from Russia, Ukraine. So they rely very, very heavily on what's coming from Russia, Ukraine. And interestingly enough, I always say Russia, Ukraine, because apparently the neon is produced as a byproduct of steel production, and many Russian factories, steel factories capture the neon that is produced. And then they ship it to Ukraine where it's processed into something that can be used.

And it's used, neon is really important for lasers. And lasers are used for lots of things, obviously. but, you know, particularly important for chips to, I guess, to etch the chips to create the circuit, that actually create the circuit, integrated circuit. And, of course, the chips go everywhere and key to the vehicle industry. So, so that's why it's so important. And it turns out that, you know, retrofitting steel factories to capture the neon is not all that easy. It takes, it's a process.

It takes some energy and time invest. So it's not something you can solve very quickly. So that is a vulnerability, seemingly a vulnerability here in terms of the supply chains. Okay, very good. Any other channels we should be, I mean, there are many, I guess, to think about, but any other any other things that you think, you know, it's one of those, this is an open-ended question. What out there could we be surprised by? Any thoughts on that? You know, not that I expect that there would be any, but I'm just throwing it out there just in case anyone thinks there's something else we should be thinking about here. In relation to the labor market?

No, Russia. Ukraine, Russia. Any impact. Any impact. Any impact, yeah. Go ahead, Marissa. I was just going to say what China does. I mean, there's the sort of how this is going to,

affect our other trading partners in the world. Obviously, this has a huge impact on Europe, but China is sort of the big question mark, right, of kind of they're going to stick to the side of Russia. And yeah, I don't know. Yeah. That's an outstanding question in my mind. Yeah. Clearly, that's the most important economic relationship on the planet, US, China. that's been been pretty vexed. And, you know, it's hard to say how what's going on Russia, Ukraine, can affect that relationship. But, yeah, something to watch.

Chris, anything, Ryan, anything else on this issue? I guess India. I throw that in. Throw that in turn. And then it's just a question of the timing here and how long, how long the conflict goes on in one, in one form of the other. And then how long the appetite for sanctions, the resolve of European nations and the U.S. holds out, that's going to play a key role in terms of the price of oil and all the other economic impacts we talked about. Europe highly dependent on energy, right?

Already, even before the conflict, prices were high for consumers, if they're paying even larger, amounts for their utility bills, right? You have to wonder what the outlooks is going to be. Yeah. Well, very sobering and very disconcerting to watch. Hopefully this gets resolved sooner rather than later for everyone's sake, particularly Ukrainian people's sake. And obviously, very, very catastrophic situation.

Okay. But let's move on to, you know, move on to, We'll liven it up a little bit. I mean, I think it's appropriate to kind of end on a more positive note. Let's talk. Let's do the game. Let's do the statistics game. We've got a lot of statistics.

And who wants to go first? Should I pick somebody? Ryan, you go first. All right. So second consecutive week, I'll give you guys a two-fer. Okay. So this is two numbers related to the same topic in the same report. Oh, can I say, Ryan, I should, maybe I just took it for grand.

People who are listening know this game inside now, but just quickly. Yeah, I got to explain it, I guess. This is statistics games. So each of us put out a statistics, the rest of us try to figure out what that is through questioning, deductor reasoning. The best statistic is one that is not so easy that's a slam dunk, not so hard that no one's ever going to get it. And it would be very nice if it's related to statistics that came out this week and to the topic at hand. in this case labor market, but we've already talked a lot about the labor market, so not necessarily, you don't necessarily have to do that. So with that as a preface, Ryan, go ahead.

All right. Here are your two numbers. Yep. 1.573 million. Okay. And the second one is 4.2 million. Okay. Job, relate to jobs. Yes. In the employment survey. Is it in the numbers that came out today? In the numbers that came out today. In the employment, or excuse me, sorry. In the household survey? Yes. One is the household survey. The other one is... The payroll survey? It's in the right-up.

It's what? In the right-of. I don't actually know where, if it's household or... I think it would know it would be household. Yeah. Oh, is the four million part-time for economic reasons? It is not. That's close, though. It's one of those statistics. It's actually $4.1 million. It's for something, right?

