Daniel Ackerman

Does not mean that layoffs aren't coming, but so far they are not showing up.

The length of unemployment duration has actually increased drastically.

The diminishing continued claims is largely a product of just folks rolling off of benefits instead of actually them being rehired.

After the financial crisis, regulation forced big banks to tighten up their lending practices.

Elizabeth DeFontenay of Duke University says that made it harder for some companies to get loans.

She says private lending can be riskier than bank loans or corporate bonds.

But Laura Veldkamp of Columbia University says that's part of the appeal.

Typically, you'll get a higher rate of return in private credit.

Investors tend to be the ones with an appetite for that kind of risk.

As for the companies receiving those loans, Gerald Cohen of UNC says, A significant amount of private credit has been in the software industry.

Which, he says, shouldn't be a surprise.

Software firms are often startups too small to sell bonds or may not meet requirements for bank loans.

Cohen says the problem right now is that software companies are threatened by the development of artificial intelligence.

Those fears caused share prices for private credit managers to drop in recent weeks.

By itself, that's not a huge deal, says Columbia's Laura Veldkamp, but... Maybe this is the canary in the coal mine.

Veldkamp says there could be ripple effects, like remember those big banks, the ones too big to fail?

Veldkamp says they sometimes lend to the very private credit managers who make those riskier loans.

And while we're nowhere near a private credit collapse... The concern is that this is just the beginning and that this is a more widespread phenomenon.

But, she says, it's still too early to tell.

I'm Daniel Ackerman for Marketplace.