downward mobility

market vibes

June 5…)

“People have to get their heads out of the sand.” Jamie Dimon

NFP came in with another stunning report and the press is amplifying a narrative that rate cuts are off the table for some considerable time. Hikes are likely. AI is not the job killer it has been pilloried to be. Let’s take a closer look. *note my sources on this note are the BLS with guidance and math help from Grok. Obviously it is my POV with which Grok stridently disagreed.

NFP jobs data – March to May 2026

Total jobs created: +565,000 nonfarm payroll jobs over the three months
(+214k in March +179k in April +172k in May)… Combined revisions for March + April: +93,000

80% of the new jobs are hourly non-supervisory roles.

50–60% are menial jobs like grocery bagging and cleaning hotel rooms paying less than $25/hour.

30–35% of new jobs pay $35/hour … mainly health care and other services.

15–20% higher-wage ($40+/hour) select skilled and government jobs.

So…Job growth is real, 565k in 3 months, but 80% is low-paying hourly work about equal to what an illegal would earn waiting in front of the local train station or outside a Walmart parking lot hoping for a day’s labor.

On the right-hand side of the ledger, Grok estimates 400,000–500,000+ higher-paying positions (“broadly defined as federal gov, finance, info, and select professional roles) have been eliminated so far in 2026.” Let that sink in.

There were massive layoffs in 2025; over 1.1 million were announced (highest in years outside of COVID), mostly concentrated in white-collar and high-salary sectors. Federal layoffs alone were over 300,000. Plus…1.8 million downward revisions from the Biden years in September 2025.

The 2026 job market has been called “low-fire, low-hire” with few high-quality openings. NFP is often old data. The BLS announced a huge JOLTs miss on Tueday of 761,000 job openings. I doubt any were high paying jobs. You decide. At any rate that data will probably not be calculated in NFP until July or August. Something to keep in mind. Max unemployment benefits last 6 months. There is an acknowledged trend of laid off higher salary workers taking lower paying jobs by necessity.

One of my daughters with a triple major magna cum laude is working as a bartender. Anothe daughter was laid off yesterday. A PE bought her company and they eliminated her role in marketing. One is still working for a white shoe law firm but the mood is grim.

Manufacturing jobs since Trump took office

“The two sectors where we’re likely seeing the biggest hits from AI (in terms of jobs) - Tech and Finance - continued to shed jobs in May. Tech payrolls have been falling since November 2022 and Finance payrolls have been falling since last May.” (BBG data via Kevin Gordon on X)

AI cited as top reason for US job cuts for third straight month

my vibe

Gold is down $100, Silver is down $4.50, bonds down 15 points (modest?), NDX is down 600. All because a lot of highly paid workers were fired and their benefits ran out. All of these moves are trading on fake news, in my opinion. Everything about this NFP report is disinflationary, I think. Poor people don’t spend and there are going to be millions more of them according to a very candid Jamie Dimon.

The same sources of misinformation hyping up the jobs data are trying to convince the world we are going to run out of oil in 3 weeks. They say millions will die of starvation because there is no fertilizer.

The dollar value of gold may exceed the value of Treasuries held as reserves in foreign banks but the dollar value of gold is larger than all the AI stocks combined because it doubled in price last year. We have no clue how many ounces the PBOC has in reserve. We don’t even know how many ounces are in Fort Knox. They said vaccines were safe in 2020.

I am going to skip charts for a few hours and see how the markets play out through the session. I’ll be back tonight or later this weekend more on makets and charts.

this is #1 of my top 5 Larsons

reason to believe tim hardin circa 1980 …rip

see ya later

JJ

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Charts and data CQG and Bloomberg… occasional cartoons by Gary Larson

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