The Labor Department just reported 189,000 new unemployment claims last week. PBS has reported it as the lowest since 1969 and even printed an economist saying there was nothing to worry about, even though the same economist warned layoffs were coming.

“There is nothing to worry about in this report. YET!,” HFE’s Chief Economist Carl Weinberg wrote in a note to clients. “At some point, elevated energy costs and prices for materials will cause firms to lay off marginal workers to protect profit margins.”

This is disinformation. I feel like I have to write about it the way someone in 1969 might have written about labor reports coming out of the Politburo in Moscow. The report counts people who filed a new state unemployment insurance application in one week. It counts nothing else. That is how disinformation works, by amplifying one true thing into a huge lie.

What’s missing from the proper context of unemployment numbers? Contractors cannot file. Gig workers cannot file. Federal workers who took the deferred resignation cannot file, because the resignation was voluntary on paper. Tech workers on severance file months later if they file at all. H1B holders risk their visa by filing. Workers who used up 26 weeks of benefits drop off and never come back. Workers whose hours were cut in half generate no claim. Workers locked out by broken state filing systems generate no claim.

Reporting only a narrow pipeline of W2 layoffs from covered employers in states that process applications on time, is a tiny slice of the labor market, and it’s probably the one that represents it the least.

Headlines have been flying about 100,000 jobs cut by the tech sector alone through April. Infamously cruel Oracle has boasted they would fire 30,000 in one round, to juice their stock price and attract Wall Street investors. Block said 4,000. Meta said at least 8,000 and probably a lot more. Microsoft offered buyouts to 7 percent of its American workforce. Quitting would logically come in at historic lows because workers are too scared to move in a market where layoff announcements are constant.

Besides all that, the 1969 comparison is dishonest. The labor force of 80 million does not match the 168 million today. The two periods and their respective numbers do not belong on the same axis.

Carl Weinberg of High Frequency Economics is who gave the most telling admission of what the wealthy value now. Nothing to worry about, he said, because the rise in cost of living (operational cost to employers) will force firms to lay off workers to protect margins. He was writing to his clients who can’t wait to see more layoffs. The workers being described as marginal, ejected to squeeze more money into the pockets of the investors, were not the audience.

Oxfam reported this same week that S&P 500 CEO pay rose 25.6 percent in 2025 while worker wages rose 1.3 percent. Twenty to one.

Time reported this same week that Oracle asked technical writers to document their workflows so AI could be trained on their work, then laid them off. 62 percent of those laid off were over 40, with many saying they thought they had a career. 27 percent had stock vesting within 90 days that the company clawed back, erasing past promises of equity. Oracle has a $400 billion market cap and just posted its best growth quarter in 15 years.

Variety reported this same week that Donnie Wahlberg offered to give back half his salary to film Boston Blue in Boston. CBS told him he could give back 100 percent of his pay and so could the rest of the cast and the show still could not afford to film there. The salaries cannot make a dent in the delta between Massachusetts tax policy and Ontario tax policy.

Each piece is reported as its own item. Together they describe a very different labor market than the White House wants anyone to see.

The Labor Department releases a measure for an economy that no longer exists. PBS says they see a chart pointing down, and pulls in an economist who tells capital to go to sleep.

In short, all the people losing their jobs in 2026 are being told by their own government that they do not exist, because to exist would mean they are worth something.