Dear Reader,
Happy Wednesday.
Today is December 24th — Christmas Eve — and what a wonderful, special day this is, especially if you have younger kids and you’re caught up in the spirit of the season. There really is nothing quite like it.
But today, I want to talk about something very different: the job market, and what I believe is quietly becoming one of the most important economic stories in America right now.
Recently, I’ve been car shopping because my mechanic told me I needed to make a decision — either sell my Jeep now or brace myself for a long list of expensive repairs. So I decided to start looking around. And I have been absolutely stunned by what I’m seeing.
The average price of a new car has jumped from roughly $38,000 in 2020 to around $50,000 today — a 33% increase in just five years.
That’s the kind of price change that, in any other era, would be enough to spark real political and social consequences. It’s enough to genuinely anger people.
And look, I can afford it, thankfully, but I think about families like the one I grew up in — a single mother working hard, going to school at night, trying to hold everything together — and I honestly do not know how they’re doing it today.
That made me want to take a closer look at the labor market again, something we haven’t dug into here for a while.
And when you really look at the numbers, the picture is concerning. Full-time employment is falling at an alarming rate. In October and November alone, the U.S. lost nearly 1 million full-time jobs, bringing the total down to the lowest level since late 2021. Only about 78% of the labor force is now employed full-time — also the lowest since 2021. That’s the kind of pattern we typically see during recessions.
At the same time, part-time work is exploding.
Over a million part-time jobs were added in those same two months, bringing that total to a record high. The number of Americans working two or more jobs has surged to an all-time record, and that number has risen by nearly four million since 2020. We now even have more part-time workers than we did during the 2008 financial crisis.
Put simply, one job in America increasingly isn’t enough to pay the bills. People are working full-time and still needing a side hustle just to get by. That’s not a strong labor market. That’s a stressed population.
And you can see confirmation of that stress in the markets. Gold keeps hitting new highs. Silver keeps hitting new highs. Markets are forward-looking instruments — they tell you what investors believe is coming. And right now, what gold and silver are screaming is that investors expect inflation to remain high, and possibly even worsen.
This is also why we’ve been spending so much time on our new project America First Fortunes, where we’ve been focusing on companies that benefit from this environment — not suffer from it.
Strategic manufacturing, critical technology, national security infrastructure….
The parts of the economy they simply cannot afford to let fail.
If you aren’t a part of this project yet, make sure you check it out now.
So where does that leave us heading into 2026?
The Federal Reserve is in an incredibly difficult position.
If they lower rates too aggressively to help the job market, they risk igniting inflation again.
If they don’t lower them enough, the job market deteriorates further and consumer pain increases.
It’s a high-wire act, and I don’t envy them.
But I honestly don’t know how they avoid cutting rates more meaningfully at some point — because employment stability is one of their two mandates. The other is protecting the purchasing power of the dollar. And if inflation runs too hot for too long, history tells us that leads to social unrest and political instability.
That’s the danger zone we are flirting with. And if we don’t get this right, we’re going to see even more populism, more anger on both sides, and more extreme political figures emerging with radical economic ideas — because people in pain become desperate.
Before I close, I want to take a moment to acknowledge someone very important to our Behind the Markets family.
One of our longtime members, Cindy B., was in a terrible car accident over the weekend. Her car was absolutely destroyed, and she is currently in the hospital recovering.
She is one of the kindest, warmest people I have ever interacted with through this community. It is nothing short of a miracle that she is still with us.
On behalf of all of us here, we are keeping her in our thoughts and prayers and wishing her a strong and speedy recovery.
Have a wonderful Christmas tomorrow. Hug your families. Enjoy the warmth of the day. And be grateful — because life is fragile, and every day is a gift.
“The Buck Stops Here,”
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Written by Dylan Jovine