Less-than-great expectations for upcoming jobs data
Marketplace
Marketplace
4.6 • 8.5K Ratings
🗓️ 9 January 2026
⏱️ 26 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The January jobs report and consumer price index come out this week, and experts expect both employment and inflation to hold relatively steady. But that jobs report will also include revisions to 2025 data. Will that show a net loss of jobs over the last year? Also in this episode: Foreign investment in U.S. Treasurys stays strong, Hollywood prepares to renegotiate key labor agreement with SAG-AFTRA, and Michigan wants to sue Big Oil for antitrust violations.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The days of delayed government data aren't over. Up this week, jobs and inflation. From American |
| 0:09.4 | Public Media, this is Marketplace. |
| 0:16.1 | In Los Angeles, I'm Amy Scott in for Kai Rizdal. It's Monday, February 9th. Good to have you with us. I want to call your attention to two items to watch on the economic calendar this week. First, the January jobs report, delayed by last week's partial government shutdown, comes out Wednesday, followed by the latest consumer price index, also delayed, now scheduled for Friday. |
| 0:45.8 | Both are key readings on the health of the economy, and both are expected to be okay, as in modest but not great job growth and moderating but not yet low enough |
| 0:57.5 | inflation. Marketplaces Mitchell Hartman has more. |
| 1:01.2 | The economy has been adding an anemic 50,000 jobs a month on average over the last year, |
| 1:06.6 | just one third of the rate in 2024. |
| 1:09.4 | And more of the same is expected for January, says Boston |
| 1:12.8 | College economist Brian Bithune. The whole employment market has been sort of put on hold. |
| 1:19.5 | Limited hiring going on by large business. Actually, reductions in employment levels in the |
| 1:25.4 | small business world. What's more, the January jobs report also comes with something called annual benchmark revisions, |
| 1:32.6 | which are expected to reduce the number of jobs added to the economy last year by 6 to 900,000, |
| 1:39.4 | says economist Joe Bursuelas at consulting firm RSM. |
| 1:42.6 | Meaning, we're probably going to see a net decline in jobs for the entire year of 2025. |
| 1:49.8 | Brosewellis says there are a bunch of reasons why the job market has stagnated, |
| 1:54.3 | starting with a declining supply of workers for employers to hire. |
| 1:58.3 | You've got the long-run demographic issues caused by the retirement of the boomers. |
| 2:02.6 | Second, very tight immigration policy, which is a choice on the part of the Trump administration. |
| 2:08.5 | Also, he says, companies overhired during the post-pandemic recovery, and now they're slimming down. |
| 2:14.8 | Plus, they've invested heavily in automation and AI, which is increasing |
| 2:19.0 | productivity and reducing their need for more workers right now. Turning to the inflation data |
| 2:25.1 | we'll get later this week, economists expect a decline in headline consumer price inflation |
... |
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