I love how nobody has snitched alpha on here somehow 😆

Answer is probably a soft Yes in the spirit of the question but the linked chart will almost certainly not get updated to reflect this.

@nsokolsky That’s also what I’ve thought this entire time, but Kalshi is now has it as 69% likely that it will. ^¯\_(ツ)_/¯

@polymathematic “Will Biden resign” was at absurdly high numbers like a week before he did IIRC. This is a thin market, a couple of whales can move it easy.

I think I've been on the skeptical side of this market roughly as long as anyone. I've thought Kalshi was roughly 5-7 points too optimistic for most that time. But I don't know that I have a good reason to believe it's 10-15 points wrong. @brod what am I missing?

@polymathematic what prevents me from selling my NO shares is:

1. I’m not fully convinced all of the 154k or whatever employees who took the buyout are actually still on the payroll;

2. I wonder if that number doesn’t include buyouts that will take effect after December 31 rather than October;

3. It’s not obvious but I expect the other firings to slow down in the next few months;

4. While the hiring of ICE agents is not remotely enough to make up for the losses, I suspect there’s more hiring and re-hiring by other agencies than the government advertises.

All in all this leaves a very unclear picture. My sense right now is that it’ll be close. Like we might be just shy of (or barely above) 250k for the December numbers (published in January).

But yeah, nine months ago I would have thought the courts would obviously have prevented the bloodshed. Clearly they didn’t.

@polymathematic agree kalshi is a bit too high atm, selling low bc i’m trying to reduce my position a bit

@brod Kalshi also has >500k at 9% and >1M at 4%, which is unhinged.

I apologize if this has been answered below (I looked but didn’t find the answer), and this might end up mattering: what is the last data point you or Kalshi will use? December 2025 or January 2026?

@Ziddletwix

@MachiNi

If there are more than 250000 federal employees no longer working relative to the January 2025 employee count before Jan 2026, then the market resolves to Yes. Outcome verified from FRED.

I will follow Kalshi on this point but my reading of this quote is that it includes all months in 2025 (any single month satisfying the criterion resolves YES) but it would exclude the Jan 2026 data point (Dec 2025 last chance for resolution). And this refers to the time of the data points on the chart, not when the numbers are released.

If anyone thinks Kalshi means something different LMK—I will mirror them.

@Ziddletwix thanks for confirming. That’s how I understand it too but since it may be close I wanted to be extra sure. The last data point (December) will be released in January.

I will point out that Kalshi is currently at 62%

@bens I don’t care I’ll go down with the ship

@bens I guess this is the link? (ah nvm clearly this is indeed the link in the description)

So, what happens to this market if the BLS monthly jobs data gets that it references gets suspended or has its methodology substantially revised?

@jb456 hahahahahaha uhhhhhhh

@bens this would be funny because on one hand... political motivation to show jobs going up... but on the other hand, motivation to show federal positions going down

@bens OK so the real question is what would be the funniest... this market resolving NO because the jobs data is being cooked, this market resolving YES because the jobs data is being cooked, or this market resolving NO because of massive federal hiring to conduct an interdecennial census. Lot of good options on the table.

@jb456 also be funny if someone was trying to manipulate the prediction markets.

@jb456 so my unofficial quick reaction is that the description says "Linked to this Kalshi question", so my default resolution will likely follow Kalshi's. but if there is sufficiently good reason to do otherwise, I would consider a different resolution. Kalshi is bound by different constraints, so if that forces them into a resolution that seems broadly worse, I won't follow (plus, Kalshi is unable to N/A, while Manifold has that option, even if I will try very hard to avoid such a resolution for such a large market).

to be concrete, if that seems like a serious concern, I should probably do some work looking into how people would expect kalshi to handle that edge case, & lay out some guidance for whether I think I would follow. (and if someone wants to do that legwork for me, i.e. predict "if BLS stops publishing in october and at that point cuts were <250k, how would Kalshi resolve?" and save me some time to look at their rules, feel free, I would certainly appreciate it).

free money to vote no, especially if you consider the new ICE hires. Not even mentioning their ugly breakup and the TACO factor.

@OKanon Seems like the ICE hires are highly relevant.

What news are people betting on? I feel like I missed something important. lol

@MachiNi OTOH I'd be really reluctant to bet against @bens which is what it would be now.

@MaxA flattering XD

@MachiNi there was a big spike on the kalshi market, i think most likely related to this: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2025/08/11/fema-union-contracts-canceled.