Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Here's the thing about out with the old, in with the new. The biggest economic stories of 2025 don't end today. They help inform the biggest economic stories of 2026. From American Public Media, this is Marketplace. In New York, I'm Kristen Schwab in for Kyra's doll. It's Wednesday, December 31st, the last day of the year. Good to be here with you.
We're starting today with jobs because, honestly, the job market is likely to continue to be one of the key metrics we watch in 2026. We got the latest round of initial claims for unemployment benefits a day early because of tomorrow's holiday. It showed that claims fell last week by 16,000, which means in total there were just under 200,000 claims.
That's below what economists were expecting, and it's the second lowest reading in the last two years. So should this data send us into the new year hopeful that the job market is stabilizing and heading for a rebound? Marketplace's Mitchell Hartman reports. December can be kind of messy when it comes to unemployment data, says Andrew Statner at the Century Foundation.
It is always a tricky month to look at the week-to-week claims. And this year, that could be especially true. Businesses may have shifted layoffs to earlier in the year to deal with tariffs. Seasonal trends could be skewing the numbers. Stettner says over 2025 as a whole, unemployment claims have risen about 5%.
Frank Fiorelli analyzes employment data at Paychex, a small business payroll processor. He calls the current job market a... Low-fire, low-hire environment.
Small employers are now raising pay at well under 3% a year, and workers are staying put rather than switching jobs, unlike a few years ago when... People who were leaving for another job were getting really big pay raises, and that's just not happening now. As 2025 was drawing to a close, here's how David Royal at Thrivent Financial summed things up.
I think you see a weakening employment picture. In the delayed November jobs report that came out a couple weeks ago, he points out not only did overall unemployment rise to a four-year high. The biggest percentage of additional unemployed came in people unemployed five weeks or less. So that implies this is a more recent phenomenon, probably the result of
A lot of the layoffs we've seen in the news. One bright spot is that employers have been increasing hours for existing employees, says Paycheck's Frank Fiorelli. That's the first lever that businesses will pull, that they'll start asking folks to work more hours. That could be sort of a precursor to more hiring coming down the pike.
On the other hand, Andrew Stettner at the Century Foundation sees more headwinds in the forecast for 2026. Federal spending cuts in health care, the immigration crackdown, uncertainty around tariffs. Plus, he worries about the quality of economic growth, which is still strong, but... A lot of the spending is at the very high end of the job market.
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Chapter 2: What does the current job market look like as we approach 2026?
A lot of GDP growth is in the AI and the construction around that. He says economic growth that's overly concentrated is unlikely to support broad-based job growth. I'm Mitchell Hartman for Marketplace. Wall Street today, traders ended a record-setting year feeling a bit sour. We'll have the details when we do the numbers.
If I had to pick one economic buzzword to take us into the new year, it would be affordability. Everyone from your next door neighbor to President Trump and soon to be New York City Mayor Zoran Mamdani is talking about it. And while there are plenty of components that go into what makes life affordable or not, things like groceries and gas, the biggest expense for most people is housing.
Now, different governments are taking different approaches to tackle the cost of it. A common solution is to simply build more homes. But Los Angeles is also trying something else. The city recently tightened its rent control laws. From LAist, David Wagner reports. L.A. has had rent control for decades.
Still, most of the city's renters pay more than what the federal government considers affordable. In a recent meeting, Councilmember Nithya Raman said the city's rent control formula was long overdue for an update. It has been 40 years since we put this formula together. These extraordinary rent increases are driving people out of the city. Here's how it works now.
Landlords can raise rents at least 3% every year, and up to 10% in some apartments, but only during periods of high inflation. Low-income immigrant renters like Humberto Altamira say they can't afford any increase. Pensamiento que vamos a vivir en la calle. He's a cook who's currently unemployed, and he says he and his wife could end up living on the streets.
