Almost All New Jobs Are From 1 Industry

The September jobs report showed a weaker, unusually narrow labor market, and a lot of people panicked about the big downward revisions to July and August. Justin Wolfers walks you through why those revisions are a good thing. Hint: more data = better numbers. Justin also shows why all the hiring is coming from health care (we got richer, we're aging, and Baumol's cost disease means appendectomies don't get cheaper like dishwashers do). Then he takes on the scariest question: is AI already killing jobs for young college grads? His honest answer, backed by economist Erik Brynjolfsson, is that we don't know yet. The famous prediction that AI would end radiology was flat wrong, and today's weak hiring may just be a "low hire, low fire" economy. Here's a worksheet you can use to work through the same process I use (and thanks to Stata for sponsoring this episode): https://platypuseconomics.com/stata Chapters: 0:00 September jobs: weaker and narrower 1:22 Why nothing is measured perfectly 2:40 How the jobs survey works 4:11 Why revisions make the data better 6:17 Health care is nearly all the hiring 10:46 Baumol's cost disease explained 12:42 The pandemic echo in health care 17:33 Is AI killing the jobs? 20:39 The threat to young workers' first rung Subscribe — it's the one number that never gets revised down: on YouTube 👉    / platypuseconomics   on Substack 👉 https://newsletter.platypuseconomics.com the Podcast 👉 https://platypuseconomics.com/podcast Follow on Social Media @PlatypusEconomics and @JustinWolfers