Good morning, investors. Official government data is always revised after the fact, and that makes it a faulty compass for steering the economy.

But the central bank relies on it anyway, using inflation and jobs data to decide how to adjust the price of capital. As it happens, the latest monetary policy decision was built on a forecast that’s become stale just days later.

One week ago, the Federal Reserve forecasted that the unemployment rate would peak at 4.5% this year.

That informed policymakers’ decision to lower interest rates by 25 basis points for the third time in 2025.

Yet data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics out Tuesday showed the unemployment rate actually rose to 4.6% in November, the highest in four years and a sizable jump from the 4.4% seen in September.

So much for the Fed calling the top.

The report also showed that the US:

If we take those numbers at face value — with the understanding that they will be revised later on — the economy has lost jobs in three of the last six months.

This underscores the central bank’s fundamental limitation as a backward-looking institution. Sophisticated as its economic models and calculations may be, they are based on historical data.

And while it feels redundant to spell out in plain language, lagging economic data does not make the best crystal ball for policy decisions.

The fact the Fed’s latest estimate turned bad after one week is a fitting reminder of this.

To be fair, this particular jobs report had more shortcomings than usual, distorted by the government shutdown and data delays.

That said, the broader trend of a slowing labor market remains hard to ignore.

Job growth has essentially stagnated since the spring while sentiment surveys tied to finding and keeping a job have deteriorated.

“The US economy is in a hiring recession,” Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal, wrote in a post on X.

“Almost no jobs have been added since April,” she said, adding that 710,000 more people are unemployed now versus November 2024.

Concerning, too, is that the number of people forced into part-time work for economic reasons rose by nearly a million in just a couple months.

As smooth a path that the Fed’s PhDs and model-driven forecasts predicted, the economic data has communicated a different reality.

Policymakers will, understandably, downplay this single report and point to cleaner and more reliable data ahead.

Still, the credibility hit that comes with a forecast turning obsolete within seven days is difficult to shrug off — especially for job-seekers and hiring managers navigating the real economy.

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🚗 A judge ruled Tesla engaged in deceptive marketing. The marketing, according to the judge, gave customers a false impression of the capabilities of the company’s Autopilot and self-driving capabilities. Tesla has 90 days to modify or remove previous language. (Yahoo Finance)

📉Gas prices have fallen near a five-year low. An oversupply of oil, seasonal patterns, and weaker gasoline demand have dragged prices at the pump to $2.89 a gallon for the first time since April 2021. (Barron’s)

I sat down with Nancy Tengler, a top-1% portfolio manager on Wall Street the last 11 years, to discuss her highest conviction stock picks for 2026, why she doesn’t buy into AI bubble talk, and how she sees the chip race unfolding in the months ahead.

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🗓December 17, 1971: Finance leaders met at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington to agree to an adjustment of global exchange rates, effectively devaluing the US dollar and loosening the original Bretton Woods restraints. 

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📰 I’m Phil Rosen, co-founder and editor-in-chief of Opening Bell Daily. I’ve published books, lived on three continents, and won awards for my journalism, which has appeared in Business Insider, Fortune, Yahoo Finance, Bloomberg and Inc. Magazine.

I write our flagship newsletter and host our show, Full Signal, to prepare you for each trading day — unpacking markets, economic data and Wall Street with analysis you won’t find anywhere else.

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