A small town's fight against ICE
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
On the show today, jobs, housing, and the climate impacts of war. From American Public Media, this is Marketplace.
In Denver, I'm Amy Scott, in for Kai Risdahl. It's Thursday, March 19th. Good to have you with us. We got another sign today that the U.S. job market is holding up okay. The Labor Department said new claims for unemployment benefits dropped more than expected last week. The number of people filing for the first time fell to 205,000, the lowest level since January. While one week does not make a trend, it is one more data point to back up the Fed's assessment yesterday that the labor market appears to be pretty stable, even as the economic outlook is uncertain. Marketplace's Megan McCarty Carino has more. Weekly jobless claims are one of the first places we'd see signs that recent geopolitical turbulence is destabilizing the labor market.
So far?
This is consistent with what we understand to be kind of a boring job market.
Mark Hamrick at Bankrate says it's basically the same low-hire, low-fire environment we've been talking about for months. A lack of new jobs means it's taking longer for unemployed people to find work, pushing continuing claims higher. But it looks like most firms are holding on to workers, says Elizabeth Crowfoot, principal economist at Lightcast. It's a gradual rebalancing of the labor market, not a full-on deterioration. Which may sound surprising if you've been following the news, says Daniel Zhao, chief economist at Glassdoor. There have been big layoff announcements from Amazon, Block, UPS, Meta.
But when we actually look at the macro data, we see that layoffs are relatively similar to where they were before COVID. We aren't seeing this dramatic surge in layoffs
some of those cuts might never show up in jobless claims, says Andy Challenger at Challenger Gray and Christmas.
If you get let go from a large tech company and you get a severance package, there might not be a need for you to go claim that insurance.
Those job losses would show up in the unemployment rate, which as of last month was 4.4 percent, relatively low by historic standards. I'm Megan McCarty Carino for Marketplace. We're coming up on the spring home buying market, but we're still catching up on data from earlier this year, thanks to the lingering effects from last fall's government shutdown.
How did weekly jobless claims signal stability in the U.S. labor market?
Today, the Census Bureau reported new home sales for January. And as Daniel Ackerman reports, the news was not great for builders.
Seasonally adjusted sales were down more than 17 percent compared to December. On one hand, Lisa Sturdivant of Bright MLS expected some weakness.
There was a lot of wintry weather. People aren't usually out touring home sites during that weather.
But she didn't think the numbers would be quite this bad.
We saw sales at their lowest level since October 2022.
And that has caused some home builders and the lenders they work with to offer sweeteners for prospective buyers, says Tiffany Russell, a real estate agent in Austin, Texas. Those include below-market mortgage rates.
I'm seeing that they are building a lot of homes and giving the farm away on incentives.
For sellers, Russell is also being more conservative with asking price these days.
We are pricing on the lower end of the comps of the area because our buyers won't come through the door if we're even a bit overpriced.
Rising mortgage rates in the past few weeks haven't helped, says Michael Orbino, a real estate agent in Bellevue, Washington.
The spike in interest rates with conflict going on in the Middle East and oil prices have really disappointed some folks.
That, plus ongoing worries about the job market, means the housing market is still kind of stuck.
We've been at this for three years ever since the Fed changed their policy.
Urbino says at this point, he considers the slower housing market a new normal. I'm Daniel Ackerman for Marketplace.
Wall Street singing the blues today. We'll have the details when we do the numbers.
To buy one of those new houses Daniel Ackerman was talking about, most Americans need a mortgage.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:01–2:46
2
How did weekly jobless claims signal stability in the U.S. labor market?
2:46–6:29
3
Why did experts say layoffs at big tech haven't created a surge in jobless claims?
6:29–15:25
4
What caused January's new home sales to fall and how are builders responding?
15:25–26:24