US Job Openings Decline to Lowest Level in More Than a Year
The number of available positions decreased to 7.15 million in November from a downwardly revised 7.45 million in the prior month, Bureau of Labor Statistics data showed Wednesday. The figure was below all estimates in a Bloomberg survey of economists.
The pullback in openings reflected fewer opportunities in leisure and hospitality, health care and social assistance, as well as transportation and warehousing. The number of hires declined to the lowest since mid-2024, while layoffs also eased.
The decline in vacancies along with a slowdown in hiring reinforces views that the job market continues to soften, though companies are largely refraining from dismissing workers outright. (…)
The JOLTS report showed the number of vacancies per unemployed worker, a ratio Fed officials watch closely as a proxy of the balance between labor demand and supply, fell to 0.9 — the lowest since March 2021. At its peak in 2022, the ratio was 2 to 1.
(Ed Yardeni)
Some economists have questioned the validity of the JOLTS data, in part due to the survey’s low response rate and sometimes sizable revisions. A separate index by job-posting site Indeed, which is reported on a daily basis, showed openings rebounded in November after reaching a multiyear low.
Companies announced 35,553 job cuts in December, the lowest since July 2024 and down substantially from elevated readings in the prior two months, according to data from outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. Additionally, employers laid out plans to add nearly 10,500 jobs, the highest for any December since 2022. The data was released ahead of schedule after it became accessible on the Challenger website.
While December is typically a month with fewer layoff plans, the drop in job-cut announcements, plus greater hiring intentions, “is a positive sign after a year of high job cutting plans,” said Andy Challenger, the firm’s chief revenue officer.
The figures signal some momentum for the labor market heading into the new year after a notable slowdown in 2025. Planned layoffs topped 1.2 million last year, the most since 2020 and led by the federal government. In the private sector, technology, warehousing and retail also saw pickups from 2024. (…)
- As the year closed, hiring growth recovered
What was the state of the labor market as 2025 came to an end? While Bank of America internal data suggests payroll growth slowed last year, the “good news” is our data suggests some recovery in December. We also see no sign of an acceleration in the rise in unemployment payments into Bank of America customer accounts.
So overall, while the story as the year closed remained one of “low-hire, low-fire,” it appears possible that most of the labor market slowdown may have run its course.
We use Bank of America internal deposit data to estimate a payrolls series by looking at how the number of customer accounts receiving a paycheck is changing. This data can be fairly noisy, partly due to seasonal variation. However, looking at a three-month moving average, Exhibit 1 suggests that the year-over-year (YoY) growth in our measure rose to 0.6% in December, a rebound from 0.2% YoY in November. This December YoY growth is also similar to that seen in the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) estimate of payrolls for November, which adds to the impression the slowdown in jobs growth may be over.
We also do not see signs of an acceleration in the rise in unemployment payments into Bank of America customer accounts. Exhibit 2 shows that in December, growth in unemployment payments into Bank of America customer accounts held steady at around 10% YoY, consistent with the rate of growth observed from September through November.
In September, the YoY increase in the level of unemployment was +10.2%.
- New orders for U.S. manufactured goods fell 1.3% in Oct 2025, ending 2 months of gains.
@Econoday
Someone has a plan!
Trump Team Works Up Sweeping Plan to Control Venezuelan Oil for Years to Come President believes the effort could lower oil prices to his target of $50 a barrel
A plan under consideration envisions the U.S. exerting some control over Venezuela’s state-run oil company Petróleos de Venezuela SA, or PdVSA, including acquiring and marketing the bulk of the company’s oil production, people familiar with the matter said.
If successful, the plan could effectively give the U.S. stewardship of most of the oil reserves in the Western Hemisphere, when factoring in deposits in the U.S. and other countries where U.S. companies control production. It could also fulfill two of the administrations’ primary goals: to box Russia and China out of Venezuela and to push energy prices lower for U.S. consumers.
Trump has repeatedly raised the prospect of lowering oil prices to $50 a barrel, his preferred level, two senior administration officials said. (…)
Many companies see $50 a barrel as a threshold below which it becomes unprofitable to drill, and a sustained period of low oil prices could decimate the U.S. shale industry, which has been a key backer of the president. (…)
Energy Secretary Chris Wright said at a Goldman Sachs investor conference in Miami that the U.S. will sell blockaded Venezuelan oil “indefinitely.”
“We’re going to market the crude coming out of Venezuela—first this backed up, stored oil, and then indefinitely, going forward, we will sell the production that comes out of Venezuela into the marketplace,” Wright said at the conference. (…)
The administration’s actions amount to an expansion of its “drill, baby, drill” mantra well beyond U.S. borders. Trump has long viewed increased production and lower oil prices as an economic boon and has made that a priority throughout his second term. The initiative has taken on more urgency as voters continue to express anxieties about affordability and Trump’s polling numbers decline ahead of pivotal midterm elections. (…)
The WSJ Editorial Board:
(…) Mr. Trump’s incessant talk about monetizing Venezuela’s oil plays into the hands of critics who say it’s all about oil. The President in recent days has suggested subsidizing American oil companies to return to Venezuela, as if it’s an imperial American outpost from a century ago.
