Jobs report warning signs

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Another disappointing jobs report will get you the headline numbers and a look at how those numbers play out in people's lives in real time.

Plus, the future of commercial shipping in the United States.

From American public media, this is Marketplace.

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

It's Friday, September 5th.

Good to have you along.

We got a ton of economic data this week, including today's lackluster, shall we say, jobs report, not to mention all the political news driving economic headlines.

So let's dive right into a recap of the week that was with Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, and Anna Swanson, a reporter at the New York Times.

Hey ladies.

Hi Kimberly.

Heather, I want to start with you with this jobs report.

What sectors were the hardest hit?

Wow, yeah, I've been saying that this job market is going from frozen to cracking, and a lot of industries are now doing layoffs.

You asked which ones are hardest hit.

There were a lot.

Mining was shed jobs, construction, manufacturing, information, and of course the federal government finance was pretty much flat.

Professional and business services have been laying off in the past three months.

To put it in perspective, in the past four months, without health care, we would be down 140,000 jobs.

So there just isn't much hiring anywhere, and now it's turning into layoffs.

Yeah, and I wanted to ask you about all the revisions, which have been a big topic of contention, as we saw with the firing of the BLS, Commissioner.

What does this jobs report tell us about what the economy has actually been looking like these past few months?

Yeah, it's been curious.

Oh, we've been looking for the effect of some of these policies on the job market, and things have actually looked pretty strong for

quite a few months.

But now we're seeing that there are significant revisions.

June revisions now show the first monthly net loss of jobs since December 2020, quite a long time ago.

So I think that what we're finally seeing here is, you know, this is a pretty bleak report, and we're finally seeing some of the effects of tariffs and immigration policy and the effort to shrink the government show up.

You see companies less willing to hire because there are probably concerns about higher costs for tariffs, because there's a smaller pool of labor to work with.

You see these significant losses in federal jobs.

So these changes have been predicted for months, but economic data is very backward looking.

It's something that statistical agencies need to amass over time.

So we're finally starting to see that show up.

Heather, what does all this mean for the Fed and the likelihood of a September rate cut, which we know the President wants oh, so much?

Well, a September rate cut is definitely happening, and there will either be an October and December rate cut following that to try to prevent further layoffs and further deterioration in the economy, or we may end up getting a really big September cut, another 50 basis point cut like we saw last year.

And so, Anna, I want to switch over to tariffs because Trump is appealing to the Supreme Court over the legality of his tariffs.

What do you think is going to happen with that appeal?

Yeah, so we did get a ruling this week in this court case, and the the majority of the court

said basically that the president did not have the authority to issue the global tariffs that he did in the way that he did them.

So he used this 1970s emergency powers law that allows him to declare a national emergency and take action against it.

It's something that's mostly used for sanctions, but he's used them to slap tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China for fentanyl, and then also do these global tariffs.

And it seems like the court is arguing that this use here is just really too broad.

So we have to see how the Supreme Court rules on this this fall, but so far the courts have been pretty consistent in their interpretations.

And it seems like a lot of legal experts are saying that, you know, it's possible that Supreme Court justices could take a similar view.

So, Heather, what do you think all this back and forth means for you and me, regular consumers and the businesses trying to make sense of these tariffs?

Look, obviously, one of the main reasons that we're seeing a slowdown in hiring and a slowdown in consumption is because of all this uncertainty.

And we hear it from small businesses, we hear it from large businesses, and you hear it from consumers.

They're really anxious right now, both about how much of these price hikes are coming through, particularly with the holidays not too long away.

And so it continues to be a drag on the economy.

And frankly, what we really need is just for the Supreme Court to weigh in and we could finally have some clarity here.

I want to get both of your takes on this op-ed that was in the Wall Street Journal today, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessant.

And the headline is, the Fed's gain of function monetary policy.

Lots of technical jargon in here, but the overall idea that he's making is that the Fed is doing too much and doing it in a way that doesn't make sense for the economy anymore.

What was your take on this?

Anna, you go first.

Yeah, so my take basically is that this is an effort to put a kind of intellectual framework around their criticisms of the Fed.

You know,

gain of function monetary policy experiment is a big mouthful, but he's basically saying the Fed has added

all these new tools and capacities, but they have not helped it to more accurately project the trajectory of the economy or achieve their economic mission.

He calls for a nonpartisan review of the Fed, says the Fed should leave banking supervision to other officials.

But I think it's just kind of ironic.

