29,000 Jobs and a Door That Isn't Moving

Here is a thing I have come to believe about work: it's the heartbeat of a place. You don't notice it when it's steady, same way you don't notice your own pulse when you're sitting still reading the paper. But let it falter, and suddenly everything else feels uncertain too. The walls look thinner, the distance between neighbors feels longer, and you start counting things you never counted before.

I learned this standing at the grain elevator on a Tuesday morning, watching Big Earl go over his commodity sheet. "Nobody's hiring," he said, without looking up. I asked him when this started. He said, "Since nobody asked." That's the whole thing right there, if you're paying attention.

The country added 29,000 jobs in September. Now, I don't know what you know about numbers, but I know this: 29,000 sounds like a lot until you remember there are 330 million people in this country. It's like showing up to a barn raising with three guys and a cordless drill. You're not going to get much done.

Employers added just 29,000 jobs last month, fewer than the forecasters expected. I call forecasters "people who guess and get paid for it." They expected more, got less, and the July and August numbers got revised down too, by 60,000 combined. July actually went negative. That's the part that sticks with me. July lost jobs. July, the month of county fairs and sweet corn and everybody's cousin passing through town looking for a few weeks of cash work. July went backward.

When I think about July going backward, I think about Pastor Holmgren's church kitchen. Every year, the Lutherans up the road run a strawberry social in July. They need maybe twelve people to pull it off. Last year they had nine. This year, seven. Not because people don't want to help, but because people are working whatever hours they've got and can't spare a Saturday. When the job market tightens up, it works both ways. Nobody's getting laid off, sure, but nobody's getting hired either, and the people already in the harness are pulling harder with fewer breaks.

One of the Wells Fargo economists put it plainly: you're not seeing a lot of layoffs, but if you're new to the labor force or trying to get back in, there's not a lot of turnover, and it makes it harder to get your foot in the door. I read that and thought, yes, that is exactly right, and also, that is exactly the problem with a door nobody's opening. It's not that you're locked out. It's that nobody's coming or going.

Aunt Vi would say the economy is like a potluck where everybody brought the same casserole. Nothing wrong with the casserole, but there's no variety, no movement, nobody trying something new. You just keep eating the same thing and hoping it tastes different next time. It won't.

Wages were up 3% from a year ago, which sounds fine until you remember prices have been climbing faster than paychecks. So that 3% raise is a pay cut in a nicer shirt. You're earning more and buying less. That's the kind of math that doesn't require a degree, just a grocery receipt.

The Federal Reserve raised interest rates two weeks ago, a quarter point, trying to cool inflation down. Now this jobs number comes in looking like a tractor that won't turn over, and everybody's saying, well, maybe the Fed won't raise rates again this month. The stock market went up on that news, because of course it did. The stock market is like a hog at the feed trough when somebody mentions they might stop pulling the trough away. Perked right up. But investors still think there's one more rate hike coming before the year's out. So the hog is happy, but nervous. That's a bad combination in a hog and a market both.

Unemployment ticked up to 4.2% from 4.1%, which the Labor Department says is mostly because 485,000 additional workers came into the labor force. More people out looking for work. That's the part that ought to sit with you a minute, not because it's bad news exactly, but because it's the part with a face on it. 485,000 people decided September was the month to go looking. Some of them are kids graduating into a market that isn't moving. Some are folks coming back after a stretch away. All of them are standing at a door that isn't opening very fast.

Here's what I know about doors that don't open fast: the people already inside don't think about them much. The people outside are the ones who notice. And when the people outside start wondering if the door might not open at all, they stop knocking. That doesn't show up in any jobs number. The Federal Reserve doesn't measure it. But a town where people stop knocking is a town going quiet, and a town going quiet is a town in trouble whether the numbers say so or not.

So. 29,000 jobs. The forecasters expected more. The market rallied a little. The Fed is still thinking. Somewhere in Chamberlain's Bend, Big Earl is still reading his sheet and not looking up, and the strawberry social had seven people instead of twelve, and the door is mostly closed.

The economy doesn't feel like a number. It feels like whether your neighbor's kid found work. Whether the church can rustle up enough hands for the social. Whether anybody's hiring, and whether anybody thought to ask.

Nobody asked, Big Earl said.

And he went back to his sheet.

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