The price of oil surged, I mean surged, over the weekend.

From Marketplace, I'm Sabri Beneshore, in for David Brancaccio.

You might have seen video of streets on fire in Tehran after lit fuel trickled down roads

and into sewers after an Israeli strike on a fuel storage facility there.

Not long after those reports surfaced,

the price of Brent crude oil late yesterday surged to almost $120 a barrel. It has now come down

some to $104 a barrel this morning. That is still up 44% from before the war in the Middle East started. G7 countries are now

considering releasing oil from strategic reserves to help contain the oil price surge.

Back here in the U.S., economists are still digesting last Friday's jobs report, which showed a

loss of 92,000 jobs in February. The labor force participation

rate, that's the percentage of working age people who are either working or looking for work,

fell to 62 percent. That's the lowest since December of 2021. And I mean, some people are giving up on

even looking for a job. Marketplaces Carla Javier has more.

The labor force participation rate is the percentage of people over 16 who are either working or looking for work.

Corey Staley at Indeed says the figure gives us a clue into how potential workers are doing.

Are they feeling like there are the jobs for them to come into, you know, are they

feeling like it's worth it to have a job? The jobs report doesn't explain why so many people

aren't working or even looking for a job right now. Staley says one possible factor is that.

Older workers are leaving the labor force. They're aging out of the labor force.

They're choosing to maybe retire and leave and not participate. Or maybe workers are taking on more

gig work, says Brian Bethune at Boston College. But if you're in and out of the labor force and you're not actively looking,

you wouldn't necessarily show up in the participation rate. Immigration policy could also

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