The unemployment rate is 4.1%. By any normal reading that is a healthy labor market. But layoffs are running at 1.0% of employment, near the lowest level on record, while hiring has slowed to a 3.2% rate. Those two numbers together describe something the headline rate cannot. If you have a job, you are unusually safe. If you need one, you are in the worst market in a decade.
Sponsored by Brownstone Research
Elon Musk’s New Invention Will Blow You Away
Editor’s Note: Jeff Brown and Marc Chaikin, two investment legends who picked Nvidia 10 years ago, are predicting that by the end of this month, Elon Musk’s new AI breakthrough will collide with a strange market pattern with a flawless 100% track record of massive market gains. Click here to see the details or read more below because the last time this happened everyday folks had a chance to turn $10,000 into as much as $350,000 in just about 12 months.
Dear Reader,
Elon Musk did it again.
After self-driving cars…
Reusable rockets that land themselves…
And brain chips that let paralyzed people control computers with their minds…
Elon just filed this patent (click here and see it for yourself) to protect his new invention…
A new form of AI so powerful he called it an “infinite money glitch.”
And it could help send shares of a little-known Elon supplier to the moon.
Click here to get the details because you must act fast.
You see, Elon promised he will begin to scale production by the end of this month.
And if you miss this window…
You’ll probably never see an explosive opportunity like this in your lifetime.
As The Wall Street Journal says…
AI advancements like this new Elon invention could be “the last chance to amass generational wealth.” (Click here to get the details.)
We have so much to look forward to,
Jeff Brown
Founder & CEO, Brownstone Research
The Low-Hire, Low-Fire Economy
Employers stopped expanding and stopped cutting at the same time. There were 7.3 million job openings in July and 5.1 million actual hires. Quits fell to 1.9% of employment, which is the clearest signal of all, because people only quit when they are confident something better is waiting.
Payrolls actually shrank by 23,000 in July. Losses came from local government education and retail, while health care kept adding. That is not a recession print. It is a stall.
Why This Hits Older Workers Hardest
A quarter of everyone unemployed, 25.5%, has now been out of work for 27 weeks or longer. In a market where companies are not creating positions, the only openings are replacements, and replacement hiring skews toward cheaper and younger candidates.
Workers over 50 who lose a job in this environment face a long search, and long searches do lasting damage. People who take six months to find work usually accept less than they earned before, and that lower number becomes the base for every raise afterward. It also lands in the Social Security calculation for anyone still building their highest earning years.
The Raise That Is Not a Raise
Average hourly earnings rose 3.2% over the past year. Consumer prices rose 3.4%. That gap is small, but it points the wrong way. The typical worker got a raise this year and still lost a little ground.
Labor force participation sits at 61.4%. Some of that is retirement, some of it is people who stopped looking because looking stopped working.
Final Take
The practical reading is that job security is currently worth more than it looks on paper, and job mobility is worth less. If you have been waiting for a better offer before making a move, this is a market that rewards patience over ambition.
For anyone over 50 in a stable role, the calculation has shifted. Leaving voluntarily means entering a market where employers are not creating positions, and re-entry takes longer than it used to. That does not mean staying somewhere miserable. It means pricing the risk honestly before you jump.
For anyone already looking, the search is slower than your instincts will tell you it should be, and that is the market rather than you. Keep the network warm, apply to replacement roles rather than new ones, and treat six months as a normal timeline rather than a personal failure.
The economy is not falling apart. It just stopped moving, and standing still is harder on some people than others.
An Opportune Moment in the $110B U.S. Coffee Industry (Sponsored by Green Coffee Company)
This Startup is Growing 23X Faster than Nvidia (Sponsored by Brownstone Research)
The war we can’t afford to lose (Sponsored by Porter & Co.)
The math on this IPO doesn't add up (Sponsored by Boardwalk Flock)
No. 1 Money Manager: This Will be 100X Bigger Than Bitcoin (Sponsored by Brownstone Research)
Mark your calendar for America’s New 1776 Moment (Sponsored by Porter & Co.)
It’s growing faster than Tesla and SpaceX (Sponsored by Brownstone Research)
Written by Deniss Slinkins
Millionaire Core