Critics would say it's ironic that

he's here saying that it was these practices that have threatened the central bank's independence.

But

really, it's the Trump administration that is threatening the central bank independence quite consistently

on a kind of weekly basis at this point.

Yeah, Heather, this came up this week when Trump's pick to fill an open seat on the Fed, Stephen Myron, was testifying on the Hill.

Yeah, to a certain extent, it did.

I think though, one of the big questions with Myron, you know, he's probably going to get approved and be on the Fed board pretty soon, maybe even in time to vote for a September rate cut.

But look, the game really changed with this latest jobs report.

I don't think Myron makes a big difference in monetary policy for the next few months.

It looks like the Powell Fed is going to cut no matter what, no matter who's on the board and voting.

The really big question is what happens in February 2020 when the Fed governors are supposed to reaffirm and vote on keeping those 12 regional Fed presidents in place?

And that's where it's a big question mark.

Does Myron join Waller and Bowman, and do they form some sort of trio that would try to challenge some of the Fed presidents and keeping them in place?

That could be a really big shake-up.

We'll have to wait and see.

Heather Long, Chief Economist at Navy Federal Credit Union, and Anna Swanson of the New York Times.

Thank you both and have a great weekend.

Happy Friday.

Wall Street today, jobs report bad.

Likely rate cut, good, at least in the eyes of traders, but it made for a day of ups and downs in the markets.

We'll have the details when we do the numbers.

Like we were just saying, the headline numbers in today's jobs report were pretty dismal.

Job creation is slowing to a crawl, unemployment rate is moving higher, drilled down into the report, and it doesn't look any better.

Black unemployment was up this month and over the last year, with more than 340,000 more black people out of work.

The so-called U6 rate, which includes people marginally attached to the labor force and part-time for economic reasons, is up over 8%.

And long-term unemployment, six months or more, up above 25% of job seekers for the first time since 2022.

Marketplace's Mitchell Hartman digs into the details.

Federal government saw the biggest losses over the year, and the federal workforce tends to be very diverse.

There's also veterans hiring preference, which has also drawn a lot of workers of color to federal jobs.

And even though headline unemployment for all workers hasn't shot up nearly as much, rising black unemployment could be a harbinger of things to come, says Angela Hanks at the Century Foundation, in part because black workers tend to be last hired and first fired.

So when we see things like black male unemployment reaching 7%, black unemployment overall getting to 7.5%, the concern is that overall increases in unemployment are not far behind.

Long-term unemployment has also risen a lot, with one in four unemployed workers now having been jobless for six months or longer.

One reason is pretty basic.

Fewer jobs to go around, says Sam Kuhn at recruitment software firm AppCast.

For the first time in years, there are now more unemployed workers than job openings.

More industries are cutting jobs rather than adding.

The last time we saw this was May of 2008 during the Great Recession.

Companies just aren't recruiting as much, says Laura Ulrich at JobSight Indeed.

Job postings, they are down 6.4% from this time last year.

It's not that the probability of becoming unemployed is getting much higher, but if you are unemployed, it's becoming much harder to get a job.

But not hopeless, she says.

Some sectors are still expanding, like healthcare and social assistance.

There are bright spots, but it's someone has lost their job in software development.

It's not easy for them just to become a healthcare worker, right?

Outside of healthcare, actually, the big bright spot right now is leisure and hospitality.

Which Sam Kuhn at AppCast says is still growing.

But if you're not looking to be a doctor or you're not looking to be a bartender, it's a pretty tough time to be hunting for a job.

I'm Mitchell Hartman for Marketplace.

We just heard from Mitchell about some seriously slowing employment numbers, but it's important to keep in mind that behind all that data, those 7.4 million people who are looking for work are real people.

My name's Archie.

I graduated three years ago.

I live in Phoenix, Arizona, and I'm looking for work in the tech industry.

It's been an interesting year because around May, I got laid off and then about two weeks later my dad got laid off and then my mom's company also announced they were going to do layoffs and that she will most likely be getting impacted with this.

My dad likes to say like being unemployed is almost busier than being employed.

There's so much interview preparation you have to do, networking, and then the big thing is job applications.

One company I applied to, which I thought was so funny, after I applied, they emailed saying, We have just received over 18,000 applications.

And to be clear, they aren't even a big company, they're like a really, really small company.

And they were like, We're just gonna continuously ask for you guys to like email us every week to let us see that you're still interested.

So now I'm kind of just trying to contact recruiters on LinkedIn, and that's been at least like getting me interviews.

