On the program today, making economic sense out of all that uncertainty.

From American public media, this is Marketplace.

In Los Angeles, I'm Kyle. I'm Kyle Rizzdahl.

It is Tuesday today, the 11th March.

Good as always, to have you along, everybody.

It is a hard and fast rule of this program that while the economic headlines matter and should have attention paid to them,

what's really important is what people

are feeling in their day to day, people and businesses, too. So I'll give you the headlines.

Then Justin Ho is going to come on and tell you what they mean. We got a couple of data points about

the American labor market this morning. The January job openings and labor turnover

survey jolts, of course, from the labor department, and the February small business optimism

index from the National Federation of Independent Business. The NFIB says a lot of small

businesses are still having trouble filling their open positions. So there's that. But the Joltz report showed job openings have

fallen almost 9% since the same period a year ago. It's a sign that the labor market is

slowing a bit, of course, and then you add the general layer of uncertainty in this economy right now.

Well, here's Justin. Throughout last year, sales were strong at Rothmans, a men's clothing

store in New York. Co-president Ken Gidden says he went into this year feeling optimistic, and he was

planning to hire for two new positions. And then the last week or so has definitely made us

think about it a little bit.

Gidden says Rothman's imports a lot of the clothing it sells, so he's concerned that the Trump

administration's new tariffs will make that clothing more expensive. And then there's all the

stock market gyrations in recent days, which he says can put his customers on edge.

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