His plan to sell Venezuelan oil raises more questions. The government “will be turning over between 30 and 50 MILLION Barrels” for the U.S. to sell, and “that money will be controlled by me, as President of the United States of America, to ensure it is used to benefit the people of Venezuela and the United States!” he wrote on Truth Social.
Selling sanctioned oil could do some good if the proceeds are given to the opposition or put in an escrow account for rebuilding Venezuela’s economy, when and if the regime relinquishes power. But Mr. Trump seems to view the oil proceeds as a personal executive account, beyond the control of Congress’s purse-strings, to dole out as he sees fit.
It elides U.S. national security interests with Mr. Trump’s personal power, much like his gambit to let TikTok keep operating in the U.S. in violation of the law on the condition that the Treasury get a cut of its eventual sale to American investors. To the victor go the oil spoils won’t improve U.S. standing in the world, and it sends a bad message to the world’s rogues about the way to buy U.S. support. This will be reinforced if the oil donation helps the Caracas regime stay in power. (…)
The FT’s Alan Beattie:
(…) Now, the limited amount of oil that the US can take from Venezuela in the medium term — its deposits are famously hard to extract — is unlikely to have a serious economic impact. But Trump’s quasi-imperial ambition to establish a sphere of influence in the Western Hemisphere will not make America great again. The key to greater US prosperity is competing in new technologies and addressing the problems in its domestic economy, not looting its neighbours for hydrocarbons it already has.
In that respect, the Venezuela gambit is an intervention from a lost age before the shale gas revolution, when the US was not just a net importer of energy but oriented much of its foreign policy around keeping the hydrocarbons flowing. (…)
In trying to press US oil companies into investment and production in Venezuela, Trump is treating them like the state-owned companies typical of oil-dependent countries elsewhere, used as geopolitical and fiscal tools.
To what economic end? At the margin, even assuming the efficiency of production increases to bring the current cost of extraction in Venezuela down from around $80 a barrel, well above the current world price, its oil will displace the US shale, which genuinely does deliver American energy dominance. It will also make US energy supply subject to the vagaries of Latin American politics.
Trump’s broader aims, as suggested in December’s national security strategy, are to use coercion to secure the supply of commodities for America. But not only does the US have the misfortune to be in a not particularly ideal neighbourhood in that regard, making the country’s economy safe and prosperous will require improved technology more than the minerals delivered by quasi-imperial satraps. (…)
It’s not a lack of basic commodities that’s holding back the US economy. America is falling behind China in innovation in productivity-enhancing technologies such as batteries, robotics and renewable energy — though to be fair, the sometimes reprehensible services offered by its tech sector remain world-beating. Trump’s growth strategy appears to rely on an AI sector that looks exceedingly like a bubble, fossil fuels with which the world is currently amply supplied and a pointless attempt to reshore basic manufacturing through tariffs. (…)
In one area where America has maintained a lead — semiconductor research and development — Trump is allowing companies to help China keep up, for example by permitting Nvidia to export high-end chips there. If China is emboldened even at the margin by Trump’s Venezuela misadventure to seize Taiwan, it will take control of a huge swath of the world’s chip research and production capacity. As imperial plunder goes, an unassailable position in the technology that networks the world economy is worth more than some sticky oil deposits hundreds of metres underground.
One of the reasons that the Spanish empire imploded so quickly, certainly compared with its British counterpart, is that it was run by a corrupt, self-enriching aristocratic elite more concerned with grabbing wealth and power than in developing technologies and building trade routes.
Trumpists may pride themselves on acting decisively in US interests — international law and foreign policy alliances be damned — but building a sphere of geopolitical influence that delivers no discernible economic gains is emphatically not the way to do it.
Microsoft’s chief scientist has warned that cuts to US federal funding for academic research will drive talent and ideas abroad, giving international rivals a lead in the artificial intelligence race.
Eric Horvitz told the Financial Times that President Donald Trump’s decision to slash academic research funding could give other nations, such as China, an edge in science and technological innovation.
“I personally find it hard to see the logic of trying to compete with competitor nations at the same time as making these cuts,” Horvitz said.
The intervention comes as US universities and federal agencies have been hit by billions of dollars in funding reductions since Trump took office last year. Those moves have been justified as cost-cutting measures or by ideological stances, such as blocking grants for diversity initiatives.
