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EndGame Macro
4.6% Unemployment and a Labor Market Running on Fumes
Payrolls up are up +64k, unemployment 4.6%, everything changed a little. But changed little since April is doing the heavy lifting. That’s the BLS telling you the job engine has stopped accelerating and is now idling.
The math backs it up. The 3 month average is +22k jobs. That’s not a resilient labor market. That’s stall speed, the kind of pace where almost any shock (policy, credit, energy, geopolitics) can tip the balance.
Where the weakness actually is
The recessionary signals aren’t loud; they’re in the boring tables….
• Underemployment jumped…involuntary part time work rose 900k to 5.5M. Employers cut hours before they cut heads.
• Fresh unemployment is rising…Unemployment under five weeks increased by 316,000 to 2.4 million, an early sign of layoffs or short term contracts ending.
• Long term unemployment remains chunky at 1.9M (about 24% of all unemployed).
• U-6 at 8.7% not a crisis number, but no longer tight.
• Goods side stress shows where it always does: manufacturing soft, temp help shrinking, and transportation and warehousing down 78k since Feb, a real demand tell.
Hiring that is happening is defensive: health care (+46k), construction (+28k), social assistance (+18k). That’s fine, but it’s not broad cyclical growth.
One more quiet tell…multiple jobholders 9.5M (5.8%). In isolation that can be fine; paired with the surge in involuntary part time work, it looks like households patching income gaps.
The good data that can fool you
This month’s read is helped by measurement reality.
• Household survey noise…October wasn’t collected; November had a 64% response rate, weighting adjustments, and effectively reflects a 2 month window. Small moves in the unemployment rate don’t deserve confidence.
• Payroll fog…given a confidence range of roughly 136,000, a 64,000 payroll gain is not statistically meaningful.
• Definitions blur stress…one paid hour, paid leave and severance, or temporary absence still counts as employed. Stress shows up first in hours, part time status, and churn.
• Revisions lean weaker (about -33k combined).
• Model changes ahead (birth and death update in Jan 2026; industry reclassification in 2025) make clean historical analogs harder right when turning points matter.
Layer in the broader macro stress
Zoom out and the labor slowdown is colliding with balance sheet pressure. The Fed has already cut three times in 2025 (to 3.50–3.75%) not from strength, but as stress crept in. Ahead sits a massive refinancing wall: $9–10T in government debt maturing in 2026 and $1.5–1.8T in CRE loans, with office vacancy 18.6% nationally (availability as high as 22.8%).
Households are cracking…auto delinquencies near 5% (subprime 6.6%), credit card serious delinquencies 7%, student loans 9.4% already 90+ days delinquent with only 33% paying on time. Corporate stress follows: 24k+ bankruptcies over the past year, 1.17M job cuts in 2025, claims edging higher.
My Read
This economy is losing altitude. Hiring is narrow, hours are being managed down, temp labor is shrinking, goods linked sectors are weak, underemployment is rising, and credit stress is spreading. Wages still look okay but they usually do until margins crack. If weakness stays contained, expect a slow growth, disinflationary grind. If underemployment sticks and unemployment keeps edging up while refinancing pressure builds, this is how the classic downturn sequence starts…quietly, gradually, and then all at once.
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4.6% Unemployment and a Labor Market Running on Fumes
Payrolls up are up +64k, unemployment 4.6%, everything changed a little. But changed little since April is doing the heavy lifting. That’s the BLS telling you the job engine has stopped accelerating and is now idling.
The math backs it up. The 3 month average is +22k jobs. That’s not a resilient labor market. That’s stall speed, the kind of pace where almost any shock (policy, credit, energy, geopolitics) can tip the balance.
Where the weakness actually is
The recessionary signals aren’t loud; they’re in the boring tables….
• Underemployment jumped…involuntary part time work rose 900k to 5.5M. Employers cut hours before they cut heads.
• Fresh unemployment is rising…Unemployment under five weeks increased by 316,000 to 2.4 million, an early sign of layoffs or short term contracts ending.
• Long term unemployment remains chunky at 1.9M (about 24% of all unemployed).
• U-6 at 8.7% not a crisis number, but no longer tight.
• Goods side stress shows where it always does: manufacturing soft, temp help shrinking, and transportation and warehousing down 78k since Feb, a real demand tell.
Hiring that is happening is defensive: health care (+46k), construction (+28k), social assistance (+18k). That’s fine, but it’s not broad cyclical growth.
