Companies hit Quiet Firing mode while prices do cardio

51.4 — that’s the economy’s latest “we’re fine” score, said the S&P Global Flash Composite PMI, while employers quietly started cutting jobs for the first time in over a year.

This is what late-stage corporate optimism looks like: the vibes are barely above “not technically dying” (50 is the line), but the payrolls are already getting sent to the shadow realm.

S&P Global says the composite PMI cooled to 51.4, and firms trimmed employment for the first time in 12+ months. Input costs also jumped at the fastest pace in 10 months, because of course they did. Your boss is paying more for stuff, and somehow the solution is always “less you.”

And don’t worry, you’ll still hear the usual corporate bedtime stories about “efficiency” and “right-sizing.”

Meanwhile… the whole quiet-firing playbook is back: hiring freezes, fewer hours, “performance concerns,” reorganizations that somehow always delete your team and not the executive bonus pool.

If you’re a worker, this is the part where you update your resume “just to be safe,” and then discover every job posting is a ghost listing designed to harvest your soul and your email address.