Chapter 1: What does the recent increase in unemployment rates signify?
The word of the day today is portmanteau. Two words combined into one. What's that? Use it in a sentence? Sure. How's this? What we've got here is a meh-conomy. From American Public Media, this is Marketplace. In Los Angeles, I'm Kai Risdahl. It is Tuesday today, the 16th of December. Good as always to have you along, everybody. Meh and economy.
Chapter 2: How are workforce re-entries impacting the job market?
Mehconomy. Get it? I confess here that it's not my original thought. I saw it someplace this morning. I would credit you if I remembered where. But it is kind of apt, no, given today's November and partial October jobs report. 4.6% is the unemployment rate, the highest it's been in more than four years, and the latest sign that the U.S. labor market just keeps slowing down.
Chapter 3: What trends are emerging in the healthcare job sector?
That 4.6%, by the by, is up from an even 4% at the start of this year. The thing is, it's not happening because people are losing their jobs left and right. Marketplace's Daniel Ackerman explains what's going on. Amanda Augustine is a career coach with CareerMinds, and she says many of her new clients have been out of work for months now.
It's a lot of people who have been unemployed for quite some time who are now saying, well, whatever I've been doing is clearly not working. I need some extra help. She says employers aren't laying off a ton of people. There's been no spike in first-time unemployment claims. Firms are just reluctant to hire. Even the interview process takes a longer time.
Chapter 4: Why are young people increasingly turning to trade schools?
And so the share of people seeking jobs just keeps climbing. And one reason for the uptick in November's unemployment rate was workforce re-entry, says Tuan Nguyen, an economist with RSM. Meaning that there were people on the sideline rejoining the market again. And he says workforce reentry can be tough to interpret.
It could mean people are more confident in their ability to land a job, or it could mean more people feel they have no choice but to land a job, says Ron Hetrick, an economist with the labor data firm Lightcast. So these are people who were spouses of people or family members. They didn't need to work. And then the primary person loses their job. So these people reenter the labor force.
And then there's the stuff that the headline unemployment rate just doesn't capture. Hetrick says the number of part-time workers who'd rather be full-time is at the highest level since March of 2021. That's a pretty big deal. That's a sign of economic stress.
And it's one reason the unemployment rate isn't always the best indicator of what it feels like to be in the labor market, says Sarah Foster, an economic analyst with Bankrate.
She says even though 4.6% isn't sky high compared to the long-term average... People who want a job, who are stuck at a position that they don't like, you know, want to change something about their job circumstances, this is not an easy labor market for them.
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Chapter 5: What challenges do part-time workers face in the current economy?
She says anxiety is being felt by workers and would-be workers alike. I'm Daniel Ackerman for Marketplace. So let's talk about where people are getting jobs. Pretty much the only industries that are doing a decent amount of hiring right now are health care and social assistance. 64,000 new jobs in November.
But as Marketplace's Samantha Fields reminds us, past performance is no guarantee of future results. If it weren't for health care and social assistance, hiring would have been totally flat last month. Healthcare is really the last remaining reliable source of jobs growth for today's job market. Daniel Zhao at Glassdoor says that's been true for much of this year.
There have been multiple months where all other industries have actually lost jobs, whereas healthcare has continued to steadily add jobs. The industry tends to be resilient, even in recessions. People always need health care, no matter what's happening in the economy. And these days, Alex Jaquez at the Groundwork Collaborative says need is growing.
The baby boomer population, a very large segment of the overall population, is aging. And what we know about aging is that it comes for all of us.
Chapter 6: How is artificial intelligence affecting entry-level job opportunities?
And you use more health care as you get older. That's good for anyone looking for a job in the field. But even though there is plenty of hiring going on in health care and social assistance, Kate Bond at the Institute for Women's Policy Research says there's not quite as much now as there was a year or two ago.
