# US Economic Stagnation and Strategic Market Shifts

**Podcast:** Marketplace
**Published:** 2026-02-10

## Transcript

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The days of delayed government data aren't over.
Up this week, jobs and inflation.
From American Public Media, this is Marketplace.
In Los Angeles, I'm Amy Scott, in for Kai Rizdall.
It's Monday, February 9th.
Good to have you with us.
I want to call your attention to two items to watch on the economic calendar this week.
First, the January jobs report, delayed by last week's partial government shutdown, comes out Wednesday, followed by the latest consumer price index, also delayed, now scheduled for Friday.
Both are key readings on the health of the economy, and both are expected to be okay, as in modest but not great job growth, and moderating but not yet low enough inflation.
Marketplace's Mitchell Hartman has more.
The economy has been adding an anemic 50,000 jobs a month on average over the last year, just one-third of the rate in 2024.
And more of the same's expected for January, says Boston College economist Brian Bithune.
Actually, reductions in employment levels in the small business world.
What's more, the January jobs report also comes with something called annual benchmark revisions, which are expected to reduce the number of jobs added to the economy last year by six to nine hundred thousand, says economist Joe Bruce Wellis at consulting firm RSM.
Meaning we're probably going to see a net decline in jobs for the entire year of 2025.
Bruce Wellis says there are a bunch of reasons why the job market has stagnated, starting with a declining supply of workers for employers to hire.
Companies overhired during the post pandemic recovery, and now they're slimming down.
Plus, they've invested heavily in automation and AI, which is increasing productivity and reducing their need for more workers right now.
Turning to the inflation data we'll get later this week, economists expect a decline in headline consumer price inflation for January from 2.7 to 2.5% year over year.
But for consumers in the real economy, it might not feel like that, says Joe Brussellis.
Most Americans would say there's a common baseline around rent prices, electricity's increasing, and food is increasing.
So for them, that means inflation is probably closer to 3.5% to 4%.
And with wages rising about the same amount on average, that means most workers, even if they can hold on to their jobs, don't feel like they're getting ahead in this economy.
I'm Mitchell Hartman for Marketplace.
Another economic indicator coming out of Washington this week will be investor demand when the Treasury Department auctions off a wave of government bonds, with a big batch of 10-year bonds on Wednesday and 30-year bonds on Thursday.
In advance of those auctions, Bloomberg reports today that the Chinese government has been advising banks to hold off on buying any more U.S.
treasuries, and in some cases to trim their holdings.
The worry is that holding too many T bills and notes in a volatile market could expose banks to losses.
Marketplaces Justin Ho spent the day looking into those concerns.
Over the past year or so, a lot of foreign investors have either sold or threatened to sell U.S.
treasuries.
This has been a perennial theme in a period of geopolitical volatility.
Guy Labas is chief fixed income strategist at Jenny Montgomery Scott.
Some European investors said they'd pull away from treasuries after President Trump's threats to take over Greenland.
Many foreign investors sold treasuries after the President's Liberation Day tariff announcement.
Labas says that matters because demand for government bonds affects bond yields.
So if the United States Treasury sells bonds and foreigners don't show up at the auctions to buy bonds, that means that domestic purchasers are probably going to require higher interest rates to choose to buy those bonds.
In other words, the federal government is going to have to pay more interest on the national debt.
That said, foreign demand for U.S.
Treasuries has been holding steady over the last several months.
It's not accelerating, but it hasn't really slowed down either.
Chris Lowe at FHN Financial says one reason is because tariffs haven't been as extreme as investors worried they might be.
Another reason he says is that treasuries are still more attractive than bonds from the rest of the world.
Interest rates in other countries have been rising, in Japan and the UK.
You know, the thing is that when interest rates go up, the price of those bonds, their value goes down.
And that makes U.S.
bonds look more attractive, despite all of the ongoing uncertainty in this economy.
It's like being the tallest kid in the kindergarten class.
Still not very tall, but it looks taller than the rest.
