An individual’s level of happiness tends to return to its baseline after experiencing either positive or negative life events, a phenomenon known as the Hedonic Treadmill.

Consumer Confidence, gauged by factors such as job availability, difficulty in finding employment, and expectations for future job prospects, has recently shown a decrease in the perceived availability of jobs (a 1.5-point drop), an increase in the perceived difficulty of obtaining jobs (a 2.7-point rise), and a decrease in expectations for future job opportunities (a 2.6-point drop).

However, these indicators contradict the current unemployment rate at 3.8%.

Getting into the weeds but lets take a deeper look. There are two key Census readings. 12M entities with the Census and 700k in the BLS report. Census data shows 192,000 job losses vs the BLS showing 521,000 job gains.

The Feds lean into the BLS report.