Hawaii’s worker shortage goes NUTS
The Indicator from Planet Money
NPR
4.7 • 9.5K Ratings
🗓️ 29 January 2026
⏱️ 9 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Macadamia nuts. Labor shortages. Volcanoes. All that might sound like econ Mad Libs, but they’re all connected to the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco’s entry into the Beige Book this month: labor shortages are hurting macadamia nut harvests in Hawaii.
On today’s show, we take a vacation and talk to someone on the Big Island who runs a macadamia nut farm. He calls them “mac nuts.”
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | NPR. |
| 0:12.0 | Whalen, I hate to tell you, but we have a new competitor. |
| 0:15.2 | Don't tell me there's another short-form nerdy business podcast out there. |
| 0:19.5 | Even more concerning. |
| 0:21.3 | You know how we do a show |
| 0:22.2 | every time the Federal Reserve |
| 0:23.4 | publishes the document known as the beige book |
| 0:25.8 | where we highlight the best stories? |
| 0:28.4 | Well, now the Fed is cutting out the middleman |
| 0:30.5 | and becoming their own influencers. |
| 0:32.0 | Oh, no! |
| 0:33.0 | Yeah, the Minneapolis District of the Fed |
| 0:35.0 | is now doing a hip video version |
| 0:37.3 | of their beige bookjbook entry. |
| 0:39.0 | Listen to this. |
| 0:39.9 | Our surveys for the latest Bejewks show Hiring Demand is weak. |
| 0:43.7 | And more firms are seeing their headcounts shrink than grow. |
| 0:47.8 | They even have that jaunty piano music like the cereal podcast. |
| 0:52.3 | Are we toast? |
| 0:53.5 | We're toast. |
| 0:56.6 | We are going to have to up our game. We no longer have a monopoly on the beige book coverage. We'll have to do today's episode with |
| 1:01.6 | extra prizes and glitz and glamour. It's the Bezzi Awards. Our eight times a year's |
... |
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