U.S. Lost 32,000 Private-Sector Jobs in September, Says Payroll Processor

https://www.wsj.com/economy/jobs/u-s-lost-32-000-jobs-in-september-says-payroll-processor-06528340

by JumpCrisscross • 10 months ago

218 197 10 months ago

mdhb• 10 months ago

It’s really hard to overstate just how much this administration has lit the entire country on fire for absolutely no good reason in a way that isn’t going to magically bounce back either for at least a generation.

daveguy• 10 months ago

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=asojiVtJ7F0

1121redblackgo3• 10 months ago

But it feels good, so here we are. (Feels good for now). (To some people)

bdangubic• 10 months ago

to people that it feels good now it'll feel good forever :)

wslh• 10 months ago

But isn't the lost of jobs also attributable to previous administration policies?

This isn't in any way an opinion about the current government but an observation of lags between decisions and measurable metrics.

ngetchell• 10 months ago

I mean usually it is pretty hard to determine fault since most presidents don't make gigantic changes early in their presidency.

Tarrifs on the whole world is a pretty large smoking gun.

runako• 10 months ago

Normally yes. However, it's worth noting that the last major economic legislation passed by the prior administration took effect over 3 years ago. Further, there is not a reading of that law that would predict a negative overall effect on hiring.

However, tariffs have been extensively studied in a number of countries around the world. What we are observing in the labor market is more or less what economists would predict given the magnitude of the tax increase and the uncertainty around its application.

Further, data[1] shows a rapid deterioration in the labor market corresponding to the initial tariff announcement.

1 - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PAYEMS

jfengel• 10 months ago

That's generally true. Presidents are routinely credited and blamed for things outside of their control, including things done by their predecessors. It's something you have to accept with the job.

In this case, though, the President is taking actions designed to have quick effects. Presidents (of both parties) generally try not to do anything radical. (They promise to, then blame inaction on Congress.) This President is actually fulfilling his campaign promises, for once.

So I think he will deserve a higher fraction of the credit and blame that he would have gotten anyway. The lag is shorter because he's bypassing the usual process for change, and is able to make much more radical changes with shorter term returns.

georgemcbay• 10 months ago

But isn't the lost of jobs also attributable to previous administration policies?

According to Trump, when Biden was in office it was Biden's failing economy that was the problem (despite the fact that Biden took office directly after Trump v1.0).

Also according to Trump, when Trump is in office now it is also Biden's failing economy that is the problem.

Its the same situation with the roles reversed because of Trump's gap of being in office so either the economy is a lagging problem from the last administration or it isn't, but somehow neither situation is "Trump's fault", according to Trump.

The "Biden economy" wasn't as rosy as proclaimed by the Biden government, in large part because run-away wealth inequality is making all of the statistics we historically track very misleading (eg. consumer spending looking good, as long as you ignore the huge red flag that 50% of that spending is being done by the top 10% of wealth holders).

So I'm not fully defending Biden here (both parties are ultimately allowing the economy to unravel because they refuse to deal with wealth inequality, though I do give Biden some credit for [temporarily] getting some things on the right track by, for example, putting Lina Khan in charge of the FTC) but economically things were still fundamentally much better under Biden than Trump, and we haven't even seen the depths of how bad Trump's economy is going to get (but have plenty of leading indicators of things getting much worse) and virtually all of the problems with Trump's economy can be traced pretty clearly to his own actions, such as his wildly irresponsible tariff policies.

Like even if you believe tariffs work the way he thinks they do (they don't) anyone with any understanding of business at all would have to understand that changing the values wildly sometimes from day to day makes doing business impossible for a lot of companies due to a complete inability to plan. Its crazy shit.

ActorNightly• 10 months ago

Unemployment was 5% going into Trumps administration, which is basically fricional levels - US recovered quite well after Covid.

The "both sides" stance is almost worse than just being a conservative at this point. Dems routinely have to fix Republican fuckups, and are judged negatively on the things they don't fix - meanwhile Republicans are judged positively on the things they manage not to fuck up.

For example, the BBB has set Medicaid to expire in 2028. Anyone wanna take a $10k bet that if we have fair elections and Dems somehow win, they are going to get blamed for not fixing that?

vjvjvjvjghv• 10 months ago

Rest assured that they would take full credit of any gains.

alfiedotwtf• 10 months ago

When England created high tariffs on The Netherlands, it started wars, and relations took almost 100 years to repair.