It's not the 4.2, I'm thinking. Oh, well, okay. But that's a good guess, that's a good one. Yeah. That's half a cowbell at least. Oh, yeah, speaking of the cowbell. You guys keep debating.

Oh, no, he doesn't have the cowbell. I got it over here. I see actually see two of them over there. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There he goes. So 4.2, and he was very precise.

I mean, maybe there's some information in the fact that he said 1.5371 or something. 1.573. So for contact. Yeah. Normally in February be around a million, 1.1 million. Oh. You want another hint? Is this the seasonally, is it seasonally, is it a household survey though? I'll give you a hint.

Yeah, go give us a hint. It's a strong sign that Omicron's grip on the labor market is easy. Oh, is it the number of people. with a job not at work. Because of? Because of sickness. Correct. Oh, so, so was that 4.2 announced 1.57.

No, no, no. 1.573 million is the number of people that were employed, but not at work because of own illness. Okay. So 4.2 million is something else. Something else. It's related to home. It's got to be related.

Yeah. Okay. Number of people working at home because of Omicron. Ooh, that's another excellent guest. Close, but no. I don't know. You talked about it before on the podcast. Do you know?

It's right up your alley, Mark. This is one number you always ask about. I do. I always ask about this number. This is not, I don't know. What is it? Is the number of people that were unable to work because of the pandemic, down from 6 million in January?

I get confused with. because there's a lot of, it seems like. So this is like business closures or reduced hours. Oh, okay, okay. This is like a more comprehensive measure, not just people that are sick. Right. You know, you know, your company closed down or they cut your hours a lot so you weren't able to work.

Oh, so the 1.5-7 is the number of people who couldn't work because they were sick. Correct. And the 4.2 million includes those folks, but also, I don't know if it does. I don't know. The 4.2 million is the special COVID questions that they're asking, specifically about COVID. The 1.5, they've always asked that. It's illness. It could be illness for any reason.

That's why you always look at past February's, just because this is kind of flu season. So we've got that on top of the pandemic. Okay. So I'm sorry because I'm just had our time to get my mind around what we're measuring. but the 1.57, what is that typically in February? 1 to 1.1 million? Okay. So we're about 400K above, 4,500 a way above.

And the 4.2 million, well, of course, that's COVID-related, and that's businesses that are closed or disrupted. And what is that down from? 6 million in January. In January. So that's Omicron. That's up. Yeah. Right.

Okay. And we never figured out why Omicron didn't show up in the top line employment gain, right? I mean, we never really figured that out. Well, we were hypothesizing. I think Chris and I, maybe mercy, we were going back and forth, that right around the timing of the payroll survey in January, the CDC reduced the quarantine period from, I think it was 10 days to five days. So I think that left a mark,

or limited the impact of Omicron compared to Delta. Yeah, yeah. Because I made it more likely that the person, even if they got sick, went to work. They went to work. Eventually. At least got an hour in. Right.

That's the threshold. He's got to work one hour. Right. Okay. Okay. Okay. Mercer, but your statistic. Okay.

First I'll say Chris scooped my statistic that I picked. He didn't exactly say it, but he talked about it. So I'd like to come back to it. We could delve into it a little bit more. My statistic was female labor force participation, which was 56.6. over in February. And that was down two tenths of a percent. percentage point. Oh, does this mean we're not playing the game? Yeah, we are. I have another one.

I haven't had before to the game. I'm just saying we can come back to that because it's a good conversation and you asked about the gap between men and women. Okay. So my statistic is 48.5. And you're sure it's positive. Oh. We never forget, Marissa. I'm sure it's positive. Yeah. All right. Mrs. tends to miss the minus signs before numbers. All right. So what was it, you know? 48.5 in February.

48.5. And it was related to the jobs, it was an employment report. No. No. Oh, okay. Is it related to jobs? Yes. NFIB.

Nope. Did it come out this week? Yes. Oh, okay. I thought you guys would get this right off the bat. Was it in the ISM surveys? Is it the, so it's employment, the employment measure in the, I think it was non-manufacturing. Yeah.

