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Cornering The Job Market: What the Latest Jobs Report Isn’t Telling You

• Pete Newsome

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Welcome to the latest job market news, where we cut through the noise to make sense of today’s economic signals. 

To start, state unemployment figures reveal a sharp divide: South Dakota boasts a low unemployment rate of 1.9%, while DC struggles at 6% and California at 5.5%. However, significant revisions are looming, with Goldman Sachs projecting that up to 950,000 jobs could be removed from official counts in the next BLS report.

However, job postings tell a different story: while openings are down 1% from last year, there are still 7.5 million available positions, well above pre-pandemic levels. Inflation and wages, however, remain out of sync, with prices up 22.7% since 2021 and wages trailing slightly behind at 21.5%. Only a handful of lower-wage industries, such as retail and hospitality, have managed to outpace inflation.

And then there’s AI: some executives frame it as a driver of layoffs, while others view it as a productivity tool that creates new opportunities. The reality is far more nuanced.

News Articles:
1. State Employment and Unemployment BLS data
2. The Kobeissi Letter X post
3. Online Labor Demand Decreased in July
4. Is AI The Scapegoat Employers Use To Explain Technology Layoffs?
5. Wages are outpacing pandemic-era inflation in these 4 industries

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Pete Newsome:

This is Cornering the Job Market for August 19th. I'm Pete with Four Corner Resources with all the headlines you need to know for today. Well, the BLS is back. Yes, our friends from the BLS released the latest state unemployment data this morning and it shows that unemployment is relatively stable. South Dakota came in lowest, at 1.9%. That's really low. Good for them If you're living in South Dakota, they're doing something right up there for sure. But DC is the highest, at 6%, and then California at 5.5%. Now that's assuming we can trust these numbers, can we Probably not?

Pete Newsome:

The BLS is also announcing more revisions that are coming. So on September 9th at 10 am, expect a big revision. Here is a chart that was released this morning on the Kobesi letter on X in a post that they made, and they are talking about how Goldman Sachs is expecting significant I mean massive revisions. You remember when that happened a year ago? But in this report that is coming out in early September, goldman Sachs is predicting between 550,000 and 950,000 jobs revised. I mean that is just a massive number. So again, bls screwing around with the data, intentional or not, it just isn't good. So we'll continue to watch what happens there. But what I'm so thankful of is that we have the internet to call this out in a way that we just didn't have before. This has been going on for such a long time and we're the victims of this and we, as everyone in the workforce employers, employees alike we just have to take what we've been given. But you can't get away with that anymore. You can't just quietly report numbers that are being revised, like they have done historically. X calls them out, other social media sites call that out now, which I think is awesome. And look, I mean Trump is flipping out over these numbers and he fired the head of the BLS when they first made the big revision a couple of weeks ago. But something's got to change. We'll see what happens. Obviously, there's a new BLS head coming in. We'll see what he does about this, but I just you know this but more bad news potentially, with these jobs being revised down. We'll find out in two weeks.

Pete Newsome:

But let's turn to some data that we can trust. I specifically trust companies involved in hiring, because that's where the rubber really meets the road. If you are hiring, that means you generally feel good about what's happening for your business, which is a great good about what's happening for your business, which is a great indicator of what's happening with the economy. And so, as a staffing company owner, I say this a lot. We see this first, we really feel it, because companies don't use staffing agencies unless they need to right. Not just because they think we're great hopefully they do but it's because we produce something that they otherwise can't get on their own. And then kind of the next level down is if they can hire but can do it slowly, can drag it out where they don't really need a third party outside help. But then when companies stop hiring at all, stop advertising for jobs, stop recruiting, that's when it's really time to worry. So we're not quite there yet. That's good.

Pete Newsome:

But the conference board Lightcast help wanted online index that is something that I rely on, that I believe in. It tracks changes in advertised online job vacancies across the US and it showed a 0.1% decline in July. Now, that's not a huge number, of course 0.1% but it's a trend, right, that's what's worth paying attention to. In July, that was the number reported in 2025 is 1% lower than July 2024. So now that's a bigger trend. That means we're definitely not heading in a better direction than we were a year ago. So I'm. Look, while the market's not great, we already know that what's important to keep in mind is we still have almost 7.5 million job openings in the US, and that is down from the peak. I mean we peaked around, I think, 11 million in 22. That was post-COVID right. Things were just going crazy with hiring then but this is still more than any other time pre-COVID in history. So the market, while not as good as we'd like, is historically brave as it relates to job openings. We have to keep that perspective as we see these reports coming out.

