Wall Street News Roundup: Shaky Jobs Reports, New Rules for Public Companies and Elon Musk Trillion Dollar Pay Package

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I'm Nicole Lappen, the only financial expert you don't need a dictionary to understand.

It's time for some money rehab.

It's time for a roundup of the biggest stories on Wall Street and how they're going to affect you and your wallet.

This week, we're talking about the job market, reporting requirements for publicly traded companies, and Elon Musk.

On the job market, I want to highlight a recent trend in the data that really stuck out to me.

And before we dive in, let's zoom out a little bit.

I'm talking about just one piece of the job market, but we always have to think about the big picture here.

The Fed has been meeting this week, and they're actually going to make a call on interest rates today, Wednesday, September 17th.

They rely on jobs numbers as part of a deep dive into the state of the economy.

So we can use these numbers as a partial clue for what the Fed will do, which of course has downstream effects on all of our wallets.

The big jobs report comes out from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, or BLS.

It typically comes out on the first Friday of each month at 8.30 a.m.

Eastern Time and covers employment data from the previous month like job creation, unemployment rate, wage growth, and so on and so on.

As you might remember from an episode a few weeks ago, the BLS builds the report using two main surveys, one from households and one from businesses.

On the household side, BLS staff literally go door to door asking people about their employment status.

On the business side, they collect a bunch of data straight from companies.

Then they check the numbers to make sure nothing got duplicated, balance them for seasonal adjustments, and release the report to the public.

Now, the BLS is staffed by some of the nerdiest people on the planet.

And I say this in the best way possible.

They love numbers, they love data, they love all of it.

That said, the process is not easy.

Going door-to-door takes people and participation.

Over the years, public response has dropped, and the agency itself has lost a chunk of its workforce in the last year, including the former commissioner who President Trump accused of cooking the numbers.

And yes, falsifying government data is a crime, and so far, no one at the BLS has been charged with anything like that.

So there's no reason for us to feel that the data is being manipulated on purpose.

But there is definitely room for improvement when it comes to data collection.

Door-to-door canvassing is a wild method for 2025.

Now, the latest jobs report hasn't been all bad.

Unemployment overall is still very low, but there are some persistent problem spots, and one of the biggest is long-term unemployment.

But before I get into that, we have to talk about another revision.

The BLS has the opportunity to revise the reports as they continue to get more data from the surveys and the door knocking and all that jazz.

You remember when President Trump fired the Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner?

Well, that was because of that big revision published in August.

These revisions can really affect the stock market because a revision will either mean that the labor market is better or worse than we thought.

The stock market is very reactive to our perception of the economy.

And if the headlines are saying that the economy is worse than we thought, you better believe that the stock market is going to go down.

This month, the BLS published another revision, debatedly worse than the one that got the commissioner fired.

This month, the Bureau published updated numbers for March of last year and March of this year that showed employers added 900,000 fewer jobs than initially reported, which means that the economy added only 850,000 jobs during that time, half as many as previously reported.

The New York Times did a good analysis on all of this data.

I'll link that article if you want to read more in the show notes.

So, the latest revision does mean that the economy isn't looking so hot, and this revision got all the headlines.

But there's another number that I'm focused on, which brings me back to long-term unemployment.

The jobs report defines long-term unemployment as when someone has been looking for work for more than six months without any luck.

Right now, the share of long-term unemployed people has crept up to levels we usually associate with recessions, not healthy economies.

The number of long-term unemployed is 1.9 million, and that has increased by 385,000 over this year.

In August, the long-term unemployed accounted for over 25% of all unemployed people.

What's especially striking is who makes up that group.

People with college degrees are overrepresented in a way that we haven't actually seen before.

Two years ago, they accounted for one-fifth of all all unemployed workers.

Today, it's closer to a third, and that is a big jump.

Let's dig into why.

A couple things are at play here.

First, the rise of AI, which is, of course, reshaping entire industries that used to be staffed by college-educated workers.

Second, the layoffs tied to Doge, both in federal agencies and in programs that depended on government grants, notably the slashing of the federal workforce and the federal grant system disproportionately impacted white-collar workers.

It's hard to track exactly how many people lost their jobs because of Doge.

At one point, the count was 260,000 federal workers, but some have been hired back.

And then further complicating things, that 260,000 figure does not include people who lost their jobs because of the grants that were nixed by Doge.

Now, trends in economic data are always worth watching.

I know not everybody feels that way, but I'll tell you why.

Maybe this is just a statistical blip and these workers will find new opportunities.

But it could also signal something bigger, a structural shift in the jobs market where entire groups of people end up locked out of long-term opportunities as industries disappear.

If that's the case, we could be staring at a generational change in employment.

Next, publicly traded companies.

Publicly traded companies have to play by a whole lot of disclosure rules.

By law, they're required to update investors every single quarter with detailed financial information.

These are basically the earnings calls that I've talked about a lot on the show.

