# US Labor Market Stabilization and Strategic Shifts

**Podcast:** Marketplace
**Published:** 2026-02-12

## Transcript

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Another day, another release of delayed government data as we try to piece together not just where this economy is heading, but where it's already been.
From American Public Media, this is Marketplace.
In New York, I'm Kristen Schwab in for Kaires Doll.
It's Wednesday, February 11th.
Good to be here with you.
All economic data is important, but the data I just referred to at the top of the show is a biggie.
It's the employment situation from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, aka the Jobs Report.
We got January's numbers today.
A little late because of that little government shutdown.
And to the delightful surprise of many, the report looks solid.
The economy added 130,000 jobs in January, more than it has in months.
And the unemployment rate fell a tad to 4.3%.
So let's not delay this delayed data any longer and go to Marketplace's Samantha Fields.
On the surface, Heidi Sheerholz at the Economic Policy Institute says today's jobs report was good.
It was one of the surveys that is showing, okay, we are still humming along.
But it also made her think, wait, what's going on?
Because it was different than what we've been seeing in 2025, on average, the economy only added about 15,000 jobs a month.
So what we saw in January was a big change.
It could signify that things are strengthening, or it could be volatility in the data.
We are really in a wait and see moment.
But Layla O'Cain at the nonprofit Opportunity at Work says it is a positive sign that companies appear to have hired more in January than they have in a while.
To me, this is sort of tentative hope that the labor market is not going to go off the cliff that people are concerned about.
And that the low hire, low-fire labor market we've been in for a while is not gonna turn into a no higher labor market.
Healthcare in particular is an industry that has seen job growth, and same with social assistance.
Those two sectors have been propping up the labor market for a while.
Construction also added a bunch of jobs in January, but when you look a little bit further, you know, hiring is pretty muted.
Andrew Stettner at the National Employment Law Project says that's why so many people feel like the job market isn't great.
Because unless you're in healthcare or social assistance, it isn't.
And compared to a year ago, the unemployment rate is higher.
About half a million more people are out of work, and hiring has slowed.
When you have a job market like this, which is not a recession, but it's just been a job slowdown, people really don't like that.
They want a situation where they feel like they can quit their job and get a much better one.
They can get a promotion at work and be able to afford a house.
And for most people right now, that's not what's happening.
I'm Samantha Fields for Marketplace.
Wall Street Today, a good jobs report can mean bad news for traders who are eyeing lower interest rates.
We'll have the details when we do the numbers.
Average hourly earnings in January were 3.7% higher than they were the same time a year ago.
That's good news for workers, because it means wages are not just keeping up with inflation, but actually outpacing it.
One thing to watch here, though, is that 3.7%, it's the weakest 12-month increase in about a year and a half.
Marketplace's Justin Ho has more on what that tells us about the economy.
The big reason why wage growth has been slowing down is because the labor market is softer than it was a few years ago.
It's a little bit softer in terms of the unemployment rate being a little bit higher.
It's a lot softer in terms of the number of people being hired each month.
That's Tim Dewey, chief U.S.
economist at SGH Macroadvisors.
He says, even though there's less demand for labor, the supply has been shrinking too, thanks in large part to the Trump administration's crackdown on immigration.
As a result, Dewey says labor supply and demand have been coming into balance.
Maybe not a perfect balance right now, maybe a little bit on the weaker side, but enough of a balance that it's hard to get a lot of downward pressure on earnings right now.
Wage growth has been starting to stabilize.
Kathy Bus Jansik, chief economist at nationwide, says over the last year or so.
We have seen average hourly earnings or wage growth kind of hover between 3.7 and say, you know, 4%.
How much wage growth workers are seeing depends on what industry they're in, says Bill Adams, chief economist at Comerica Bank.
Parts of the economy that are getting affected more by immigration restrictions, like the hospitality industry are seeing faster wage growth as a result.
Overall, a stable pace of wage growth should support consumer spending this year.
