🚨The US labor market just cracked, but not all the way.

Nonfarm payrolls added only 57,000 jobs in June, badly missing the 110,000 estimate. That is one of the weakest prints in over a year, and it comes right after May's gains were flattered by World Cup and Memorial Day hiring in leisure and hospitality that always looked temporary.
And yet unemployment fell to 4.2%.
That combination is not a contradiction; it is the labor market's version of a slow puncture. Hiring is stalling. Companies are not adding headcount. But they are not laying people off in large numbers either. The unemployment rate is falling partly because fewer people are being pushed into the job market to begin with, not because the market is thriving.
This is exactly the "low hire, low fire" economy the Fed has been describing for months. It is not a crash. It is a slow stall, and it puts the Fed in a genuinely difficult spot heading into the next meeting. Weak enough to justify a cut, resilient enough to keep them hesitant.
The labor market is not breaking. It is just quietly running out of momentum.