Inflation is up, job growth is flat, and voters don’t like it
The NPR Politics Podcast
NPR
4.4 • 25.7K Ratings
🗓️ 14 May 2026
⏱️ 21 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This episode: voting correspondent Miles Parks, financial correspondent Maria Aspan, and senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro.
This podcast was produced by Casey Morell and Bria Suggs, and edited by Rachel Baye.
Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, it's Miles. A quick word before we get started today. If the NPR Politics Podcast is part of your daily ritual, make it official on the NPR app. You'll hear about every episode the moment we have it ready. Just turn on notifications and we'll handle the rest. See you there. Download the NPR app today. Okay, here's the show. |
| 0:21.4 | Hey there, it's the NPR Politics podcast. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. |
| 0:25.9 | And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. |
| 0:28.6 | And NPR finance correspondent, Maria Aspen is also here with us. Hi, Maria. |
| 0:32.4 | Hey there. Great to be with you in person. |
| 0:33.9 | Yeah, it is awesome to have you in studio all the way down from New York. |
| 0:36.8 | And today, we've actually brought you in to untangle some pretty complicated economic data |
| 0:43.0 | because I feel like the U.S. economy is giving me personally mixed messages. So where can we start |
| 0:48.0 | here? Walk us through what we've seen in the economy right now. It's kind of a mess. |
| 0:53.0 | Mixed messages is a good description of it. I mean, we've seen |
| 0:58.0 | unemployment holding pretty steady. Companies have added jobs the last two months. And so, |
| 1:05.1 | you know, the employment picture is okay. It's not fantastic. Consumer spending is okay. This morning we saw retail sales for |
| 1:15.7 | April rose. Now, they only rose 0.5 percent down from a higher increase in March, but |
| 1:22.7 | spending is still up. We're towards the end of a quarterly earning season where big companies |
| 1:29.0 | unveil their corporate report cards and their, you know, blowing past profit expectations. |
| 1:34.1 | And that is helping out the stock market, which we've seen hitting record highs. |
| 1:40.7 | Of course, the obligatory disclaimer that the stock market is not the economy, but it is a good proxy for how the big companies that reflect the economy are doing. |
| 1:50.8 | And yet, at the same point. |
| 1:53.7 | I knew the boat was coming here at some point, but yeah. |
| 1:56.4 | So we're in the middle of a war that has created an energy crisis that is driving up oil and gas and fuel prices, which is driving up consumer prices. |
| 2:06.4 | We just saw that inflation, which was seeming closer to coming under control, it's now heating up to its highest level in almost three years. |
| 2:16.9 | That is a little wrong direction. And look, we're all |
... |
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