Luke Vargas

Thank you so much.

It's jobs day.

March's employment report is due out at 830 a.m.

Eastern, and it could go a long way toward clarifying whether a big jobs drop in February was a blip or the start of something more serious.

Most economists are expecting a bounce back after the U.S.

labor market shed 92,000 positions in February.

Federal regulators are mounting a legal defense of prediction markets, with the Commodities Futures Trading Commission suing Arizona, Illinois, and Connecticut over their efforts to ban sports and election betting on Kalshi and other platforms.

The civil complaints contend that the federal regulator has sole authority to regulate the contracts listed by Kalshi and others, and asked courts in the states to prevent them from applying their own gambling laws to the contracts.

Prediction markets have grown quickly in recent years, and the Trump family has taken a financial interest in the industry, with one of Trump's sons serving as an advisor to Kalshi and its largest competitor, PolyMarket, which has a data partnership with Dow Jones, the publisher of the Wall Street Journal.

Kalshi declined to comment, while a PolyMarket spokesperson applauded the suit and said that prediction markets are federally regulated financial instruments.

And I'm afraid that we've got to end the week talking about price hikes.

Beginning later this month, Amazon will start charging third-party sellers a new 3.5% fuel surcharge, a fee that could get passed along to shoppers.

United Airlines is joining JetBlue in upping checked luggage charges with first and second bags jumping today by $10 each and a whopping $50 for a third checked item.

And as journal reporter Inti Pacheco told us, not even your morning coffee is insulated from rising prices thanks to tariffs, higher labor costs, and bad weather in Brazil and Vietnam.

Commodity coffee prices dipped in November after President Trump pulled back the 40% tariff on Brazilian food items, easing pressure on businesses that rely on coffee sales.

But now higher freight costs because of the Iran war and stepped up trading in unroasted green coffee futures markets are driving them back up again.

Coffee outpaced many other grocery items in the inflation tracking consumer price index last year.

So might I suggest a cup of humble tea?

And that's it for what's news for this Friday morning.

Additional sound in this episode was from Reuters.