Trump basically did what Britain did, but against the entire world.

… it might be more than a generation for the whole world to trust any trade agreement with the US if every 4-8 years agreements can be torn up so easily

drstewart• 10 months ago

Why would relations be repaired with Britain after Brexit?

... it will be at least 700 years before Europe can trust the UK again if it can just leave from the EU any time it wants

Terr_• 10 months ago

I went and lived overseas in Asia for a while, and at this point back in America, I keep thinking of comparisons to Mao's "Great Leap Forward".

Directly equating them remains hyperbole due to the death-toll, but... it's not a joke anymore, or at least not a funny one.

____

[Edit] In brief, a disastrous attempt in 1958-1962 to quickly force China into an industrial powerhouse, with a lot of weird autocratic commands. It backfired with a severe economic recession, the killing/exile of subject matter experts, officials lying about how well it was going to avoid being punished, and tens of millions of peasants dying from famine.

jmclnx• 10 months ago

In a way I suppose, but from what I heard lots of people were killed or died due to the "Great Leap Forward".

aiauthoritydev2• 10 months ago

The people who are lighting up the country actually enjoy and fire and smoke and they don't own (or they think they don't) anything that is worth protecting.

sampton• 10 months ago

That's one way to lower the interest rate.

mlinhares• 10 months ago

If nobody can borrow money for anything it doesn't matter what the interest rate is.

I'm very smart!

silisili2• 10 months ago

Powell said explicitly a year or two ago that it was his goal to bump unemployment numbers to tame inflation. Kinda sick to think about, but, here we are I guess.

alostpuppy• 10 months ago

Isn’t that the charge of the federal reserve? I think this is what he is required to do statutorily.

Hammershaft2• 10 months ago

That's the inherent nature of the interest rate. Both unemployment and inflation have bad consequences, so the role of the central bank is to balance rates to target a specific inflation rate.

ipaddr4• 10 months ago

Yes lets blame Powell he pushed Trump into putting tariffs on everything and gutted the remaining manufacturing jobs.

N70Phone• 10 months ago

a year or two ago

3 years ago. September 2022. https://edition.cnn.com/2022/09/23/economy/powell-fed-labor-...

When unemployment rates were back down to the pre-covid 2020 levels, only time they were even lower was before the 1969 recession. When inflation was at the highest it's been since the 80s.

The statement & monetary policy decision was entirely appropriate at the time.

miltonlost• 10 months ago

Powell said explicitly a year or two ago that it was his goal to bump unemployment numbers to tame inflation. Kinda sick to think about, but, here we are I guess.

This is basic monetary economics via the Phillips curve (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillips_curve). There's a strong relationship between unemployment rate and the inflation rate. Of course, that is based on historical data in normal times, and, since 2010s and the financial crisis with years of ZIRP, we are now in very unnormal times with Trump's tariffs and general fuckery of the economic system.

paxys2• 10 months ago

Powell doesn't decide or control the unemployment rate. His job is simply to react to it.

carabiner3• 10 months ago

Satirical IG post I saw from a college professor: "In 2050, I'll be getting emails from high school students about research opportunities, because the average college will require 2 publications to get in and will cost $500k." Fertility rates are plummeting globally for this reason in addition to housing, and earth has reached its carrying capacity. There are no entry-level jobs, because "entry level" now requires years of experience: https://www.zippia.com/advice/entry-level-jobs-pay-experienc....

If you decide to have kids today, you should factor in the cost that they may significant require financial support into their 30s. I know a couple of guys over 40, including a laid-off SWE, living with their parents again.

com2kid• 10 months ago

"In 2050, I'll be getting emails from high school students about research opportunities, because the average college will require 2 publications to get in and will cost $500k."

From my general understanding, those are already the numbers for elite colleges.

I hear complaints about kids that have published research, have started local charities, and have completed most of an undergrad degree already, that they are still getting rejected from top colleges.

sarchertech6• 10 months ago

Harvard costs about $350k all in for 4 years.

