To express both confusion and excitement, an author might place a question mark and an exclamation point at a statement’s end. In 1962, advertiser Martin K. Speckter thought it more efficient to merge the two symbols into one like so: (‽). He shared his idea in a magazine called TYPEtalks, prompting readers to name this new form of punctuation. Ideas such as “exclamaquest” and “exclarotive” were proposed, but Speckter settled on “interrobang,” which merged “interrogation,” the Latin word for questioning, with “bang,” slang for an exclamation point. Unfortunately for Speckter, the interrobang never landed its own key on typewriters. However, the symbol did lend its name to Interabang Books, a magnificent independent bookstore in our hometown of Dallas. Founder and owner Nancy Perot, daughter of businessman and presidential candidate Ross Perot, said in a 2017 interview with D Magazine that the name symbolizes “wonder and curiosity and discovery and revelation and all the things that a bookstore can be.”
Countless newly minted college grads and recent pink slip recipients are asking themselves why they can’t find a job, surely punctuating the thought with an interrobang. One reason is the breadth of “good” employment and unemployment (Hires and Quits) has shriveled across the nation’s 50 states and DC. For June, the latest month available, the percentage of states with rising Hires and Quits over the prior six months fell to just 33%, a level consistent with the 2001 and 2007-09 downturns (blue line). Despite inherent volatility, since 2022, breadth has been consistently poor, running below the 48% long-run average with only sporadic forays above this line. Powell’s Jackson Hole speech on Friday cited this phenomenon, manifesting as both a slowdown in the supply of and demand for workers. The Wall Street Journal echoed these sentiments on Saturday in “A Job Market That is Just ‘Meh,’” noting that the hiring rate has fallen from 4.6% in November 2021 to its current 3.3%, while layoffs as a share of total employment, at 1% in June, were a stone’s throw from their 2021 record low of 0.9%.