A widely watched labor market sentiment indicator has dropped to its lowest level since early 2017, excluding the pandemic spike, signaling potential trouble ahead for the U.S. job market.
What Happened: On Wednesday, The Kobeissi Letter shared the results of the recent Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence survey, showing that the gap between the percentage of Americans who say jobs are “plentiful” and those who say they are “hard to get” has shrunk to just 11.1%.
Seen by many economists as a forward-looking signal for labor market strength or weakness, historically, the narrowing of this spread has almost always been followed by a rise in unemployment. The spread is now at its lowest level since 2017, ignoring the spike seen …