But if you make under $200k a year they wave tuition, and over that you start paying a prorated rate until assistance phases out.

carabiner3• 10 months ago

Yeah it's extraordinary how prepared today's elite undergrads are. Population demand has outpaced spots in these colleges, and so that's why I don't believe "grade inflation" is a thing. The kids are just way, way smarter and more productive than 60 years ago, just as workers are.

triceratops5• 10 months ago

Well yeah if they've completed most of the degree already why admit them /s

mothballed5• 10 months ago

If they are that enterprising and go-getters, I paid some guy almost $10k to roof my house, and he gave me an invoice showing the price of materials were only about $3500 of that. He did it with a few friends in two days, maybe 60 man-hours of work. All they had was a few ladders, harnesses, an ancient truck, and they didn't look like the sort to have wasted much of it on insurance or overhead.

meindnoch2• 10 months ago

I hear complaints about kids that have published research, have started local charities, and have completed most of an undergrad degree already, that they are still getting rejected from top colleges.

Are they Asian by any chance?

sarchertech6• 10 months ago

The problems that you’re highlighting are self correcting. If the fertility rate drops, houses and spots at colleges become more available.

piker• 10 months ago

Agree with both, and you can see this in prep school admissions in the UK, but that adjustment might take a generation.

bell-cot2• 10 months ago

True...eventually. But recall the old saw about how long the market can stay irrational.

Analemma_2• 10 months ago

That's not how it works. Housing prices are not allowed to go down, because a massive chunk of Boomer equity is bound up in them. If there's ever a danger of housing prices going down, bailouts will be issued and supply tightened until the "natural" state of things is restored and they go up again.

jf222• 10 months ago

It won't be for a long time. World population may increase well into the 2100s.

parasti• 10 months ago

First-home buyers aren't the ones causing prices to go up.

baq• 10 months ago

Average age of a home buyer in the us is what? 50-60ish? Should be 20-25.

sodpspsosk2• 10 months ago

Mass self deportation is a fairly easy solution too. It’d cause an immediate glut of homes and jobs. It would also cause economic shock, but that would by and large hurt the capital class. We are in for pain either way, might as well ensure the next generations have ample opportunity.

Cut back/tax on legal immigration, tax remittances harder, and penalize those employing illegal immigrants. None of this ICE kabuki theatre is needed (and frankly is cruel and immoral).

Obviously this won’t happen because both left & right want immigration.

wbl• 10 months ago

Houses are made and maintained by workers. Fewer workers, less building and maintance.

nostrademons2• 10 months ago

I feel like this view suffers from https://xkcd.com/605/. The future is not a linear progression from the present; as linear (or exponential!) extrapolations become progressively more absurd, they get replaced by qualitatively different systems that fit peoples' needs as they exist now.

I have young kids. I don't worry too much about how they're going to afford college education or get a job or afford to retire, because I don't believe college or jobs or retirement will exist in the form it does today. They'll be replaced by systems that actually work in the world that they'll grow up in. My job is to help them survive, and ideally to keep them fed and clothed and housed in the meantime. I'm training them to be adaptable, to think and act for themselves, and to have a good grounding in fundamental skills like reading/writing/rithmetic that I don't think will go anywhere. But the specifics of today's world will definitely be going away, because today's world doesn't work.

SoftTalker2• 10 months ago

I'm not sure why you think that. From what I can see, the undergraduate college experience of today is basically the same as it was in the 1980s. And since then we've had the entire rise of the internet, mobile tech, social media, and all the rest of it. Kids still live in dorms and sit in lecture halls and listen to professors lecture. Why do you think it's going to be much different 15-20 years from now?

Sure there is a lot that can be done online, but that hasn't really impacted the fundamental experience of "going to college" for most young adults who decide to do that.

boogieknite• 10 months ago

good plan training your kids to be adaptable

youre also right that todays world doesnt work

i think weve already moved too slowly in the US to prepare the societal changes were facing and culture is not adapting, but clinging harder to old expectations. i hope US culture shifts, even if its long overdue, but i dont think it will before many more dramatic economic events

meindnoch2• 10 months ago

We need a war.

triceratops5• 10 months ago

Are you enlisting?

Lammy3• 10 months ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNG-gYjneeA

ge96• 10 months ago

The fertility rates thing, is it true everywhere seems poorer countries/people are used to having 4+ children.

carabiner3• 10 months ago

It's true everywhere except for Africa. Poorer countries in Latin America are having wayyy fewer babies.

ipaddr4• 10 months ago

At some point we will start paying men/women to have babies for others.

