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Chapter 1: What does the latest jobs report reveal about long-term unemployment?
On this Jobs Friday, we'll read the tea leaves on the labor market. Plus, talk about some actual tea. Keep the kettle on. From American Public Media, this is Marketplace. In Denver, I'm Amy Scott, in for Kai Risdahl. It is Friday, January 9th. Good to have you with us. Well, the Supreme Court kept us in suspense over the fate of President Trump's sweeping tariffs.
Many were hoping for a ruling today on the legality of many of those tariffs. But that gives us more time to talk about today's jobs report in our weekly wrap. The Labor Department says employers added just 50,000 jobs in December. That's adjusted for seasonality. And it's down slightly from the month before.
With me to break it down are Catherine Rampell at the Bulwark and MS Now and Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union. Hello, you two.
Hi Amy. Hey.
Hi Amy. All right, Katherine, let's start with you. Not only was hiring pretty weak last month, but weaker than we thought for the prior two months as well. How would you characterize the job market right now based on this report? It's not so great. If you look under the hood, we have lost jobs in most industries year over year. Manufacturing has been doing quite poorly.
A number of other industries have been doing quite poorly. The only industries that seem to be doing okay, if you take that 12 month long view, is are basically health care and social insurance, leisure, private education, just a few areas of services. But blue collar jobs in particular, not doing so great. And there seems to be a fair amount of fragility in this economy.
I mean, and yet, Heather, the unemployment rate is still pretty low at 4.4 percent.
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Chapter 2: How is the current job market impacting different industries?
Wage growth improved last month. How concerning is this overall slowdown in hiring in that context?
Yeah, it's really an interesting discussion. I mean, Amy, the way that I would look at it is we've basically been stuck around 4.4% unemployment since September. So we're probably not getting a lot worse in the last few months, but it's hard to make a case that things really look like they're getting better. I would characterize this as a hiring recession.
That's not an official economic term, but nobody wants to live in a world where pretty much the only places hiring are hospitals and restaurants. That's just not very healthy for the economy and not a very dynamic economy.
So, Catherine, a wrinkle in this report is that President Trump actually posted a chart on his social media last night that included some data from this morning's jobs report before it was released. It's generally considered a no-no to share this data in advance, even though, you know, people in the executive branch are briefed on the data. How much of a breach is that? It's a huge breach.
This is not just about violating norms or propriety, things like that. Somebody probably made a fair amount of money off of that early tweet. These numbers are kept under lock and key because they move markets.
So this is about preventing some insiders from potentially scrutinizing that tweet and reading the tea leaves and noticing that the numbers that he posted, because he posted some year-over-year numbers that reflected the inclusion of the December figures. If you had scrutinized that and you had realized that, oh, no, he was not using publicly available data,
Those numbers must imply some not yet released data. You could have made a lot of money. And those of us who have 401ks, who are more passive investors, you stood to lose a lot of money because there was somebody who had insider information. So this is a very big deal.
I've been trying to explain this to people that it's not just like, oh, the wonks and, you know, others are are frustrated by all of this because there's this memo that says that they're not supposed to do it. No, this is there's real money on the line. This was a big, big deal. Right. Heather, what are you hearing about this and what it means for the future of kind of the integrity of this data?
Well, that's the big question. Now that the genie's out of the bottle, can you prevent the president from doing it again and again? And I don't know. Supposedly, there should be legal ways to go after this, but we live in a very different world.
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Chapter 3: What are the implications of the recent hiring slowdown?
now than we did a year ago. But I'll just go back to the big picture here. I think for most Americans, what they're really focused on is that 2025 was the worst year for hiring outside of a recession since 2003. And there's a lot of anxiousness about the job situation right now.
Yeah. And so, of course, the Fed will be thinking about this when it meets in a few weeks to talk about interest rate policy. Catherine, how do you think this latest jobs report figures into that discussion? Well, the Fed is trying to weigh both sides of its dual mandate, which is stable prices and maximum employment.
And there's been a question of which side of the mandate is more pressing at this point, because the actions that the Federal Reserve can take with regard to interest rates would probably, you know... hurt one at the expense, hurt one and help the other and vice versa, depending on how much, whether they continue to cut rates or they keep rates flat or increase them.
Given the fragility that is in this job market, given as Heather said, that we seem to be in some sort of hiring recession, it certainly looks like this will encourage the Fed to continue cutting rates. That's what markets seem to be expecting as well.
I think it's not so much a question of whether they cut rates again at this next meeting, but what is the trajectory of interest rate policy look like over the next year, given that we still have inflation in the economy and that we potentially may see further softening in the job market? Yeah.
