Job numbers fall short of expectations
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What were the latest job numbers and unemployment rates?
You got your rock, you got your hard place, you got this economy pretty much stuck right in the middle. From American Public Media, this is Marketplace.
In Los Angeles, I'm Kyle Rizdahl. It is Friday today. This one is the 6th of March. Good as always to have you along, everybody. Just to be completely clear here, the rock is inflation higher than we want and most assuredly going higher in no small part because war is inflationary. The hard place is the labor market, which we learned today, well, is a bit more challenged than we all had probably thought. The economy is Well, that's us. And it's where we're going to start today. Sudeep Reddy is at MSNOW. Courtney Brown is at Axios. Hey, you two.
Hi, Kai.
Courtney, you get to go first. Jobs, we lost 92,000 of them. Unemployment rate ticked up. I would like you to discuss for me in the next 45 seconds what you make of that given, oh, everything. Wait, like we learned earlier in the week from ADP. and other private sector data that maybe the labor market was on better footing. I wrote a story that said that momentum was the story of February, and then 8.30 this morning hits, and it's like, oh, never mind. Maybe the strong job gains that the government reported in January was a little bit of a head fake, and maybe the story really has been intact the whole time. That This labor market has a very soft underbelly, and that's a concern for everyday Americans, for economists, and for the Fed.
I love how you started with, wait, and you're like offended at what the data said. I'm upset. Sudeep Reddy. No, look, I hear you, man. I hear you. Sudeep, if I use the word stagflation now, because economic growth is happening still, but look, there's a war on and oil prices are up and who knows what's going to happen. And inflation is still too high. Is stagflation, am I bringing that one out of the barn too early? It's something we should worry about. The overall growth rate in the economy has actually been fine. It's just the job market has been extremely weak. Inflation has been a touch too high. Neither one of these is at disastrous levels or basically at... stall speed with the job market. If you look at the trend, we've had, I think, probably half of the last nine months have had negative payroll numbers.
So that's not a good place to be. That rarely happens when things are just fine. And inflation, we do have to see it. A week of this 35% surge in oil is worrying if that sticks around for four weeks or six weeks. then it's going to embed in inflation expectations. They're going to have people kind of starting to panic. They'll pull back on spending. And, yeah, you do then get this stagflation scenario. Courtney, let's turn to the geopolitics tax that we're all paying now. And that's not my original phrase.
What factors contributed to the recent job losses in the healthcare sector?
I saw it somewhere on the socials, and I would credit it if I remembered. But Katharine Pell, our sometimes colleague here on Fridays, now at the Bulwark and MSNOW, She wrote the other day and said, look, if the president wanted prices to go up, what would he be doing differently? And I wonder, I mean, look, you're an economics reporter and not a political scientist, but it does seem that that's exactly the result of all of these policies, that these prices are going up because of what the president's doing. Right. And so there's the war, but there's also, you know, in the backdrop, the trade war is and tariffs that might be going higher. The president has made it very clear that what the Supreme Court scrapped, he wants to replace in full.
So you have those two forces and many other forces kind of coming together and making the environment look more expensive for consumers who are already very upset about how expensive things are. They don't really care about inflation, right? They care about price level and prices are high and they just don't want to see prices go even higher. Right. So, Sadiq, that gets me to the next point I think I want to talk about, which is I've said over the past couple of days, when will the markets hit the president's pain point?
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What were the latest job numbers and unemployment rates?
0:01–3:16
2
What factors contributed to the recent job losses in the healthcare sector?
3:16–7:05
3
How are inflation and geopolitical issues affecting the economy?
7:05–9:10
4
What is Eli Lilly's new initiative regarding GLP-1 drugs?
9:10–14:07
5
Why are employers hesitant to cover weight loss drugs?
14:07–18:02
6
How are independent meteorologists gaining popularity on social media?
18:02–22:56
7
What role do multiple job holders play in the current economy?
22:56–25:50
8
How does hosting trivia reflect the gig economy?
25:50–26:01