Lammy3• 10 months ago

and earth has reached its carrying capacity

[citation needed]

ceejayoz3• 10 months ago

Why would a citation be needed for a "satirical IG post" set in 2050? Are you providing the time machine?

nozzlegear• 10 months ago

Tax land value and legalize housing!

zzgo• 10 months ago

There are no entry-level jobs, because "entry level" now requires years of experience

This was my experience leaving college in the dot-com bust 25 years ago, and I heard it was similar for graduates around 2008-2012.

BobaFloutist2• 10 months ago

Fertility rates are plummeting globally for this reason in addition to housing

That's very much not the reason for plummeting fertility rates, those are just your pet issues. It's rare for people to acknowledge the true cause of reduced fertility, because it's a huge bummer and the only even remotely plausible solutions are pretty much unthinkable for all but the most regressive.

busterarm6• 10 months ago

If my employer were using ADP in 2025, I'd have a grim outlook on my job's future.

hhh• 10 months ago

starts sweating

manchmalscott• 10 months ago

Every job I’ve ever had has used ADP for payroll.

phatfish2• 10 months ago

The radical left are everywhere!

triceratops5• 10 months ago

1 in every 5 employees works at such a company.

busterarm6• 10 months ago

And?

etchalon3• 10 months ago

ADP is essentially the only reliable payroll processor I've ever used (and we've tried a half-dozen now).

Every. single. "startup" we tried screwed up at least one payroll. Gusto ruined three.

ADP don't miss.

busterarm6• 10 months ago

They have the lowest growth of their industry (granted, they're ~25% of the market) and every company I've been involved with for the last 20 years either uses a competitor or used to be an ADP customer. ADP is terrible.

Paychex, Workday, etc have been eating at their lunch for years and years now. My perception of companies using ADP is either that they're slow behemoths or they still have some niche issue that's keeping them from switching.

ADP is also incredibly cavalier with your personal data. As a potential employee I would see its use as a strong minus.

senderista• 10 months ago

Also have one of the worst business websites I've ever been forced to use.

aynyc• 10 months ago

Don't worry, it'll revised to +50,000 soon! /s

the_real_cher• 10 months ago

No it will be revised to +one million. I create the most jobs, tremendous jobs

Analemma_2• 10 months ago

In short order there will be a speech about how ADP has "very nasty people" who need to stop saying like this or there will be "serious consequences".

After that, it's not that ADP will fabricate the numbers, they'll just stop making them public, and when e.g. analysts buy them the contract will come with a term forbidding public disclosure.

aiauthoritydev2• 10 months ago

There are multiple excellent policy choices.

1. Claim it is Biden's economy and his job numbers. 2. Claim the lost jobs are actually indian immigrants going back. 3. Your point about ADP. 4. Threaten any media that reports these numbers.

hypeatei• 10 months ago

And if ADP did get the wild idea to resist any government action, the law firm representing them would be targeted as well. Like we've seen this year already.

dyauspitr• 10 months ago

It’s a wasteland out there.

lbrito• 10 months ago

I am signing a beautiful Executive Order firing Maria Black, the radical left-wing CEO of ADP. As the President I can do that, you know. She was appointed by Joe Biden. She has said some very nasty things lately - I've been told by very nice people that she is very, very bad. The order is effective immediately. Failure to comply will trigger retaliatory tariffs on ADP. Some very smart people - I'm very smart myself, but there are some other smart people around me - have even suggested labeling ADP a terrorist organisation, and I'm thinking about that. I think its a beautiful idea.

throwaway0123_5• 10 months ago

Not quite enough random capital letters for me.

insane_dreamer• 10 months ago

also the reference to Joe Biden contains no slur. Feels fake.