It feels very much like a lottery at this point.

So I guess I have to kind of like do my time almost in a way, like putting in enough applications, getting to that 200 application mark.

And then eventually, at some point, something falls into place.

Architect out of Phoenix, Arizona.

Another story from the front lines of the labor market later in the show.

Coming up, everybody moved up quickly, and so you have this real void at the entry-level position.

The shipping industry needs all hands on deck.

But first, let's do the numbers.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 220 points, half a percent, to finish at 45,400.

The NASDAQ subtracted seven points, basically unchanged, to close at 21,700.

And the SP 500 lost 20 points, a third of a percent, to end at 6,481.

For the week, the Dow gave back a third third of a percent, the NASDAQ picked up one and one-tenth percent, and the SP 500 added a third of a percent.

Bonds rose, the yield on the two-year treasury, a proxy for what traders think interest rates will be 24 months from now, fell off a cliff this morning when the jobs report came out.

It ended, though, at 3.52%.

The yield on the 10-year treasury note fell to 4.09%,

and you're listening to Marketplace.

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Those games sent the team's energy through the roof.

Are you saying it was the off-field play that made the difference on the field?

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This is Marketplace.

I'm Kimberly Adams.

At the top of the show, Heather was talking about how the economy is kind of frozen, if not cracking.

Well, another sign of that, warehouses, or more specifically, weakening demand from companies to store their wares in them.

According to recent data from NAOP, the Commercial Real Estate Developers Association, leasing demand for industrial space shrank by 11.3 million square feet in the second quarter of 2025.

Industrial space is basically synonymous with warehouses these days.

And that's the first quarterly decline in 15 years.

And yes, it has a lot to do with that T-word.

Marketplace's Matt Levin has more.

Amazon is not the only game in town when it comes to warehouses.

Take the Georgia market, where Asian car brands like Hyundai and Kia with auto plants throughout the southeast are also big warehouse players.

They need space for all the fenders and batteries and other parts they import through the port of Savannah.

And so a lot of it was being shipped in through the ports and then stored and or transported to Atlanta and stored and assembled, you know, for the ultimate car to be distributed out.

Gregory Bowler Jr.

is an industrial real estate developer based in Atlanta.

He says recently, though, those Asian automakers seem to have less need for all that space.

We have seen a slowdown in that leasing

really since April.

April 2nd, of course, was the Trump administration's tariff palooza announcement.

While many of those tariffs have since been lowered or scrapped, the anxiety they provoked are leaving some warehouse shelves empty.

Josh Harris is a real estate professor at Fordham University.

Deal-making is going to always pause when there's uncertainty, right?

So if you don't feel like, boy, if I don't make a decision today, somebody else is going to take that space away from me, you might just delay unless you really need it.

It's not just trade policy that's causing demand for warehouse space to slump.

A big part of the warehouse downturn is happening in the Sunbelt, partly because new housing construction is slumping there, too.

Construction materials...

are huge demand drivers for industrial warehouse.

Furnishing, home goods, everything even from cabinetry makers take big spaces.

To be clear, the warehouse leasing data is more of a yellow caution light than a red alert at the moment.

Activity is still much higher than in recessionary times.

But urban planning researcher Beth Gutelius at the University of Illinois Chicago says more often than not, the way warehousing goes, so goes the rest of the economy.

I think it is a bit of a leading indicator, especially if you look at employment with the real estate market, which are both softening right now.

Warehouse employment is down about 27,000 jobs year over year, according to this morning's jobs report.

I'm Matt Levin for Marketplace.

So, Matt was just telling us about that slump in warehousing.

So, let's put a face to that data point.

We called up our go-to warehousing guy, Weston Labar.

He's the chief strategy officer at Waterfront Logistics.

It's been a pretty topsy-turvy year.

In some weeks, we have so much work that we, I hate to say, don't know what to do with it because we do know what to do with it, but it's just really busy.

We have all of our trucks in rotation.

We have to pay overtime.

We hire additional labor just to help get through the projects.

And then other weeks, it's a little bit like a ghost town.

You know, half the trucks may be parked.

We might not need need as many workers in the warehouse, in the yard, obviously truck drivers.

And so

unstable is what I would call this year.

One of the uncertainties going into periods when you have a lot of additional work, you need to hire new people is that when you don't keep people busy, you run into the risk of them finding something else to do.

Whenever we've seen this before, we see workers move to other states where maybe there might be a burgeoning manufacturing industry or a plant opening up, something else.

