No jobs report? We're still on the case
Marketplace All-in-One
Marketplace
4.5 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 3 October 2025
⏱️ 9 minutes
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Summary
The September hiring and unemployment data won't be released today due to the ongoing government shutdown. These reports are typically among the five most closely watched economic indicators each month. Economist Julia Coronado of Macropolicy Perspectives joins us to discuss. Also on the show: the shutdown's impact on health care — from canceled online doctor's appointments to reduced home health services for seniors. And later, Marketplace's David Brancaccio speaks with a former high school guidance counselor in Sheboygan, WI about how students are preparing to enter the labor market.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Doing some sleuthing in lieu of no unemployment report today. I'm David Brancaccio in Los Angeles. I come to this party empty-handed. The September hiring and unemployment reports are on the schedule for today, but as we anticipated, they never showed because of the partial federal government shutdown. These are typically among the top |
| 0:21.1 | five most significant reports of any month. Joining us from Austin is economist Julia Coronado |
| 0:26.2 | of macro policy perspectives. Good morning. Good morning. Not to extend the metaphor too much, |
| 0:30.9 | but when my friends take pilot lessons and they want to get their instrument rating, they put |
| 0:35.8 | on an actual hood so they can't see out the windows and they have to use their little dial, they put on actual hood so they can't see out the |
| 0:37.5 | windows and they have to use their little dials. Is that how you feel today without the big |
| 0:42.4 | unemployment report? That's right. It's a little bit of withdrawal over here, trying to figure out the |
| 0:48.2 | landscape of the labor market with very, very little to go on. A few snippets, though, here and there. |
| 0:55.3 | Well, earlier this week, we did get the ADP payroll company does its own crunching of what happened in the month |
| 1:01.7 | just ended. You have that. Yeah. And that wasn't good. That showed private sector job losses. |
| 1:08.8 | We did suspect we were going to get federal job losses, but |
| 1:12.7 | ADP suggests that private sector companies are also not hiring such that we're actually seeing |
| 1:20.5 | job losses on balance. I mean, typically on a Thursday when the government's not shut down, |
| 1:25.6 | we get new claims for state unemployment benefits |
| 1:29.4 | as a read on the health of people and the labor market. The federal government did not release |
| 1:35.2 | their aggregates set, but what, you've been piecing together stuff from the states? |
| 1:39.9 | The states did release their numbers, and we could sum them all up and see that filings for unemployment insurance remain low. |
| 1:48.0 | We are not seeing a spike in layoffs as of yet, and that's the good news. |
| 1:52.5 | All right. Well, we'll keep feeling our way through this murk. |
| 1:56.4 | Economist Julia Coronado is also a professor at the University of Texas, Austin's Business School. |
| 2:01.9 | Thank you very much. |
| 2:02.7 | My pleasure. |
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