Slow news day: Twenty days after the figure was updated the New York Post finally does a story on it

 Shocking 105 million Americans are not working – more than during COVID or the Great Recession

Fed Chair Kevin Warsh, whose wealth is his wife's, peddles the myth that the Fed is in control

This country eats, drinks, and sleeps inflation in the post-war . . . at 3.4% since 1948.

It's the cover for the haves to rob the have-nots. The Fed's job is to keep it going, just at a lower level than the 4.4% of the last six years, while telling you that they work for you when they actually work for the banks and the corporations.

From 1871 to 1948 the inflation rate was 0.8%, for most of which time we had sound money . . . until they confiscated it in 1934.

The only true words below are "We don't know". 

 

 Warsh promises inflation will be a ‘thing of the past,’ cites benefits of AI investment boom

... "if we get policy right — and we will — the inflation surge of the last five years will be a thing of the past."

... "While monthly price fluctuations are inevitable — especially in an unsettled world — underlying inflation over longer time horizons is determined largely by monetary policy," he said. 

... "We don’t know the extent to which the economy will benefit from the AI buildout," he added. "Yet it seems inevitable that what is now called ‘AI investment’ will soon be called just ‘investment.’"

Warsh previously has said he expects an AI productivity boom will prove disinflationary — a premise challenged by some economists as well as his fellow Fed policymakers. ...                          

 

Gee, I hope it's not this disinflationary:

 

 

The first half of 2026 is falling far short of a new golden age for workers, and isn't even as good as 2019

The worst indicator is full time employment, which is running more than 2 points behind Trump's best showing in the second half of 2019. Just 48.65% had a full time job in 1H2026, and the high pre-Great Recession levels look more unachievable than ever. It is summer time and this is when we should be feeling the purported boom most acutely and we are not.

On a similar semiannual average basis, nearly 400k more workers than at the lows in 2019 want to work but are so discouraged they have dropped out. The spread between June 2026 and October 2019 is nearly 600k.

The overall number of unemployed in the first half of 2026 is 1.633 million higher than it was in the second half of 2019, 7.413 million vs. 5.780 million. The level averaged 7.6 million when Trump was elected in 2016.

The broadest measure of unemployment, the U6RATE, is 8%. In the second half of 2019 it was 6.9%, the lowest on record to the time, but Biden beat that in 2022/2023. Are we really not ever going to break Biden's two-time record low of 6.7%?

Was that the golden age?

The thing I worry about most is initial and continuing claims for unemployment. They are both on a run at historic lows.

How much longer can they keep it going like this?

First time claims for unemployment on an average semiannual basis have been below 250k for 79% of the time since 2016 through 1H2026

 7.5 years vs. 3.0 years in the late 1960s and the first half of 1973.

Unprecedented in the history of the metric.

 

It's not job seekers giving up, it's Baby Boomers exiting the stage

 Job seekers giving up: Labor force participation rate falls to lowest in 50 years, outside of Covid era

... in June the biggest plunge came from what is defined as “prime age” workers, or those between the ages of 25 and 54. That rate fell 0.6 percentage point to 83.3%, its lowest since December 2023.

“Looking at the statistics now, that argument doesn’t hold up so well,” North said of the retirement and immigration rationale. “I hate to use the word ‘alarming,’” he added, but said the numbers are cause for concern. ...

 

Alarmed? Really now. This misses the forest for a single tree.

Percent change for the labor participation rate for 25-54s is UP .1 and .2 for 1H2026 and 2H2025 respectively.

For 55s+ it's DOWN 0.8 and .2 respectively.

The 55s+ metric has had NINE semiannual declines since 2019 vs. only three for 25-54s.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The former is bleeding participation, while the latter is holding its own.

You can't really appreciate this unless you measure the employment of each group as a percentage of its own population level, from which you can determine how many of them are not working now vs. then.

The number of 55s+ working in 1H2026 and 2H2019 is nearly the same, 37.8 million and 37.6 million respectively, but the former represents only 36% of the group, while the latter represents 39.3%. 

That means that the net additions to the no-longer-working side of the total population of the group since 2019 for 55s+ is now 9.193 million, but doing the same exercise for 25-54s yields a statistically insignificant 215k.

Meanwhile employment as a percentage of its own population for 25-54s, unlike for 55s+, has been and remains stronger now than at any point since the dotcom bubble, averaging 80.64% for forty-two consecutive months.  

The peak year individuals of the Baby Boom, 1957, turned 62 in 2019, when employment of 55s+ naturally peaked too, while the individuals of the final year of the Baby Boom, 1964, turn 62 now in 2026.

We are witnessing the Baby Boom roll over and disappear from the labor statistics. 

The foreign born population works at a rate of 63.26% in June 2026, the native born at only 58.25%

Foreign born workers numbered 30.725 million, native born 131.997 million.

To get native born employment to 63.26% of their own population in June 2026 would require an extra 11.351 million native born suddenly to get jobs.

The best estimates of current illegal alien presence in the United States range between 11 million and 13.7 million.

The percentage of the native born population working continues to fall because it is aging. The share of the 55s and over who work continues to fall, now down to 35.77% of their cohort. 

There are just 26 million people aged 25-54 in the United States who are currently not working. That's where they'd have to come from, a tall order.

