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On the show today, a look at the job market, at car sales and the impact student loans can have on our lives.

From American public media, this is Marketplace.

In Portland, Oregon, I'm Rima Khrase and for Kaira Ristall who's on assignment in China covering Secretary Yellen's visit, more from him tomorrow.

It is Thursday, July 6th. Good to have you along.

There are a lot of people waiting anxiously for tomorrow's June jobs report from the Labor Department, economists, investors, my Marketplace colleagues, and most importantly, of course, the Fed.

The Fed wants to see job and wage growth cooling down, which would mean it's making inroads against inflation.

Today, leading up to that much anticipated jobs report, we got a lot of confounding contradictory indicators.

So we asked Marketplace's Mitchell Hartman to figure out what is going on in the job market and the larger economy.

So here's what we learned today.

Jobless claims are rising according to the Labor Department, but announcements of job cuts by big employers actually fell by half last month, according to out placement firm Challenger Gray and Christmas.

Labor Department reports job openings dropped by half a million in May, but more workers quit voluntarily in hopes of finding a better job fast.

And private sector employers hired half a million new workers in June, according to payroll processor ADP, which is huge and totally confounds economists' expectations of a slowdown.

Split all the differences and economist Bill Adams at Comerica Bank comes up with this.

The job market does seem a little cooler than in 2022, although it's still good and it's adding jobs relatively quickly.

Adams says companies are seeing business slowdown, but they worked hard to staff up in a labor shortage so they don't want to lay anyone off now, because they think it might be really difficult to be higher if the economy picks up again.

Meaning the labor market is likely to remain challenging for employers.

Companies are growing and there is more jobs than there are people.

Kathleen Quinn Votau runs talent first, a recruitment and retention firm.

Employees are quite optimistic and in the driver's seat just because a software session might be coming.

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