Yeah. So it's the employment diffusion index in the ISM non-manufacturing survey, which is often. Yeah, you got that. Yes. Yeah, yeah. There you go. And I got it pretty fast, too. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. Can I get a cowbell for the 1.57 million that I said, why? Oh. Okay, she can. Okay, she can. My natural reaction is to say no. We need more cowbell.

So, okay, ISM. Non-manufacturing. They have this survey that comes out every month for manufacturing and also for the non-manufacturing sector. Now men came out. They asked questions around employment. It came out at 48.5, which is below 50. Yes.

So this means that compared to the previous month, there was a decline in employment among the surveyed service sector participants. And if you delve into the commentary in the report, it was pretty interesting because all the comments were around, we can't hire anybody. We're trying to hire people. We can't find people. This is pervasive across manufacturing. It's pervasive across service sectors. So it looks like, you know, it's not, it's not that anyone's getting laid off, right? It's just that hiring has slowed because it's just becoming so tight. It's difficult to find people.

This is why I thought today's report was going to be weaker than it was. You know, I just, and you see it in the jolt state. I mean, the jolt state is older, right? It's lagged a couple months. But you see hiring rates have been flat to falling for the past several months. I mean, it's just seems like we're going. going to run up against a situation where it's just, we're going to start to see, I think, weaker job growth simply because it's becoming increasingly difficult to find workers.

And this is the first sub 50 reading on this index since July of 2021 when it dipped right below 50, but it's the lowest since August of 2020. That's interesting. And do you know what is the question The purchasing managers are actually answering? Did you add to payrolls last month? Yeah, I believe, and Ryan, you may know this better than I, but I believe what they do is they look at the change over the month

in employment among all of the respondents. Is that right? And it's relative to the prior month. Yeah. Oh, so relative to the prior month. To January. So you can still have an increase. if it's, but if it's not as large as,

correct. Oh, that's, that's interesting. Okay, so that's good. Yeah, 50's neutral. Right. I don't know if we mentioned that. Yeah. 50's the, right, the threshold. So below 50 means lower employment or slower employment. Yeah, I never actually thought, thought, you know, thought about it. I thought the 50 was, if I'm below 50, I'm actually reducing payrolls, but it's not that you're saying.

You're saying it's I added less than I added last month. Is that right? Oh, okay. I didn't, for some reason, I didn't know that. Now, ISM puts in there what exactly the index reading has to be that's consistent with either an increase or a decrease in, you know, employment. Oh, really? So do you know what it is? Not at the time I had.

And you can do it. We've done it econometrically. And I mean, the warning to Marissa is that the ISMs aren't great at forecasting BLS's employment numbers. Right. But still, that's interesting. And you ascribe the soft number, although it could be a strong number. It's just not as strong as what was in January. But you ascribe that to labor supply issues, not going back to Ryan's point earlier, that it's supply, not demand.

Yeah. Okay. Because they solicit comments from the respondents. And there were a lot of comments about being unable to find sufficient number of people. Well, it stands the reason, right? I mean, you know, at 3.8% unemployment, the employment to population ratio is closing 79.5. Labor Force participation has improved quite a bit, you know, at some point, and you're creating a lot of jobs. So at some point, it's just going to run out, literally going to run out of, you know, people to hire.

Yeah. Okay. Okay, good. That was a good one. A good one. Yeah, it was really good. Chris, and it's really good because I got it. So, great satisfaction. All right.

Let's see. Important criteria. Go ahead, Chris. Let's see if you get this one. 39.1%. 39.1% is it related to jobs? Yes. Was it in the employment report?

Employment, yeah. The jobs, the BLS Employment report. Okay. Is it in the household survey? Yes. Okay. It's 39.1 percent? Yes.

Okay. Is this a calculation you did? Yeah. No, it is not. It is reported. It is actually reported. Okay. Demographic related?

It is. And Mercer took my education statistics. Oh, well, we swapped. Fair play. Yeah, you took mine. So is it related to a race? No. Age?