One more quiet tell…multiple jobholders 9.5M (5.8%). In isolation that can be fine; paired with the surge in involuntary part time work, it looks like households patching income gaps.
The good data that can fool you
This month’s read is helped by measurement reality.
• Household survey noise…October wasn’t collected; November had a 64% response rate, weighting adjustments, and effectively reflects a 2 month window. Small moves in the unemployment rate don’t deserve confidence.
• Payroll fog…given a confidence range of roughly 136,000, a 64,000 payroll gain is not statistically meaningful.
• Definitions blur stress…one paid hour, paid leave and severance, or temporary absence still counts as employed. Stress shows up first in hours, part time status, and churn.
• Revisions lean weaker (about -33k combined).
• Model changes ahead (birth and death update in Jan 2026; industry reclassification in 2025) make clean historical analogs harder right when turning points matter.
Layer in the broader macro stress
Zoom out and the labor slowdown is colliding with balance sheet pressure. The Fed has already cut three times in 2025 (to 3.50–3.75%) not from strength, but as stress crept in. Ahead sits a massive refinancing wall: $9–10T in government debt maturing in 2026 and $1.5–1.8T in CRE loans, with office vacancy 18.6% nationally (availability as high as 22.8%).
Households are cracking…auto delinquencies near 5% (subprime 6.6%), credit card serious delinquencies 7%, student loans 9.4% already 90+ days delinquent with only 33% paying on time. Corporate stress follows: 24k+ bankruptcies over the past year, 1.17M job cuts in 2025, claims edging higher.
My Read
This economy is losing altitude. Hiring is narrow, hours are being managed down, temp labor is shrinking, goods linked sectors are weak, underemployment is rising, and credit stress is spreading. Wages still look okay but they usually do until margins crack. If weakness stays contained, expect a slow growth, disinflationary grind. If underemployment sticks and unemployment keeps edging up while refinancing pressure builds, this is how the classic downturn sequence starts…quietly, gradually, and then all at once.
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App Economy Insights
🏥 The Biggest IPO of 2025 is here.
Medline seeks a $55B valuation.
$MDLN is a healthcare supply giant:
• Vertically integrated model.
• 98% retention (Prime Vendor).
• $25B+ in FY24 revenue (+10% Y/Y).
Here's what we learned from the S-1.
https://t.co/H3GFKdaAJQ
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🏥 The Biggest IPO of 2025 is here.
Medline seeks a $55B valuation.
$MDLN is a healthcare supply giant:
• Vertically integrated model.
• 98% retention (Prime Vendor).
• $25B+ in FY24 revenue (+10% Y/Y).
Here's what we learned from the S-1.
https://t.co/H3GFKdaAJQ
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Fiscal.ai
Shares of South Korean e-commerce giant Coupang are now down 31% over the last 3 months following a large data breach.
$CPNG https://t.co/8C3ymd1exB
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Shares of South Korean e-commerce giant Coupang are now down 31% over the last 3 months following a large data breach.
$CPNG https://t.co/8C3ymd1exB
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The Few Bets That Matter
The $NBIS drama is kinda fun. Lot of noise for nothing though.
No, $NBIS wasn't a great buy at $100+.
Yes, $NBIS fundamentals are strong.
Some act on FOMO & got burnt. Others didn't. But that's passed, lessons were learnt - hopefully.
What matters is making the right decision now.
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The $NBIS drama is kinda fun. Lot of noise for nothing though.
No, $NBIS wasn't a great buy at $100+.
Yes, $NBIS fundamentals are strong.
Some act on FOMO & got burnt. Others didn't. But that's passed, lessons were learnt - hopefully.
What matters is making the right decision now.
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The Few Bets That Matter
$TMDX continues to fall on CapEx risks, shrinking margins and rising unemployement which sparks fears of consumption slowdown.
Now down 23% in 12 sessions. Wild.
Bounce soon? https://t.co/eVU8lDOMIW
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$TMDX continues to fall on CapEx risks, shrinking margins and rising unemployement which sparks fears of consumption slowdown.
Now down 23% in 12 sessions. Wild.
Bounce soon? https://t.co/eVU8lDOMIW
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Offshore
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EndGame Macro
When One Job Isn’t Enough Anymore
A record 9.3 million people holding multiple jobs is a sign that one job isn’t stretching as far as it used to. When that number jumps by nearly 500,000 in just a couple of months, it usually means households are filling gaps and not chasing upside. This is about covering rent, groceries, insurance, and interest payments that didn’t come back down just because inflation cooled.
