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My recap of September's disappointing but not terrible jobs report.
Link: macromostly.substack.com/p/bls-jobs-rep…
Link: macromostly.substack.com/p/bls-jobs-rep…
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1/ RIP Bill Nordhaus.
When I was a grad student at Yale in the 00s a lot of the old school giants were still there. James Tobin still occasionally came to seminars!
When I was a grad student at Yale in the 00s a lot of the old school giants were still there. James Tobin still occasionally came to seminars!
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2/ I didn’t know Bill well. But I did get some interactions with him toward the end of my studies, when I was on the job market.
Aside from being an extremely accomplished economist (understatement!!!), he was an incredibly nice guy and I feel fortunate to have known him. RIP.
Aside from being an extremely accomplished economist (understatement!!!), he was an incredibly nice guy and I feel fortunate to have known him. RIP.
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This is great! Hooray for Claude
Claude gonna start snitching on Tuesday.
Anthropic just emailed customers. Starting Nov 3, text carries an invisible watermark.
You can't see it. It survives copy and paste, and it can survive some editing.
Only regulators, journalists, fact-checkers and researchers can check oesn't say who you are. It says Claude touched the words. Even a quick proofread counts.
If your brand voice runs on Claude, write like someone might check. Because now someone can.
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Guy Berger retweeted
So, lots to ponder, and nothing clear-cut.
But for now I think attributing the US productivity data to AI is an error.
My full article: ft.com/content/7f27aa…
But for now I think attributing the US productivity data to AI is an error.
My full article: ft.com/content/7f27aa…
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Guy Berger retweeted
Quick thread on AI and productivity:
Lots of people say this chart shows AI is now showing up in the productivity data.
But I made this chart to argue the opposite: a trend that pre-dates AI and only shows up in the US doesn’t look like AI.
Here’s how I’m thinking about the amics:
Lots of people say this chart shows AI is now showing up in the productivity data.
But I made this chart to argue the opposite: a trend that pre-dates AI and only shows up in the US doesn’t look like AI.
Here’s how I’m thinking about the amics:
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At 9 AM PT on Friday November 6th, me & the ONE AND ONLY @keds_economist will be doing our usual fun BLS chit-chat.
Kathryn Anne started a tradition of exotic locations, last week was DC and I bet you can't wait to find out where she'll be on Friday!
open.substack.com/live-stream/42…
Kathryn Anne started a tradition of exotic locations, last week was DC and I bet you can't wait to find out where she'll be on Friday!
open.substack.com/live-stream/42…
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Roddenberry’s rule was absolutely bananas and one of the reasons TNG ended up being a good show is that the writers ended up circumventing it a lot
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Guy Berger retweeted
Here is my conversation with @WorkforceVan - otherwise known as Van Ton-Quinlivan of Futuro Health - about my research at AIR on how community colleges can create more credentials of value: …forcerx-with-futuro-health.castos.com/episodes/dr-ha…
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LLMs are SO POWERFUL they traveled back in time to boost productive growth a few years before ChatGPT even launched:
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On of those cases when I should read the original article before tweeting the chart, because in the article @jburnmurdoch uses the chart to make this exact point (LLM impact requires time travel)
x.com/jburnmurdoch/s…
x.com/jburnmurdoch/s…
@joefrancis505 @EconBerger I do hope you’ve both read the article these charts are from, which makes exactly these points! 😅😅😅 ft.com/content/7f27aa…
(The whole point of putting the ChatGPT annotation on a series that diverges 2 years earlier was to show it doesn’t fit!)
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This sounds much better than the 2013 movie
A modern-day police procedural take on ‘THE GREAT GATSBY’ is in the works at NBC.
The series follows Jay Gatsby, a charming investigator with a gift for reading human behavior, and Nicole “Nicky” Carraway, a cop with dreams of becoming a writer.
(Source: Deadline)
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I enjoyed reading Mike’s piece.
Imho regardless of your political orientation, the next few years (at least) of policymaking will involve making unpleasant tradeoffs and tightening belts
The “slack resources” context of the late 2010s is gone.
Imho regardless of your political orientation, the next few years (at least) of policymaking will involve making unpleasant tradeoffs and tightening belts
The “slack resources” context of the late 2010s is gone.
New post: I can't tell if this is a spicy take or not, but the more I think about it the 2028 "ideas primary" won't look like 2020.
It's worth noting fans and critics of 2020 both emphasize that it could. But I think there's at least 11 reasons the world is too different. /1
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This piece is also worth reading in the same vein. It’s a very good idea to try to mitigate the tradeoffs by expanding the supply side.
BUT…
BUT…
Me in @TheArgumentMag: let's encourage economic growth, to reduce the need for painful spending cuts and tax hikes in the face of high deficits
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My informal observation is there’s a ton of unsavory appetite (not by these authors) for laundering supply-reducing policies as “supply-expanding policies”
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Am grateful to @Neil_Irwin at @axios for chatting with me about how surging health insurance costs are squeezing workers' pay raises.
axios.com/2026/10/30/hea…
axios.com/2026/10/30/hea…
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I agree that Patrick Stewart was perfect for “The Inner Light”…
OTOH I can’t imagine the TNG ensemble pulling off “Far Beyond the Stars”
OTOH I can’t imagine the TNG ensemble pulling off “Far Beyond the Stars”
Debate about which trek is best is good and all (I'm very pro DS9 and even thing Voyager is underrated) but nobody could pull of this kind of episode like TNG and Patrick Stewart and I'd love to see TV like this again.
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My general feeling about this is:
1/ It's hard to find a job right now because marginal labor demand is weak and only slowly recovering
2/ this "can't talk to a real person" is a screening friction that's been introduced to compensate for a massive decline in application costs.
1/ It's hard to find a job right now because marginal labor demand is weak and only slowly recovering
2/ this "can't talk to a real person" is a screening friction that's been introduced to compensate for a massive decline in application costs.
This is such a bleak story about what it's like to try to land a job right now. nytimes.com/interactive/20…
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3/ Compared to, say, the early or mid 2010s, when finding work as an unemployed person was of comparable difficulty, it's much easier to discover and apply to open jobs. But the number of opportunities isn't any bigger.
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