Janelle Jones
Previous: Chief Economist @seiu, Chief Economist @usdol, Groundwork Collaborative, Economic Policy Institute & others. Northeast Ohio will always be home. Very Personal account.
- Great thread.
- So, to sum up, measures of underemp & Black unemp were still flashing danger, at the end of the (meh labor market) year & should be watched in 2026. Workers at the margins - people of color, involuntary part time, discouraged-are the groups who feel a downturn first, feel it longest, & recover last.
- Black unemp went down to 7.5% in Dec from 8.3 in Nov. BUT! - that measure is volatile, so a single month means less than the trend - Black unemp has been 📈 all year - it's still nearly *double* the unemp rate for white workers (3.9) - if the overall UR was 7.5 it would be a national emergency
- I mean. This is the underemployment story. Involuntary part-time is up over a million from a year ago. It had a slight rebound in December, but that could very well be due to the holiday season.
- Of those unemployment, *one in four* has been unemployed for at least 6 months! This is the highest level of long term unemployment since Feb 2022.
- Already so what do we got? A weak jobs report for december to cap off a weak year of labor market data. Job growth came in at 50k, lower than expectations, with downward revisions for the part 2 months, and the unemployment rate is at 4.4. #EconSky
- Yesterday I flagged that I'd be watching measure of underemployment and Black unemployment to indicator underlying weakness that may not show up in the topline numbers. So, let's see.
- In my first piece as a @groundwork.bsky.social fellow, I’m previewing #JobsDay. Underemployment and Black unemployment are on the rise, & that usually means a labor market slowdown is coming for the economy overall. groundworkcollaborative.org/news/are-can...
- Excited to (re)join Groundwork!
