When a falling unemployment rate is bad news

What happens when the unemployment rate falls even as jobs disappear?Mindy Gudmundson, Institutional Portfolio Manager on RBC GAM’s BlueBay U.S. Fixed Income team, unpacks a week of mixed market signals and what they reveal about the labor market beneath the headlines.Job losses concentrated in consumer-facing sectors hint at a cooling labor marketA falling unemployment rate reflects workers leaving the workforce, not underlying strengthThe Fed's new chair is letting data, not commentary, steer policyIt's a week where the numbers told two very different stories, and the gap between them is where the real insight lives.