While prominent scientists and academics have criticised the Trump administration’s policies, Horvitz is a rare senior corporate executive to have taken a public stance on the matter. (…)
“By betting on intellect and ideas, we can make the world better in surprising ways,” he added. Trump has scrapped more than 1,600 NSF grants, worth nearly $1bn in funding, since 2025. (…)
Funding cuts and freezes have forced academic institutions to overhaul their governance and finances, while prompting some academics and students to move abroad. (…)
Chinese officials are preparing to allow local companies to buy the component from Nvidia for select commercial use, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the deliberations are private.
However, the H200 chip will be barred from the military, sensitive government agencies, critical infrastructure and state-owned enterprises due to security concerns, they said. That mirrors similar measures that the Chinese government adopted for foreign products such as Apple Inc. devices and Micron Technology Inc. chips. (…)
Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. and ByteDance Ltd. have both told Nvidia in private that they are interested in ordering more than 200,000 units each of the H200, according to a person familiar with the matter. Both companies — alongside prominent Chinese startups, including DeepSeek — are rapidly upgrading their models to compete with OpenAI and other US rivals. (…)
Meanwhile, Nvidia’s rivals in China are making inroads. Huawei and manufacturing partner Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. have improved their chip production technology, despite US attempts to limit their progress. The Kirin 9030 processor — part of Huawei’s latest flagship Mate 80 Pro Max smartphone — was produced using an evolved version of SMIC’s technology, research firm TechInsights has found.
Huawei’s smaller peer Cambricon is also planning to more than triple its production of AI chips in 2026, aiming to expand its market share in China and fill a void left by Nvidia.
Still, Nvidia’s AI accelerators are considered the gold standard for the AI industry, and some of the company’s older products are still more powerful than Huawei’s latest offerings — especially on a chip-by-chip basis.
Trump Orders Crackdown on Defense Industry Stock Buybacks President threatens to punish RTX, accuses it of not investing enough in infrastructure.
President Trump lashed out at U.S. weapons manufacturers Wednesday, announcing new restrictions on executive pay and stock buybacks while also threatening to cancel contracts with one of the country’s largest defense contractors.
An executive order posted Wednesday evening said companies “are not permitted in any way, shape, or form to pay dividends or buy back stock, until such time as they are able to produce a superior product, on time and on budget.”
Earlier Wednesday, Trump said in a Truth Social post that he would limit executive pay to $5 million, but the dollar figure wasn’t included in the executive order. It wasn’t clear how the administration intended to carry out the order beyond using the enforcement tools already available to Pentagon officials.
Trump also singled out contractor RTX in a separate social-media post, saying that the company “has been the least responsive” to the Pentagon’s needs and “the slowest in increasing their volume, and the most aggressive spending on their Shareholders rather than the needs and demands” of the U.S. military.
Either the company “steps up and starts investing in more upfront Investment like Plants and Equipment, or they will no longer be doing business with” the Pentagon, Trump added. (…)
Saying that he was addressing defense contractors and the defense industry, Trump wrote, that “…Defense Contractors are currently issuing massive Dividends to their Shareholders and massive Stock Buybacks, at the expense and detriment of investing in Plants and Equipment. This situation will no longer be allowed or tolerated!”
The post didn’t specify whether the order would curb CEO salaries, which are usually less than $5 million a year, or full compensation packages with stock options and bonuses often worth eight figures.
Defense stocks fell following Trump’s afternoon Truth Social post. RTX shares dropped more than 2% during the Wednesday trading session, while shares in Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics all fell 4% or more Wednesday. The companies’ shares rallied after hours, however, following another Truth Social post calling for a $1.5 trillion defense budget, more than $500 billion more than the Pentagon is expected to receive in the fiscal 2026 budget. (…)
Trump’s posts raised questions about legality of the restrictions on stock purchases and executive compensation, and how the government would enforce them.
“The executive order would affect the fundamental business models of U.S. defense contractors,” said Jamie Gorelick, a former deputy attorney general and Defense Department general counsel during the Clinton administration who is now a partner at WilmerHale.
The executive order “would also raise significant legal issues,” Gorelick said. “It’s extremely difficult to imagine a defense contractor raising any capital, or indeed having any shareholders if you cannot compensate the shareholders for their investments.” (…)
Some defense contractors have recently taken steps to shore up the administration’s support. Lockheed Martin said Tuesday it had struck a deal with the Pentagon to potentially more than triple production of Patriot missile interceptors to about 2,000 missiles a year. Under the agreement, Lockheed agreed to pay to expand its Patriot missile factory in return for Pentagon orders over a seven-year period.
“We will be aggressively exploring other opportunities to make sure that we can stretch every acquisition dollar to the benefit of the war fighter and the taxpayer,” Michael Duffey, the undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment, said Tuesday on a call announcing the Patriot deal with Lockheed. (…)
Data: Department of Defense, Axios research. Chart: Erin Davis/Axios Visuals
President Trump said he will ban large investors from buying single-family homes, the administration’s first significant move to address the country’s severe housing shortage.
