When unemployment becomes endless

it's going to be tough but we're going to try to say the phrase bond market no more than five times in the program today from american public media this is marketplace in los angeles i'm carl risdahl it is friday today this one is the 21st of august good as it always is to have you along everybody it has been a week in this economy i will tell you that so we're just going to start anna swanson is at the new york times city ready is at ms now hey you too hey guy hey guy all right here are the rules i get to see this one doesn't count i get to say bond market three times because it's my show you each get to say it one time so uh proceed accordingly but but anna swanson the first question goes to you it's not about that part of this economy it's about the trade part of this economy i would like you please uh to crystal ball for me where we are in the trade war with our neighbor to the north the deadline being like this weekend right oh nice so i can save my b market reference um so okay so yeah i have been covering canada negotiations this week and um you know if there's anything that trump loves as much as tariffs it's these ticking clocks and we've had a couple of them with canada um tariffs on about 20 billion dollars of canadian goods were set to go into effect tuesday at midnight but trump delayed that for three more days for negotiations now the deadline is tonight at midnight we still don't know what's going to happen um as of taping and it's hard to predict with trump but it seems like the u.s is optimistic they have some kind of deal to stop this so the talks have been um a lot about kind of the tit-for-tat measures that the two sides have been putting on each other over the past year after trump initially put tariffs on canada but i think it's important that this is also um kind of laying the groundwork and beginning to address some of the issues in this bigger negotiation that's going on this year over the north american trade agreement um and u.s officials want to wrap up those talks before the end of the year so um i'm gonna you know be following that i'm gonna venture this is not the last tariff deadline that we're gonna see on that this year yeah you think all right fair enough so so that's canada sudip here comes uh my the first of my references uh to the marketing question um we're going to spend more time than we usually do on the podcast talking about the treasury secretary secretary besant tried real hard to intervene in the bond market this week as the yield on the 30-year hit 5.3 and change percent which is very high the market doesn't seem to care what the treasury secretary thinks discuss please the market realizes that this treasury secretary knows what it's like uh on the other side of government interventions you can't bring a water pistol to a bazooka fight and they know you can't use four billion dollars in a two trillion dollar deficit uh where the government's borrowing this much money and think you're going to actually have a meaningful impact what they want to see is actual credibility from the people who are there this is uh it's not the same as the problem that the fed has where there's a lot of confusion about what's the actual future course of fed policy with dealing with inflation but in this case uh the credibility is not that high the there were promises that inflation would be lower than it is uh we're running well over three and a half percent uh promises that deficits would be uh lower than they are we went through all that doge nonsense last year and we have a two trillion after all of those empty promises there were promises of higher oil production that we've had and obviously a direct result of the iran war inflation is higher sending bond yields higher it's a problem all over the world that is that needs actual solutions and you can't just uh do a one-day intervention i think that's going to have any lasting impact because it won't speaking of all over the world it bears a mention here that that lots of industrialized and modernized economies have uh political dysfunction they have high debt levels we're talking japan we're talking europe um it is not just us and so my question is you know i talked to robin brooks uh this week and i said how you how worried are you about this and he said oh you know like a six or a seven and i guess where are you what do you think yeah yeah i know i think that's that's very wise i mean there are a lot of highly indebted countries around the world you know setting aside the u.s which just surpassed 40 trillion japan china the eu many of these countries are operating with huge debts and aging populations and you know more and more of their budget obviously has to go to debt service that forces governments to make really difficult choices about funding social programs funding infrastructure other things and of course you know results and stress on people trying to afford companies borrowing so you know it does result in a tougher picture that definitely raises some longer-term worries so deep that 40 trillion dollars in debt that anna mentioned the treasury secretary here he is again popping up um came out today and said you know what or came out uh i guess yesterday maybe two days ago i forget frankly it's a blur uh he said yeah you know nothing magic about 40 trillion which is true it is just a number but then he said we can grow our way out and that's maybe not the case we are definitely not seeing growth levels that would allow you to grow your way out of it we're seeing growth levels that uh allow you to plod along and that's not that's not enough the uh this argument's been going on for so long that we need to grow our way out of it which obviously does need to happen uh but