Does the new Fed chair care about jobs?
The Indicator from Planet Money
NPR
4.7 • 9.5K Ratings
🗓️ 2 July 2026
⏱️ 9 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
How much does Kevin Warsh care about the jobs side of the Fed’s dual mandate?
Fact checking by Sierra Juarez.
Your Next Listen
— Are we in a new era of permanently higher prices?
Connect with The Indicator
— Sign up for The Indicator’s brand new newsletter
— Buy the Planet Money book
— Find our socials, YouTube and more!
— For sponsor-free episodes, subscribe to NPR+
See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.
NPR Privacy Policy
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | NPR. |
| 0:02.0 | This is the indicator from Planet Money. I'm Darym Woods. |
| 0:09.0 | I'm Waylon Wong and welcome to Jobs Thursday. |
| 0:13.0 | Jobs Thursday, yes. The Bureau of Labor Statistics released its numbers for the month of June today. |
| 0:19.0 | It's a day earlier than usual because of the |
| 0:20.9 | July 4th holiday. So we're sending you into the long weekend with a look at the labor market. |
| 0:26.4 | The U.S. economy added 57,000 jobs in June, and the unemployment rate was 4.2%. That's mostly unchanged |
| 0:34.1 | from May's rate of 4.3%. As you know, we make a point of studying the |
| 0:38.7 | jobs numbers every month because it tells us how workers in the U.S. are doing. The Federal Reserve |
| 0:44.3 | cares a lot about the employment numbers too. In fact, it's legally obliged to care about jobs. |
| 0:50.7 | That's because Congress gave the Fed what's known as a dual mandate, stable prices and |
| 0:55.8 | maximum employment. But last month, new Fed chair Kevin Walsh presided over his first |
| 1:00.9 | interest rate decision in press conference. And he had a lot to say about stable prices. |
| 1:06.3 | Price stability. Price stability. Price stability. Price. Price stability. Price. Price stability. Price stability. Price stability. Price. Price. Price. Price stability. Price. Price stability. Price. Price stability. But you didn't talk much about maximum employment. So, does Kevin Warsh even care about jobs? |
| 1:22.7 | Oh, the humanity. Today on the show, we talk about how the dual mandate is tricky for the Fed to fulfill, |
| 1:28.3 | and we parse some early clues about how Kevin Warsh might be tackling this part of the mission. |
| 1:38.3 | Let's take a whirlwind tour of central bank mandates around the globe. We will start in Frankfurt |
| 1:46.1 | with the European Central Bank. Their mandate is to maintain price stability. Then onto the Bank |
| 1:52.1 | of Japan. Price stability. The Swiss National Bank. Price stability. Bank of England. Financial |
| 1:57.6 | and price stability. Then we have the Reserve Bank of Australia. It talks about |
| 2:01.9 | both price stability and full employment, which mirrors the Federal Reserve at the US. But this two |
| 2:07.7 | gold structure is relatively rare among central banks. And the Federal Reserve's current mission is |
... |
Transcript will be available on the free plan in 24 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from NPR, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of NPR and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.