“I am immediately taking steps to ban large institutional investors from buying more single-family homes, and I will be calling on Congress to codify it. People live in homes, not corporations,” Trump said in a social-media post Wednesday.
It isn’t clear if Trump can carry out such a ban without congressional approval, and big investors would still be able to hold on to their hundreds of thousands of existing homes. Yet if the president is able to enact a ban, it would likely ripple through a number of major housing markets across the country.
Wall Street’s presence in the housing market began growing after the subprime mortgage crisis started to erupt in 2007, even though institutional investors have never owned more than a tiny slice of the overall housing market. Some estimates put the figure around 2% to 3%.
But in several cities, investors hold a significant share of homes. During the pandemic housing boom, investors accounted for more than 20% of all home sales in some hot markets, including Houston, Miami, Phoenix and Las Vegas.
Sunbelt cities have been a particular target for institutional homeownership. A 2024 analysis by the Government Accountability Office said large institutions owned 25% of rental homes in Atlanta and 18% in Charlotte.
Investors of all sizes, including mom-and-pop landlords, spent billions of dollars buying homes over the past dozen years. At the 2022 peak, they purchased more than one in every four single-family homes sold. Most of these purchases were made by small investors looking to rent out properties. Investor purchases, alongside those made by traditional buyers, slowed when mortgage rates surged.
Single-family rental companies that buy up homes say they offer their residents an opportunity to live in upscale neighborhoods with good school districts that they wouldn’t be able to afford to own.
But growing voter anger over high homeownership costs has led government officials from both parties to try to crack down on institutional investors in their local markets. Nebraska, California, New York, Minnesota and North Carolina are among the states where lawmakers have proposed laws to restrict large investor home purchases, though most haven’t gone anywhere. (…)
Home building slowed considerably after the 2008-09 financial crisis caused home prices to plummet. That left many builders stuck with an excess of inventory. Wall Street firms, private-equity managers and other institutional investors bought tens of thousands of single-family homes, often in bulk at foreclosure auctions.
Trump would be hard-pressed to implement a legal ban without getting congressional approval. A bipartisan Senate bill last year that aimed to increase housing supply by streamlining certain federal programs and improving access to affordable mortgages passed the Senate unanimously. But it was blocked by House Republicans.
Democrats said they support limiting institutional investors from buying up homes, but objected to how Trump was going about it, and noted that Republicans have blocked similar attempts in the past. (…)
Corporations that invest in single-family homes would have several ways to argue that a ban is a violation of their constitutional rights, according to the American Bar Association.
“The pushback won’t just be from our industry,” said Sean Dobson, chief executive of Amherst, a single-family rental firm that owns about 47,000 homes. “This is anti-free-market, anti-property-rights kind of policy.” (…)
Shares of home builders also fell on Wednesday. These firms sometimes sell their excess supply to large investors or build homes specifically for these firms to rent. (…)
Bloomberg:
(…) It’s also important to note that large institutional investors, the target of the president’s proposal, own a very small share of America’s single-family homes — about 0.5%, according to Blackstone and the American Enterprise Institute. When it comes to rental units, the figure is slightly higher but still small: According to Invitation Homes Inc., a single-family rental operator that owns just over 100,000 homes, institutions that own more than 1,000 homes hold just 3.3% of the 14 million single-family rental units outstanding in the US. For context, there are about 85 million single-family homes in the country.
Notably, institutional purchases have declined significantly over the past few years for the same reason that households have pulled back on buying homes: Higher interest rates and rising costs have made homeowning less financially attractive than it was in the 2010s.
At the same time, even as they account for a small share of homeowners, institutional homeowners have been useful in providing liquidity and market stability over the past 15 years. During the foreclosure crisis in the early 2010s, home prices were falling, unemployment was high, bank balance sheets were stressed, and demand for rentals outpaced demand for purchases. Institutional homebuyers played a crucial role by buying up homes and renting them out. More recently, when homebuying demand plunged in late 2022 after the Federal Reserve raised interest rates, homebuilders were able to offload new homes they were struggling to sell to individuals to institutional investors.
Having a known “buyer of last resort” helps give homebuilders the confidence to build more homes than they otherwise might. They know that even if the market gets shaky and individual homebuyers get skittish, institutional investors are willing to buy. This ability to smooth out demand — selling homes primarily to households, a modest amount to build-to-rent operators, and then to institutional investors when market conditions turn challenging — is mutually beneficial. It helps de-risk an industry that’s inherently risky and cyclical, provides steady employment for construction workers and other tradespeople, and reduces the risk of homebuilder bankruptcies. (…)
If this is the most the industry can expect from the White House when it comes to housing, then homebuilders may be better off simply cutting production until market conditions improve. (…)
Apollo Global Management just released its US Housing Outlook chart package. Here are a few charts related to the above.
