Hi, big news this evening: Nvidia could soon part ways with CEO Jensen Huang, the Wall Street Journal reported, over his affair with a suspected Chinese spy. Here’s a gift link to that developing story, and we’ll have more intrigue below. But first, let’s talk about jobs.

October was a surprisingly strong month for hiring, and tomorrow we’re set to get our first look at the November labor market with the weekly release of first-time jobless claims. Economists generally use unemployment insurance as a proxy for layoffs, but should they?  — Tony Wagner, newsletter editor

We got good news on hiring in October. The economy added 165,000 jobs and unemployment ticked down to a historically low 4.1%.

And we got, if anything, better news on first-time weekly jobless claims for the week ending Oct. 31, which fell to an even more historically low 189,000. Initial claims haven’t been this low since September 1969 . Keep in mind, back then, we only had about half as many workers who could even get laid off and go on unemployment.

Economic journalists often refer to initial jobless claims as a “proxy” for layoffs in the economy. That’s because when people lose their jobs through no fault of their own — which is the definition of a layoff — they can generally file a claim for unemployment insurance right away.

So, with jobless claims this low, we must be living in the absolute best of times layoff-wise, right? Not just a “low-hire-low-fire” labor market but a “low-hire, historically-low-fire” labor one?

Well, maybe not so fast. There are reasons to think jobless claims data may no longer be as reliable as it used to be — as a proxy for layoffs or (when they start rising) a harbinger of higher unemployment to come.

One reason economists tend to like jobless claims as an economic indicator is that the weekly report from the Labor Department comes directly from administrative records generated by state UI systems. It’s based on an actual count of unemployment insurance applications submitted by laid-off workers in every state, reported less than a week after they’re filed.

Compare that to the main BLS labor-market measures published in the monthly jobs report — like job creation and the unemployment rate — which are statistical estimates based on surveys of businesses and households.

Still, several leading labor market economists surveyed by this reporter said the current super-low level of jobless claims is as likely to reflect changes in the workforce and in the unemployment insurance system itself as it is to reflect a low level of layoffs in the economy right now.

“I don’t think it’s a reliable economic indicator anymore,” said Michele Evermore, a director at the National Employment Law Project and expert on social insurance, who worked on UI reforms in the Biden Labor Department. “I think it’s an indictment on the unemployment insurance system in the United States.”

Wilson would know; she rose to fame as the star of “Matilta,” “Mrs. Doubtfire” and “Miracle on 34th Street,” all before she was 10 years old. 

On this week’s episode of “This Is Uncomfortable,” we’re looking at the state of child stardom with Wilson and journalist Kate Taylor, who wrote an exposé on Nickelodeon's Dan Schneider and produced “Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV.”

And the climate crisis is no different.

This season, Marketplace’s podcast “How We Survive” is exploring the disaster economy. From prediction markets where investors can bet on the weather or hedge against climate risk, to insurance companies and cleanup companies raking in dough, we’re finding out who benefits from extreme weather, and what it means for the rest of us. New episodes start next week.