Bottom line, the U.S.
Treasury market has been stable over the last few months, says Guy Labaugh, Jenny Montgomery Scott.
I'm looking at a charts part of my Monday morning meeting packet that charts uh yields and interest rates have barely moved since August.
And sometimes a stable market isn't such a bad thing.
I'm Justin Ho for Marketplace.
Green was the color on Wall Street today.
We'll have the details when we do the numbers.
More than 70 city and state governments have tried in recent years to take big oil to court over damage caused by climate change.
The latest lawsuit brought by the state of Michigan takes a different tack by accusing the oil giants of antitrust violations.
Emily Pontecorvo is a staff writer at Heat Map, where she had the story.
Welcome to the show.
Thanks for having me, Amy.
First, can you talk about what states and cities are trying to accomplish with these lawsuits against fossil fuel companies?
Yeah, so over the last uh about 10 years, dozens of cities and states have filed lawsuits against oil companies for their role in climate change.
And in all of these cases, they're basically asking for money for help to adapt to future climate damages and often also to pay for past and present climate damages from floods, from wildfires.
So we saw like New York City uh sue for damages from Hurricane Sandy, for example.
And in a lot of these cases, they're arguing that the companies either deceived the public or created a public nuisance, even though they knew about the harms the fossil fuels would cause, they did it anyway and should now pay for the damages.
And what makes this Michigan lawsuit different?
This Michigan case is arguing that the companies violated antitrust law.
So they're alleging that basically a bunch of fossil fuel companies all got together and coordinated a strategy to prevent the country from transitioning away from fossil fuels.
And they allege that they did things like they bought up patents and then restricted their use, basically all in a in a ploy to protect their market share.
Why do you think Michigan is making this argument?
Is it that these other lawsuits have not so far really gone anywhere?
I think there's a few reasons.
In general, there's been this kind of constant um challenge for them where they're filed in state court, and then fossil fuel companies will argue that these need to be fought out in federal court, and that kind of delays actually getting into the substance of the case.
Another part of that argument, it has to do with the Federal Clean Air Act, which basically preempts states from enacting their own regulations of fossil fuels or really of greenhouse gas emissions.
That's one reason I think Michigan is trying this new route is to say, you know, we're not talking about emissions, we're not talking about climate damages, we're talking about a cartel getting together and stifling competition.
As a result, our energy costs are much higher than they otherwise would be.
So I understand that proving antitrust or proving collusion among companies can be pretty difficult based on your reporting.
Do you think the state has a good chance?
Yeah, you know, if you read the complaint, it doesn't have some kind of like smoking gun where it says we have, you know, a letter that all the companies signed that said that they were gonna work together to, you know, kill electric vehicles.
There's nothing like that.
But it does tell this kind of compelling story.
There was a climate task force that was formed by the American Petroleum Institute, the kind of trade group that all of these companies are a part of.
And when this task force was formed kind of after that, all these companies started to take similar actions.
You know, they shut down internal research programs for alternative energy and they withheld products from the market.
If they hadn't been working together, they might have, you know, individually tried to, it would have made more sense for them to kind of lead the way into the future with these other technologies.
But um, so it kind of makes the case that their their behavior can only be explained by a conspiracy.
And so I think listeners might be wondering what what's the end goal here?
Is it to hold fossil fuel companies accountable to make them take climate action more seriously?
Or is it really just about paying for the damage that these you know states and municipalities are already experiencing and only see rising in the future?
The the explicit um, you know, goal, the explicit kind of ask in these cases is uh funding for adaptation, funding for damages.
This Michigan case is no different, but it's it's a little bit different in that it also asks for compensation for high energy costs for this, you know, difference in how much they think they've overpaid essentially for energy over the past decade.
All right.
Emily Pontecorvo is uh staff writer at Heat Map.
Thanks so much for sharing your reporting.
Thanks for having me.
So it's like I want to go on a trip or I wanted to travel more, so I would put it on my credit card.
