Wall Street’s Bounty Doesn’t Extend to the Job Market

The message from America’s big banks this earnings season encapsulates the tension underlying its economy: Business is booming for the industry, but hiring isn’t.

The nation’s technology titans send the same message with each round of layoffs even as they plough hundreds of billions of dollars into their artificial intelligence ambitions. More broadly, the economy grew at its fastest pace in two years in the third quarter, notwithstanding a hiring rate that was the weakest since 2011 excluding the worst days of the Covid pandemic. The question is whether this “jobless expansion” is sustainable, and what stagnant headcount in the good times implies for more challenging economic periods.