An ominous portent, to understate it: US hiring intentions for the September quarter sank to their lowest ebb since 2009

image generated by Google Gemini

In addition, seasonal recruitment projections have fallen precipitously from last year’s levels. At the same time, planned job cuts have surged to heights not witnessed since the darkest months of the COVID-19 pandemic, when entire sectors contracted under the weight of lockdowns and economic paralysis. Employers are bracing for further and greater turbulence, shedding labour where they can and withholding opportunities where they might once have expanded. And the principal culprit being cited? Why, the tariffs that our fearless leader claims are going to save our economy. This is the inevitable consequence when a nation of the economically illiterate—not that I profess any particular genius in the field myself—entrusts its fortunes to an economic illiterate who, corrupt to the hilt and beholden to foreign despots, was once again elevated to high office after having proven to be an abject failure in his first run. #Murica —Arthur Newhook, 2 October 2025.

{Yahoo Finance 2 October} ‘US hiring plans sink to lowest since 2009 in September as labor market slowdown continues’

{alternate text for the above image} A graphic illustration, evocative of mid-20th century Pop Art, delineates a tableau of fiscal pandemonium. In the foreground, a statuesque female figure with a platinum blonde coiffure and a demure verdant frock stands immobilised, her visage a study in profound disquietude, her eyes wide with unutterable consternation. Surrounding her, the floor of a financial bourse erupts in a paroxysm of hysteria. A cacophonous throng of male financiers, their features contorted in agony, gesticulate wildly amidst a maelstrom of plummeting indices displayed on electronic boards. The composition starkly juxtaposes her static, doe-eyed paralysis against the kinetic frenzy of capitalist collapse, creating a powerful allegory of innocence confronting a cataclysm of avarice.

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