# Labor Shortages, Fiscal Deficits, and Corporate Strategy Shifts

**Podcast:** WSJ What’s News
**Published:** 2026-02-11

## Transcript

January's job numbers were the strongest in more than a year.
Plus in South Texas, immigration raids mean half finished houses are sitting idle and empty.
The effects of it trickle down because it affects the banks where builders and others are getting loans.
It affects people who are waiting to buy homes or move into homes.
It affects the material suppliers.
It's a sign that the labor market is shaking off its recent slump, but can it continue?
For more behind the numbers, I'm joined by WSJ economics reporter Justin Lahart.
Justin, the jobs numbers were more than double the 55,000 jobs economists had expected.
Why were these numbers so surprising to economists?
I think because of what they had seen over the past several months, which was very, very, very slow job growth.
And also, we just don't expect to see very high job growth these days because we have such lower immigration in the country, and the supply of workers is much lower than it was before.
What are the sectors that were doing well versus not so well?
I mean, it's mostly healthcare and uh social services are sort of adjacent to one another.
There are other sectors that we saw growth in, uh, construction.
That could reflect uh the data center construction going on.
Uh, manufacturing did a little better, but it's really, you know, health services, health services, health services, which has really been powering the job market for a long time now.
And just thinking ahead to the rest of the year, can we expect this job growth to continue?
We have uh an aging population.
We have more healthcare needs, so it is natural to expect that we're gonna see demand for these healthcare jobs continue.
That was WSJ economics reporter Justin Lahart.
Thanks so much, Justin.
Thank you.
The solid jobs report weakens the case for more interest rate cuts and made investors more confident that the Federal Reserve will keep rates on hold.
Stocks rose today after the jobs report, but the major indexes surrendered their small gains in later trading.
They ended flat or slightly lower.
Kraft Heinz is pumping the brakes on its breakup plan.
In September, the company announced that it was splitting its condiments and grocery staples businesses.
Now Kraft Heinz says that isn't happening.
Its new CEO Steve K.
Helane says he's focused on returning the business.4%.
And employees of American Airlines are calling for its CEO to step down.
This week, directors of Americans Flight Attendance Union issued a vote of no confidence in American Airlines CEO Robert Isum.
And last week, the pilots union said it no longer believed management was improving the company's operations and financial performance.
Executives at American have pledged to get the airline back on track and get delays and cancellations under control.
ISOM, through company representatives, declined to comment.
From the congressional budget office today, projected that the annual US budget deficit will worsen over the next decade.
It's expected to deepen from $1.85 trillion this year to $3 trillion by 2036.
WSJ US tax policy reporter Richard Rubin says there are three big factors behind this.
There is really just this growth in three big things in Social Security, Medicare, and interest.
This big interest cost that covers all the debt that we've racked up in the past.
And so those things are just growing faster than everything else.
We're running deficits 5.8% of GDP, heading towards 6.7% of GDP.
We've done that before, but those are deficit levels that we haven't hit outside of emergencies and wars and recessions.
We're not in the middle of some emergency.
Rich says the CBO estimates that Republicans' tax cuts will also contribute to a bigger deficit.
We had all these tax cuts that were scheduled to expire at the end of last year, the end of 2025.
And so for a long time, CBO, the congressional budget office, has looked at that and said, oh, we're gonna get all this revenue.
And Congress and President Trump extended basically all of those tax cuts permanently and created some new tax cuts.
That tax law, which also had some spending cuts, increases deficits by about $4.7 trillion compared to had they just let the tax cuts expire.
He says having such a deep hole in the country's budget comes with risks.
The risk is that you run into a sort of crisis where interest rates go up, or the federal debt is crowding out private investment, or the debt is so burdensome that bond investors demand we pay more in interest rates to service that debt.
You just run increasing risks the larger and larger that these debt and deficit numbers go.
That was WSJ US tax policy reporter Rich Rubin.
In other news out of Washington, we're exclusively reporting that the Pentagon has told a second aircraft carrier to prepare to head to the Middle East.
Flights over El Paso resumed this morning, just a few hours after the airspace had been closed for quote special security reasons.
The lawmakers who prosecutors tried to indict include Arizona Senator Mark Kelly and Michigan Senator Alyssa Slotkin.
It's the latest setback for the Trump era Justice Department in its attempts to prosecute the president's perceived enemies.
Hey, Berlin.
Berliner Stadtwerke.
Good for dich.
Good for Berlin.
The organizers of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics said today that Casey Wasserman will remain the committee's chairman.
Several members of the city's leadership called for the LA businessman to step down from the Olympics Committee after his name surfaced in the most recent batch of the Jeffrey Epstein files.
After a review with outside council, the Olympics board found that Wasserman's relationship with Epstein and Galen Maxwell quote did not go beyond what has already been publicly documented.
Singer Chapel Roan and retired US women's soccer star Abby Wombach have left Wasserman's talent agency.
Wasserman issued an apology after the emails were disclosed.
On the industries that feed into it.
Elizabeth Findel is a reporter based in Texas who joins us now.
Elizabeth, why is the housing industry in South Texas being hit particularly hard here?
Well, it's just an area where we have seen repeated immigration raids, sometimes hitting the same developments over and over again.
So builders can't find anyone to work because they're afraid they're gonna be picked up.
And that includes people who are in the country legally and working legally.
Two guards that I spoke with at a nearby detention center said they now have a significant proportion of men in their care who have valid work permits.
And that's something that they had not seen under previous administrations.
You visited a development called Monte Cielo in Westlico.
What's been going on there?
Yeah, that's one of the bigger developments in Westlico, which is a town of about 40,000, 45,000 people.
They have gotten raided by ICE numerous times.
I heard estimates of at least six or more times in the last few months.
And so workers are really just don't want to work out there.
And it was pretty empty when we were there.
And builders are trying to do things like put up temporary fencing around their lots because ICE agents aren't supposed to go onto private property or they can be blocked from private property if they don't have a judicial warrant.
But that only helps so far because the workers have to trust that the agents are going to abide by that and they don't in all cases.
What did ICE have to say about this?
They did not respond, unfortunately, to our requests for comment.
Got it.
And it sounds like it's not just the housing developers that are feeling the impact here.
The effects of it trickle down because it affects the banks where builders and others are getting loans.
It affects people who are waiting to buy homes or move into homes.
It affects the material suppliers.
We spoke with a concrete supplier who filed for bankruptcy protection after he saw demand for his concrete fall some 60%, laying off employees as well.
And their CEO, um Iliod Cavassos from 57 Concrete.
He told me about seeing raids occur when they would go to drop off their concrete and builders would be left with half-pored foundations.
You know, you put the concrete in this, in this in this foundation.
So you're in the middle, and the eyes show up.
So grab everyone.
So the owner of that house have half empty, half full foundation.
So it's not my problem.
They need to pay me, number one.
But you cannot use that foundation because he's wrong.
They need to tear the foundation out and do it again.
And that costs him like a 30, 40,000 to do that.
Elizabeth, some of the stuff you're talking about seems kind of specific to South Texas.
Are we seeing this in any other parts of the US?
It is happening in other places in the country, especially places where we've seen increased immigration enforcement activity, like in Minnesota.
My colleagues spoke with builders in Minnesota and heard the exact same types of stories that we're hearing in South Texas.
That they can't find people to work.
So projects are on hold and it's costing builders a tremendous amount of money.
slash career.