All the job numbers are going to be a surprise from here on out.

I've been watching tons of layoffs lately. But I would never wager to guess the number.

A funny thing started happening over the summer. Companies started trying to hide layoffs. Mostly this didn't surprise me until Intel started having layoffs in Oregon.

Intel was the first large company I saw that was purposefully trying to evade the news of this getting out in a major way. One of the papers up in Oregon had to put a lot of pressure on them (Intel) to get any info at all. Then, when they did - the info was pretty scant. It was then I said to myself - self - the reported layoff numbers are inaccurate. Obviously there is some serious silencing going on internally as well. I wouldn't be surprised if they made people sign agreements not to talk about them until their severance was over. By that time people will have lost interest.

We are entering the Christmas window which should goose hiring. But deflation takes a little while to work through the system. So I don't know if those will cancel each other out.