What if the job market had a Spotify Wrapped?
If you subscribe to the music streaming giant Spotify, you’ve probably received what has become something akin to an end-of-year tradition: your Spotify Wrapped playlist.
That’s when Spotify tells you the artists and songs and genres you listened to most over the past 12 months. Then it’s up to you whether you want to publicly disclose on social media that, yes, your top artist is Captain & Tennille and yes, you listened to 3,500 minutes of yacht rock in July.
Because we got the last jobs report for calendar 2024 on Friday, we thought it would be fitting to create our own version of Spotify Wrapped for the American labor market — the songs that captured the ebbs and flows of the workforce we devote so much coverage to. The perfect playlist for plugging away.
Economist Olu Sonola at Fitch Ratings wants you to know that he actually isn’t a huge fan of early 2000s post-grunge pop-rock. It’s just that when I asked him what song would best describe the trajectory of the labor market in 2024, what immediately popped into his head was: “If I go crazy, then will you still call me Superman?”
“The Fed was supposed to be the kryptonite of the U.S. labor market. That didn’t happen, right? And I’m thinking of the labor market pretty much in superhuman terms,” Sonola said.
We started the year at 3.7% unemployment. The Federal Reserve didn’t cut rates until September and unemployment is still really low. That’s unusual — especially when you look outside our borders.
Which brings us to Bank of America economist Stephen Juneau’s selection.
“‘Not Like Us,’ by Kendrick Lamar,” he said. “Because when you compare the U.S., you know, us, to the rest of the world, we’re just really the standout.”
Our unemployment rate right now is 4.2%. The eurozone’s is over 6%. Canada’s is nearly 7%, and I don’t think Drake has filed for unemployment over there — yet.
Still, even if U.S. workers had an objectively better 2024 than many of their foreign counterparts, every consumer sentiment survey and political poll said we didn’t feel that way.
Betsey Stevenson at the University of Michigan said if she had to describe the labor market in 2024, she’d turn to the lyrics of Demi Lovato.
“We added over 2 million jobs, real wages are up, and yet the response of the public is: ‘It’s complicated,'” Stevenson said. “I think it’s underrated.”
Stevenson is hopeful the labor market will remain strong in 2025. But she wouldn’t say she’s 100% confident.