Most CEOs even hop on these calls to talk through the results.

As a side note, some CEOs lately have sent in AI avatars.

Klarna's CEO, for example, used an AI version of himself to give the company's Q1 2025 results.

That seems to mostly be publicity stunt nonsense and not a case of AI actually taking the CEO's job.

Now, President Trump wants to change this system, moving from quarterly reporting reporting to just twice a year, which is the way it worked back in the 1970s.

And to be fair, he is not the only one to suggest this.

In 2018, Jamie Dimon and Warren Buffett both floated the idea, and the SEC even asked the public to weigh in.

The question is, would it even matter?

Honestly, it's not clear.

Before I invest in a company, I comb through all of these reports, I listen to earnings calls, but it is literally my job.

For retail investors who don't have a daily finance podcast, shifting from quarterly to semi-annual reports probably isn't going to make much of a difference.

Institutional investors would notice, but these folks already invest in private companies, which don't disclose nearly as much.

The people who will notice, though, stock traders.

There's a lot of volatility around earnings season, which means opportunities for traders to win and to lose.

So they'll likely feel this update will rob them of half of their biggest days of the year.

But as you know, I am not a trader.

I am a long-term investor.

So this doesn't really mean a lot for me.

Trump's argument is that so much reporting distracts companies and drags down productivity.

Maybe, but companies have to keep detailed records regardless.

So even if you cut the number of reports in half, I doubt going from four hours a year of boring meetings to two hours a year of boring meetings with investors would actually change anything for CEOs.

But again, I would love to have fewer meetings personally, so the jury's out.

As for how these rule changes would go into place, it's still a little TBD.

There's no clear path here that leads from Trump saying something about this to the SEC changing its rules.

But it's 2025, so things are different now.

Of course, all of these concerns about disclosure rules apply to normal companies, not Tesla.

Tesla is not a normal company.

Yes, investors will tell you it's the future of robots, AI, batteries, and Mars colonies.

But let's be honest, for many, buying Tesla stock is really just investing in Elon Musk himself, meaning most of of us can't invest in his other ventures like SpaceX or Neuralink, but with a brokerage account and a few bucks, anybody can grab at least a fractional share of Tesla, which means Tesla's stock price often moves on the public's perception of Elon's interest in Tesla at any given moment.

Case in point, even though Tesla's earnings are down, the stock got a bump after Musk bought a billion dollars worth, about 2.5 million shares.

Because Elon is worth about $471 billion, this purchase was kind of a drop in the bucket, but it is significant to Tesla.

The price jumped on the news, so much so that it erased the remaining losses for Tesla's shares for the year, which were down at 1.42%.

So why did he do it?

Well, more shares means more ownership, which means more decision-making power.

But even though 2.5 million shares sounds like a whole heck of a lot, and it is, it barely nudged his ownership stake in Tesla.

It only went from 19.71%

to 19.78%.

Seriously, so that's not going to give him much more power in the next shareholder vote than he already had.

It's also possible that this move is more symbolic than financial.

When Elon was in Washington heading up Doge, some Tesla shareholders were vocal about feeling like Elon was MIA at Tesla and the stock was feeling the heat.

Increasing his ownership in Tesla might be Elon reassuring investors that he is back and focused and at a critical time too.

It's also worth noting that just over a week before, Tesla's board proposed a trillion-dollar comp package for Elon.

So he definitely wanted to show investors that he is serious about Tesla and serious about becoming the world's first trillionaire.

Investors also know that when Elon gets bullish on Tesla, the market gets bullish on Tesla.

When the news broke of Elon buying more Tesla shares, the stock jumped 6%.

6%.

Last week, Elon briefly lost his crown as the richest person in the world to Larry Ellison of Oracle.

So maybe he just wanted an extra edge to stay on the top.

I don't know, but I think it's probably the other stuff.

For today's tip, you can take straight to the bank.

The Fed meeting is the wild card hanging over all of this.

If the Fed raises rates, borrowing gets more expensive.

Think higher credit card and mortgage payments.

So it's a smart play to pay down variable debt quickly.

If they cut rates, the focus shifts to locking in cheaper loans or refinancing.

And if they hold steady, it's your reminder to keep building your emergency fund and investing consistently, since stability often gives the market room to breathe.

Money Rehab is a production of Money News Network.

I'm your host, Nicole Lappin.

Money Rehab's executive producer is Morgan Lavoie.

Our researcher is Emily Holmes.

Do you need some money rehab?

And let's be honest, we all do.

So email us your money questions, moneyrehab at moneynewsnetwork.com, to potentially have your questions answered on the show or even have a one-on-one intervention with me.

And follow us on Instagram at MoneyNews and TikTok at MoneyNews Network for exclusive video content.

And lastly, thank you.

No, seriously, thank you.

Thank you for listening and for investing in yourself, which is the most important investment you can make.