And where's the sentence about how the greatest presidency in the history of the United States has CREATED MORE JOBS than ever before in history?

cozzyd• 10 months ago

Thank you for your attention to this matter.

noitpmeder• 10 months ago

I can believe it. Speaking as a SWE working in a finance-related space in NYC the quantity of recruiter spam on linkedin has decreased _notably_ over the last 2 months.

tamimio• 10 months ago

I don't know what's the end game here, you read news like this, another that thousands of government workers aren't paid, at this rate everyone will be homeless in a few months. In another news, you read someone like Musk hit a net worth of half a trillion dollars, if the economy is bad and people are losing jobs, why are others getting richer?

auggierose• 10 months ago

Because it is becoming more like a zero sum game?

danesparza• 10 months ago

If this is a genuine question, my only answer would be "It's because this is poorly run capitalism" (aka "crony capitalism")

SantalBlush• 10 months ago

This makes as much sense as the notion of "crony communism," which is to say, it doesn't. Ignoring the harmful side effects of an economic system makes one an ideologue.

dmbche• 10 months ago

You mean you don't see how both things can be true ( or have a kernel of truth at least, don't know about mass homelessness) and related?

etchalon3• 10 months ago

The phrase "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer" was coined for a reason.

PartiallyTyped2• 10 months ago

Because increasingly the top percentages are doing most spending and compensate for those who lose their jobs.

hermannj314• 10 months ago

Based on policy over the last decade, it seems America would rather have every rich person own an electric vehicle than every poor person eat dinner.

We really should do more tax credit for solar panels and EV credits, I know a doctor that has really struggled to buy his 3rd AirBnB rental.

downrightmike3• 10 months ago

The adage "The time to buy is when there's blood in the streets" advises a contrarian investment strategy of acquiring property or other assets during periods of extreme economic or market turmoil. The saying is attributed to 19th-century British banker Baron Rothschild, who is said to have profited significantly by purchasing assets during the panic that followed the Battle of Waterloo.

DrewADesign2• 10 months ago

When you consider the free market an unimpeachable ideal, being able to manipulate the system to hoard resources is a feature, not a bug.

sph• 10 months ago

Let's stop calling it a free market if manipulation is the name of the game, then.

sauercrowd• 10 months ago

The U.S. shed 32,000 private-sector jobs in September, payroll-processing giant ADP said on Wednesday.
That is down from a revised loss of 3,000 in August. Economists polled by The Wall Street Journal had expected an increase of 45,000.

Yikes

sssilver• 10 months ago

How does this happen?

jeffbee• 10 months ago

Every single day at 2:30 in the morning the inebriated President radically reconfigures federal trade policy.

downrightmike3• 10 months ago

Things are far worse then expected/ can be hidden. That's why they are firing the people who put statistics together and appointing yes men to make the numbers look good.

Expect ADP to catch heat for this/ have their corporate charter revoked.

mothballed5• 10 months ago

I think people way underestimate just how badly the US fucked themselves with the tariff regimes, amongst other reasons.

The way US workers survive in a high-skill economy is having complex, internationally supplied machines/services/trade.

People think what will happen is more stuff made in US, but then that room sized CNC milling machine you ordered from Germany so you can actually operate a US company suddenly has a massive tariff bill and now you have to fire 3 guys to pay the bank for that. And people are buying less of your stuff because they're already spending more money on all their other goods, either because of tariffs or because it's now made by people with less comparative advantage.

dcre• 10 months ago

Assuming you mean: how do estimates and previous monthly turn out to be wrong and need correction?

After the president fired the head of the BLS for publishing numbers he didn't like, there were a number of articles explaining why there are revisions.

https://www.axios.com/2025/08/01/jobs-report-july-2025-revis...

The short answer is that there are various data sources and the most detailed ones are collected less than monthly, so the estimates based on the most recently monthly data are often corrected based on the other data.

As for why estimates are off, the data used by the estimators are presumably themselves even lower quality than whatever BLS is using.

fzeroracer• 10 months ago

The entire stock market and economy is being held up on the back of a massive AI bubble. Everywhere else you look, performance is down, people are struggling, jobs are vanishing and consumer confidence is disappearing. The most inept people you can imagine are in control of the only levers that can fix things and they've decided to instead strip it and sell it for parts after slamming the self-destruct button.

JumpCrisscross6• 10 months ago

Survey response times creating trend bias.

If the economy has been growing at N% a quarter, that’s your baseline until evidenced otherwise. The evidence comes in the form of BLS surveys and payroll data, both of which are lagging indicators.

