McService Job Nation? | Econbrowser

Reader Moonmac argues the case that we are in a recession, in a rejoinder my paper “Recession since 2022? A Critique“:

McService Job Nation disagrees even though they’re employed. Gainfully is a different matter.

I think the data is suggests otherwise. While employment is growing at limited service restaurants (aka fast food restaurants), wages are growing both relative to average wages, and in real terms.

Figure 1: Employment in limited service restaurants, 000’s (blue). Source: BLS. 

Figure 2: Average hourly wages in limited service restaurants (blue, left scale), in private nonfarm payroll sector (red, right scale), both in 2023$ (deflated using CPI-all urban). Source: BLS, and author’s calculations.

What is it about people that they don’t look at freely available data? Is it Excel-phobia, or they can’t do division even with a calculator?