So tempting, right?
But first, let's do the numbers.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average found 20 points, pretty much flat to close at 50,000,135.
The NASDAQ picked up 207.910% to finish at 23,238.
And the SP 500 climbed 32 points, almost half a percent and at 6964.
This into social media and Ubaida Twist.
This is Marketplace.
I'm Amy Scott.
Remember that big Hollywood strike more than two years ago now, when both writers and actors walked off the job and productions pretty much ground to a halt.
The industry is still recovering, and yet film and TV actors and producers were back in the negotiating table today to hammer out a new labor contract.
Many of the key issues are the same.
The rise of artificial intelligence and how streaming has changed the business.
But the landscape in which these talks take place is different.
Marketplace's Nova Sappho has the story.
Against this backdrop, the studios and SAGAFTRA, which also represents marketplace employees, are planning to talk initially over the next four weeks.
The biggest areas to be hammered out between the two sides are thought to be similar to last time, improving compensation over streaming content, as well as AIAIAI.
That's entertainment industry lawyer Skylar Moore.
People don't want to admit it, but AI is replacing below the line crew, it's replacing special effects houses, it's replacing the need for directors on a lot of shoots.
And the cost savings Moore says are too enticing for studios.
He says actors and writers may have no choice but to strike again.
Tom Noonan is an independent film producer.
The combo platter of the pandemic and then the labor strikes, the fires in Los Angeles, and then all of this consolidation.
It's really just been an overwhelming, uncertain and awful time.
Noonan says how negotiations go will ultimately depend a lot on tone.
And so far, all sides have been sounding more conciliatory than they had prior to the strikes in 2023.
I'm Novasaf for Marketplace.
Ever shelled out a bunch of money for a tool or a piece of equipment that you might need around the house just occasionally?
Or maybe wished you could just borrow that shop vac or chainsaw.
More communities are adding tool libraries for just that purpose, and lately they've been playing another role in disaster response.
Michael Friedrich wrote a story about it in Bloomberg.
Thanks for joining us.
Thanks for having me, Amy.
So for someone who's never been to a tool library, uh, what are they?
Is it pretty self-explanatory?
It is.
They are uh independent organizations in the community that lend their members tools, uh everything from uh hacksaw to a lawnmower to a weed whacker to cookware, and they operate on a pay what you will or sliding scale basis for the most part.
So you wrote specifically about the tool library in Asheville, North Carolina, um, which, you know, as listeners will remember was struck by Hurricane Helene uh in the fall of 2024.
What role did the library play in the recovery?
Well, this Hurricane Helene was pretty severe and did a lot of damage.
It knocked out power, you know, a lot of roads were blocked, and people were trying to chainsaw uh trees off the roads and off their homes.
The tool library came together with uh what's called the West North Carolina Repair Cafe, a partner that shares the same space.
And because they have this network of volunteers, they were able to respond very quickly.
They set up by the next day, they were in the parking lot of a local bookstore, and they brought in their organizers and volunteers to sharpen chainsaws, repair generators, um, and you know, provide training for people who maybe hadn't used a chainsaw in quite a long time or ever before.
With you know, FEMA pulling back federal disaster aid and and leaving more to states and local governments.
Do you see this kind of mutual aid organization playing a bigger role in disaster recovery?
I think we can expect it to.
At Northeastern University.
You know, through data and survey all across the world, he's found that communities that have a high density, which is to say a lot of community organizations and services are much more likely to retain population.
People are much more likely to rebuild and stay in place instead of picking up and leaving.
These community organizations seem to be much more important than even formal government response.
Wow.
But formal governments, you know, have a lot more money, right?
I mean, I assume that these can't totally replace the role of government in in terms of long-term recovery.
Certainly.
And look, I think we absolutely need the state to provide repair for infrastructure, you know, roads, get the water and the electric turned back on.
But there are services that government can't necessarily provide.
