Was it only a month ago that someone was, yet again, stuffing an ice cream cone into his maw and snapping back at a reporter’s question?

“Our economy is strong as hell.”

The brakes came on abruptly for the private job market in November.

…Companies added just 127,000 positions for the month, a steep reduction from the 239,000 the firm reported for October and well below the Dow Jones estimate for 190,000. It also was the lowest total since January 2021.

This doesn’t bode well for either the Federal Reserve’s interest rate policies attempting to stem inflation and stave off a deep recession, nor encouraging for the job market going forward. The big number to take from the ADP report?

100,000 manufacturing jobs gone

The ADP jobs report came in below expectations. I read it as really bad. We lost 100k manufacturing jobs. The only increase was leisure and hospitality. This often means people picking up 2nd jobs.. pic.twitter.com/HqyVbaLmAi

— Frog Capital (@FrogNews) November 30, 2022

Service industry jobs – waitresses and bartenders – do not keep an economy going, however hard those folks bust their buns. In many instances, they are also fallback gigs for laid-off workers from other sectors. Unnerving in any event.

…In the ADP report, the biggest sector gainer by far was leisure and hospitality, which saw an increase of 224,000.

However, that was offset by losses in manufacturing (-100,000), professional and business services (-77,000), financial activities (-34,000), and information services (-25,000). Goods-producing industries overall saw a decline of 86,000 jobs, while services firms added 213,000 on net.

These are disastrous numbers

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) November 30, 2022

But that hiring bump in the service industries won’t last if folks don’t have the money to go out. It’s getting dicey in the TV and streaming industries, too. Talk about “Breaking Bad” and bad breaks…

AMC Networks Inc. said it is planning to lay off about 20% of its U.S. employees, a sign of further disruption at a company that earlier Tuesday announced its chief executive had stepped down less than three months after taking the reins.

“We have determined we need to conserve resources at this time,” the entertainment company said Tuesday. “This will involve cutbacks in operations which unfortunately includes a large-scale layoff, impacting approximately 20% of our employees in the U.S.” AMC said it has about 1,000 U.S. employees.

And…well…huh.

JUST IN: CNN announces layoffs amid difficult year https://t.co/2NX9vmb2ma pic.twitter.com/LNKXBGiiYl

— The Hill (@thehill) November 30, 2022

Another batch of information the Fed takes into account when determining rate increases is the unemployment rate and the ratio of job openings to job seekers, which, to their minds, has been too high (running about 2-1). Their target rate is 1.2 job openings for every job seeker. A report that also dropped this morning – the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey or JOLTS – provides that snapshot for them. The JOLTS came in on a downward slide, as well, and has people raising warning flags about the Fed being overly aggressive. Job openings sank by 353,000 and “quits” (people who leave their job for a better opportunity) hit lows not seen in the past year, even as hiring dries up.

In more dismal economic news, the Chicago Purchasing Manager’s Index or PMI (used to measure the economic health of manufacturing in the Chicago region), came in today alarmingly under estimates.

Yikes: November Chicago PMI fell to 37.2 vs. 47 est. & 45.2 prior … now starting to flirt with pandemic lows … prices paid rose at slower pace; new orders and production fell at faster pace; inventories rose at faster pace; and employment fell at slower pace pic.twitter.com/H6x0zHhlRA

— Liz Ann Sonders (@LizAnnSonders) November 30, 2022

Anything below a 50 reading indicates a retraction in the index. Generally, when the readings are in this territory, we are already in a recession. Sadly, there wasn’t a single positive thing to be gleaned from the report.

Let’s throw pending home sales numbers (largest annual drop ever)…

US Pending home sales from the National Association of Realtors.
It takes a special kind of idiot to look at this chart and say "hey, let's raise interest rates" pic.twitter.com/usLfxzMkwA

— Frog Capital (@FrogNews) November 30, 2022

…and the GDP in there for good measure, too, since we’re all in on the economic-hell-in-a-handbasket stuff. Get it over with.

It does not paint a rosy picture, whatever the King of Cones insists. Not to mention the looming stressors at work besides printing money and spiraling inflation that have yet to hit. Diesel shortages and skyhigh prices remain. This little contretemps…

Railroads, unions draw their lines in sand as Biden, Congress move to prevent strike

I don’t know that folks who call Pelosi forcing them to work without 4 sick days a “blatant betrayal” are going to roll over...

…”I thought it was kind of laughable that anyone would think that either the Democrats or the Republicans actually cared. Bottom line, they care about money,” he said.

Even so, “there was always that hope in the back of my mind that maybe someone would do something that was actually right for the American worker for once — instead of just what’s right for corporate America.”

Gonna have to see how it shakes out.

Wrap all that mess in a blanket of lame-duck, fractious, bitterly divided Congress trying to jam through unpopular legislation, maybe even an Omnibus bill?

Yeah. Pfft.

Strong as hell.

[Beege: I updated the CNBC quote at top to include the entire paragraph re: w/ 2021]