But Tim Dewey at SGH Macroadvisors says even though immigration restrictions are holding back the supply of labor and putting upward pressure on wage growth.
We also know that when we had more immigration, the labor market was going faster.
And so when the labor market's going faster, uh Joe would think consumer spending's going to be faster.
Instead, the labor force has been growing more slowly, and that limits how much income is being earned overall, says Nicole Serve, an economist at Wells Fargo.
Even if you have strong wage growth, your aggregate income growth is slower, and that will lead to likely a softer pace of consumer spending growth.
Survey says that could start to play out in the coming months.
I'm Justin Howe for Marketplace.
And data from the National Association of Realtors shows the median existing home price sits at just over 400,000.
Still, there are people out there looking for some place to call home.
Ashley Ayala is one of them.
She lives near Austin, Texas.
And I've been checking in with her regularly for my reporting series called Lived Economies.
Ashley, it's great to talk with you again.
How are you?
Great, thanks.
So you've got some big news to share with us.
I bought a house.
You bought a house.
I bought a house.
It is like terrifying and exciting and just like ah all day, every day.
I was even late to this call because I'm literally here, like laying out furniture and paint choices to create a mood board because now I'm that person.
Yeah.
Tell me, tell me more about the house.
Um, what interest rate you got, what is the house look like?
I mean, I feel kind of like a proud parent, right?
That my house is the most beautiful house in all of the world.
But it is very cute.
Two-story, significantly larger than where I live now.
It's about 2800 square feet.
I got it for 430,000 with a 4.99 interest rate.
So, yeah, you've been on and off house hunting since we met almost a year ago.
You know, the last time we talked, it was off again.
You told me you were worried about the economy, you were seeing some friends around you get laid off.
What made you dive back in?
What changed?
Well, I was disheartened by what I could afford to buy in my target neighborhood.
And I sat down with my best friend, you know, that I live with now and you know we were talking about we are older and neither of us is really looking for a romantic partner.
And so then we decided to buy a house together.
Oh this is this is a new development.
Yeah.
It sounds like a great solution but could also be complicated.
Yeah I'm wondering how that came up and how you worked out you know even thinking about what you both want in a home and the financials and all of those conversations that go with that.
Well we literally were just having this conversation 15 minutes ago because it is a conversation that's probably never going to end right as long as we're living together.
But yeah at a certain point we were like hey well if I were to buy the house you'd live with me if you were to buy the house I would live with you.
What if we just buy the house together, and he was the one who suggested that.
And I was like, oh, that is the dumbest thing that someone could ever do.
But the more that we talked about it, and the more that I really reflected on where I am in my life and what I want from my life.
This was and is someone that I care very deeply about and who cares very deeply about me, and a relationship that I feel very safe in.
You know, a theme you and I have talked about a lot is this idea of you feeling like you were treading water at work, you know, romantically in life.
Does this step change how you feel?
Yes, and no.
It feels like I'm taking a very big step, right?
And hey, I'm buying a house, and this is great.
And I feel like I have checked off one of those very big items on my list.
And it feels kind of like I am giving up on other things, in that I'm not buying a house with a husband, and I'm buying a house with my best friend, which is still great and fantastic and amazing, but honestly, it means closing the door and making a romantic relationship probably not something that is very high priority at this point.
What is the first thing you're gonna do when you when you move in when you get the keys?
So we've already got a plan.
I've got notebooks with lists and to buy and to do lists and to paint and to change, and yeah, it's just kind of exciting and overwhelming and very happy and also sad, and you know, it is what it is.
Well, Ashley, I'm excited to see how where it goes.
Congratulations on homeownership.
Thank you.
Ashley Ayala lives in Texas.
She's now a homeowner, and she is one of the people we've been following for our series Lived Economies.
Ashley, congrats, and thanks again for catching up.
Thank you.
News about a potential US military intervention has caused oil prices to rise and fall over the last couple of weeks.
