THE ECONOMY • CORPORATE TRENDS
Every economist on TV called Friday’s jobs report a blowout. 172,000 jobs added. Markets up. Layoffs low. But scroll to page 14 of the BLS release and you find this: financial activities is down 107,000 jobs since May 2025. Banks, insurers, brokerages — the industry your career was probably in — has been shedding workers for twelve straight months while everything else hires. The desk you used to sit at is half the size it was a year ago. The hiring recession isn’t over for everyone. It just moved.
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Twelve consecutive months of contraction in finance — and the headline jobs number has been positive in every single one of them.
