Austan Goolsbee:
The first thing to note is what matters is not one specific raid or anything like that. It’s the total net immigration into or out of the country. And we saw last year, for example, big jobs numbers, 185,000 a month on average for the year.
It ended up being a sign that, looking back, ah, there was a lot more population growth than we knew as it was happening. That’s what we’re trying — everyone is trying to tease out from the data like the ones that are coming out today, is, we don’t observe, we don’t know what’s — how much the immigration is pulling down the number.
I’m more comfortable looking at multiple job market indicators. The hiring rate is kind of low, but the layoffs have not really commenced. If you thought this was the beginning of a recession, you would think you would be seeing a big uptick in layoffs. And the job openings/vacancy rate is actually still quite good. It’s even better than it was 2019 before the pandemic, which was a strong labor market.
So, we’re just going to have to see as the months come through here, is this a sign that the labor market is deteriorating or is this a sign that some things are happening behind the scenes that make the number a little noisier to interpret?