West Texas Intermediate is currently trading at around $65 a barrel.
The volatility, it's because of just how much of the world's oil is produced by Iran and its neighbors.
Marketplace's Elizabeth Troval has more on the ups and downs of oil prices at a time when the world is producing more oil than it needs.
It's time to pull up Google Maps, y'all, because the story starts with the Strait of Hormuz off the coast of Iran.
From a crude oil perspective, this is a choke point.
That's Tom Sang with Texas Christian University.
Roughly 20% of global oil travels through this narrow passage from the Persian Gulf to the open sea.
So Sang says there's some different scenarios to consider.
Do we impose more sanctions that can actually stop uh Iranian exports?
Or number two, does there become some type of a conflict where now ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz are in danger or there's a blockade?
We could see a big Middle East war or nothing at all, says Dan Pickering with Pickering Energy Partners.
In those scenarios, oil's probably anywhere from back into the 50s to over 100, which is obviously a very wide range, and the marketplace tries to assign probabilities on all of these possible outcomes and bakes in a premium.
So oil is more expensive today because of something that may or may not happen off the coast of Iran tomorrow or next month.
This is good for oil producers because they get to sell oil at a higher price.
And then there are the intermediaries who thrive on volatility.
So higher volatility means more chances to trade around price.
There's money to be made off risk, says Joe Delora with Rabobank.
We're starting to see the options market really wake up over the past month.
In other words, there's a shift towards speculation and hedging because of the uncertainty around where prices are headed.
But not everyone profits from this higher risk environment.
Dan Pickering again.
Who tends to lose?
Consumers.
That risk premium trickles down to the gas pump, and regular Americans will pay the price.
I'm Elizabeth Troval for Marketplace.
Coming up, if whole milk was in school, kids would drink more of it because it would taste better.
I'm not sure, though it looks like we're gonna find out.
But first, let's do the numbers.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 66 points, a tenth of a percent, to close at 50,121.
The Nasdaq gave up 36 points, two tenths percent, to finish at 23,066.
And the SP 500 fell less than a point to end at 6941.
Lift had some disappointing news for investors.
Its first quarter profits came in below what analysts were expecting.
Lift slowed 17%.
Electric aircraft manufacturer Beta Technologies climbed 15 and 6 tenths percent after Amazon reported that it holds an 11 million share stake in the company.
Beta expects to get certification for its vertical takeoff engines this year.
Amazon.com slipped one and a third percent.
Bonds fell, the yield on the 10 year T note rose to 4.17%.
You're listening to Marketplace.
The legendary checkout from Shopify for influence shopping off thine website this into social media and overall.
For the holidays.
We caught up with her to see how it went.
I am trying to do a little bit of self-care post Christmas season where I didn't sleep well, eat well, do anything well except for run the business.
I jumped on Amazon myself and bought a cot, and we just called uh Sherembrosia home for uh November and December.
Gosh, I don't want to be negative.
But it was tough.
It was tough.
The kiosk was the center of my world for two months, but it just did not do well.
Um we sold just barely enough.
I, you know, I've I'm still doing the math and looking at it different ways, you know, trying to find the positive in it all.
But the reality is I did not sell enough to uh barely break even.
I would venture to say 75% of all online sales this Christmas season was repeat business, but we did see a dip in sales, and and also that could be because I was so focused on my local community here in Salt Lake through the kiosk.
You know, cost is going up with regards to everything, including shipping.
For the last five years, I've been giving, you know, free, an extra free four-piece box of Vaclava with every order purchased online to help compensate people for paying for shipping.
But after doing the numbers this year, we really couldn't afford to do that.
And the sales did come in less.
You know, my boxes are like boxes of chocolate.
And I think it very much aligns with the Valentine's gifts that people are willing to spend money on.
I've got my 12-piece chocolate almond box in the pink.
And then this is so cool.
My candle girl, she has made a chocolate almond candle.
