← All instruments — the full set 1939
high 159,001 · low 29,923 · now 159,001 · 13 recessions shaded 2026 2016
high 7,600 · low 2,001 · now 7,584 · 1 recession shaded 2026
R1 · PAYEMS × SP500
Jobs vs. market reaction
Good news should lift equities. When strong payrolls sell stocks off, the market is trading the Fed, not the economy.
STRAINED z = 1.13 PLAUSIBLE as of 2026-05-08
toward the strained side — above ~84% of its history
The dysfunction statistic, full history
Above the dashed zero line is the economically wrong direction — the relationship failing to do its stabilizing job.
The two series it watches
PAYEMS
SP500
How it is scored
- Correlation today (r)
- 0.1928
- z vs. its own history
- 1.13 on the Fisher-transformed (arctanh) correlation — effective N ≈ 5 independent windows (from 94 overlapping readings)
- Rule, pre-committed
- z < 1 BEHAVING · 1 ≤ z < 2 STRAINED · z ≥ 2 with the wrong economic sign, held 2 consecutive readings, DECOUPLED.
- Confidence
- PLAUSIBLE — Surprise is proxied against the series' own trend (revised data, not real-time consensus); disclosed on Methodology.