'Tis the season of holiday bonuses ... for some

Marketplace

American Public Media

News, Business

4.6 • 8K Ratings

🗓️ 26 December 2025

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The number of workers recieving end-of-year bonuses is falling. Some of that has to do with shifting workplace norms and some is related to this tight labor market in which employees stay in jobs without extra perks. In this episode, the state of the holiday bonus. Plus: The history of Play-Doh, the year in anime, and a recap of the week’s economic headlines.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	A look back at the big economic trends of 2025 and what's ahead for 2026.
0:07.3	We'll have our last weekly wrap of the year.
0:09.8	From American Public Media, this is Marketplace.
0:18.3	In Washington, D.C., I'm Kimberly Adams in for Kai Ristall. It's Friday, December 26th. Good to have you with us. This is the last Friday of 2025, meaning it's also the last weekly rep of 2025. So to look back and a little bit forward at the economic year that was, we've got Courtney Brown at Axios on the line and Rachel Siegel at the Washington Post. Hey, you two.
0:47.6	Hi, Kimberly. Thank you for joining me this holiday week. Courtney, I want to start with you because there were a bunch of big
0:54.6	economic themes this year. And one in particular that showed up in this week's GDP report
0:59.6	is this ever resilient American consumer. Doesn't matter if we've got tariffs, bad consumer
1:05.9	sentiment, whatever, people are still spending. Courtney, you've been writing about this. Why?
1:13.1	I also am curious and surprised by the resiliency of the American consumer. And this isn't the
1:21.4	only year that we're having this conversation about consumer resiliency, right? This has been the story of the U.S.
1:28.7	economy for a while now. I think what makes it the most shocking is some of the factors
1:34.4	that you mentioned that are new to the economy this year, tariffs, for instance. We've seen the
1:39.7	consumer continue to spend despite some tariff-related price increases. And I think the big question for my
1:48.0	reporting in 2026 is how much longer can this continue, especially as the labor market starts to
1:55.1	look a little bit more rocky. Will consumers keep spending or will they start to be more cautious? That's a massive
2:03.4	question for the economy going into next year. Rachel, what's your take? Why do you think people
2:08.6	are still spending and what might stop them? Well, I completely agree with everything that Courtney
2:15.4	just said. And I also feel like it's hard to parse out
2:19.5	different stories coming from different types of consumers and different types of spending, too.
2:25.0	So there's this big looming question about higher-end consumers, you know, how much they're willing
2:30.4	to absorb, how much bandwidth they continue to have for higher prices.
2:34.8	And then I feel like there's this sort of additional question that follows from there of how
	...

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