This year, their rent went up 50 bucks a month. It may not sound like a lot, but one recent study commissioned by the city found that one out of every 10 L.A. renters is spending 90 percent or more of their income just on rent. So those tenants are teetering on the edge of homelessness. Before, I had to work one or two jobs to be able to pay.
Altamira says he used to work two jobs to pay the bills, but it's hard to find any job now. Landlords say clamping down on rent hikes isn't a long-term solution. The cost of insurance and building maintenance has risen faster than inflation. Megan Berseno is a landlord who owns eight rent control departments throughout L.A.
She was planning to build one new one as an accessory dwelling unit, but she says those plans are now on hold. I don't know how much longer I can continue to do business in a city that's constantly, I feel like I'm constantly fighting for my basic property rights here, for a basic fair return. Many economists argue the way to get rents down is to build a lot more housing.
Fred Sutton with the California Apartment Association says lower rent control limits won't do that. Instead, he says these regulations send a message to developers and landlords. When someone looks at all the hurdles it takes to create homes and operate in the city of Los Angeles... Why would you do it here versus anywhere else in the nation?
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Chapter 3: How are seasonal trends affecting unemployment data?
Constructing new housing takes years, but rent control can take effect right away, which is why it's politically popular in cities like L.A. David Garcia with UC Berkeley's Turner Center for Housing Innovation says tackling affordability requires a plan for building and a plan for regulating rents. politician in a big city right now really has to consider both.
And the details are really going to matter. It can't just be political posturing. New home building faces stiff opposition in many LA neighborhoods. The LA City Council recently voted not to allow new apartments in most of the city's residential areas. And on rent control, the council ultimately decided to cap increases at 4%. Under the rules, nearly 70% of tenants will be covered.
In Los Angeles, I'm David Wagner for Marketplace. In an age when it is seemingly possible for anyone to become famous by taking some photos and videos on their phone and throwing it up online, the market for content creators is growing. Goldman Sachs predicts that by 2027, the influencer industry will hit half a trillion dollars.
From the outside, content creation looks like a lot of fun and games. But remember, social media is increasingly about selling, which means for influencers to make money, viewers have to spend money. And that has changed the way we're marketed to and the way we shop. Mia Sato, a reporter at The Verge, wrote about this in her piece, You Are Not Immune to Shopaganda. Mia, thanks for being here.
Yeah, my pleasure. So your story starts in a kind of an unexpected place with the history of Pilates, and it becomes a theme in the story. Tell us about Pilates on the internet and why you started there. I wanted to start the story with Pilates because I think it represents... how everything has become commodified when social media algorithms are attuned to shopping.
Pilates has this sort of really raw survivalist origin story where it was created by a man who was an internee at an internment camp in World War I. And the idea was that you don't need too much to practice this exercise. And so I started there because I wanted to show how far we've come and how much consumption and shopping has become part of this exercise.
I mean, I always get these videos of women at Pilates wearing piles of dainty chain necklaces while they're sweating, which I find really interesting, but I feel like really illustrates what you're talking about. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
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Chapter 4: What challenges are small employers facing in the job market?
So influencer content feels really intimate, right? I'm wondering, how do these influencers walk the line between fantasy and reality? It's actually a really big part of, I think, what makes this industry work and what keeps it growing. Influencers at all times are towing a line between being polished and entertaining and brand safe, right?
So brands want to send them product for them to feature in content while at the same time feeling like your friend. They want to be authentic. They want to be relatable. And when you think about how people consume this content, you are holding them in the palm of your hand on your phone. You're watching them at night on the couch after a long day of work.
And so when you look at it that way, influencers have to be both the perfect salesperson and your best friend. And so, you know, when it comes to shopping, really, I think you see they want it to feel like it's a friend recommending something. It's a way to build trust and also obviously move product for brands.
You know, for all the creators who are peddling stuff, there are also people who are de-influencing. Tell us about the de-influencer movement. Yeah, it is part of a sort of series of different mini movements or mini trends maybe that have popped up in the last couple of years.