Why it’s happening now
Employers get cautious before they get aggressive. They cut hours, lean on contract work, delay full time hires. Workers respond the only way they can by stacking jobs, gigs, or clients to stabilize income. The unemployment rate tells you who has zero jobs. Multiple jobholding tells you who has a job that isn’t enough. Those two stories can coexist, and they often do right before the labor market visibly weakens.
My View
This is a quality of growth signal. An economy where more people need two jobs to stand still is an economy with shrinking margin for error. If multiple jobholding stays elevated while underemployment rises and job growth slows, the pressure shows up next in softer spending, rising credit stress, and eventually layoffs…not all at once, but step by step. This is what fragility looks like before it gets labeled as weakness.
tweet
When One Job Isn’t Enough Anymore
A record 9.3 million people holding multiple jobs is a sign that one job isn’t stretching as far as it used to. When that number jumps by nearly 500,000 in just a couple of months, it usually means households are filling gaps and not chasing upside. This is about covering rent, groceries, insurance, and interest payments that didn’t come back down just because inflation cooled.
Why it’s happening now
Employers get cautious before they get aggressive. They cut hours, lean on contract work, delay full time hires. Workers respond the only way they can by stacking jobs, gigs, or clients to stabilize income. The unemployment rate tells you who has zero jobs. Multiple jobholding tells you who has a job that isn’t enough. Those two stories can coexist, and they often do right before the labor market visibly weakens.
My View
This is a quality of growth signal. An economy where more people need two jobs to stand still is an economy with shrinking margin for error. If multiple jobholding stays elevated while underemployment rises and job growth slows, the pressure shows up next in softer spending, rising credit stress, and eventually layoffs…not all at once, but step by step. This is what fragility looks like before it gets labeled as weakness.
Multiple jobholders soar by 499K in the 2 months since Sept, to a record 9.301 million https://t.co/U1KDciyqaH tweet
Quiver Quantitative
The national debt has now risen by $2.1 trillion in 2025.
Here’s how that compares to past years:
2024: $2.2 trillion
2023: $2.5 trillion
2022: $1.7 trillion
2021: $1.5 trillion
2020: $4.3 trillion
2019: $1.1 trillion
2018: $1.3 trillion
2017: $557 billion
2016: $975 billion
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The national debt has now risen by $2.1 trillion in 2025.
Here’s how that compares to past years:
2024: $2.2 trillion
2023: $2.5 trillion
2022: $1.7 trillion
2021: $1.5 trillion
2020: $4.3 trillion
2019: $1.1 trillion
2018: $1.3 trillion
2017: $557 billion
2016: $975 billion
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EndGame Macro
Reading Between the Lines of the S&P Global PMI
The composite PMI is still above 50, so technically the economy is expanding. The headline number is 53.0, down from 54.2, and both services and manufacturing remain on the growth side of the line.
But once you slow down and read past the headline, the story changes. Momentum is fading and the expansion is becoming thinner and more fragile.
Where the recessionary signals show up
The biggest red flag is demand. New business growth is now the weakest in 20 months, and goods orders fell for the first time in a year. New orders are the forward looking part of the economy, and they’re clearly rolling over.
Services matter most in the U.S., and that’s where the slowdown is most uncomfortable. Service sector sales growth has dropped sharply, near levels last seen in weaker patches of 2023. When services lose momentum, there’s not much else left to carry the economy.
Manufacturing shows a classic late cycle contradiction. Output is still rising, but sales are not. The report itself flags this as potentially unsustainable production unless demand rebounds. That’s a polite way of saying inventories are being built into weakening orders, which usually gets resolved by cutting production and jobs later.
Hiring behavior confirms the caution. Employment growth has slowed to a marginal pace, with service sector hiring close to stalling. Companies aren’t panicking, but they’re clearly pulling back. That’s exactly what you see when firms are unsure about demand six months out.
Inventories add another layer. Unsold stock has built up 7x in the last eight months, while factories cut back on purchasing inputs for the first time since spring. Inventory accumulation paired with falling orders is a setup for future retrenchment.
Why the headline looks better than the reality
A PMI above 50 doesn’t mean strong growth. It just means more firms reported growth than contraction. A reading of 53 can coexist with an economy that’s slowing quickly, especially when the direction of travel is down.
