Hello and welcome to The Download. I'm your host Dave Richardson, and it is time for Jobs Friday with Canada's formerly hardest working economist Eric Lascelles. Eric, welcome. Instead of being here on Jobs Friday, you're here the following week because you were actually on vacation. And then we normally put on our lumberjack shirts to denote hard work and effort that people out in the economy, getting jobs and working hard, and you've become like a suit guy. So I hope this is not a sign that you're no longer Canada's hardest working economist.

They say dress for the job you want to have, Dave, not the job that you do have. I'm just trying to think of what job requires a suit these days. Not that many, but I did a BNN a moment ago, is the honest answer, and so they did oblige me to fancy up a bit.

I know. As Eric said when he came on, he did a BNN hit and that's the major leagues. Now he's on in the minor leagues here on the Download podcast, but we love him anyways, even though he's dressed wrong. Anyways, but we'll get to that. So Eric, I guess we did end up landing on a day when some significant news came out, which is why you were on BNN. And that is inflation. Anything in there that was interesting, unexpected?

Yeah, so this is US inflation. I should mention we've called this Jobs Friday. This is actually inflation. What day is it now? Wednesday. Just so people aren't too thrown off by our ability to predict the inflation number that arrives several days after Jobs Friday. But US inflation came out for the month of May. To no one's surprise, at the headline level, there is still a bit of heat. Here we are still with this war with Iran and energy prices that are still elevated, and even just purely in an energy sense, it's still trickling through into the numbers, even though, you could say the price of oil probably isn't any higher at the end of May than it was at the end of April, but it's certainly still fairly hot. And so we did get that heat. I guess maybe further to that, the annual inflation print, as expected, has increased further. And this is probably the peak number, though I guess that does depend on certain outcomes with the war and oil not spiking further. But headline US CPI is now 4.2% year over year. So we've got a 4% handle on that thing, which, of course, no one much likes. Probably the peak, again, barring some great further intensification and blockage of the Strait of Hormuz. The market, though, feels okay about this, it seems. And I think that's significantly because the core inflation numbers weren't quite as bad as feared. So we got a 0.2%. 0.3 was what was expected. No one is surprised that, of course, energy prices are higher. The debate is to what extent is it broadening into other categories. That's the fear. That's the genie that gets hard to put back in the bottle. This is May data, the third straight month in which we're seeing the consequences of the energy shock. Classically, after about 3 months is when you get a little nervous about the second-order effects. The fact that core inflation was only up 0.2% is, I guess, being viewed as a minor victory. Core inflation annually is still just under 3%, which isn't 2%, let the record show, but still isn't too, too bad. And so, I think that's essentially where the market has landed right now.

I was talking to Stu Kedwell the other day. We had him on. And we were just talking about how markets just seem to be desensitized to the war. And that you go back into March and April, and every day there'd be news one way or the other around the war. Of course, the start of the war, energy prices shoot up. But then you had a ceasefire. Okay, we're going to have an agreement soon. Trust me, we're going to have it. Oh no, no, we don't have an agreement and we're back. Oh, we're going to have an agreement. And as we back and forth on that, and the markets would move up and down and be highly responsive to every little word that was said by either side or any intermediary. And then all of a sudden, it just seems like there's no good news there. It's extended a long time. You're seeing it in the inflation numbers and markets just kind of shrug it off. And bond yields are modestly higher. And you've seen over the last few days at least some of the froth coming off some of the hotter areas of the market. Things that are related to artificial intelligence and storage and chips and things like that. But really, the market just plows through. There were some missiles launched over the last 48 hours back and forth, and it just doesn't seem to be impacting things. And then again, things were looking a little bit negative this morning, but then this inflation number came out and it's not great, but it just seems to be a little better than expected, and we just carry on. How much longer does this war carry on before we really see some permanent damage with respect to inflation and then economic growth?