Yes. Okay. Is it participation, is there a participation rate? It is. 39.1% that's pretty low. Is it teenage? No. Teenage?

No. Are we going to the other? 65 and older. Oh, that's what it is. 55 plus. 55 plus. 55 plus. 55 plus.

Yep. Get a half cowbell. Who got it? Who got the cowbell? No, Merissa. Did you get it? I said 65.

Yeah, no, it's fair. I said half cowbell. Yeah, there we go. Thanks. Even three quarters. So, so what's, okay, so why? Significates? Yeah.

So 39.1% is an improvement from the low of 38.2%, which was last year, still below 40.3%, which was what we had in February. And what it signifies to me is that you have people coming back in the labor market from early retirement. So we have actually 1.1 million 55 more people who are 55 plus than we did 12 months ago. So that might help the previous statistic that Marissa review. Right. If we have a shortage, we do have this pool of folks who had stepped out of the labor market. Maybe they're going to come back in and higher numbers. So I'd given up hope on the boomers.

I'd given up hope on the boomers, but they might save us. And that might indicate just the sensitivity of that group in particular to what's happening now. right to higher inflation or fears about their 401ks or stock prices that, you know, maybe they left sort of earlier than they had planned and now they're kind of rethinking that decision. Because one thing I noticed when I was looking at the female participation rate is that actually where it was down the most was in 65 plus women. So the 45 to 55 was way up and that includes what you just said.

but the 65 plus was down. Yeah. I also wonder if it's a small business effect here that, you know, you had that big spike in entrepreneurship. Maybe folks tried it for a while, but the labor market is improving, so it's more advantageous to come back in. I don't know,

it's a theory, but it's encouraging that we're getting some household. The household survey is based on a small sample of household, so it can be volatile month to month. Are you observing that this is a, Something you've seen in recent months. It's just not a month. It's a past several months or something. That's right.

It's been steadily increasing over the last year, right? Oh, it's over the last year. Yeah. The bottom was 38.2% last March. And it's been increasing steadily since then. I missed that. Okay. So 38.2.

And what was it pre-pandemic? 40.3. 40.3. Okay. That feels like that's a trend. Yeah. And I guess now with the stock market down in the volatility in stock prices, that might also say to some people, hey, my nest egg isn't quite as big as I thought it was. I might need to get some work here. Right.

Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Okay. That was a really good statistic. Yeah, a really good one. Okay. I'll give you mine.

Yeah. Down 1%. Down 1%. All right. So this is a calculation that you did? No. Or is it reported number? reported number in today's jobs report no

is it labor market are you going back to like neon it's not directly related to the labor market no but it's an important statistic it's not a back to normal no no no back to normal copper prices lumber prices so lumber prices are up a lot yeah they are they are it's a good thing you started your

construction on your your home or something yeah great about to build a deck yeah yeah although i'm sure they put a clause in there that you know yeah right um okay that was kind of labor market that that was for the month of january so it's a little bit lagged i'll give you the month of december minus point two oh i just i shouldn't know this i wrote it yeah i calculated it yeah what is it well what the other two other two to do it. Okay.

You will hurt my feelings significantly if you can't get this number. In November, it was minus point four or minus point three five to be precise. Okay, I'll go back one more month. In October, it was up 1.8%. Here's a big hint. Not many places have this. We are, we are not, we're very unique. Oh, it's the back to normal.

Is it back to normal? No, no, no, no, no, not back to normal. Yeah. Well, monthly GDP? There you go. Monthly GDP. Which I, you know, if you look at the, we calculate GDP on a monthly basis based on all the statistics. Ryan does this, you know, and it, uh, so, you know, obviously GDP is released by the government,

B.E.A. Bureau of Economic Analysis every quarter. but we calculated every month. And actually some countries around the world actually do Canada produces UK produced GDP. No, we don't do that here for some reason. But we take it upon ourselves and we do it. And I find it very informative and valuable because you can get a real good sense of what's going on, you know, more real time. And January was really weak in terms of GDP.

