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Hey, What's News listeners. It's Sunday, January 12th. I'm Luke Vargas for the Wall Street Journal,

and this is What's News Sunday, the show where we tackle the big questions about the biggest

stories in the news by reaching out to our colleagues across the newsroom to help explain what's

happening in our world. And this week, we're performing a health check on the U.S. labor market,

looking at everything from the macro trends

around unemployment to industry-specific trends around AI and whether people are trained for the jobs

of the future. All right. Let's get to it. All right, we've got a lot to get to today, so I want to

bring journal reporters Lauren Weber and Paul Berger into this discussion straight away.

Paul covers logistics and the supply chain for us, and we will see very soon why decisions companies are making up and down the supply chain are key to understanding the broader labor market.

But first, Lauren, I want to start with you, given your focus on workplace issues and employment,

given that we have just had the latest jobs report for December. The report showed hiring,

ramping up, though the last month of the year can be a bit of an outlier, given that it includes

holiday hiring moves and bigger picture. The job market has cooled off since its red-hot moments

in 2022 and 2023.

Generally speaking, what is the labor market looking like as the year gets underway and how are

companies and employers approaching the new year?

So we're waiting to see what's going to happen in 2025, not only as longer-term trends continue,

but also as a new administration comes in, there's a lot of uncertainties.

You know, we're seeing a little bit of wait and see as companies and employers try to figure out what's ahead.

...