And speaking of interest rates, Heather, I wanted to get your take on some other news this week that President Trump has ordered Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to buy some $200 billion worth of mortgage-backed securities as a way to try to lower mortgage interest rates. What, if anything, would that do for affordability?
Well, there's two ways to look at this. The good news is President Trump is really turning his attention to housing affordability. And we desperately in this country need more housing supply and we need more plans for how to make housing more affordable. You know, the more not as encouraging news is a lot of the things that have been floated or tried so far are pretty small potatoes.
And you mentioned this $200 million buying of mortgage-backed securities. Is that going to drive down Mortgage rates below 6%, which is where everybody really wants to be again. 5.89 would be the best, wonderful, feel like a real gift. And no, it's not. It's not. And the same thing when you go back to the 50-year mortgage idea. Not a great solution for the bigger problems that we have right now.
He also suggested this week the idea of preventing buying the Black Rocks and the big companies from buying up homes, trying to prevent investment buyers. Again, these are all very small potatoes.
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Chapter 4: How has President Trump's actions affected the integrity of job data?
What we really need is ideas to stimulate more housing and reform our zoning codes.
All right. Well, we will have to leave it there for now. Heather Long is chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union. Catherine Rappel is with Bulwark and MSNOW. Thank you both so much and have a great weekend.
Thanks, Amy.
Wall Street shrugged off pretty much everything. We'll have the details when we do the numbers. One line item in that December jobs report that stood out was long-term unemployment. More than a quarter of people who are unemployed and looking for work have been so for at least 27 weeks. And that's the highest that figure has been in almost four years. Marketplace's Kristen Schwab has more.
The job market is maybe the economic indicator to watch right now. And it's not looking bad, but it's not looking good.
The labor market feels very fragile.
Michael Linden at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth says a lot of the fragility is in the long-term unemployment rate. 26% of unemployed people have been out of work for 27-plus weeks. Before and after the pandemic, the number hovered around 20%, which makes this spike unusual.
You know, we don't often see increases in long-term unemployment outside of recessions.
It means something funny is happening in the labor market right now. Elise Gould is with the Economic Policy Institute. Employers are not doing a lot of hiring right now. Workers are not quitting. There's not a lot of churn in the labor market, so it's harder for workers to break in. Low hire, low fire. You've heard us say it before.
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Chapter 5: What role does AI play in the future of agriculture?
He says even if the unemployment rate stays relatively low, long-term unemployment still has negative effects on the economy and negative effects on those job seekers the longer they seek. I'm Kristen Schwab for Marketplace. Technological change is a constant in farming. About a century ago, farmers were ditching their horses and plows for the gas-powered tractor. Now in 2026, they're using AI.
Here's one farmer's story.
I'm Andrew Nelson. I am a fifth-generation farmer and software engineer. I live and farm in Farmington, Washington. I kind of got more into software than farming because I did grow up on the farm and I was a constant tinker as a kid. So what I decided to do was go to college for computer science and business, but always with the thought that I wanted to come back to the farm.
I mean, just to think of what my grandfather had of, you know, he started farming with horses and ended farming with big tractors and stuff. But the change in my lifetime has definitely been digitization where, you know, we were able to get GPS guided tractors, stuff like that, where you're able to scrutinize the ground better because you're able to break it down into smaller parts.
For us, the technology that I integrated was a lot of drone-based mapping. And I did an exercise once where I drew out where I thought the weeds were in the field. And I went and looked at the field. And then I took my drone map and ran our AI model on it. And I missed 25% to 50% of the weeds.
Granted, I got all the heaviest areas, but there was all these outliers that I missed, which would have turned into a problem if I didn't get it. With the large language models, it definitely has increased the speed at the access of information. So we have worked with UIUC and their Crop Wizard project and been able to look at pictures or describe a situation that I'm having.
And then it'll pull up all the research documentation that has been done in the universities in the U.S., I'll talk to, you know, chat GPT or a couple of the other AI voice models and I'll just talk to it while I'm driving in the combine or driving in the sprayer or tractor and be like, what if instead of doing spring wheat next year, I did another fall wheat but sprayed it like spring wheat?
You know, what would that look like profit-wise? I still also text my agronomist and things like that, but it's definitely a nice secondary sounding board I think farmers are quite resourceful, and especially years like this year where commodity prices are very low, our input costs were near our record highs.
