Dueling data on jobs, more on what's behind that GDP jump, and to be on theme for the holiday, toys.

From American Public Media, this is Marketplace.

In Washington, D.C., I'm Kimberly Adams in for Kai Rizdahl.

It's Wednesday, the 24th of December.

Good to have you along, everybody.

We got some relatively good news about the job market today.

The Labor Department reported initial claims for unemployment benefits fell by 10,000 nationwide last week.

That's now down to the historically low level we saw before the pandemic.

It's a very different story than what we saw in the delayed government jobs report, which showed that since September, the economy lost about 40,000 jobs, while unemployment spiked

higher to 4.6 percent, other than the pandemic, that's the worst unemployment rate we've

seen since 2017. So, one report says fewer people are filing for unemployment,

while the other says there are more people unemployed.

How does that work? Marketplace's Mitchell Hartman is here to help it make sense.

Let's start with the positive employment news.

It's good to see that jobless claims are low.

Ryan Young is chief economist at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

There came in about 10,000 people

under estimates, which is 10,000 paychecks that are safe. Except that might not tell the whole

story. Michelle Evermore at the National Academy of Social Insurance is an expert on the unemployment

system. Initial claims, as I always say, only measure people who lose work and then

apply for unemployment insurance. And right now, Evermore says the workers losing jobs are least

likely to apply for unemployment insurance. So that's black workers. People who are part-time for

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