Yeah, that’s a great question. The way I would frame markets' mentality right now is they're looking for excuses to be happy as opposed to looking for excuses to be sad. And so that's very much been the focus, notwithstanding a few wobbles in the last few days. I think that's right. We've been pleasantly surprised by the resilience of the market in the face of this very real challenge. Not to underestimate things, but of course you can equally say, West Texas Intermediate oil is $89. That's a big number. It's certainly not $60, which of course it was not long before this war began. Equally, we have spent time in the mid 80s loosely before without disaster befalling the world. And so I'm less concerned than I was when it was the triple double-digit situation, which is historically more damaging. I mention the price of oil in part just because, of course, that is the central variable that's affecting everything, but also because this is a physical commodity, and so it would seem, despite everyone's concern that there's a missing somewhere between 5 and 20 million barrels of oil a day, it does seem as though the market is sorting itself out in a way that isn't demanding extraordinarily high oil prices, and so that would lead you to believe that maybe the market isn't dead wrong, the economy certainly can survive, we think, at 80-something-dollar oil. But I take your point, which is, in theory, the idea here was, listen, the longer this lasts, the higher oil prices should go. It shouldn't just be a war equals add $20 to $40 to the price of oil. It should be a war equals add— I don't know what it would be— but $5 to the price of oil each month and it just keeps going higher and higher. We've certainly peddled in that kind of analysis as well. The shortages get more intense and the inventory levels diminish and so on. So it does make us nervous as this war is not seemingly resolved. By the way, I've been quite the sucker for every time a deal seems tentatively announced, I'm nearly convinced it's on the cusp. I do still feel, foolishly maybe, that there are strong incentives on both sides to reach a deal. I'm still going to say I think this is a temporary shock. But here we are now a good 3 months in, and not to suggest there are specific delineation points or tripwires that suddenly change the story completely, but one very loose rule of thumb is after an energy shock has lasted about 3 months, that's when you often start to see some broadening of the consequences, at least in terms of other price categories, and those get harder to reverse. Again, one of the reasons I think the market's feeling good— and I guess granted that was sort of the month 2 to 3— would be the May data, but nevertheless didn't get too much. But I mean, we're nervous about that broadening out if this were to persist a few more months for sure. I think the real focus in terms of inventory shortages might be the distillates and these sorts of things. Of course, jet fuel has attracted particular attention. The good news there is that initially there was quite a bit of concern and that concern has been pushed back to some extent. I read numerous newspaper headlines claiming that Europe was going to run out of jet fuel by the end of May, and they haven't. I have seen new estimates that would say they're okay into the fall. I think we are seeing some resourcefulness here, and the initial set of estimates proved to be a little bit too bleak. We are seeing an economy doing what it does best, which is adjust and prioritize and put the energy product where it needs to be and where it's most demanded. But all the same, yeah, if this continues another 2 months, we will need to revise down our growth forecasts and to revise up our inflation forecasts because that will then be materially exceeding our expectations. And you would think the pain should grow nonlinearly if it were to persist several more months. So that does make us nervous. Equally, maybe foolishly, I still think there's scope for some sort of deal. And again, whether it is 2 weeks or 2 months from now, I do feel quite strongly it is inherently a temporary shock, but there is a certain amount of damage that can accumulate if it's not resolved relatively quickly from here.

And I think it just highlights that you have to watch the hyperbole around any of this stuff. I was sitting in London in the second week of April, so we were there on a Tuesday morning, pick up the paper and talking about the UK running out of jet fuel before our Friday departure time. And again, that was 2 months ago, and clearly everything's fine. And so, just on the flip side of the last question that I just asked you, how strong was the economy? When you think about it in hindsight now, how strong was the global economy and where were we going to be without this war? Because if you're just chugging along at $60 to $65 oil and the route we were taking, markets were hitting all-time highs, but they're still hitting all-time highs or thereabouts. If we go back to February, without the war, where do you think we'd be right now? It seems like we were headed for some pretty impressive growth.