Pete Newsome:

So let's move on to AI news. There was an article in Forbes today that questions whether AI is being used as a scapegoat by employers who are using that as a reason to explain technology layoffs. So the author who wrote this article apparently believes that AI has become the favorite fallback explanation when companies cut jobs. But he says it's a cover story, not the real reason. He argues that AI is a perfect, non-human scapegoat, although I think this is a weird argument to make, by the way. I'll tell you why in a second. But he says it's because AI, you can't sue against that, or there's no union to fight that, although unions are fighting that, which is one of the reasons. I think it's kind of a weird argument and let's executives sidestep the blame for layoffs.

Pete Newsome:

Well, yesterday I talked about how the Duolingo CEO had to come out and say no, no, ai is not going to be the reason for layoffs, I'm not going to do that. So he got in trouble. A couple months ago, the Duolingo CEO, when he put an article, put out an email to his company saying AI first is the way we're going. A lot of people were really pissed about that and he looks like he's trying to retract that with the statements he made yesterday. But which is it? Is it AI is the blame for layoffs?

Pete Newsome:

Ai isn't the reason for layoffs. Can we just be honest? I mean, really, why is that such a difficult thing? If business is bad, say it's bad. Say why take action when you need to? But you know, I don't know why it's so hard just to be forthcoming with these things. It life would be so much easier if we didn't just try to put a spin on everything. I mean, as a business owner, I've always tried to take that approach with my employees. I want them to know when times are good. Of course we celebrate those, but I also want to be transparent and let them know when times are bad, so they're not surprised. And when it comes to AI affecting the job market, affecting careers, affecting our future personally and professionally, I don't want anyone to be surprised by that. So whether you say that is a reason for layoffs, you pretend that it's not. Whatever it might be, ai is going to have a massive impact there. I have to get in that statement, every recording. So that's it for today. Don't be surprised.

Pete Newsome:

But then, finally, for today, fox News shares some. I won't call it good news. It's better than awful for certain industries where wages are outpacing COVID era inflation. So I'll share that real quick for you guys. Give me a second.

Pete Newsome:

I'm still not fast at this, but what you can see here is four industries where wage increase is outpacing inflation, and we always want to see that happen. That's a great thing. So those four areas are retail, healthcare and social assistance, leisure and hospitality, food services and accommodations. Now I will tell you, my first reaction when I saw this is those are all generally low paying industries. Retail A lot of healthcare jobs are not high-end. A lot are, of course, but a lot are not when you look at a healthcare setting, leisure and hospitality think hotel workers and then food services. We know that there's a lot of low-wage jobs there. It's great that this these wages have outpaced inflation, but I'd much rather see it in some other areas like financial services. Education, manufacturing would be great and professional in business, and you can see that those have a decline. So just to share some more numbers on that since January of 2021, inflation prices have increased 22.7%, while wages overall have only increased 21.5%. So that leaves workers with over 1% gap. So workers are having a more difficult time living right. That's the result of this, and so we can't really celebrate a couple industries, especially when they're low wage, when overall this is bad for workers, they're earning less in real terms than they were prior to COVID.

Pete Newsome:

So those are your headlines for today Always great news, unfortunately. But let me leave you with your fun fact the word boss. It comes from the word bass and I think I'm pronouncing that right, bass, b-a-a-s, and I think I'm pronouncing that right BAS, b-a-a-. Employees in my organization call me boss just because that just seems so just crass. I mean, it seems like just a kind of gross way to describe the relationship between an employee and an employer. So I, like manager, let's stick with that. So there you go. There's your headlines. There's your fun fact for today. Thank you for listening, as always. Please subscribe to the channel, share it with anyone you think would be interested, and I welcome any feedback you have so I can make this better. Talk to you soon.