It is adding fewer jobs each month while the overall labor market is also slowing down. So it's a little concerning. And there's more to be concerned about looking ahead, according to Andrew Stettner at the Century Foundation, with the enhanced subsidies for ACA insurance expiring and Medicaid cuts looming. Few people will have health insurance next year.
So that means, you know, some of this robust growth in health care, we're seeing it flatten out. And the biggest cuts to Medicaid won't even phase in for another year or so. So there's some real risks to health care jobs over the next few years. It really is going to be negative for people's health. And, he says, for the economy. I'm Samantha Fields for Marketplace.
Wall Street today, I do not know what to tell you. Traders didn't seem much to mind what we learned about the U.S.
Chapter 7: What role does advertising revenue play in the economy's recovery?
labor market. We will have the details when we do the numbers. A year and a half or so ago, we spent some time reporting on broadband Internet, trying to figure out how the Biden administration's $42 billion broadband equity access and deployment program, the BEAD program, that was supposed to connect every home in this economy to high speed Internet by 2030.
We wanted to figure out how it was going to work on the ground. Things have changed since then, obviously, with the arrival of the second Trump term. But back then, fiber was the priority.
So we went to McKee, Kentucky, population 800, a town that was way ahead of the government's broadband goal, thanks in very large measure to the People's Rural Telephone Cooperative, where Keith Gabbard is the CEO. Mr. Gabbard, it's good to talk to you again. Welcome back to the program. Thank you, sir. It's good to be on. So it's been a year and a half-ish since we were out there in McKee.
First of all, how are you and how's business at the People's Rural Telephone Cooperative there? Well, I'm doing well, and our company, you know, is very, very, very busy, and that's a good problem to have. We're building fiber in several surrounding counties, and we're just staying really busy, and that's a good problem to have.
Chapter 8: What should we expect for the future of the labor market?
How are you doing this expanding? I remember when we were out there, we talked about how government financing, government loans have been critical to you and your operations and the growth and, in fact, the company's existence at all. I imagine that's still sort of a key thing for you?
It is, and of course, we were applying for some things when you were here before, but we're just finishing up a project in USDA ReConnect2, and then we've just now finally got environmental permitting done for ReConnect4, and we just started a project last month in Adjoining County, and that's a huge project. It's about a $20 million, $19 million, 200-mile project.
We're trying to, you know, look for every bit of possible help we can get. Most of these are part loan, part grant. But we're trying to provide good broadband to these folks. When we were out there, Mr. Gabbard, we were talking about BEAD funding, right, the Broadband Equity Access Program and how that was working. And obviously times have changed in government support for this kind of thing.
The Trump administration is not so much in favor of whatever the Biden administration was doing. How has that affected you? And what would you say the results of the B program were for you? Well, we did apply for some bead funding. We got very little.
I think we've been provisionally awarded like 78 locations that I'm not sure if we're even going to accept it or not because they're not going to pay the proportion that we originally applied for. But I think I think the B program is really missing our opportunity. Forty-two billion dollars to get most people fiber. Of course, I'm prejudiced. Fiber is what we do.
But it looks like the emphasis is not on fiber anymore. It's on some fiber, some fixed wireless, and a whole lot of satellite. Well, let's talk about that satellite for a minute. Starlink, Elon Musk's outfit, and it's not uncontroversial, let's say, right, to pull all this money into a private company and then take money away from the folks on the ground.
Well, personally, I think it's a bad move. You know, we've got a lot of poverty here, a lot of need. I think everybody deserves quality broadband, I always think. Taking money away from people that really need it and, you know, essentially giving it to the richest man in the world just doesn't make sense to me. But what do I know? I'm not a politician.
I'm just a guy trying to provide a service here. What you've been doing, we should point out here, for a very long time. Explain for us, would you, Mr. Gabbard, what fiber has let McKee and Jackson County, what it has let people there do and become?
Well, you know, our initial fiber was we built fiber to every home and business in the two counties we serve, Jackson and Owsley, and just really made a big difference in the quality of life here and continues to. Work from home is a huge thing here. We have people buying property from all over the country and moving here.
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