Oct 3, 2026 · 18 min · 10 segments
The U.S. economy added fewer jobs than expected last month, and Black unemployment spiked. California voters will decide whether the state should charge a one-time tax on billionaires, an idea that…
Betsy StevensonGuest
Carrie Johnson
Ayesha RascoeHost
Scott SimonHost
Marisa Lagos
The US economy added fewer new jobs than expected in September, and unemployment ticked up a bit, now at 4.2%.
She's a professor of economics and public policy at the University of Michigan and was a member of President Obama's Council of Economic Advisors.
Well, what I see is a continuation of a low-fire, low-hire labor market, and that is a labor market where if you have a job, you're doing okay, you can hang on to it, but it's hard to get a new job.
And that hurts not only the people who need to enter the labor market or have lost their job, but it actually also hurts the people who are employed because most wage gains, big wage gains, come from changing jobs.
So that was the other thing we saw in this report is that on average, people's wages are not keeping up with inflation.
In recent months, a majority of the new jobs have gone to women, though in this report it was, uh, it was more equal than previous months.
Well, you and I have talked about this before, so I looked at this longer trend because you're right, this month it was more even, 14,000 of the 29,000 jobs went to women.
But if we actually look since July, 100% of the jobs have gone to women, and we now see that women hold 50.1% of the jobs.
And this is almost completely explained by the fact that almost all the hiring in our labor market is being driven by healthcare.
Um, that is a area where we s- still need people, and women are the majority of the workers in that industry.
That is the engine of job growth, which is very confusing for some people because AI is the engine of GDP growth, but it has not been an engine for job growth.
What I see is a series of patterns that reflect a labor market that we're not in a recession, but I wouldn't call this a strong labor market.
And what happens in a weak labor market is all sorts of workers who are used to being able to churn and change jobs frequently find themselves getting left out.
Now, when we break down the unemployment rate to groups like Black workers, we do see a lot more volatility.
So when you see a big jump in a month, I always wanna have a little bit of caution.
The US economy added fewer new jobs than expected in September, and unemployment ticked up a bit, now at 4.2%.
She's a professor of economics and public policy at the University of Michigan and was a member of President Obama's Council of Economic Advisors.
Well, what I see is a continuation of a low-fire, low-hire labor market, and that is a labor market where if you have a job, you're doing okay, you can hang on to it, but it's hard to get a new job.
And that hurts not only the people who need to enter the labor market or have lost their job, but it actually also hurts the people who are employed because most wage gains, big wage gains, come from changing jobs.
So that was the other thing we saw in this report is that on average, people's wages are not keeping up with inflation.
In recent months, a majority of the new jobs have gone to women, though in this report it was, uh, it was more equal than previous months.
Well, you and I have talked about this before, so I looked at this longer trend because you're right, this month it was more even, 14,000 of the 29,000 jobs went to women.
But if we actually look since July, 100% of the jobs have gone to women, and we now see that women hold 50.1% of the jobs.
And this is almost completely explained by the fact that almost all the hiring in our labor market is being driven by healthcare.
Um, that is a area where we s- still need people, and women are the majority of the workers in that industry.
That is the engine of job growth, which is very confusing for some people because AI is the engine of GDP growth, but it has not been an engine for job growth.
What I see is a series of patterns that reflect a labor market that we're not in a recession, but I wouldn't call this a strong labor market.
And what happens in a weak labor market is all sorts of workers who are used to being able to churn and change jobs frequently find themselves getting left out.
Now, when we break down the unemployment rate to groups like Black workers, we do see a lot more volatility.
So when you see a big jump in a month, I always wanna have a little bit of caution.
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