You're going to be looking at everything that your current equipment can do and making sure it can do it. I'm not trying to go out and buy new equipment. I'm trying to take the information I have or can get and apply it to the equipment that I have.
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Chapter 6: How are businesses adapting to economic uncertainty?
To hear more of our AI economy stories or tell us your own, head over to marketplace.org slash my economy. Coming up. Not all growth is good growth. You can say that again. But first, let's do the numbers. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 237 points, half a percent, to close at 49,504. The Nasdaq rose 191 points, eight-tenths percent, to finish at 23,671.
And the S&P 500 increased 44 points, two-thirds of one percent, to end at 69.66. For the week, the Dow improved 2.3%, closing at an all-time high. The Nasdaq gained 1.9%. The S&P 500 expanded 1.6% to a record close. Go figure, right? Bonds rose. The yield on the 10-year T-note dipped to 4.16%. You're listening to Marketplace.
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This is Marketplace. I'm Amy Scott. When we chatted back in July, the company had just resumed regular sales.
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Chapter 7: What challenges are small businesses facing in the current market?
Jessie, good to talk with you again. Hi, Amy. Thank you so much for having me. So how's business? Well, it's moving along. We have had a pretty good year overall, I'd say, even though it's been a lot of pivots and a lot of changes. Our business grew a little bit. year over year, which was surprising to me, given all the pivots and things we had to change.
And then actually just today, I put down deposits on new equipment for all the things that we had lost in the flood. So that's big news as of this morning. Oh, wow. Congratulations. What kind of equipment are we talking about? Thanks. It's equipment that makes the tea bags. So we're pretty excited about it. It's a good step towards bringing our manufacturing back in house.
So another thing we talked about was that you're hoping to have a new space in Asheville for your retail and manufacturing by early this year. Has that happened? Not quite yet. So I wish that I could say that it has, but we are still looking for a new space. It's a little bit challenging here.
Commercial space costs are high, and we have kind of some specialized things that we're looking for to be able to hook up our equipment and manufacture in-house again. So We haven't yet found that space, but we're actively looking. And our goal is to have that done still by the end of this quarter. So fingers crossed.
How would you say your role as a founder and business owner has changed because of all these challenges? Oh, that's a great question. And I do feel like my role has changed significantly in the last year.
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Chapter 8: How is climate change influencing business strategies in agriculture?
And I mean, it's interesting as I reflect on what this last year has looked like for me personally. I think it's very real for any entrepreneur that things are going to come up, things are going to happen, trouble's going to occur. And it really requires us as entrepreneurs to look at things like, are our relationships solid? Have we built relationships that matter?
How do we tell our story, which has become a huge part of my role sort of unexpectedly in the last year? Fundraising has been a giant focus, just a whole lot of focus on fundraising in all the ways. Talking to investors, working on grants, all of those kinds of things has just been a huge part of our business being able to survive.
And I think that I'll carry those learnings with me for sure, even though my year has been quite different. There was a lot of federal aid aimed at helping businesses recover after Hurricane Helene. Were you able to take advantage of any of those programs? We're still waiting here for that federal aid to be dispersed, at least in the... Wow. Yeah.
It's been longer, certainly, than I expected, even though we knew it would take a little bit. But we're still waiting to find out how we can access that capital. Some of it has been specifically earmarked for the city of Asheville for small business grants because our regional economy is driven so much by small business that that's such a big
part of our recovery, but we have not yet seen that funding come through. As someone who's been so directly impacted by a climate disaster, how are you thinking about the changing climate as part of the future of your business? Are you adapting? Are you planning for more disruptions? I think it would be tough not to at this point.
You know, I think for the tea industry, I think anyone in this industry working with agricultural products in general is means that there are going to be some changes within our supply chain. And I do think that our model being focused on native plants and regional and domestic sourcing and building those value chains, working with farmers.
My hope is that we'll be able to be nimble as we move forward around supply chain and look at using herbs like yaupon, which is our only native North American caffeinated plant, and it's native to the Southeast. Hmm, say more about that. What is yaupon? Yeah, yaupon is such a cool plant. It's in the holly family, which is the same family as yerba mate.
So it's really kind of similar to yerba mate, but it's our North American varietal. And it has caffeine in it. So it's a really great tea and is pretty drought resistant, heat resistant, that kind of thing. So I'm personally really interested to see how that goes with regards to climate change over the years, how customers' tastes will change and how plants like this might get a chance to shine.
Jessi Dean, founder and owner of Asheville Tea Company in Asheville, North Carolina. Thanks as always, Jessi. Take care. Thank you so much for having me, Amy. Thank you.
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