Depending on how the birds are behaving, a group of hawks is referred to as a kettle, a boil or a cast. Birders and naturalists use the most popular term – kettle — when these raptors spiral high in the air together. They use warm air currents called thermals to gain altitude, and from a distance, the swirling mass looks like steam rising from a kettle on a stove. Similarly, a boil describes a group of hawks frantically flapping and circling as they first enter a thermal, making the air look as if it’s boiling with activity. Cast is the more traditional or formal term, often used in falconry to describe a pair of hawks released at the same time. As you birdwatch alongside April showers harkening May flowers and catch a few hawks on the move during their annual trek south, they also can be referred to as a lease. Because falconers often carried three birds at a time – one on the glove and two on a portable frame – a “lease” became the collective noun for exactly three birds of prey.
Loosely, the Federal Reserve’s lease of hawks – Beth Hammack, Neel Kashkari and Lorrie Logan – added another colleague Thursday in Boston Fed President Susan Collins, who critically is not a voting FOMC member until 2028. In a Bloomberg News interview on Thursday, Collins said that she was “strongly supportive” of leaving rates unchanged at the April policy meeting and that she also preferred to revise the statement to “not be as closely aligned with language that has been associated with the presumption that the next move will be a cut.” A follow-up story noted “she favors a more ‘agnostic’ stance around the future path for rates” as the Iran War energy shock makes the Fed’s job harder. In a March 6th speech, Collins articulated her deliberate approach: “I do not see an urgency for additional policy adjustments, and I will be looking for clear evidence that inflation is moving durably toward the 2 percent target – something that might occur only over the second half of the year.”
Price is one of the Fed’s two mandates. Thursday’s first quarter Productivity and Costs report made that abundantly clear. As the jump-off point before war wreaked havoc on global energy markets and the logistics chain, nonfarm business sector price inflation posted a 4.9% quarter-over-quarter (QoQ) annualized advance, the largest sequential gain since the Russia-Ukraine war began in 2022. This pushed the year-over-year (YoY) trend up to a three-year high of 3.5% (red line). Unit nonlabor costs have been a strong upward influence on the pricing channel, rising at QoQ annualized rates at or near 8% in three of the last four quarters. The result was a 6.3% YoY increase through 2026’s first quarter (blue line).
What did nonfarm businesses do to adjust to the higher nonlabor cost environment? Ease unit labor cost growth to a three-year low of 1.2% YoY (yellow line).
Companies focus on what they can control – labor costs. For the Fed, nonfarm sector inflation at a 3.5% annual rate, and likely to rise further, is an unwelcome development. Since the Great Moderation, this price gauge averaged a 1.5% YoY pace from 1995 to 2019 and ran between 0% and 2% more than 80% of the time. Since 2020, it’s averaged 3.5%, where it is now. In the pre-pandemic period delineated, readings at or above 3.5% happened twice in 100 quarters for a 2% hit rate.
This is just one illustration of how Fed hawks could gather more ammunition to stand pat on policy. Wage disinflation – or stated differently, cooler labor cost inflation – is insufficient to make the case for easing. Wage or unit labor cost deflation is another story. Under that scenario, consumers would spend less now because they make less now. In either case, saving gets depleted and discretionary borrowing goes up in the short run, a nasty combination for household balance sheets.
But why worry when we’re in a ‘lower fire’ labor environment? Challenger’s report revealed U.S.-based employers announcing 83,387 pink slip announcements (aqua bars), down 21% from the same month last year. In fact, the 300,749 year-to-date tally was 50% less than the 602,493 job cuts through 2025’s first four months (red boxes). Even the more comprehensive MacroEdge Job Cuts Tracker, which uses inputs from DailyJobCuts.com, state WARN notices, TrueUp and Google News, reported 94,065 reductions, almost 10% below April 2025’s 104,022 figure. The 2026 year-to-date number of 403,151 is also down 16% compared to 2025’s same-period count of 481,919.
Continuing jobless claims topped the ‘lower fire’ narrative on Thursday’s economic calendar — they fell to 1.766 million in the week ended April 25th (fuchsia line), marking 2025’s low point and the lowest level since January 2024. Even though they only cover about one-quarter of the total unemployed, continuing claims’ slide picked up steam in March, diverging from the sideways movement over the same period in 2025 (purple line).
The truth of the business bankruptcy cycle challenges the ‘lower fire’ narrative. Since late-January, BankruptyWatch has tracked a widening in Chapter 11 filings that through the week ended April 18 totaled 2,961 cases (green bars). This was 41% above the 2,099 filings through the first 15 weeks of 2025 (light blue bars).
Moreover, the ‘lower hire’ backdrop has worsened. According to Challenger, “Hiring plans fell 69% in April to 10,049 from 32,826 in March. They are down 38% from the 16,191 hiring plans announced in April 2025. So far this year, employers have announced plans to hire 60,936 workers [orange bars], down 13% from 70,058 new hires announced during the same period in 2025.”
Revelio Labs’ April payroll employment stood as corroboration. April’s Revelio jobs number vis-à-vis March’s official NFP data scorecard read as follows: Headline 66,000, down from 178,000; Private 56,000, lower than 186,000; Private Core 24,000 vs. 95,000. The 71,000 NFP whisper number and 65,000 consensus estimate also support the stances of the growing kettle of Fed hawks.