I mean, we've got that big job number, but GDP was really weak. December was weak, you know, November was weak. In fact, if you go back, GDP, the level of GDP in the month of January is no higher than it was in August of last year, basically going to fly out. Yeah. And the other thing is all of the GDP growth has been almost all. I mean, I'm exaggerating obviously, but almost all.

Inventory accumulation. Yeah. So that gives you a sense that, you know, Delta and now Amicron actually did damage, I think, to the economy. It did a fair amount of damage. It's just that businesses don't care. You know, they know that the pandemic is going to go away at some point, and they're going to be left with a very tight labor market and unfilled positions.

And if they stop hiring, regardless of what's going on with, you know, sales, revenues, whatever, you know, their output, they got to hire. They got to keep hiring. They got to keep moving because if they shut down the hiring machine, then getting that back up is going to be really painfully hard and they're going to be left out without, you know, we're going to have a very severe labor shortage. And that goes back to the productivity growth. I mean, productivity growth in the fourth quarter, we just got that. That was almost 2% year over year. It feels like we're going to get a, you know, in the case of the first quarter, it's going to be very weak, right?

We're going to get a lot of jobs and no GDP. So, you know, they're looking right through it. And GDP's looking really bad. Yeah. I mean, we think, Ryan, we could get a negative. I don't think so, right? Because it feels like February and March are going to be a lot stronger. Feels like it, right?

Yeah. In terms of output. I mean, right now, our tracking estimate is barely positive. But to your point, February should be a lot better in March. But this jump in oil prices like Chris pointed out, that's, I could be concerned. Right. So I just found that very, very, very. interesting that was down and and you know the fact that we do that's in some economic view you

you put it's like a headline statistics on economic view to allow you know kind of a summarizes a lot of what's going on okay that's the game you know we've already chatted for quite some time here is there anything on the labor market front kind of a broader picture issue that you think we should kind of dive into or discuss one thing I did notice this is some research that Matt Colliard and others in our firm in our business in our organization did was around calculating inflation by different income groups which I which is you know kind of interesting in the context of wage growth by income groups Ryan do you want to summarize that research I thought it was pretty cool what they did

and what they came up with yeah so this actually stems from our podcast discussion when Chris brought up his personal CPI. So everyone's basket is different. So Bernard Yaros, who's been on the podcast, Matt, the Collier, took it upon themselves to go by income quintile, and you can get this data from the consumer expenditure survey and then, you know, calculate what, you know, the growth in the CPI is for across the income distribution.

And I think the results were kind of very interesting. I thought there would be a lot more dispersion, a lot, you know, but there really wasn't. And it just, you know, shows that, you know, everyone's feeling the pain of inflation, no matter if you have a similar consumption basket to Marissa or Chris or I, you know, everyone's feeling the hit from inflation. So, yeah, I saw that there was a nice chart where it showed month-to-month CPI consumer price index inflation across the different, I think it was the quintiles of the distribution. Correct. Yeah. And it really surprised surprisingly not any meaningful difference as far as I was surprised by that.

Yeah, I was surprised. The only thing that stood out a little bit to me, and I'd like to see a longer time series, is the folks in the top quintile saw lower rates of inflation. You know, if there's, if you made, if you had to say what stood out, that was the one thing that was the one thing that stood out. And I think that's energy. I have to double check, but I think it's their share of energy. Of course.

That's in their basket. Yeah. Yeah. And of course, on the wage front, we know from, the Atlanta Federal Reserve Wage Tracker, where they track the same individuals over time, and therefore can calculate wage growth by different demographic. We know from that that most of the acceleration and wage growth has been in the bottom part of the wage distribution, the bottom quartile, the bottom half of the distribution.

So that would suggest that real wages for high-income households, middle-income households, is really under a lot of pressure for low-income households. It's under pressure, but less so. Is that fair characterization? Yeah, I think that's fair. Fair. Okay. All right.

I thought that was a very interesting work. We should continue to update that. Maybe calculated because the consumer expenditure survey data has lots of good demographic data. Maybe we can calculate CPIs for other groups and see if anything stands out. That would be really interesting. Yeah, we discussed that. By age? I think you can do it by age.

