“If you can learn to create a state of mind that is not affected by the market’s behavior, the struggle will cease to exist.” — Mark Douglas

1. Private Employers Add 109,000 Jobs in April, the Fastest Pace of Job Growth Since January 2025 — The U.S. added 109,000 jobs to private payrolls last month, the fastest pace of job growth since January 2025, according to the ADP National Employment Report released Wednesday morning. Healthcare continued to drive job growth, but April’s robust hiring was also helped along by a rebound in trade, transportation, and utilities. During the first quarter, private employers added an average of 46,300 jobs on a monthly basis. In fact, the private sector has managed to post positive job growth every single month so far this year. That’s in contrast to total nonfarm payroll data produced by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which posted a massive decline in job growth in February in the combined private and public sectors.
2. Corporate Layoffs Are Down 10% This Year, but the AI Reckoning Has Come for Tech — Layoffs in the first four months of the year totaled 300,749, according to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a level 50% lower than the same period last year when enormous federal-worker job cuts dominated the start of President Trump’s second term. Private-sector layoffs were 10% lower than this time last year.
Now AI is upending workplaces in ways both real and whitewashed. Tech has been hardest-hit, with firms letting go of more than 85,000 employees so far this year, a 33% increase over the same period in 2025, Challenger data show. The cuts keep coming, with fresh announcements in May of thousands more workers cut at PayPal and the elimination of “pure managers” at Coinbase.
3. U.S. Debt Tops 100% of GDP — As of March 31, the country’s publicly held debt was $31.265 trillion, while GDP over the preceding year was $31.216 trillion, according to data released Thursday. That puts the ratio at 100.2%, compared with 99.5% when the last fiscal year ended Sept. 30. That figure will likely climb for the foreseeable future because the federal government is running historically large annual deficits of nearly 6% of GDP, which add to the debt. The government also becomes more sensitive to interest rates as debt grows. One in seven dollars of federal spending now goes to interest. A 0.1 percentage-point interest-rate increase would cost $379 billion over 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
4. US Jobs Rise 115,000 in Strongest Two-Month Gain Since 2024 — Nonfarm payrolls rose 115,000 last month after an even bigger surge in March, marking the strongest two-month increase since 2024, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data out Friday. The unemployment rate was unchanged at 4.3%. The advance in hiring was led by healthcare, which has been the primary driver of job growth over the last year. Transportation and warehousing and retail trade both added the most jobs since 2024. Employment in couriers and messenger services added almost 38,000 jobs, the most since 2020. Manufacturing employment fell slightly.

The week ahead — Economic data from Econoday.com:

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 13th, 2026 at 5:43 pm and is filed under Weekly Summary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.