It does seem that way, you're quite right. And we'll never know exactly. But I will say— and this is patting ourselves on the back— we've been above consensus in our growth forecast for a while. We've been talking a lot about some pretty significant tailwinds that were relevant for 2026 and potentially 2027. So the lag benefit from earlier rate cuts still very real, if maybe fading a little bit. Lots of fiscal stimulus and infrastructure spending. And now we've got gas subsidies and military boosts and all sorts of other things. Some tax cuts too in many markets. The AI CapEx story, the AI productivity story. The stock market wealth effect, which there's a bit of a circularity there as we try and justify the stock market on that basis. But nevertheless, I think your point would be, yeah, possibly we'd be seeing economic numbers that were a percentage point plus stronger than we're actually getting, which in the US context would mean very strong indeed. Even the latest job number for the US, and indeed a few months now consecutively, have been surprisingly strong. And we're still getting perfectly adequate and indeed even pretty good numbers, even after the shock. So, yeah, it's interesting to think about that and hard to say whether central banks would have felt compelled to hike rates more or not, because of course, they wouldn't be dealing with quite as much inflation all the same. And the big debate— and this is an appropriate one as Kevin Warsh steps into the role as Fed chair— he's been a big proponent of this idea, but the idea that, if this is indeed a period of rapid technological change with AI as the flag bearer for that, the extent to which that could be a deflationary force and allow rates to be held lower despite fast economic growth. We have some sympathies towards that. We've been penciling higher our productivity growth assumptions on the basis of the contribution of AI. Again, that's ree growth. It's growth that doesn't require a compensatory offset from the central bank, which is nice. It's tricky, though, Dave, because I think you can speak quite confidently, if AI is the big deal— most people think that it is— that it should be a deflationary force. Companies aren't going to be investing in this if it's not saving the money over the long run at least. It's a bit more blurry in the short run though, in my view, just because of course the computer chips and the memory chips, there's a very high rate of inflation associated with those right now. I was just seeing estimates that the average computer is likely to be a little bit more expensive in a year's time. If that sounds unremarkable, well, normally computers become less expensive over time. It's a funny situation where we're maybe not getting the deflationary benefit right off the front, but you'd think there's something out there. I'm sure that's part of the thinking that Kevin Warsh is going to do as he, probably for the moment at least, tries not to have to raise rates in the US. Then we'll see later whether that proves viable or not by the end of the year.

This is this always a gentle balancing act that you're playing. But clearly, technology is having an impact everywhere. And artificial intelligence, in terms of the productivity, is clearly making the economy behave a little differently than we've seen historically, in different areas. But you get the jobs numbers last Friday when you were on vacation. Maybe you didn't see this, but there were some really good numbers out of the US and Canada around jobs where, again, you’d think the robots are taking all the jobs, but they're not. And it's not like the population is growing. We've seen immigration basically come to a halt largely. And these were pretty good numbers last week.

