Profile avatar
econberger.bsky.social
Director of Economic Research at the Burning Glass Institute. I tweet a lot about labor markets, macro, and (sorry) music! Tweets represent my own views.
1,147 posts 7,420 followers 2,062 following
Regular Contributor
Active Commenter
Posts 20 Comments 30

Drove past a car on the Bay Bridge with the license plate M2BEAST - probably a San Francisco Fed employee?

submitted 4 hours ago • 1 comment

A quick thread on the Q3 2024 QCEW data: 1/ On Wednesday we got Q3 2024 QCEW data. We now have 1/2 of the eventual March 2025 NFP benchmark source data. *So far*, it's consistent with a moderate post-benchmark overcount by NFP (around 470K). More on predictivity downthread.

submitted 1 day ago • 2 comments

I just saw a tweet on the other site by a high follower account that was an unironic analogue of this famous meme

submitted 2 days ago • 1 comment

This is a piece I've been noodling on for a while and finally completed (with lots of questions still to be answered). Young people are bearing the brunt of the post-2022 hiring slump, according to BLS data. open.substack.com/pub/macromos...

submitted 2 days ago • 1 comment

I wrote a short note on today's unemployment insurance data, and what we should expect going forward from the federal government layoffs. macromostly.substack.com/p/high-frequ...

submitted 2 days ago • 1 comment

Claims: 1/ Initial claims quite a bit higher than a year ago (possibly due to calendar shifts). If this persists might be a sign of federal government cutbacks rippling into the private sector. [Federal government worker layoffs would show up in a separate time series.]

submitted 2 days ago • 4 comments

My kids watch a show where one of the villains is a cockatoo named Zsa Zsa, she has budgie sidekicks

submitted 2 days ago • 3 comments

I hate writing about bad labor market news

submitted 3 days ago • 1 comment

I wrote a short post on what we know about the government employment cutbacks so far (less than you think), and about the macro/labor impact (even less than that!). Not intended to be comprehensive; intent is quick illumination for non-specialists. open.substack.com/pub/macromos...

submitted 3 days ago • 3 comments

I owe this to @marthagimbel.bsky.social but: the 200K probationary government employment number is an upper bound, right? Not all of them have been laid off to my knowledge. (Open to being corrected.) I'm seeing references to "term employees" - I assume this is a separate category?

submitted 3 days ago • 4 comments

Hesitant to disagree with Jesse, who is much smarter than me, but 200K (to the degree it materializes in one month) is one mildly negative month on NFP and 0.1-0.2pp on the unemployment rate am open to evidence that the contractor effect is very large, and 2nd order effects could matter a lot

submitted 3 days ago • 12 comments

The negative reaction “I did something useful with AI” content sometimes gets makes me wonder how digital calculators or word processing software would have been received if social media existed pre-2000

submitted 3 days ago • 0 comments

The share of US firms reporting recent AI usage has gone up over the past few months, but is still relatively low: just under 7%. About 9% of US firms are planning to use AI over the next 6 months.

submitted 4 days ago • 3 comments

The “is the gold really in Fort Knox” thing is almost certainly going to entail people credulously sharing clips from Goldfinger

submitted 4 days ago • 2 comments

A little late to this but finally got around to Wild Robot. It was top notch, one of the best animated movies I’ve watched in the past 10-12 years

submitted 5 days ago • 0 comments

Some people dislike this album, but they will never know love

submitted 8 days ago • 0 comments

February 14th 1974 is well known as one of the most romantic Valentines Day in history, mostly as a result of Rush releasing this album youtu.be/a9h2H5Sgzfw?...

submitted 8 days ago • 1 comment

When labor markets are tight, intended headcount change = actual headcount change + higher turnover It happened during the Great Resignation and may happen again if "something"(?!?!?) happens which radically slows labor supply growth

submitted 9 days ago • 0 comments

It's always restraining your inflation hot takes until we get high quality PCEPI estimates instead of shooting from the hip after CPI. January core PCEPI was much less bad than core CPI, but still not good - it raised the hurdle a little on the Fed hitting their 2025 projection.

submitted 9 days ago • 0 comments

1/ The US Census Bureau's Business Trends & Outlook Survey continues to show that businesses are more upbeat about future headcount than they were a year ago. However, their actual behavior is marginally more headcount negative than a year ago. Will plans turn into reality? TBD.

submitted 9 days ago • 1 comment