 

The Golden Age of eating but not working: A record 105.808 million not-in-labor-force in Donald Trump's America in June 2026, Dumb Ass Unemployment Rate still higher than at any point in his first term when Limbaugh stopped talking about it

 The Donald Trump-Rush Limbaugh Dumb Ass Unemployment Rate in June 2026 is 38.14%.

 

Just 48.97% had a full time job in June 2026

I thought this was the Golden Age?

 

Four consecutive years with jobless claims averaging below 250k is unprecedented in the data

 

The homeownership rate soared to 68.8% in 2006 after nearly twenty years of Alan Greenspan at the Fed

 The rate when he began as Fed chairman was 64% in 1987, and again in 1990 and 1994, before taking off during the Clinton-Gingrich era.

Supporting the high homeownership rate was full time employment on an average annual basis north of 50% of population for twenty-three consecutive years 1986-2008. 

We call it The Lost World. 

 

As a percentage of population, the long term unemployed ticked up to 0.72% in May 2026 from 0.66% in April

Everything sold off today

Stocks were down across the board, with the NASD 100 notably down 4.77%. The equal weight S&P 500 is down 0.52% month to date.

The Tech sector was down the most on the day, 5.78%.

The Consumer Staples sector was up the most on the day, 1.64%, which looks defensive against a possible coming recession. The Utilities sector was up half that.

The U.S. 10Y yield rose to 4.55%, and the 20Y and 30Y yields rose above 5.00. YTD return for VUSUX is now down 0.85%.

Oil retreated 3%.

Metals were down across the board, silver down over 8%.

Crypto was down across the board, too, with Bitcoin falling below $60k.

But DXY climbed! +0.658 to 100.071.

The theory is investors are upset that today's "strong" jobs numbers (the 70k hospitality hires is probably World Cup related, a one off, so forget that) indicate easy money from the Fed is now absolutely out of the question, and maybe even a rate increase is coming because the economy is running too hot, which is silly with 1Q GDP at 1.6% annualized. CNBC called that "solid" lol.

Jokers say everyone's just raising cash to buy overpriced SpaceX in its IPO next week.

Investors are taking profits ahead of SpaceX IPO, says Capital Wealth’s Kevin Simpson

SpaceX is worth less than half of its $1.75 trillion IPO target, Morningstar says

Just 48.82% had a full-time job in May 2026

 Trump I averaged 49.23% full-time, even with 2020 thrown in there.

For 2017, 2018, 2019 the average was 49.87%.

2019 averaged 50.38% full-time, Trump's best year.

Trump's best month was July 2019 at 50.98%, which Biden did not beat. 

Trump is making America 2017 again, not great.

Full-time peaks in the summers, so we'll see what happens, but the set-up doesn't look promising. 

 

We need 7 million new manufacturing jobs, not 7,000

 

The Dow Jones consensus estimate for May jobs was +80k, leisure and hospitality alone led all sectors with +70k lol, well above the 14k/month average over the past year, government added 52k, education and health services 40k

 

Productive jobs rose by 7k in manufacturing, by 17k in construction, and by 4k in mining and logging, mixed in there with the others.

 

 U.S. payrolls rose by 172,000 in May, much more than expected; unemployment at 4.3%

 

 

CNBC says long-term unemployment is surging but it is not, at least not yet

Long-term unemployment is surging in the U.S. There are hidden costs for workers and the economy

Long term unemployment is . . . falling.

The four-week moving average of initial claims has been falling for a year.

The four-week moving average of continued claims has been falling for ten months, not very fast at first, but falling decisively nevertheless.

The actual number unemployed 27 weeks or longer is down since December 2025. Yes, it is slightly higher than in January. 

The percentage of population unemployed 27 weeks or longer is not surging either. At 0.666% in April, the percentage has been holding fairly steady near this level also for ten months.

In this latter metric, a surge would look more like a steady climb toward 1.00% of population unemployed 27 weeks or longer, which is common after recessions begin. The climb to the current level has been very choppy, reflecting the chaos of positive and negative developments under Trump II.

And incidentally, a contraction in this metric falling below 0.5% would indicate good times are here indeed, so this right now is not that either, as Trumpty Dumpty keeps saying. 

Of course all of this could be about to change for the worse because of oil.

Oil makes our world go round. 

  

 

 

59.2% working at any job in April 2026 doesn't look particularly strong to me Mr. Treasury Secretary sir, especially compared with your boss' past performance

 

ADP total nonfarm private payrolls rose 122k in May 2026, but the 10-year trend for monthly change is basically flat not booming

But you already knew that.

 

Gold and silver are still up 5+% year to date

 SPX +10.52% ytd

WTI +53.11% ytd

 

Meanwhile in April: 

Hamburger +18.9% yoy

Coffee +29.0% yoy

Unleaded regular gasoline +28.0% yoy

Electricity +7.2% yoy

Natural gas +3.1% yoy

[Trump 9/21/2024: "We will cut your energy prices in half. Mark it down . . . within 12 months . . ."] 

Milk +1.5% yoy

Whole Chicken -1.6% yoy 

Eggs -56.1% yoy

Tomatoes +50.0% yoy

 

And: 

30-year mortgage average monthly, above 6% since August 2022

Full time jobs above 50% of population just 6 of the last 25 quarters, all under Joe Biden

 

Manufacturing jobs went sideways in April 2026, economic boom nowhere in sight