Uh, these kinds of immediate responses where a community comes together and clear the trees off the road, uh, provide a shoulder for somebody to lean on and cry on when they're overwhelmed by the magnitude of the disaster.
Um, these are the gaps that uh community members can really fill while people are waiting for FEMA funding to trickle in.
Michael Friedrich wrote about tool libraries in Bloomberg.
Thank you so much for sharing your reporting.
Thank you so much for having me, Amy.
If you want to hear more about solutions for a changing climate, check out the podcast I host.
It's called How We Survive.
The latest season looks at how our food is changing.
You can find it now, wherever you get your podcasts.
No takeout, no coffee runs, no shopping sprees, all in the name of saving a little cash to start off the new year.
And given that more than a third of Americans say they wouldn't be able to cover an unexpected $400 expense.
My name is Chulessa Mercedes.
I'm 28.
I live in San Diego, and I participated in No Spend January.
I do have a job that pays me six figures.
Like I work as a financial analyst, but even at that point, it doesn't mean that I'm able to essentially like spend my money as I really want to.
This is my second time doing no span January.
I essentially started off pretty strong.
I incorporated some hobbies.
So for me, it's like pickleball.
In the beginning of the month, it was pretty strong.
I didn't have any urges to go out and spend.
But midway through the month of January, I had an injury.
So I did kind of buy some takeout and some like coffees just because I wasn't able to move around for a couple days because of the injury.
I was able to see that with my no spend, I had about like over a thousand dollars that I was able to not spend because of my no-span January.
I put that towards my emergency savings, which I'm slowly building up.
But my main priority for essentially 2026 is paying off my debt.
It's about like $18,000 that I'm trying to pretty much pay off by the end of 2026.
If I'm being honest with you, when I was in my early uh mid-20s, like 2526, I would see a lot of people going on trips and and you know, doing those type of things and like buying.
So it was like I want to go on a trip or I wanted to travel more, so I would put it on my credit card.
When you add all those things together, it became thousands and thousands of dollars.
I was like, I'll pay it later.
I'll pay it.
And so it just kind of like snowballed slowly but surely, and I was like, okay, I gotta stop.
I got into budgeting and doing more of the spreadsheets.
I was just kind of building habits to be better in my finances because I come from a lower income background.
Um, I'm also a first gen as well.
I didn't grow up with any personal finance understanding, or I didn't grow up with any understanding about investing or savings.
I think now as an adult, now that I can do that for myself, I really wanted to make sure that one A that I'm getting better in my personal finances.
It's not just gonna happen for me.
Like I had to take actual time and educate myself as well to try and reach certain goals that I'm trying to do for myself.
I would consider this month a success for my no spend.
I didn't feel completely um like strapped for cash, or I didn't feel like I was able to go out and do things that I wanted to do.
I still had a pretty enjoyable month and I was able to save and invest for the month.
For me, that was a win-win.
Julissa Mercedes in San Diego, California.
She says she's thinking about trying a no-spend quarter next year.
As we always say, we cannot do this series without you.
So tell us what's happening in your economy.
You can do that at marketplace.org/slash my economy.
This final note on the way out today with a hat tip to Axios.
Homeowners are staying put longer than they have in at least 25 years.
Data provider Adams says home sellers at the end of last year had been in their homes an average of 8.6 years.
That's more than twice the average at the beginning of the century of 4.2 years.
I probably don't have to tell you why, but one big reason the golden handcuffs of those ultra-low interest rates we had a few years back.
Amir Babawi, Caitlin Esh, John Gordon, Noya Carr, and Stephanie Seek are the marketplace editing staff.
Kelly Silvera is the news director, and I'm Amy Scott.
Hope to see you back here tomorrow.
Secret from a partner.
I'm Rima Gerees, and this week on This Is Uncomfortable, I sit down with a divorce lawyer who shares some pretty extreme cases of financial secrecy.
They had a forensic accountant, went through the numbers, and they calculated that he spent $250,000 in a year on strip clubs.
Listen to this is uncomfortable on your favorite podcast app.