The ADP is only reporting 22k for January. Which lines up very closely with the monthly pace of job creation for 2025 (~15k, on average).

The downward revisions on the BLS numbers for 2025 are the largest on record. There's a sentiment that the monthly numbers were purposely inflated for 2025.

It’s been creeping up for sure, but still historically low. And I’d attest that the headline rate is still the “real” rate.

You might want to look at the 'not in labor force' numbers: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNU05026642

Underemployment is already reported and is distinctly different so I don't think it's fair to say that not counting someone at Burger King who has a Master's degree as unemployed is a "flaw."

The idea that the BLS lacks detailed labor market data is just internet conspiracy slop.

Just because U3 is the measure typically quoted doesn’t mean the others don’t exist.

GLP, not sure.

The AI companies really did spend every last cent (and more) of this capital.

There's a potentially civilization-ending disasters looming over us (the climate crisis, increasing escalation between the major powers, rising risk of insurrection due to mismanagement and inequality) and what are the smartest people of our time doing?

Making sure you click that damn ad or create technology that lets you create slop ads more easily.

Or finance. There was a pretty brutal takedown published recently: The Finance Industry Is a Grift. Let’s Start Treating It That Way. (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/06/opinion/capitalism-indust...).

Basically the finance industry is pivoting away from actually investing in real businesses to more and more elaborate paper pushing schemes (that make them money, but actually weaken the economy):

> Unlike Dawes’s Fidelity Fiduciary Bank, a modern investment bank mostly earns its money in a way that not even the bravest lyricist would set to music: providing advisory services, executing complex financial engineering schemes, trading stocks and bonds, managing other people’s money, issuing credit cards and so on. Assets get bought and sold, divided and packaged, and the bank collects fees at each step.

> David Solomon, the chief executive of Goldman Sachs, could not sing to young Michael about the many productive uses to which he might put the tuppence because Goldman Sachs rarely invests in anything at all. Fostering economic progress appears to be beside the point.

> Less than 10 percent of Goldman’s work in 2024, measured by revenue, was helping businesses raise capital. Loans of Goldman’s own funds to operating businesses accounted for less than 2 percent of its assets. At JPMorgan Chase the figures were 4 and 5 percent; at Morgan Stanley, 7 and 2 percent. Even the efforts at helping to raise capital are misleading, because less than a tenth of it goes toward building anything new. The rest funds debt refinancing, balance sheet restructuring and mergers and acquisitions.

> These are symptoms of financialization. That’s the term for making financial markets and transactions ends unto themselves, disconnected from — and often at the expense of — the societal benefits that support human flourishing and are capitalism’s proper purpose. Chief among those benefits are good jobs that support families, and products and services that improve people’s lives.

Nintendo is notorious for under producing their consoles vs demand in recent years - the worst example was the mini NES or whatever they called it, they could not keep it on shelves for that one either.