Or we've even seen truck drivers just leave the industry altogether and focus on things like Uber.

So we had to this year again look at wage increases.

Minimum wage went up for fast food workers.

So you wouldn't think, hey, what's the correlation between fast food workers making more money and people in supply chain?

But if you've got skilled workers and they find that they could get more steady hours and steady pay making $20 or $25 an hour in fast food, maybe again, they shift and go to a different industry altogether.

Weston Labar at Waterfront Logistics at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.

Staying maritime-related, the Trump administration says it wants to revive the American commercial shipping industry.

Ships that help keep the American economy moving fly under lots of different flags, and relatively few of them under the stars and stripes.

The ships that are in the U.S.

fleet, called the U.S.

Merchant Marine, make up less than 1% of commercial ships in the world, and the country with the most ships is China.

So, to compete, the administration is pouring millions of dollars into building ships and expanding the fleet.

But even if the U.S.

expands the merchant marine, there may not be enough certified mariners to work on those ships.

The agency that manages it already has a hard time filling open positions.

Claire Keenan Kurgan of Interlocken Public Radio joined some mariners in training aboard a tugboat at a community college on the shores of Lake Michigan.

It's not even 8 a.m., but cadets at the Great Lakes Maritime Academy are already sailing out of the school's harbor.

So we have to make sure our radar works, our depth finder, our...

That's Bryce Wise Brown, one of the students.

Today's exercise is to steer the tugboat carefully in and out of the bay.

It's a difficult harbor to make an approach to.

Kerry Godwin, their instructor and captain today, is watching closely behind the cadets.

There's not a lot of room to make a mistake.

So we're like moving out of the harbor now.

We're trying.

Left 30.

Left 30.

One cadet steers and pulls levers to shift the throttles, and another calls out angles for navigation.

Just keep it right 30.

Holding right 30.

They're training here to work on tugboats all over the country that push and pull on huge cargo barges.

Jerry Akenbach has led the Great Lakes Maritime Academy for 15 years.

The job opportunities for a cadet graduating from a maritime academy, any of them, have not been seen since the end of the Vietnam War.

He said that's in part because a bunch of senior officers retired during COVID.

When that happened, everybody moved up quickly.

And so all of a sudden you have this real void at the entry-level position.

And while the Trump administration has poured millions into building ships, there's also a need to expand training.

Ackenback says the Department of Transportation did reach out to the school about enrolling more cadets.

The school certifies deck officers and engineers.

We had to tell them what resources we needed to add 50 seats to the academy, 100 seats, 150, or 200 seats.

But they haven't gotten any extra resources yet.

Jim Weakley of the Lake Carriers Association, a Great Lakes shipping lobby, says if the U.S.

wants to be more competitive in the shipping industry, it has to train more maritime workers of all kinds.

You need mariners to man the ships and you need shipyards or shipyard workers to build them.

I think right now we're lacking both capabilities.

The Great Lakes Maritime Academy trains around 200 future mariners at a time.

Now, in a shallow part of a bay on Lake Michigan, Wise Brown, the cadet at the helm, watches his depth finder closely.

I know if I go anywhere over there, I'm going to ground myself.

I'm going to hit the bottom.

So I'm trying to just keep a steady course.

After training here, he'll have lots of options.

There are more than 5,000 tow vessels vessels in the U.S.

fleet.

Wise Brown is from New Orleans and hopes to work in Louisiana.

I plan on making a career out of the maritime industry, so I'm trying to get any and every endorsement Academy offers, and so far I have.

These grads consistently get jobs in the U.S.

Merchant Marine, where the pay could be as much as $100,000.

And that's in their first year out of school.

In Traverse City, Michigan, I'm Claire Keenan-Kurgan for Marketplace.

This final note on the way out today: as we've been covering on the show, companies are trying all sorts of things to adapt to the tariffs.

Some clothing retailers are trying out a strategy of just charging full price.

Reuters is reporting that companies like Levi's, Ralph Lauren, and Under Armour are skipping sales and discounts, and customers are still buying.

One reason, according to Moody's Analytics, those making over $250k a year, the richest 10% of Americans, make up about half of all consumer spending these days, and they can afford to pay full price.

Our theme music was composed by BJ Lederman.

Marketplace's executive producer is Nancy Fargali.

Joanne Griffith is a chief content officer, and Neil Scarborough is a vice president and general manager.

I'm Kimberly Adams.

Have a great weekend, everyone, and we will be back on Monday.

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