Chapter 1: Why are holiday bonuses declining in the current labor market?
A look back at the big economic trends of 2025 and what's ahead for 2026. We'll have our last weekly wrap of the year. From American Public Media, this is Marketplace. In Washington, D.C., I'm Kimberly Adams in for Kai Rizdal. It's Friday, December 26th. Good to have you with us. This is the last Friday of 2025, meaning it's also the last weekly wrap of 2025.
So to look back and a little bit forward at the economic year that was, we've got Courtney Brown at Axios on the line and Rachel Siegel at The Washington Post. Hey, you two.
Hi, Kimberly.
Hi.
Thank you for joining me this holiday week. Courtney, I want to start with you because there were a bunch of big economic themes this year. And one in particular that showed up in this week's GDP report is this ever resilient American consumer. Doesn't matter if we've got tariffs, bad consumer sentiment, whatever. People are still spending. Courtney, you've been writing about this. Why?
I also am curious and surprised by the resiliency of the American consumer. And this isn't the only year that we're having this conversation about consumer resiliency, right? This has been the story of the U.S. economy for a while now. I think what makes it the most shocking is some of the factors that you mentioned that are new to the economy this year. Tariffs, for instance.
We've seen the consumer continue to spend despite some tariff-related price increases. And I think the big question for my reporting in 2026 is how much longer can this continue, especially as the labor market starts to look a little bit more rocky? Will consumers keep spending or will they start to be more cautious? That's a massive question for the economy going into next year.
Rachel, what's your take? Why do you think people are still spending and what might stop them?
Well, I completely agree with everything that Courtney just said. And I also feel like it's hard to parse out different stories coming from different types of consumers and different types of spending too. So there's this big looming question about higher end consumers, how much they're willing to absorb, how much bandwidth they continue to have for higher prices.
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Chapter 2: What historical factors influenced the creation of Play-Doh?
Just based on corporate anecdotes, we know that lower income consumers are starting to pull back, shift their spending, as Rachel was kind of alluding to. And high income consumers just keep chugging along powered by stock market returns or what have you. What happens if there is sort of an interruption in the stock market boom? How does that show up in the economic data?
That's something I'll be watching for next year.
It's funny you should mention data because I wanted to ask you both about, you know, the fact that it was a big year for talking about economic data, delayed data because of the shutdown, is data being politicized, data sets that we lost under Doge. So real quick, in the last minute we got left, Courtney, how are you changing your data game in 2026? What are you looking at?
I feel like everyone else's private sector data has become a bigger part of my, if you will, data diet. And that was just kind of by force during the government shutdown, right?
But I think that will continue next year for me personally, because I think there are a lot of questions about, you know, what's happening with the labor market as there's this massive population change underway with immigration crackdown. It's getting very difficult to understand how many jobs are being added and what that means for the labor market.
What about you, Rachel? What's your data game in 2026?
I feel like a lot of journalists, we can start stories by using a data point and then going and finding examples that tell that story or the other way around. And I feel like I've been tilting towards the latter, not necessarily seeing a data point published and assuming that it's reflective of what the whole story is.
So maybe that's just something that I feel like is going to be shaping some of my reporting. But I feel like we've all got sort of a dose of skepticism and not assuming that a data point, whenever it does come out, is going to tell us the full story.
Well, thank you so much. That's Rachel Siegel at The Washington Post, Courtney Brown at Axios. Happy New Year, you two. Same to you, Kimberly.
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Chapter 3: How did the pandemic impact consumer spending trends?
And it's a feed of pictures of things that look tasty, but that you definitely shouldn't eat. And I bring it up because this next piece is all about one toy that's ended up on the Forbidden Snacks thread a ton of times. You can take your guess as to what it could be and get your answer in the final installment of our mini-series on the history of toys.
My name's Tim Walsh. I am with The Playmakers, which is a toy design firm, and I also write books. I'm the author of Timeless Toys. Well, we have to go back to heating our homes with coal to introduce Play-Doh. Because starting in about 1850, we heated our homes with coal. And it was great, but coal soot got everywhere.
