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Trade is the pits in South Africa, as in fruits with pits. I'm David Brancaccio in Los Angeles. First, there's

news that the cost of employing people did not go up as much as predicted. At one level, that's

too bad, since who doesn't want a bigger raise? But if you're worried about interest rates or want

inflation to come down, you may see this differently, which may be a bigger story than the other news this morning

that retail sales did not go up as expected in December. Jeffrey Cleveland is chief

economist at Payton and Regal. A lot of people paying attention to retail sales this morning,

but we're looking at the employment cost index because that tends to filter into a view on inflation via, you know,

wage pressures that filter into all sorts of things, but in particular,

services inflation. And this is the softest reading on my chart since 2021.

2020. So second year of the pandemic, just before the great surge in, you know, wages, inflation, all that stuff. That's interesting.

Yes, you are precisely correct, sir, before the inflation eruption. So I think this is important.

When the central bank is looking to see what they might do next,

I think moderating wage pressures, moderating inflation pressures will be key to that story.

And this is a data point in favor of additional rate cuts in my view.

With the stipulation that it's a bummer that we're not getting raises, right?

I would say it's a flip side. It's a symptom of a softening labor market. If the labor market

were stronger, if we were adding more jobs, if we had strong demand for labor, we would see more

wage growth. And we're seeing the opposite right now. So it is sort of a reflection of the

softening of the labor market. All right. Jeffrey Cleveland, Chief Economist, Peyton and Regal,

thank you. Have a good week. Two weeks ago, the business group, the conference board, released a

survey that found the lowest consumer confidence since 2014. Yet, yesterday, the New York Fed put out

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