So we're gonna sell like a little duo.
But yeah, we're very much excited about this raw Valentine's Day, and we're hoping that we'll be able to bring some of that business into Shear Ambrosia.
Rita Magaldi there.
She owns Sheer Ambrosia in Salt Lake City, Utah.
When students at most elementary, middle, and high schools roll into the cafeteria for lunch, they have a few milk choices.
Skim, 1%, maybe chocolate, if they're lucky.
But notably, whole milk hasn't been on the menu for more than a decade.
If a school participates in the national school lunch program, and the majority of public schools do, it can only serve reduced fat milk.
Until now, a new law President Trump signed in January is putting whole milk back on the table.
Marketplace's Carla Javier looks into what the change could mean for dairy producers and schools.
Milk has been a staple at schools kind of forever, says Andrew Ruis at the University of Wisconsin Madison.
For schools that were looking for ways to provide cheap and nutritious meals for school children, one of the easiest ways to do that was to just provide milk, even before they were able to provide meals.
Whole milk's reputation started to take some damage when researchers questioned how much saturated fat Americans were eating.
Then you see uh kind of uh increased pushed for health for reduced fat milks like 2%, 1% or even skim milk.
Starting in 2012, schools in the lunch program could no longer serve whole milk.
And that was a problem for dairy farmers, because schools consume more than 7% of all dairy in the U.S.
Danny Munch is an economist at the American Farm Bureau Federation.
The major impact for dairy farmers, their bottom line is butter fat demand.
Butter fat is exactly what the name says.
The component of milk used to make butter.
It's also added to ice cream.
To make low fat milk, producers take butter fat out.
That generates a big supply and pushes down the price farmers get for butter fat.
But sell less low fat milk and more whole milk, there'll be less butter fat around.
And supply demand dynamics push that price up because now there's more buyers uh for a less amount of product than there was before.
And a higher price is exactly what the dairy industry wants.
Farmers and producers have another reason for wanting whole milk back in schools, says Texas AM's David Anderson.
I think there is a belief that if whole milk was in school, kids would drink more of it because it would taste better.
The law doesn't require schools to buy whole milk, it just allows them to.
So if the dairy industry is gonna see higher butterfly and more lifelong whole milk drinkers, schools are gonna have to actually start buying whole milk.
And that could depend on where in the country they are.
Milk can have big regional price variations.
At the Union City Area School District in Northwest Pennsylvania, for example.
Whole milk currently is a third of a penny more expensive.
Food service director and chef Krista Bailer comes from a dairy family and testified in support of serving whole milk.
So in my mind, that's really not a hurdle.
On the other hand, at the Douglas County School District, just south of Denver.
The whole milk for the same product, just in whole milk form, was coming in seven cents per carton higher, which is pretty significant.
Director of Nutrition Services Jen Piffer says her students go through about 30,000 cartons of shelf stable 1% milk and skim chocolate milk every day.
She gets a fixed amount of money per meal, so she might not be able to afford whole milk.
And another change that's coming to school lunches could also make it hard for her to offer it.
New dietary guidelines from the Department of Health and Human Services prioritize protein.
And Piffer says increasing protein portions would squeeze her budget.
So she's hesitant to take on the cost of whole milk.
Because if in a year or two I need to save money because I need to put that money towards, again, for example, additional protein servings.
She doesn't want to offer students something they like better, only to have to take it away.
I'm Carla Javier for Marketplace.
This final note on the way out today.
Some things just go together.
Salt and pepper, peanut butter and jelly, and apparently Kraft and Heinz.
Yes, the maker of American cheese and ketchup says it plans to remain as one company after announcing it would split up this past September.
The brands first merged back in 2015.
The CEO of Kraft Heinz says the company needs to focus on growth.
In an earnings call today, the brand reported a drop in sales for a ninth straight quarter.
Kraft Heinz has been in turnaround mode for a handful of years now.
Some things executives hope will revive the business.
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.