Dazed and Confused

**Mark Zandi** (0:14)
Welcome to Inside Economics. I'm Mark Zandi, the Chief Economist of Moody's Analytics, and I'm joined by my two trustee co-hosts, Chris Derides, Marisa DiNatale. Hi, guys.

**Dante DeAntonio** (0:23)
Hey, Mark.

**Marisa DiNatale** (0:24)
Hi, Mark. Hi, Chris.

**Mark Zandi** (0:25)
And this is Jobs Friday, June the 5th. We've just got today the numbers for May of June, excuse me, May of 2026
And as is typical, we have Dr. D'Antonio, Dante D'Antonio join us. Hey, Doctor, how are you?

**Dante DeAntonio** (0:46)
Hi, Mark. I'm doing all right. How are you?

**Mark Zandi** (0:48)
I'm doing okay. You always ask me if I'm doing okay, and I always answer, I'm doing okay.
We got a little bit of a technical thing going, so there's only, if you're listening to this, then no worries. But if you're trying to view this on YouTube, all you're seeing is Chris and Dante, the rest of us are having a little bit of internet difficulty, so we're keeping our cameras off.
But, you know, you guys are good-looking guys. I mean, there's something to look at, sort of, I guess, you know?
Versus laughing. Yeah. Versus laughing. Well, we got a lot to talk about. Hey, I do want to say that I am deep in the bowels of the Congressional Budget Office, CBO. This is, twice I'm on the Board of Economic Advisors for CBO. And twice a year, for a day, we get together, all the economists on the board, advisory board, along with guests from outside, convene and talk about issues that are relevant, pertinent to the CBO's forecasting process. You know, obviously, they're the folks that do the budgeting. So, really fascinating day. Although I will say, the job numbers didn't really get on the radar screen, at least to a large degree. But for this podcast, we're going to be all about the job numbers, aren't we? Is there any other issue to talk about other than the job numbers? They were strong, surprisingly strong. But I don't know, anything else we should be discussing other than jobs? I think that should do it. Well, Chris?

**Dante DeAntonio** (2:20)
Well, what's the vibe in the room? What was the vibe in the room?

**Mark Zandi** (2:23)
The vibe? Among the economist, Illuminati.
They're mostly outcome additions, so they're not like day to day. There's some Wall Street folks, and there was a lot of discussion about the run up in interest rates as a result of the employment numbers. We'll talk about this, but the ten-year treasury, what is it, three-six or something? I mean, excuse me, four-six, four-point-six percent? Something like that.

**Dante DeAntonio** (2:52)
Close, yeah, four-point-six, something like that.

**Mark Zandi** (2:55)
Yeah, yeah.
And then a couple of other economists talking about the economy, but no, it's more longer-term issues around labor force, productivity, AI, those kinds of things. So less about the here and now. But anyway, let's dive in. Dante, you want to give us a rundown on the numbers? I don't know where you want to begin, but feel free. Yeah, feel free. By the way, just get this out there so we can go past this.
Your estimate was like way off, my friend. What was that all about?

**Dante DeAntonio** (3:38)
Yeah, I missed. I didn't hear your estimate yesterday, though. You asked me for mine, but then you didn't give me one back.

**Mark Zandi** (3:44)
Did you ask me for mine?

**Dante DeAntonio** (3:46)
I didn't, but you didn't offer it, so now I don't know where you stood before this morning. I'm the only one that had to put myself out there here, right?

**Mark Zandi** (3:52)
Well, that's a basic principle of forecasting. Don't forecast unless you have to.

**Dante DeAntonio** (3:57)
There you go. If I remember, I told you yesterday that I'd be shocked if this number was above 100,000, so I'll stick with that shocked and I'll add maybe a little bit confused at the same time too.

**Mark Zandi** (4:08)
Yeah, good way to describe it, that's for sure. Shocked and confused.

**Dante DeAntonio** (4:13)
The headline number was 100

**Mark Zandi** (4:15)
Yeah.

**Dante DeAntonio** (4:17)
There you go. Got 172,000 jobs added in May and strong positive revisions to the prior two months. A total of a little over 90,000 in revision upward to March and April. All that combined brings three-month average growth to 188,000. We added almost 600,000 jobs in the last three months since a war started in the Middle East, which seems a little bit counterintuitive.
If you look at the industry composition just in May, it's still fairly concentrated.

**Mark Zandi** (4:49)
Dante, can I just stop you real quickly there? So, you know, if you look at the monthly job gains going back to, let's say, the start of 2025, you know, up until, what, February of this year, it was basically flat, you know, payroll employment, the numbers you're now talking about, based on the survey of businesses. You know, some months up a little bit, some months down, but net, net, net, we hadn't gone anywhere. And now, all of a sudden, March, April, and now May, you said an average of 188,000 per month. And that coincides, by the way, with the start of the war in Iran.