January 6-10: Credit Card Debt, Jobs, & More
This week delivered several labor market updates. You can read Zack’s longer post on today’s jobs report here (free for all subscribers). Beyond pure economics, the big story this week is that Los Angeles is on fire. This is tragic, devastating, and represents a potentially catastrophic blow to the state’s already beleaguered home insurance market. If home insurers ever tell you they won’t insure your home due to natural disaster risks, trust the actuaries and move as quickly as possible.
Monday
TSA Checkpoint Travel Numbers
Air travel volumes were almost exactly the same in the first weeks of 2024 and 2025, according to TSA data, but travel was trending considerably higher before Monday’s snow storm.
Gas Prices & Diesel Prices
Gas prices increased to $3.17/gallon this week. That’s the highest price since mid-November but still slightly cheaper than one year ago. Diesel prices increased to $3.56/gallon, the highest level since October. Inflation is making a comeback, baby, and most of us don’t like the implications.
Tuesday
Job Opening and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS)
The number of open, unfilled jobs increased in November and is back above 8 million for the first time since May. So we’ve seen a decent increase in job openings in recent months, but that’s not the big story here.
Put simply, labor market churn (hiring, firing, and quits) slowed dramatically during 2024. The rate of hiring has fallen to levels not seen since the early 2010s, and employers continue to be historically reluctant to fire workers. At the same time, workers are quitting their jobs at the slowest pace since 2015.
For several reasons (that we might cover in a longer post), labor market churn will likely increase during 2025. That’s good, but for now The Great Stay continues. My view is that many economic actors, whether employers or employees, embraced a wait-and-see attitude prior to the election. With the election now in the rearview mirror and many economic stakeholders now decidedly more upbeat, job openings are up and as the Friday jobs report indicated, so is hiring in many segments, particularly those in direct contact with consumers.
Importantly, this JOLTS data is for November (unlike the Friday BLS jobs data).
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