The US Bureau of Labor Statistics just released its "Employment Situation" report for December 2025: - Unemployment rate dropped from 4.5% to 4.4%, but in recent months has been the highest since October 2021 - The number of unemployed people was 7.5 million in December - Initial jobless claims dropped by 1k and remained low at 209,000 (slightly above the expected 205k) - Labor force participation rate (62.4%) and the employment-population ratio (59.7%) changed little in December - The number of people employed part-time for economic reasons didn't change much in December but was up by 980,000 year over the year (!) The labor data continues to have a gaping hole where the October data should be due to the government shutdown. The BLS report seems to be confirming that the labor market is currently "somewhat stable", as mentioned recently by Jerome Powell. Healthy signal or the quiet before the (AI) storm?