I've mentioned this before (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45987316 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45987316), but I follow a labor economist on Link

I've mentioned this before (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45987316 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45987316), but I follow a labor economist on LinkedIn who puts things into a balanced perspective. The thing he reminds us often is you can't take these numbers in isolation. Job numbers need to be considered in the context of a lot of other numbers, including population growth. As the other top thread yesterday highlighted, the US is experiencing slowing population growth, which may also have been exacerbated by the recent upheavals in immigration. I may be butchering the theory here, but the point is that the economy is a dynamic, inter-connected system, and a smaller population requires fewer jobs. (As a silly example, you need many more car mechanics for a town with a population of 1000 as opposed to a population of 100.) That actually has implications for GDP growth as well. That's not to say the overall economy is doing great, just that these job numbers should not be taken as a complete indicator of it.