# Breakeven Jobs and Labor Force Shrinkage

**Podcast:** The Indicator from Planet Money
**Published:** 2026-02-06

## Transcript

NPR.
This is the indicator from Planet Money.
I'm Darien Woods.
And I'm Waylon Wong.
And it's what should be jobs Friday.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics was scheduled to give us the jobs numbers for January, but due to the partial government shutdown, we're gonna have to wait.
We still have some jobs numbers.
We have the Chicago Fed estimate of US unemployment for January.
That rate is 4.4%.
And it's an unemployment rate that is essentially unchanged from December.
We also have private sector estimates of how many jobs were added to the economy in January.
Ravellio Labs, which is a workforce analytics company, it estimated that the economy lost 13,000 jobs.
HR and payroll company ADP, though, estimated the US gained 22,000 jobs.
Now you might be wondering, do those numbers really justify an air horn?
About a year ago, we were announcing numbers like 140,000, 260,000.
That we were saying meant a pretty strong labor market.
Yeah, losing 13,000 jobs or gaining 22,000, that doesn't necessarily mean that the jobs market is going down the drain.
Today on the show, we speak with somebody whose story sheds light on what's happening with all these topsy turvy jobs indicators.
And we learn about what economists call the breakeven jobs number.
We'll explain after the break.
To better understand why lower jobs numbers aren't meaning spiking US unemployment, we spoke to Guy Berger.
Guy is a senior fellow at the Burning Glass Institute, which is a labor market think tank.
And you know, a good jobs number is not what it used to be.
That's because the unemployment rate has two parts.
It has the numerator, the number of people out of work, and looking for a job.
And it has the denominator, what you divide that unemployment number by.
You divide it by the total number of people in America in the labor force.
And when the total American labor force isn't growing by as much, you don't need as many new jobs to keep a steady unemployment rate.
You might need very little.
I mean, if you look at places with, you know, with really rapidly aging populations like parts of uh southern Europe or Japan, that's the kind of world they're already in.
That seems to be the population trend that the US is hurtling towards.
We have very few people coming into the country, maybe some people leaving, and our working age population is, you know, it's probably peaked.
And this is where the breakeven jobs number comes in.
Guy explains that this number is the amount of jobs needed each month to stop the unemployment rate from rising.
He says it used to be one or two hundred thousand new jobs a month.
That's how much you needed to keep the economy on an even keel.
Now it could be in the low tens of thousands.
One thing that's hard is we actually don't have very good real-time estimates of population.
The US Census just released its population estimates, and it reckons we've seen the lowest increase in the American population since the pandemic.
It's caused by fewer people coming into the country and people being deported or leaving voluntarily.
And that's something we're gonna focus on today.
We know that the number of undocumented people leaving the U.S.
voluntarily is significant and growing.
We spoke with the group that works with this population.
Yeah, when I did a call out to hear people's stories, I was flooded with people wanting to share.
One of those people was Alessandro Negrete.
Alessandro and Angelino through and through is wearing his Carl State LA sweater.
Hey Darren, good morning.
Alessandro's mother brought him across the border from Mexico when he was three months old.
Alessandro grew up in inner city LA, undocumented.
He says this was never on his mind as he went to school.
My status hadn't really come up.
It wasn't something that we openly talked about, but it wasn't also something that I openly noticed that made a difference.
Until one day it really did.
Alessandro received a scholarship to go to the University of California, Berkeley, sometimes known as a public Ivy.
He proudly showed his mother the acceptance letter.
I'm like, hey, I'm I'm really excited.
And she starts to cry, and I'm like, what?
What's wrong?
She's like, you don't you don't have a social security?
And I'm like, I don't have a social security.
Well, what's a social security?
And she's just like, it's a number, and you know, it means you're legal here.
And obviously, my mom being undocumented herself didn't really understand the the legalities of it and what it meant in the broader context, except for we don't belong here.
This was around the year 2000, years before deferred action for childhood arrivals or DACA made life easier for some undocumented kids.
Alessandro learned that he couldn't easily accept that UC Berkeley scholarship and head off to college.
He'd possibly have to pay international fees, which wasn't feasible.
And so it hit me a bit deeper.
I was like, oh, okay.
So Alessandro instead got an under the table job working in LA's garment district.
I was just a receptionist and just helping people process their orders or direct them to the designs that they wanted.
And working for the clothing company meant Alessandro could help pay his way through a local community college where he got his associate's degree.
He'd only have to pay in state tuition and could save money by living at home.
He then enrolled at California State University in LA for his bachelor's in sociology.
Alessandro went on to work as a contractor for social justice organizations, helping with fundraising and strategy.
So career wise, he was doing well, even though he never went to UC Berkeley.
But in the first Trump administration, he started noticing an immigration crackdown.
His workplace even made preparations for any potential immigration raids nearby.
And that's when I started having those thoughts.
Like, you know, I'm pretty capable.
I have a natural hustle in me, and you know, I can do this.
I can leave and I'll be okay.
But what kept me around during that time of the administration was my mom.
Like I wanted to help her, and she she had cancer.
She was also undocumented.
So I couldn't just leave.
Fast forward to 2025, President Trump was inaugurated a second time, bringing an even stronger anti-immigration push.
The broader immigrant community is under attack.
Like all these things are just forms of weaponized mental anguish.
But there was a ray of some good news for Alessandro.
His mom's cancer was in remission, and she finally received residency.
This cleared an obstacle for him to leave.
After that news from my mom that I was just like, you know what?
I'm doing it.
Alessandro joined the millions of others leaving the US over the last year.
In September, Alessandro boarded a plane to the city of Guadalajara in Jalisco.
It wasn't until I boarded the plane that I'm like, I'm having a panic attack.
You know, it really hit me like the magnitude of this decision.
Like, I'm not gonna see a lot of people for some time.
And you know, that first week was rough.
But once I found a place to live in, I've been in my new apartment for two months.
I brought my dog with me.
She's been a saving grace.
Like, I've created a sense of normalcy and community.
The anti-immigration push has had enormous costs for Alessandro.
And for the US economy as a whole, he represents a skilled worker that the country is losing.
All that education and work experience that Alessandro gained over four decades is now out of the country.
And widening the lens as people leave the US and have fewer babies.
Economists are debating whether a larger population is good overall for the economy.
Some point out that innovation is more likely when we have more people in the workforce sharing ideas.
Others point out that there are real adjustment costs in getting more roads and houses and schools built if the population is growing.
As for Alessandro, he's feeling more relaxed being out of the US.
But he's thinking of everyone in LA.
He says it will always feel like home to him.
There are no bagels where you are.
There are no bagels in Guadalajara except in Costco, and they're not that great.
Yeah, don't forget your card when you go and visit.
This episode was produced by Cooper Casperkin with engineering by Robert Rodriguez.
It was fact-checked by Sierra Juarez.
Kegan Cannon is our editor, and the indicator is a production of NPR.
So with all this subtlety about what even is a good jobs number, we thought we'd retire the air horn.
You know, it's been a good eight years.
Ah, what a run.
Should we do like a 21 air horn salute to commemorate?
Let's do it.
Okay, baby.
That was too many air horns.
Yeah, we've truly saturated airhorn desire.
Um now put to rest.
I'm overstimulated.