You know, for example. You do it by age, yep. Retirees. Yeah, I think that'd be really cool, really interesting. Okay. Okay. Mercy, you're a resident labor market expert. Any other big topics on the labor market you think we should bring up?

But you don't need to. I just was asking if anything kind of struck you that we should talk about. Well, just coming back to the question about how women have been doing. It is Women's History Month, and it was International Women's Day the other day. and we're doing a joint study at Moody's. I don't want to scoop it, but part of my study was looking at labor force participation among women, which is why I wanted to talk about that statistic.

And you asked how it was going, women versus men. So men have now regained, if you look at male labor force, they're back above where they were prior to the pandemic. Women are still about a point and a half below where they were, about one and a half percentage points below the pre-pandemic. level of the labor force. So there's still a gap there. It is, it was narrowing throughout most of 2021. The last few months, it's widened again between men and women. I'll note, I looked at, as part of the study that I did, I looked across the developed world. Women in the U.S. have one of

the largest gaps between, particularly if you look at prime age women, one of the largest gaps with men in their country. And the gap has widened in the U.S. between men and women since the start of the pandemic, whereas in a lot of other countries, I looked at European countries, Australia, it's narrowed. And, you know, there's all kinds of, I think, policy reasons, differences between us and Europe and other developed countries

that support families more. So we're getting back there, but, yeah, women are still in a deficit in terms of the labor force and men are not any longer. Interesting. Yeah. I guess the child care issues we brought up earlier, yeah, taking elder care, taking care of sick family members, you know, elderly parents. Yeah, a lot of, and of course, the fact that women are employed in education and health care, the sectors that, you know, obviously have been hit very hard here. And there's a lot of burnout, too, I guess, and a lot of those professionals.

professions just because they've been on the front lines for so long. And another thing to note is there's disparities even among women, right? So white women are doing a lot better than black women or Hispanic women, too. And a lot of that also goes to the industrial structure and the industrial composition of the jobs that were lost during the pandemic. Yeah, who's really on the front lines. Let's just keep watching that every month, you know, to see what's going on there because I think that's an important issue and critical to Ryan's point that, you know, we want a labor market that gets, when it gets, when it gets back, it's inclusive that everyone, you know, gets back. So not quite there yet.

Okay, very good. I think we're going to call this a podcast, a lot going on. At Marks, Andy. There it is. There it is. Ryan, what's your handle? At real time underscore econ. And I know I've been noticing Ryan's been tweeting a lot, so he's really into this.

That's good. Mercer, are you on Twitter? Yeah, but not in an official capacity. Can I ask, are you following me, Marissa? I am following you and I'm following Ryan. Yeah, of course. Mark, I also, I noticed that you're following Wawa. You are?

I am following Wawa. Wait, Wawa has a Twitter? Wawa has a Twitter. Oh, yeah. Although I haven't noticed any tweets from them. They must be tweeting, but I missed it somehow. They're busy hiking gas and coffee prices. We're just joking.

We love Wawa. Yeah. Unofficial sponsor of Inside Economy. Right. That's funny. And Chris, he's not a Twitter fellow, but he's a LinkedIn Maven. So if you want to follow Chris, follow him on LinkedIn. I do want to make one point before we end.

Oh, yeah, sure. On a more positive note. Yeah. I've been tracking this closely. Every time we have Mercer on for the job report, we have an upside surprise. So I hope she joins us in the future just for the sake of the economy. Well, you know, and every time Dante joins on Fry's, it's down. Have you noticed that?

I didn't want to go there. So we got to get them back based on our forecast of whether jobs are going up or down. There you go. Yeah, there we go. And Christmas is the closest. Have us on together and see what happens. Oh, the universe will be screwed up. Oh, my God.

Hey, and Chris was closest of all four of us. Yeah, but we were like within 25,000 of each other, right? Except not me. I thought it was going to be weaker. We were going to bring it off. We're not going to bring that up. I think we're like all around 500K, something like that. Pretty close.

But strong job numbers. Okay, very good. And again, any comments, suggestions, very helpful. We do listen. Go to economy.com. Let us know. And with that, we'll call this a podcast. Take care of everyone.