The net underneath a job you still have

One · What happened

Fear about the economy split off from fear about your own job

The Bureau of Labor Statistics released its August jobs report on 4 September, and there wasn’t much in it to argue with. Employers added 162,000 jobs, more than 5 times the average monthly gain of the past year. The unemployment rate held at 4.1%, unchanged from July. Labor force participation edged up.

Four days later a different agency asked a different question and got a different answer.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York runs a monthly Survey of Consumer Expectations, about 1,300 households, fielded through the end of August and released 8 September. It asks people to put a number on things they cannot fully know. One of those numbers moved a lot this month. The average respondent now puts a 44.4% probability on the national unemployment rate being higher a year from now, up 1.6 points from July, the highest that figure has been since April 2020.

Ask the same households about their own job and you get a different picture. The probability they assign to losing the job they currently have fell to 13.8%, its lowest level since February. Almost nobody thinks it will be them specifically. A great many of them think the wider economy is getting worse anyway, one person holding two different beliefs at the same time.

A third number got less attention than it should have. Asked what their odds would be of finding a new job if they lost the one they have, respondents put that number at 45.4%, just below the past year’s average. The people already out of work are not bouncing back quickly either. BLS counted 1.9 million long-term unemployed in August, 27% of everyone counted as jobless, a share that has barely moved even as headline hiring came in strong.

Two · What it is doing

Fear that has stopped pointing at anything in particular

Usually these 2 numbers move together, because fear of losing a job usually has a specific cause behind it, a rumor, a bad quarter, a new manager who talks about headcount. This month the numbers split, and the fear got bigger in a month when the usual reasons for it got smaller.

Dread with no clear target lands on whatever is nearby. Somebody books a vacation he can afford and has a knot in his stomach the whole trip. Somebody else turns down more visibility at work this year because visibility felt like risk. Neither one is worried about the job in front of him so much as whether the whole arrangement the job sits in can still be trusted.

The same New York Fed survey found more households saying it has gotten tougher to borrow than saying it has gotten easier. That number is about what you would reach for if the job went away, a loan to bridge a gap or float a slow month, and more people this month doubt it would be there.

Three · Where the ground is

What actually holds when the numbers do not

A good credit score is still worth having, and so is a full emergency fund, and Scripture never tells anyone to stop planning for the ordinary risks of an ordinary life. It does keep asking where a person’s confidence actually sits. Psalm 20:7 was written for an army about to go to war. “Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the LORD our God.” A chariot was the best security technology available in that century, and David knew that, and he still wouldn’t let it be the thing a man rests in.

A steady paycheck, a decent credit score, a 401(k) that has done fine, a job market with more openings than layoffs, all of that is useful and none of it was ever meant to hold the full weight a frightened person puts on it. So when one of the numbers wobbles, even one that isn’t about you, everything feels less sturdy, because it was carrying more than it should have been.

A promise that does not run through the labor market

Hebrews 13:5 quotes a promise, “I will never leave you nor forsake you,” and the next verse draws the conclusion. “So we can confidently say, The Lord is my helper; I will not fear; what can man do to me?” That promise was never routed through an employer or a credit bureau, and a strong jobs report doesn’t make it any bigger. Somebody who has actually taken it seriously still checks the account balance and still worries some, because he is human, but the worry runs on a shorter leash than it used to.

Four · Today

Five things, and none of them are “stay informed”

Ambient dread is hard to fight because it never gives you a specific target, so make it specific. Put a real number or a real person where the vague fear has been sitting.

1. 01

   Write down your actual number of months.

   How many months could your household cover its bills if the income stopped tomorrow. Most people never actually do the math, and it’s the not knowing that keeps them up.

2. 02

   Pull your credit report today.

   It is free, and it takes 10 minutes. If borrowing really is getting tighter, you want to know your own standing now, while nothing is urgent.

3. 03

   Text one former coworker, today, just to say hello.

   Don’t ask for anything. A network you haven’t touched in 2 years isn’t really there when you need it, and a 30-second message costs you nothing.

4. 04

   Tell your spouse how many months you counted.

   Whatever it is you’ve been carrying alone, the months of runway or the account balance. Most people carry this quietly and badly, by themselves, and a spouse who finds out later that you were carrying it alone is going to have a fair question about why.

5. 05

   Write the first-week plan and put it in a drawer.

   If the job ended on a Friday, what happens Monday. Who you call first, what gets cancelled, which account the mortgage comes out of and for how long. One page, tonight, and then a drawer.