'Yikes': Top investment bank looks under the hood of the economy and finds 'the labor market doesn't look that good' [View all]

Fortune
‘Yikes’: Top investment bank looks under the hood of the economy and finds ‘the labor market doesn’t look that good’
Nick Lichtenberg, Eva Roytburg
Mon, November 10, 2025 at 8:29 AM PST 6 min read

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/yikes-top-investment-bank-looks-162906862.html
"A leading investment bank has delivered an arresting diagnosis of the U.S. economy: the labor market, long a pillar of resilience, may be in real trouble. In their latest economic outlook, UBS economists led by Jonathan Pingle painted a picture of mounting weakness that extends well beyond headline job numbers, warning of a growing risk to households and the broader recovery.
The latest “US Economics Weekly” note from the Swiss investment bank came with bated breath ahead of the impending end of the federal government shutdown. Economists and market-watchers have been deprived of federal economic data for over 40 days, something that former Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner Erica Groshen likened to “flying blind” in late October. If the government does reopen, Pingle’s team said it expects jobs data for September to be released next week, and potentially the October inflation report, the Consumer Price Index.
Economists need that data now more than ever. For much of the year, top economists, including Fed Chair Jerome Powell, have said we’re in a “low hire, low fire” jobs market. For much of the year, employers were laconic in hiring, and seemed afraid to fire their workers; perhaps still wounded from the pandemic-era “Great Resignation.” UBS isn’t alone on Wall Street in worrying that, maybe the “low-fire” part of the equation isn’t quite true anymore.
Now, “there are plenty of available workers that, on the whole, businesses probably don’t feel the need to hold on to workers for longer than necessary,” Veronica Clark, a Citigroup Inc. economist, told Bloomberg.
Meanwhile, Dan North, senior economist at Allianz Trade Americas, also told Bloomberg that “you’ve got a substantial number of well-established companies making pretty big head cuts.”
People are getting laid off and not hired again
Firing is running higher than advertised, UBS argued, citing the fact that “unemployment insurance claims, layoff announcements and WARN notices have all been running ahead of the pre-pandemic pace. Even the lagged Business Employment Dynamics data, the gold standard of data on job creation and job destruction dynamics has been showing the pace of job loss at or above the pre-pandemic pace through the latest data.”