What is unique about our measure is that we aggregate wealth at the level of the municipality: the funding base for many critical public services. This allows us to capture the important difference between (1) a *wealthy neighborhood* in a larger municipality, and (2) a *wealthy municipality*

Hard to dress up when the seats are cramped and you have to provide real meals like they did back in the day.

The bottom line: the September #JobsReport shows while jobs continue to grow, unemployment is rising and job growth during the summer was less than previously estimated. The Fed has a lot to consider for their December meeting. (/end)

Federal employment has fallen by 97,000 since the beginning of 2025. This has continued as it fell by 3,000 jobs this month. However, we won’t know the full extent of DOGE’s actions until the November #JobsReport. (8/9)

A bright spot is that payroll growth is being driven by the health care and social assistance sectors. Nearly half of this month's payroll growth came from these sectors.

However, given the harmful elements of the megabill, cuts to SNAP & Medicaid may hurt future job growth. (7/9)

Foreign born labor force continues to fall which is holding back overall job growth. (6/9)

Looking at the labor force participation rate & employment-to-population ratio for prime-age folks (age 25-54), both measures held steady this month. (5/9)

U6 – a measure of underemployment – fell slightly to 8% from 8.1%. In addition to the other indicators, this is a concern because U6 remains elevated. (4/9)

In September, the Black unemployment rate held steady at 7.5%, while the unemployment for other groups began to rise particularly with Hispanics & Asians. (3/9)

In September, the labor market rose with payrolls increasing by 119,000 & unemployment ticking up to 4.4%. One note, payrolls for July and August were revised down by a total of 29,000. (2/9)

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