Painful Jobs Report, Painful Podcast

**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 and Marisa DiNatale. Hi, guys.

**Cris deRitis** (0:24)
Hey, Mark, it's good to see you again.

**Mark Zandi** (0:26)
Yeah.
Happy Jobs Friday. Because it's Jobs Friday, we're sitting here on August 7th, the morning of August 7th. We bring in Dr. Dante D'Antonio. Doctor, good to have you aboard.

**Cris deRitis** (0:39)
Hi, Mark. How are you?

**Mark Zandi** (0:41)
Good, good.
So generally, how's everyone doing? How are you feeling about things? I know we'll get to the Ugly Jobs Report in a second, but, you know, other than that.

**Marisa DiNatale** (0:52)
Just personally speaking, how are we doing?

**Mark Zandi** (0:53)
Just personally speaking, and also, I should say, abstracting from the ongoing technical battles we're all having.

**Cris deRitis** (1:00)
I'm leaving for vacation right after the podcast, so I'm feeling pretty good.

**Marisa DiNatale** (1:04)
Oh, you're feeling pretty good. I'm leaving for vacation tomorrow, so I'm also feeling pretty good. Yeah.

**Mark Zandi** (1:09)
Well, you guys, you're abandoning me. What, am I all by myself?

**Cris deRitis** (1:13)
I'm here. I'm here, Mark.

**Marisa DiNatale** (1:14)
Of course, he's here. He's your deputy.

**Cris deRitis** (1:18)
I'm choplifer, but, you know, I'm here.

**Mark Zandi** (1:21)
I've been working on this. We talked about it at the last podcast, this yield curve indicator. I did some more work, Chris. I'm just about ready to send it your way. I did send you a bit of a draft. What'd you think?
Promising or not?

**Cris deRitis** (1:36)
Promising. It was a little difficult to follow, I have to say.

**Marisa DiNatale** (1:39)
Really? Okay.

**Cris deRitis** (1:40)
Yeah, it was a little AI-y, right?

**Mark Zandi** (1:42)
Oh yeah. I hadn't put the human element, you know, my human touch to it, but-

**Cris deRitis** (1:46)
You could tell. You could tell.

**Mark Zandi** (1:48)
Yeah, you could tell. You know, I will. I will, and I'll send it your way. And I have actually done more work around the explication, so I think you'll find it more useful this next round. Oh, I'm also going to send you the underlying data, so you can have at it, because you asked for the underlying data.

**Cris deRitis** (2:04)
Yeah, got to validate.

**Mark Zandi** (2:06)
Yeah. So we're still working, guys. While you're on- Dante, are you on a cruise? Where are you going? What are you up to?

**Cris deRitis** (2:11)
We're going to be in Tennessee, just going to- Tennessee? Yeah. Pigeon Forge.

**Marisa DiNatale** (2:16)
Going to Nashville.

**Cris deRitis** (2:17)
Going to that area.

**Mark Zandi** (2:19)
Bluegrass, Dolly Parton, that kind of thing?

**Marisa DiNatale** (2:20)
Oh, Dolly Parton.

**Cris deRitis** (2:22)
Going to Dollywood, yeah. I'm going to see what's going on.

**Mark Zandi** (2:25)
Oh, so cool. That is really cool. Yeah, I like Dolly.
And Marisa, where are you off to? Now, you're overseas, I'm sure somewhere.

**Marisa DiNatale** (2:34)
Well, I'm going to Mexico just for four days.

**Mark Zandi** (2:39)
Oh, that sounds nice.
Okay, well, safe travel, guys. And we'll hold down the fort, Chris and I, and we'll welcome you back. Are you going to be back for next week's podcast? Because we're, I think, David Otter. Isn't David Otter coming on at MIT? The economist, the great guy, well-respected. We're going to talk about AI, artificial intelligence, as part of our AI series that we're gearing up for. That's next week, isn't it? I believe. I believe it is.
Yeah, soon. Yeah, coming up. Okay, well, let's get down to business. The jobs numbers for the month of July, July 2026 Dante, I think the word is ugly. No? Do you have a different way of describing it?

**Cris deRitis** (3:25)
Well, I think ugly is the right word. Headline job loss for the first time since early this year.
Significant downward revisions to previous months. All that combined gets you a three month average job growth that's only about 20K right now. It was much, much higher than that. It was over 100K just last month prior to revision. So it's a big swing in job growth over the course of the month.
Industry detail-wise, there's not a whole lot to be happy about. I mean, healthcare obviously still added jobs, but at a slower pace than we're used to seeing. Construction, maybe a bright spot, added a little over 20,000 jobs. But outside of those two, it's a lot of negative on the board. Government was the big one, and I think we can talk about the details of that, but it was mostly concentrated in local government education. Leisure and hospitality also down big, again, for the second straight month. Retail trade down almost 20,000. Finance was down. So again, not a whole lot of highlights there under the surface.