When flavored cigarettes collide at the intersection of health and politics.

I'm David Brancaccio looking first at the labor market.

Payroll data from the private company ADP came out this morning showing moderate growth in

jobs for November 103,000 more people on payrolls. So will that get us closer to the

soft landing that our central bankers are looking for.

Let's check in with Susan Schmidt, head of public equity at the state of Wisconsin

Investment Board.

The number of new jobs in the economy last month still positive but much lower and that's well below

expectations that's good investors will like that because while it's still

positive it also is slowing the economy down because there aren't that many more jobs

so investors are going to like that it signals that the Fed potentially is done its work with the

interest rates at these levels and there won't be

need for further increases. Partly accounts for why stock indexes have been

running quite strong in recent weeks. We're back to a peak that we had saw

last summer.

Yes, and that's because investor optimism is growing that we are going to get that soft landing.

The Fed has done enough.

The economy is gradually easing off and that means that inflation

is slowing and coming back into the Fed's desired range that will eventually

we'll get to that range of around 2%. Therefore, businesses are going to be able to glide into this

into a slower economy but still with positive results. So again, easing that inflation but not

having the economy grind to a halt.

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