So there's de-influencing, which is the concept of like, I'm going to undo the part of your brain that wants this thing you saw on social media. There's also something called under-consumption core, which I find frankly hysterical because the idea is that like, How novel. Right.
I'm going to wear my jeans until they have a hole, at which point I'll buy a new pair, which seems like very normal to me. But the de-influencers are fascinating because not only do they tell you what not to buy, often that's followed up in the same breath with, here's an alternative that you should buy.
And so you kind of end up in the same place, which is, you know, separating the viewer from their money. Yeah. I'm wondering, as someone who reports on this world all the time, what your relationship with social media is like, and when the last time you were influenced, what did you buy? Okay, this is so embarrassing, but literally this morning...
I saw a video of a woman with like some sort of like active wear pants. And I literally have the tab open on my phone for the pants right now because I was like, maybe I'll buy them later today. I don't need more clothes, by the way. So this is like firmly in the world of what I was writing about.
And actually, that's a really big reason why I wanted to write this story was because I felt my shopping habits have changed. You know, a lot has changed in my life in the last five years since the onset of the pandemic, but I absolutely buy more stuff than I used to. And it's sort of like the frictionlessness of the apps have really become the way that people experience online shopping.
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Chapter 5: How is Los Angeles addressing the housing affordability crisis?
Sure, it's not the real Rihanna, but when's the last time she toured? Rihanna is really good. Tribute bands typically don't pay royalties directly for the songs they play live. That's covered by venues under the same licensing agreements that allows any band to play covers. And tributes can play on a range of stages, from 10,000-seat casinos to free concerts in the park. What's the other option?
Hire the real act for $70,000? And at $70,000, you get an act with three hits in their career. Or they can get in a Fleetwood Mac tribute band and know every song over 90 minutes. And at a time when average concert ticket prices have reached triple digits and the labor market is cooling, consumers may pull back spending on pricey shows.
In 2025, the live entertainment business grows 6% less than 2024's record highs. That's according to an analysis by Polestar. It actually helps us. The big concerts will go before tributes go. We've had Live Nation call us, go, we don't want to take a risk on these acts. We're going to put in a bunch of tributes, tide us over, because the risk is way less.
By the time Mojo Risen, the Doors tribute, took the stage at the Whiskey, about 100 or so people had gathered. I think we're ready. The cheapest tickets were $23, though some bought VIP seats for more. And the bar was packed. They bring a lot of people. Tisa Myler, Whiskey A Go-Go's general manager, said it was a respectable crowd for a Monday. The club hosts tribute bands a couple times a month.
They enjoy all those songs that they play. You know, if they're doing the 80s and the 90s and stuff, people love that kind of stuff. Ross Seifert, the guy who flew in from Wisconsin to be there, hung onto the edge of the stage the entire set, singing along. And on the wall, a drawing of the actual Jim Morrison with an angel halo above him.
Face the stage where another Jim Morrison kind of closed out the night. I'm Maria Hollenhorst for Marketplace. This final note on the way out, I asked our producers if we could end the show today with some optimism. They smiled a little skeptically and said they'd give it the old college try. Because frankly, a lot of what dominated business news this year was maybe not always positive.
So here are some super great things we came across that will help us go out on a high note. One, not a single hurricane made landfall in the U.S. this year, the first time that's happened in a decade. Two, a record number of people in the world now have access to some form of social protections, according to the World Bank. And three, there were a bunch of wildlife wins.
Green sea turtles are no longer endangered, and salmon returned to parts of the Klamath River in Oregon and California after disappearing for more than a century. Our media production team includes Brian Allison, John Foche, Montana Johnson, Drew Jostad, Gary O'Keefe, Alex Simpson, and Charlton Thorpe. And I'm Kristen Schwab. Have a happy new year. We'll meet back here in 2026. This is APM.
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