The GDP translation at roughly 2.5% annualized also deserves skepticism. That estimate is backward looking and can be flattered by output that hasn’t yet adjusted to weaker sales. The report itself warns that growth has slowed for two straight months and may soften further into 2026.
Another subtle distortion comes from supply chains. Longer supplier delivery times help lift the manufacturing PMI mechanically, but in this case they’re linked to import disruptions and tariffs, not healthy demand. That can prop up the index even as margins and volumes deteriorate.
The inflation contradiction
One of the most important tensions in the report is prices rising while demand cools. Input costs are climbing at the fastest pace since late 2022, and selling prices are jumping at rates not seen since mid 2022. Firms consistently blame tariffs and labor costs.
That’s cost push inflation landing on a slowing economy. Manufacturers are struggling to pass costs through, while service providers are raising prices more aggressively. That combination squeezes margins and accelerates hiring restraint.
My View
The economy is still expanding, but the expansion is losing balance. Demand is thinning, especially in services. Hiring is defensive. Inventories are building against weaker orders. Confidence is slipping below long run norms. And inflation pressures are coming from costs and policy, not from excess demand.
That mix tends to resolve in one direction where companies protect margins by slowing hiring, cutting investment, and eventually pulling back more aggressively if demand doesn’t recover. The PMI may still read growth, but the internals are telling you the U.S. economy is becoming far more sensitive to shocks.
tweet
Reading Between the Lines of the S&P Global PMI
The composite PMI is still above 50, so technically the economy is expanding. The headline number is 53.0, down from 54.2, and both services and manufacturing remain on the growth side of the line.
But once you slow down and read past the headline, the story changes. Momentum is fading and the expansion is becoming thinner and more fragile.
Where the recessionary signals show up
The biggest red flag is demand. New business growth is now the weakest in 20 months, and goods orders fell for the first time in a year. New orders are the forward looking part of the economy, and they’re clearly rolling over.
Services matter most in the U.S., and that’s where the slowdown is most uncomfortable. Service sector sales growth has dropped sharply, near levels last seen in weaker patches of 2023. When services lose momentum, there’s not much else left to carry the economy.
Manufacturing shows a classic late cycle contradiction. Output is still rising, but sales are not. The report itself flags this as potentially unsustainable production unless demand rebounds. That’s a polite way of saying inventories are being built into weakening orders, which usually gets resolved by cutting production and jobs later.
Hiring behavior confirms the caution. Employment growth has slowed to a marginal pace, with service sector hiring close to stalling. Companies aren’t panicking, but they’re clearly pulling back. That’s exactly what you see when firms are unsure about demand six months out.
Inventories add another layer. Unsold stock has built up 7x in the last eight months, while factories cut back on purchasing inputs for the first time since spring. Inventory accumulation paired with falling orders is a setup for future retrenchment.
Why the headline looks better than the reality
A PMI above 50 doesn’t mean strong growth. It just means more firms reported growth than contraction. A reading of 53 can coexist with an economy that’s slowing quickly, especially when the direction of travel is down.
The GDP translation at roughly 2.5% annualized also deserves skepticism. That estimate is backward looking and can be flattered by output that hasn’t yet adjusted to weaker sales. The report itself warns that growth has slowed for two straight months and may soften further into 2026.
Another subtle distortion comes from supply chains. Longer supplier delivery times help lift the manufacturing PMI mechanically, but in this case they’re linked to import disruptions and tariffs, not healthy demand. That can prop up the index even as margins and volumes deteriorate.
The inflation contradiction
One of the most important tensions in the report is prices rising while demand cools. Input costs are climbing at the fastest pace since late 2022, and selling prices are jumping at rates not seen since mid 2022. Firms consistently blame tariffs and labor costs.
That’s cost push inflation landing on a slowing economy. Manufacturers are struggling to pass costs through, while service providers are raising prices more aggressively. That combination squeezes margins and accelerates hiring restraint.
My View
The economy is still expanding, but the expansion is losing balance. Demand is thinning, especially in services. Hiring is defensive. Inventories are building against weaker orders. Confidence is slipping below long run norms. And inflation pressures are coming from costs and policy, not from excess demand.
That mix tends to resolve in one direction where companies protect margins by slowing hiring, cutting investment, and eventually pulling back more aggressively if demand doesn’t recover. The PMI may still read growth, but the internals are telling you the U.S. economy is becoming far more sensitive to shocks.
tweet