Why lagging? If you’re hiring and firing, you’re going to be preoccupied with that before responding to a survey. So the folks who are doing the most change to their baselines tend to respond late. Similarly, if you’re hiring a firing a bunch, you may not get your numbers into ADP precisely correctly the first time around.

johnnyanmac4• 10 months ago

Our estimates are not keeping up with modern trends.

for example: you hear a new business forms. You know from historic data that a new business adds an average of 6 new jobs. So you estimate 6 and later on you get on the ground for proper counting.

In reality, this "business" is a single person doordash/uber gig worker. So you need to revise down 5 of those jobs. Maybe even 6, because maybe you counted the fact that there are X doordashers and Y uber drivers, but did not account for overlap. So you revise from 7 jobs added, to 1. Maybe 0 if that gig worker was laid off recently.

If this happens en masse, you get drastic revisions across the board. But this is usually desired by any president because fewer people look at revised numbers . Because revisions are usually small adjustments and normal. That good faith has clearly ended.

queenkjuul4• 10 months ago

Trump is threatening [and/or has tried to fire] people who report accurate numbers to the government?

As to how the losses happen, well, let the current US regime be exhibit A of how to shed jobs lol. Like are we really to think Trump's personal insistence on ~100,000 federal layoffs doesn't affect the workforce numbers? Like things already weren't good in the last two administrations...

classified• 10 months ago

It's a Democrat conspiracy! /s

paxys2• 10 months ago

I predict ADP's CEO isn't going to last another 6 months on the job.

andy99• 10 months ago

Just for reference, Canada, with an economy less than 1/10 the US lost 66k jobs in August. https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/canadian-economy-bled-66-00...

My first reaction to 32k for the US is that it's obviously negative but a pretty modest decline.

NicoJuicy• 10 months ago

Well, they were hit with import tarrifs...

fabian2k• 10 months ago

The US policy is dragging many countries down, not just itself. The tarrifs and the huge uncertainty is really hitting companies that export to the US.

alkyon• 10 months ago

Next major crisis (like worst-case scenario AI bubble crash) could cause US economy to shed 3 million jobs. Unemployment rate reached 9% in 2010, now it is just 4%. 32k is a fairly insignificant number compared with 160 million employed overall.

aurizon2• 10 months ago

The genesis of high house prices lay in the low interest rates and nimby base home construction codes driven by owners who were deathly afraid of lower priced homes making their piles of brick decline in value. This regime ended with Covid and rates went from ~~2.5% to 5-6%. A few had 30 year mortgages at 2.5-3.5% but a huge number had corporate money market paper at 1-2% - this is great while it lasts, but it is short term, ranging from 30 days to 1-2 years, with the 30 day rates at the bottom. With low rates and efficient property managers and the shortage, these managers were able to keep occupancy rates in the high 90%'s, with aggressive vetting rules and retentive deposit procedures(deny full deposit return for trivial reasons = hoping the tenant will not create a long fight over a small bone - which often needed a small claims court battle, when at a new job far away, some managers got over 100% rent via this overlapped dual rent. Overlay this with AirBNB taking 5-20% of rental off the market where similar closely monitored management with cleaning staff kept occupancy in the 90% area in some places at 3x the apartment rent rate and greatly undercutting hotel rates at 5-10x apartment rates. A great squealing of the stuck pigs(Hotels) and the similarly stuck city tax pigs created insurance pigs and laws that shut down many of these AirBNB's = the worms all turned at once. Places that earned well became losing money pits, and large numbers were soon sold to capture the high prices of their low price circa 1999-2001 purchases. There was also the surf side condo collapse (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7KNwMSuwQ8w) where Florida forced condos that were tall/old/salty footed into huge engineering inspections and catch-up reserve rules that made many condos worth less than the paper that was written to finance them. People walked and lost everything = thousands of horror stories on utube... Then AI mediated job losses.... 32,000 under reports this, as many companies have large internal payroll processing that is not reflected in that 32,000. as dyauspitr says = It’s a wasteland out there.

This is a man speeding at 100 MPH into a blizzard with a 1000 car pileup 2 miles ahead!

smartbit• 10 months ago

Through msn https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/us-lost-32000-jobs-i... (with graphs) and it's https://archive.is/B6XEh (without graphs).

U.S. Lost 32,000 Private-Sector Jobs in September, Says Payroll Processor

Related Stories