First Friday: Jobs Fell by 92,000. But the Economy Is Still Growing?

Afford Anything | Make Smart Money Choices

Paula Pant | Cumulus Podcast Network

Entrepreneurship, Investing, Business

4.7 • 3.6K Ratings

🗓️ 6 March 2026

⏱️ 42 minutes

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Summary

#695: The U.S. lost 92,000 jobs in February, pushing unemployment to 4.4 percent.That result contradicts a different report released two days earlier showing 63,000 jobs added, leaving economists trying to square the circle. Many agree that we're in a "low hire, low fire" jobs environment.We walk through several major economic stories using a three-layer framework: the household economy, markets and policy, and long-term forces shaping the future.First, the household layer. Hiring has become uneven across sectors. Health care and education previously drove much of the job growth, but layoffs in those areas now appear in the data.Job openings have also fallen to 6.54 million, the lowest level since the pandemic began. Workers are switching jobs less often, and the pay bump for job-hopping has shrunk.Mortgage rates recently crossed 6 percent, influenced in part by rising Treasury yields and concerns about inflation. Gas prices climbed about 26 cents per gallon in a week, partly due to tensions affecting oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, which normally carries about one-fifth of global oil supply.The episode also looks at household finances. Six percent of workers in Vanguard plans took hardship withdrawals from their 401(k)s in 2025, up from five percent the year before. That increase suggests some households are leaning on retirement savings to manage financial stress.At the end of the episode, economist Dr. Ben Zweig, CEO of Revelio Labs, joins us to unpack the conflicting employment reports and explain why the labor market may look weaker than expected. He also discusses why health care hiring may be slowing and how economists interpret mixed signals across multiple labor data sources. (0:00) February jobs shock(1:02) Three-layer economy framework(2:03) BLS job losses explained(3:12) ADP vs BLS data gap(4:30) Job openings decline(5:39) Layoffs and AI cuts(7:15) Mortgage rates near 6 percent(8:26) Gas price spike(10:02) Markets react to oil shock(16:00) Record 401k withdrawals(19:30) Asset owners vs nonowners gap(21:22) Supreme Court tariff ruling(23:31) AI costs collapse, usage surge(27:03) Fed reactions to jobs report(33:33) Economist Ben Zweig interview Share this episode with a friend, colleagues, and your job recruiter: https://affordanything.com/episode695 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	The jobs report came out today and it is wild.
0:03.5	The U.S. lost 92,000 jobs in February, according to BLS data.
0:09.3	That is a huge shock after looking at the ADP report, which came out on Wednesday, which
0:13.9	told a totally different story.
0:15.4	It told a story of the U.S. gaining 63,000 jobs.
0:19.3	So how do we square the circle?
0:22.7	How do we make sense of a world in which the data is telling us such different things? Well, we're going to talk about that on
0:26.7	today's episode. Welcome to the Afford Anything podcast, the show that knows you can afford
0:31.7	anything, not everything. This show covers five pillars. Financial psychology, increasing
0:36.9	your income, investing, real estate, and entrepreneurship. It's double eye fire.
0:42.0	I'm your host, Paula Pant. I hold a master's in economic journalism from Columbia. And once a month on the first Friday of every month, we host an episode in which we take a look at the broad macro economic trends that are affecting us.
0:55.4	What's affecting your wallet, your mortgage rates, your gas prices, your ability to get a job or
1:01.5	ask for a raise at work? What are the things that are affecting that at the big picture level?
1:07.4	We answer that question on the first Friday of every month. So in today's episode, I'm going to
1:12.4	walk through several big economic stories, but I'm going to organize them into three layers of the
1:17.3	economy so that you've got a framework for thinking about them. Layer number one, we're going to
1:22.0	talk about the household economy, jobs, wages, housing costs, gas prices, 401ks. Layer number two is markets and policy,
1:32.0	things like tariffs, stock markets, how investors are reacting to big geopolitical shocks. And then layer
1:39.9	number three is the long-term forces that are reshaping the economy, most predominantly AI.
1:47.3	How is that layer affecting everything?
1:50.7	We're also going to talk to Revelyo Labs CEO, Dr. Benzwegg.
1:55.2	He will join us at the end of the episode to shed some light on today's BLS jobs report.
	...

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