Yeah, that's absolutely right. The US pulled off 172,000 more jobs, which was well above consensus, and it's a few months in a row now in which the US number grows. I think we say this every podcast, but if that sounds like a normal number to you, you maybe haven't been watching closely over the last year or so because as you said, immigration has declined in the US, population growth has really ground almost to a halt, and so a normal rate of job creation might be— I think I give a different number every time, but let's call it loosely 30,000 to 50,000 per month. This is tripling or quintupling that even. So a pretty good number there. We've been watching with particular interest weekly jobless claims during this energy shock just because it comes out every week. We've now got 12+ prints to inform us as to what's happening. We're seeing no real evidence, I should emphasize, of high-level labor market damage. That's equally relevant when we talk about AI in the sense that not seeing the unemployment rate just ticking higher at this juncture. In fact, it stayed unchanged at 4.3% for the US. Canada's had a bit of a patchier experience on the labor market side and really almost weirdly strong job numbers last fall. We were suspicious. Our suspicions were confirmed then when the numbers in the early part of 2026 were extremely weak, and we viewed that as probably just offsetting the weird strength and probably exaggerating the weakness. But then we just did get the May number, and it was up 88,000 jobs, which is a big figure. And so it undid— I'm forgetting if it was a -84 or -85 that we got not long ago. And so we're just getting these funny swings. But the takeaway is I think you've seen very mild job losses in Canada through the first 5 months of the year, consistent with an outright shrinking population in Canada. We've got a more intense kind of rebound or I guess the opposite drop after an immigration surge. And overall, over the span of a year, you would say the unemployment rate is actually a hair lower than it was a year ago. And so things are loosely holding together despite a lack of GDP growth in the most recent reported quarters. And just to pull AI into the conversation, I think we're all anxious about the possible effects of AI in the labor market. You think of the wonderful benefits to productivity and efficiency and the stock market and certain companies and so on, but you also worry a bit about the sectors that lose from AI. And that's still being sorted out. But some software companies would be the market's initial guess as to possible losers from that. But then equally workers. Will workers be displaced? It's hard to say. So, you look at the data. There's been some research that would say when you dig right into recent graduates and you look at those who are in sectors that are most theoretically affected by AI, they seem to be doing a little bit worse. And so that's concerning, certainly. I've recently seen a rebuttal to that, Dave, which said, actually, the young workers started doing worse in 2021, and the theory is that work from home has been the damaging phenomenon. And companies have said, it's harder to integrate young workers and it's harder to get them up to speed. They're just less attractive. It's no better for the young worker, by the way. It still says it is a tougher time right now for young workers. But it's actually a little blurry whether it really is AI. Whenever you see companies doing layoffs— and of course there are some right now, but on the net, not an extraordinary number— the habit is to blame whatever the current macro force is and say, oh, well, it's AI that's causing us to do this. You find it's often a bit of a blurrier mix of things that are doing the driving. As we think through the scenarios— and this is way off track, Dave— but as we think through where could AI end up, there are scenarios where it is quite problematic for labor. I'd like to think policymakers step in and achieve some balance if that were to be the clear trend. It's just not yet. We think the most likely scenario is this is a productivity enhancer. It does destroy some jobs. All new technologies are disruptive. The term creative disruption or destruction is very real. That's a concern, but historically, new technologies have not increased unemployment rates structurally. That's because they've created prosperity and new opportunities, and humans are ingenious in terms of the way that they can be useful to the world. It's not quite automatic. We're still not sure which way this argument is going to land, but I will say there are a couple of anecdotes recently that I find very interesting at least. One would be there's been a lot of talk about back when computerized spreadsheets became available and the thinking was the humans in the accounting profession would be devastated because the biggest part of their job was literally writing numbers by hand and calculating them maybe with a calculator, maybe by hand, but a lot of manual work. And whether it was Excel or some other spreadsheet, you could do this 100 times faster just automatically with a computer. And there are far more accountants working today than there were before these things came in. It turned out that when really the cost of accounting because of these software products that the demand for accounting went up a lot and people wanted to have a clearer sense of what was going on in their business. Not just their business but the subcomponents as well. In the end, the technology was super capable and yet you don't have fewer accountants. And there was an editorial not that long ago in the New York Times— I think it was actually the Goldman Sachs CEO talking about AI but recounting his experience. It would have been about 40 years ago, he said, to make a single chart, to chart the price of a single stock would take an analyst 6 hours because you would go to the bank library and you would get the microfiche out and you would have to dig out the Wall Street Journal stock page for every day or every week or whatever your frequency was and 6 hours later, you would have a single chart of a single stock over a defined period of time. We can do that now in 1 second or maybe 20 seconds if you want it to look nice but you can do it essentially instantaneously and you would think, therefore, there should be 1,000 times fewer financial analysts but actually, there are as many or more and that's because it turns out that when financial analysts can do all sorts of interesting things they couldn't do before, that's useful. Again, not to say it's a no-brainer, therefore the labor market is fine with AI, because it does disrupt and it does seemingly replace some pretty good jobs, which is a scary thing. It's not quite automatic that we're going to see widespread job destruction. I guess, again, the point in this podcast would be not seeing it all that clearly in the data so far, that's for sure.

Yeah, and then the big debate is when you may start to see it. And just to throw a little pessimistic twist into our recording today, but the spreadsheet couldn't think. It didn't have a brain that was learning faster and becoming hyper-intelligent and can do some of the analytical things that the human did once the data was produced. And so it's a little bit of a different technology. However, I believe we've said that about every other technology in some form or another and had that fear and ultimately overcome it in terms of employment and the need for humans to be involved in the process. But this is a really interesting evolution. And I think what's fascinating as we talk to you each month when we have you on, is just the different areas that it disrupts in terms of distorting numbers where you have your expectations and you would do your analysis without AI involved and now you put it in and where things deviate and are different than you would have normally seen in the past. That's what I'm finding particularly interesting. And that's why I'm glad we've got you here to interpret it. So, let's just focus in on Canada. We probably don't spend enough time talking about our beloved Canada. We're hoping to exceed expectations in the World Cup as it starts today, actually, Eric, as we're recording this.

Oh, I didn't realize.

Yeah. The first game is in Mexico but I think Canada plays on Friday. And we are, as the headline said, in a technical recession. What are your thoughts on that?

