That this got interpreted a "no one wants to work anymore" and "quiet quitting" (during the fastest increase in employment ever!) is patient zero of the vibecession IMO.

Apparently I learned today that 260k jobs is enough to have decent net growth because immigration has cratered so much and now I’m depressed.

a graph of the unemployment rate for native and foreign born americans

a graph of the employment rate for native and foreign born americans

Unsurprisingly, Trump's immigration crackdown is still not delivering labor market improvements for the US-born

Over the last year, the native-born unemployment rate has increased from 4.2% to 4.3%, while native-born employment rates have decreased

Looking at total or just prime-age employment misses the more acute changes in labor market dynamics associated with the introduction of AI and uneven post-Covid recovery. The anticipated effects seem to be largely concentrated among entry-level workers and recent grads.

In last months data the labor force participation gap has dropped another point from -12.3 in February to -13.3 in March, driven mostly by the continued decline in employment among 20-24 year olds.

Labor force participation for ages 20-24 has been falling consistently for the las 25 years and never saw the same post-Covid rebound as prime-age employment. With AI disruption seemingly concentrated in new hires, the growing gap is concerning.

You can also find my CV at johnbryonmeyer.com, or read my work at jackbmeyer.substack.com

Feel free to reach out if this overlaps with your work or if you know of any relevant opportunities. I’m open to fellowships, contributing roles, or project-based research support--academic, think tank, industry, or otherwise.

In light of the discussion around LLM-augmented application materials contributing to a more relationship-based hiring model, I want to reiterate that I am on the market for data/research/editorial roles, particularly in: innovation, antitrust, trade, and development policy.

I don’t mean to be the guy that yells “procedure!” at every major international escalation, but where’s the congressional authorization? It won’t change much, but it’s past time for some legislative accountability. Support for these reckless interventions should mean a list of names on a resolution.

The “trust but verify” approach to LLM output limits my productivity gains by forcing me to learn new methods in order to keep up. The final product is qualitatively better, but I can imagine the quantitative advantage of just letting it rip

A major tension in AI use as an early career researcher is the learning vs productivity tradeoff. I could probably 10X my output if I lowered my standards for reviewing AI-augmented code, but that might be at the expense of developing a robust working knowledge of my own research

Economists are often maligned for straying beyond their subject-area knowledge, but I find mechanism design appealing precisely because it offers an overarching framework for managing interests and incentives under conditions of hidden, private, local or otherwise asymmetric information

Health care continues to be a key driver of Vermont’s rising cost of living. Aging demographics and rural community reliance on emergency care services are raising systemwide costs, with downstream budget impacts on education spending and other state employment

That’s right

The legislative and judicial incentives to defer authority and acquiesce to executive consolidation always rested on the fragile assumption that bipartisan norms would prevail across administrations

Durable institutional reform must look beyond the past year of executive abuse and reckon with the ongoing abdication (if not outright refusal) of congressional responsibility to meaningfully constrain national security agencies and curtail the capacity to inflict state violence

We are witnessing the outcome of decades of unchecked expansion of the security state, a project that collapsed the distinction between law enforcement and national security, weakened oversight and accountability, and consolidated authority within the executive branch

A graph of US data center construction, which rises from $15B to $42B from 2022 to 2025

US data center construction inched up to a new record high in data released today, exceeding a $42B annualized rate (and this only includes the data center facilities, not the expensive computers within)

Growth has slowed down, but investment is still up 18.5% over the last year

These trends are reinforced by demographics and affordability. Vermont has a shrinking share of young professionals, alongside a widening gap between income and housing costs, making it increasingly difficult to attract and retain early-career workers.

The problem isn’t captured in headline employment figures. Vermont’s labor market appears tight, with persistently high job vacancies, as labor force participation trends downward pointing to a shrinking pool of available workers rather than strong underlying growth.

Most of the spending is concentrated in healthcare, even in education the growing cost burden can be traced back to insurance, and while ending one-off pandemic programs provides a limited stop-gap, Vermont needs to address the structural imbalance that comes with an older population

Some good and bad in the budget, but Vermont's most pressing concern as far as state expenditures should be growing revenue against an aging tax base below replacement. We're a few years out from a fiscal wall unless we can attract more young professionals to the state.

Amid all the noise it’s important to remember that no matter how you index historical prices $700 billion for Greenland is decidedly the worst deal in the history of US territorial acquisition

But I just solved the economy

My proposed solution: we eliminate application materials entirely and introduce an auction theoretic hiring framework in which prospective applicants simply bid Claude tokens for the opportunity to interview for the position.

The problem: LLMs undermine the efficacy of cover letters and screening questions as a costly signal of applicant skill and effort in the hiring process, such that they lose their informational content and no longer reliably communicate applicant quality.

E.P.A. to Stop Considering Lives Saved by Limiting Air Pollution In a reversal, the agency plans to calculate only the cost to industry when setting pollution limits, and not the monetary value of saving human lives, documents show.

Breaking News: The EPA will stop considering lives saved when setting pollution limits and instead calculate only the cost to businesses.

A regional beer market consolidation case study; The Shed was a local brewpub acquired by Otter Creek in 2011, owned by Long Trail as of 2010, acquired by Mass Bay in 2022, merged with Finestkind to form Barrel One Collective in 2024, now the largest craft brewer in New England

I have no idea what's going on. And I will be vindicated by history.