Gas vs. gas
Marketplace
Marketplace
4.6 • 8.5K Ratings
🗓️ 3 April 2026
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The war with Iran has driven up the price of gas — as in, the gas we put in our cars. But what about natural gas, like the kind we use to heat and cool our homes? The U.S. is pretty well insulated from a natural gas price spike. Countries across Europe and Asia ... not so much. Also in this episode: Wage growth slows as the economy adds jobs, historic New England country stores pivot to stay afloat, and crude oil futures look a bit funky right now.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | On the program today, the week that was, of course, and then petroleum of several different kinds, |
| 0:07.8 | and look, maybe pour one out for those iconic country stores from American public media. |
| 0:14.4 | This is Marketplace. In Los Angeles, I'm Kai Rizdahl. |
| 0:27.8 | It is Friday. |
| 0:29.0 | Today's one is the third of April. |
| 0:31.0 | Good as always to have you along, everybody. |
| 0:33.1 | We are going to dig right in on this Friday because, I mean, have you been following the news? |
| 0:39.5 | Heather Long is the chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union. Jordan Holman is at the New York |
| 0:43.4 | Times. Hey, you two. Hi, Kai. Hey, Kai. Heather, we start with you. We start with the jobs report |
| 0:50.4 | from this morning for the month of March, 178,000 new jobs. |
| 0:56.8 | The unemployment rate falls to 4.3%. Headline numbers, very nice, very good. |
| 0:59.4 | Thank you very much. |
| 1:00.7 | Look under the hood for me, would you? |
| 1:03.8 | Yeah, sure. |
| 1:05.1 | So much is moving around the job market, but I think the big picture, if you step back, |
| 1:09.8 | is we're in a frozen job market, |
| 1:11.8 | and it's been that way for about a year. And the unemployment rate's been stuck between 4.2 and 4.5%, |
| 1:19.9 | which, as you point out, not too bad. But, you know, the encouraging news here in 2026 is if you look |
| 1:26.7 | across January, February, March, we're |
| 1:28.7 | averaging about 68,000 job gains a month, and it's more than health care. |
| 1:33.2 | It's manufacturing, construction, hospitality. |
| 1:36.4 | But if you look at some downsides, a lot of people left the labor force in March, almost |
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