Yeah, so what you're referring to is that Q1 GDP for 2026 that came out. It was down. As it happens, the final quarter of last year was down. A simple rule of thumb is 2 quarters of decline equals a recession. People like to call it a technical recession. There's nothing technical about it. That's me quibbling. Full disclosure, Dave, I am on the CD Howe Business Cycle Council. We are actually the official body who determine recessions, so we take slight umbrage at these very mechanical interpretations. But nevertheless, I think the main point would be— and it's a correct point— the Canadian economy didn't do that great over the final part of 2025 and early 2026. I would argue I don't think it's a proper recession, and you could take that through a number of filters. One would be that the first quarter decline was unannualized down -0.03%, which is awfully bare. Looking historically at prior recessions in Canada, they've always been at least a percentage point declines. Now, you do need to add the two quarters together, but you're still running well short of what prior recessions would have deemed. People don't talk about this much, but there are actually three different ways of estimating GDP in Canada. There's expenditure-based, that was one that was focused. There's an industry-based, there's an income-based one. 2 of the 3 were up, 1 of the 3 was down, just as it happens. So it gets a little bit blurry. This isn't officially a criterion for whether something was a recession or not, but I think it matters, which is of course, the population shrinking in Canada and we shouldn't be expecting fast economic growth. The important thing is— maybe not for a retailer selling to customers— but if you're just gaging how are people feeling, is the average person's income going up? Is the average person spending more or GDP per capita? That would be the fancy way of describing that. GDP per capita was still rising. To me, a recession is a moment where people say, uh-oh, something bad is happening, and they're scared and they're pulling back and so on. We didn't actually see really any of that. I would say, yeah, it's been a slow period. As we look through the next few quarters, while not expecting great shakes in the very near term, there is an energy shock. Canada does better than most in that, but it's probably not a time for a wonderful acceleration. We ultimately feel decent about Canada over, let's say, the next year or beyond. That is in part, well, we just saw this very handsome-looking job creation number, not to put too much weight in one figure. But the Business Outlook Survey is looking stronger. The job numbers here seem stronger with an unemployment rate that's lower than it was a year ago. We think the underpinnings aren't that bad. As we look at some of the criteria here, maybe the Bank of Canada will raise rates later in the year. We're going to learn more about that later today as we record these words. But for the moment, it's a stimulative monetary policy. For the moment, there's fiscal support as well. We are seeing a bit of evidence that productivity is rising a little bit again, which was the missing piece of the puzzle for a long period of time. That was quite concerning. One of the takeaways from this Iran war is that the world is probably going to prioritize resource security a lot more coming out of this as opposed to going in and saying, you know what, it's not just about finding that lowest-cost resource, it's about having a reliable supplier. And Canada certainly looks pretty stable and reliable. Not to say that affects next month's GDP print, but I would say over a multi-year period, this feels like a new tailwind. And really, it's two things. One is the world now probably wants what Canada makes more. But secondarily, from a policy standpoint, Canada seems more willing to make more of it, if that makes sense. So trying to encourage the resource investment and to build out the infrastructure, and that's a slow process, and I'm sure we'll be underwhelmed on some counts and impressed on other counts. But it does feel like a new avenue for growth and one that just really didn't exist, you might say, over the last decade or so. So a bad GDP print, but ultimately an economy we think that's holding together okay with more recent data and with some scope to maybe even impress over the next few years. Obviously, the USMCA or the CUSMA trade deal is outstanding. That's still a significant source of uncertainty. We've been saying for a while, it's just impossible to know when a deal is struck, but it doesn't seem like there's a whole lot of progress in a way that to us would suggest maybe 2027 resolution instead of 2026, and so let's not expect economic miracles until that clarity is achieved. I did note, by the way, that the Gordie-Howe Bridge, which is Windsor-Detroit, is meant to be opened this week. I'm slightly annoyed because guess who crossed the other bridge as part of my holiday? This guy. It would have been fun to be one of the first people over the new bridge. But in any event there are things happening, and so over time, there is maybe a good news story that starts to brew.

Yeah, I don't want to blow that you are on the committee that officially declares recessions in Canada when they happen. It's a committee I aspire to be on because it's one of those jobs where you can actually hand in your work several months late and still get credit for.

Oh, yes, it is obligatory, Dave.

You declare the recession several months after it happens. But from an investment perspective and for Canadian investors who are looking at it, you've seen the Canadian stock market do fairly well. Now, we always have to remember the concentration of the Canadian stock market in energy, mining, and financial services. However, it has done very, very well, and markets look forward. So what's happening today is not what markets are looking at. They're looking at the earnings potential down the road. And you've highlighted several things that would suggest reasons for optimism. The trade deal is a big factor. The end of this war is a big factor as well. But if we accept that those are likely to come to a conclusion— and it could be a great outcome or it could be an okay outcome— but from that point forward, Canada is set up pretty nicely.

