January 12

1/12 – Friday’s jobs report brought some good news: the unemployment rate dropped from 4.5% (revised) to 4.4%. The bad news: the U.S. economy added just 50,000 net new jobs in Dec. In 2025, we averaged just 59,000 net new jobs per month. Compare that to the 10 years preceding Covid (2010-2019), when the U.S. averaged 185,000 new jobs per month. Similarly, we averaged 186,000 per month in 2024. The number of long-term (27+ weeks) unemployed workers rose by 400k in 2025 and now represent a quarter of all unemployed. Yet initial unemployment claims remain subdued, averaging 226,115 per week in 2025 - and Nov/Dec first-time claims averaged just 218,300 per week. That’s where we were pre-pandemic – at 217,700 initial claims per week (on average) in 2019 – the lowest since 1969. We’re probably lucky to be stuck in this low-hire/low-fire environment, because if you consider employers’ hiring intentions, the next move is down.