And non-washable surfaces like wallpaper had to be cleaned with a doughy mixture of borax, salt, flour. And homemakers would knead this together and press it on their walls like a kneaded eraser. And there was a tiny little soap company in Cincinnati named Cut All Products that became the largest manufacturer of wallpaper cleaner in the world.
And then, you know, after World War II, when oil furnaces came out and gas furnaces and vinyl wallpaper that you could wash with soap and water, this little soap company was about to go bankrupt because their core product line was obsolete. Thank you. So the idea for Play-Doh originates with a school teacher named Kay Zufall.
She was the sister-in-law of Joe McVicker, who was one of the owners of this soap company in Cincinnati. Kay read a newspaper article that you could make Christmas tree ornaments out of wallpaper cleaner. So she bought a can of cut-all wallpaper cleaner and played with the kids, and the kids loved it and thought it was great.
So then she called her brother-in-law and said, listen, I think you can turn this into a toy. And they agreed. And that was the start of Play-Doh in 1955.
They added almond scent.
And of course, the formula is very good.
well guarded but it was essentially the same stuff because wallpaper cleaner was non-toxic this was before rubber gloves and and homemakers would use their bare hands to push it on the walls so it wasn't much of a shift but they sold wallpaper cleaner for 25 cents a can and they could sell this new modeling compound for a dollar 50 so it was a big money boost for the company
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Chapter 4: What is the significance of the K-shaped economy in today's market?
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This is Marketplace. I'm Kimberly Adams. Anime, Japanese animated shows and movies, is kind of taken over the world. A report from the Association of Japanese Animations showed that the industry made record revenue last year, $25 billion globally. And 2025 is looking pretty good, too.
The movie Demon Slayer, Infinity Castle, was one of the highest-grossing films this year, making more than $700 million globally. The film is part of the hit series Demon Slayer and Infinity Castle became Japan's highest grossing movie of all time. So this being the end of the year and all, we wanted to check in to see where the anime industry might be headed next.
Doug Montgomery is the CEO of Global Connects Media and also an adjunct professor at Temple University in Tokyo. And he was game to deal with the time zones and join us in the middle of the night there. Good to talk with you.
Well, it's wonderful to be here. Thank you for having me.
Big picture, we saw data that anime hit record highs in 2024. Based on what you've seen so far this year, how will 2025 compare?
2025 should be hitting new highs once again. I think the anime business is absolutely on a roll right now. And nothing's going to stop it in the near future.
Why is it on a roll in particular right now?
I think there's a number of reasons. One reason is the bump that anime got during COVID.
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Chapter 5: How is the anime industry performing in 2025?
That's not a good environment for a producer.
Can you sort of compare the business model of anime and how it makes money compared to maybe more traditional shows that people are familiar with? Sure.
One very good example has to do with two of the biggest titles of the last, you know, four or five years, kind of according to, you know, how analytics, you know, calculates audience demand. And one title would be Game of Thrones. And the other would be a title called Attack on Titan. In 2019, Parrot's most in-demand TV series in the world was Game of Thrones.
In 2021, in the height of the pandemic, it was Attack on Titan. Which is an anime. Which is an anime, correct. And I was fortunate enough to interview the director of the final season of Attack on Titan. And I told him that it's estimated that one episode of Game of Thrones costs around $10 million. Wow. And when I told him this, his jaw dropped.
And he said, you know, $10 million is what it would cost us to make five seasons of Attack on Titan. Wow.
So, you know, I think that's something that, you know, when you look at the business in 2025 and the pressure on cost, you know, why these companies are starting to invest more and more into anime, there's a really, you know, rather big ROI that can be gained from those things as opposed to live action.
Do you think it's possible to kind of hit peak anime, you know, here in the United States or globally, like the market becomes too saturated?
I absolutely think it's possible to hit peak anime. That would be a bit like, you know, an economist, you know, predicting the next recession, right? It's going to come. I mean, Marvel hit a max. Harry Potter hit a max. Anime will hit a max. When is it coming? I'll go on record as saying sooner than later.
Doug Montgomery is the CEO of Global Connect Media and an adjunct professor at Temple University in Tokyo and an anime expert. Thanks so much.
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