I think so. We're already seeing CapEx plans, business investment plans, seemingly tick a little bit higher, which is promising because our thesis has been you don't get the full benefit of that until that trade clarity is achieved. But you would think with that out of the way— and I'm sure, Dave, this is a failure of imagination, and there'll be 3 other complications we need to sort through. The world is never perfectly straightforward or clear, but this is a pretty big source of uncertainty, the biggest trading partner and just the extent to which companies can access it reliably going forward. And even the thesis that this could be a time of greater resource investment, I think those companies would like to know that they have access to the US market before they put too much money into things. And so, yeah, I do believe it could be a period of faster growth once that's sorted. Now, equally, Bank of Canada could be raising rates a little bit, so it's not all sunshine and roses and not all tailwinds and so on. But if that were to happen, that would be done judiciously and in a way to balance out this economy and make sure inflation remains in hand. And by the way, for Canada, as I mentioned, inflation is remaining in hand. We're sitting on a 2.8% inflation number, which isn't perfect but looks pretty good compared to that 4.2% in the US right now. And so, certainly less of a problem from that standpoint.

Yeah, not to mention our fiscal situation is a little better. But that leads us— and maybe we'll wrap up on this point, Eric. We've got the Bank of Canada, I think, making their decision today around rates. And we've got the Federal Reserve next week making their decision. You're not expecting a whole lot of fireworks out of that? This is a steady-as-she-goes kind of situation.

Yeah, right. It’s always dangerous to make predictions that are then conveyed to the listener after they have or have not happened. So I guess I'll be that silly guy to stick my neck out here on the chopping block. But it does look like no rate change for the Bank of Canada. They are in a wait-and-see mode. And I would say the evidence since they last conveyed that message has been mixed. You got the bad GDP number we talked about, you got the good job number. There's some contradiction there, if I'm being honest, but it's not quite clear which way the economy is going. So they'll probably want more information there. The inflation numbers have not been quite as bad as feared, and so I think the urgency to raise rates— not that there was great urgency, but that argument that it needs to be done in the near term is probably weakened a little bit. However there are question marks, and so one would be, the war continues. I'm not sure quite what the Bank of Canada has been assuming. They've spoken more about their oil price assumptions than specifically Strait of Hormuz type assumptions. But nevertheless, that war continues, and so it will be important to get a sense, and they'll be watching when does that get resolved. Do we see a pickup in GDP in Canada in the second quarter? I would say it's looking pretty good, but not yet certain. We don't have the number yet. When is the tariff uncertainty resolved? We're thinking maybe it's 2027. Maybe we're all surprised and it's August of this year or something. And so that would be welcome and help to inform their decisions as well. Are we actually seeing that CapEx pickup? We think there should be one out there somewhere. Maybe it's got to wait for a trade deal resolution, but based on surveys, maybe we get a little bit of it sooner. Anyways, they're looking at a number of things. On hold for the moment. We do think that there is a scenario— in fact, it's our base case scenario— in which there could be a little bit of rate hiking either later this year or early next year, but a lot of water to come under the bridge before we can speak with conviction about that. Then for the Fed, yes, they're next week, at least as we record this, and again, no rate change expected at this point. The market has priced in now a hike by the end of the year. We're still in pause mode, but I couldn't argue with the direction of the market, which is, as the job number came in strong, as the inflation is strong as well, it does suggest that the direction of travel could be towards tightening as opposed to easing. I think the reason we haven't quite fully embraced that is in part we are still hopeful this energy shock is mostly temporary. That's what all central banks are hoping. But equally, you do have a new Fed chair who maybe has a slightly dovish tilt and probably doesn't want his first act to be raising rates. Our suspicion is that maybe they won't actually have to raise, but we're going to learn more about that over the next several months.

Well, if you're dressing for the job you want, it could be the head of the Bank of Canada.

I was thinking waiter, Dave. What do you think?

Or the Federal Reserve. They raise rates too fast. Maybe there'll be some openings in those roles for you. And you are looking sharp. Yeah, I'd love to have a waiter like you.

A maître d' perhaps even.

Yes, very hardworking and detail oriented. So that's very good.

What's the new David Spade movie called, Busboys? They're busboys and their dream is to be waiters. They think all their life's problems will be solved by becoming waiters. This is my aspiration. I have not seen that movie, by the way. No recommendations coming from me.

Well, I've always aspired to be a chief economist like you, but I always have to defer to a smarter person, and the listeners, as usual, have seen that. Eric, thanks always for taking the time to come on, and we'll see you soon with another update.

Thank you. Bye, everybody.