Economy: Growth, Prices and Jobs

More paid vacation didn't fix America's day-off problem

The jobs number you react to isn't the one that counts

The monthly payroll print is a sample-based estimate with a forecast bolted on. Here's what the birth-death model does, when the benchmark fixes it, and how big a normal correction looks.

The savings rate fell, debt rose, and the economy shrugged — so far

Households spent down pandemic savings and borrowed to keep pace. The uncomfortable question is what happens when the buffer runs out.

The construction worker shortage became the infrastructure bottleneck

Trillion-dollar industrial and infrastructure programs are colliding with a craft-labor supply two decades in the making — and wages tell the story faster than the payroll data.

Why economists worship a boring weekly number

Initial unemployment claims is the fastest, cleanest recession signal in the economic data — if you know what it's actually measuring.