Kyle Risdell

Dan Ackerman started us off today with labor market data, job openings and first-time claims for unemployment, specifically where the news was, as you remember, because it was like nine and a half, ten minutes ago.

Meh, honestly.

If you pull back just a bit, though.

It doesn't get too terribly much better.

We're not getting the January unemployment report till next Wednesday versus tomorrow.

Thank you.

Most recent government shutdown.

But what we know so far is not real encouraging.

The private sector payroll data we got yesterday from ADP was underwhelming.

Just twenty two thousand new jobs in January.

The unemployment rate does remain a bright spot, trending up, but still just 4.4 percent last we heard.

As happens with data, though, the headline simply isn't the whole story.

There have been, in fact, upward spikes in unemployment for specific groups.

Black unemployment in particular is up nearly one and a half percentage points in the past year to seven and a half percent right now.

Black women's unemployment is

is up by nearly two full percentage points.

And as Marketplace's Mitchell Hartman reports, that is going to have some lasting after effects.

You've heard, perhaps, that the most recent nuclear weapons agreement between Russia and the United States has lapsed.

Today is the last day, actually.

It's the New START Treaty by name, and chatter now is of a new nuclear arms race.