the the deficit has taken off like this is the highest uh that we've highest uh deficit we've seen in peacetime outside of covid and and emergency uh uh measures uh in wartime uh but as a peacetime deficit being this way we're going to be able to grow our way out of it uh we're going to be able to grow our way out of it uh we're going to be able to grow our way out of it uh we're going to be able to grow our way out of it uh we're going to be able to grow our way out of it uh we're going to be able to grow our way out of it uh we're going to be able to grow our way out of it uh we're going to be able to grow our way out of it uh we're going to be able to grow our way out of it uh we're going to be able to grow our way out of it uh we're going to be able to grow our way out of it uh we're going to grow our way out of it uh we're going to be able to grow our way out of it uh we're going to be able it now yeah no totally i think it's interesting you said the fed and the treasury have to get together hello congress right oh absolutely in congress this problem has taken off in the last 25 or because of the way tax policy has been driven uh in uh multiple administrations of just a total fear of of uh dealing with this through tax policy and uh if you want to cut taxes for everybody eventually somebody will pay for it uh but this is uh clearly an unsustainable path all right we got to go i don't think we used our full quota of bond market anyway on a swanson new york times so deep ready at ms now wasted opportunities right there thank you too thank you thanks scott wall street today stocks were up oil was up bond yields were steady which we're just going to go ahead and call a win details numbers when we get there credit where credit is due for the inspiration for this next story the new york times reported yesterday that some parts of this country are about to be hit with a massive new batch of lone star ticks the really aggressive ones that can give you that extremely dangerous allergy to red meat it is not just public health and your mental well-being and tourism that suffer in those tick hot spots livestock and agriculture in general take a hit too as marketplaces caitlin tan reports holly gaff leads old dominion university's tick lab and she's bracing for the hatch you do get these larval bombs it sounds awful it is pretty awful yes tick larval bombs gaff says they look like pepper imagine if each pepper flake has legs and starts to walk off on to you you can try getting them off with a lint roller that's a tip from becky trout frixell at the university of tennessee she's a tick expert when i was in graduate school it was listed as one of the top five worst jobs in the country because of the disease risk with climate change ticks and their germs are exploding into more areas one study says it's easily a 13 billion dollar hit to the livestock industry university of nebraska's sean cross says ranchers can be particularly vulnerable it's not so much of oh i take some medical leave it's if i'm not in the field or i'm not doing wherever it may be this is impacting my livelihood especially with alpha gal syndrome which causes that red meat allergy that's a big problem if you're say delivering a calf because the fluid from the cattle could trigger an allergic reaction scott cummins is a medical doctor at the university of north carolina allergy clinic we've seen some people where they've transitioned their cattle farm to now they're raising emu and ostrich apparently emu and ostrich kind of tastes like beef and they're alpha gal safe i'm caitlin tan for marketplace and i'm a little bit more of a fan of the animal side of things so i'm going to go ahead and All right, Caitlin did bugs, here come birds. An estimated 96 million Americans, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said a couple of years ago, are bird watchers who spend more than $100 billion a year on it. That's $100 billion with a B. Some of them travel internationally to see exotic birds around the world. Others find birds closer to home. Here's today's installment of our series, My Economy. My name is Christopher Joe. I'm the owner of Connecting with Birds and Nature Tours of New Bern, Alabama, and we are a multi-generational farm which does ecotourism on our property. A farm, unless you're going strictly to scale, you're not going to quit your day job doing what you're doing. Dad is a retired ag teacher, and basically the farm is kind of a passion project. My professional career, I am a district conservationist with the Natural Resources Conservation Service. I work with landowners to try to get them to utilize their property. I kind of had the bright idea, or it just zapped me, kind of like one of those aha moments of, I should help our own farm. On the conversation with my oldest brother, me and him were talking about different things that we can do. He likes to cook. My second brother, he likes to cook. My second brother, he's an artist. So we're just brainstorming, and I'm like, man, it would be neat to do like a tourism thing. We have probably six, seven miles of trails, wildlife areas. We have a creek that borders our northeast corner. Birdwatching was one that I was like, sounds kind of easy. I don't think we have to do much for that. Our first official tour was February. Of 2019. And we're busting well past 3,000-something people at that farm since we started. We started a non-profit as well that's an educational component to it. So I'm giving school groups coming based off of teaching. I had a group from Texas to come two Mondays ago. They brought about 30 kids, and those kids had the time of their lives. All inner-city kids. May have never seen a Black man own land. And Dad, he loves it, too, because he always said, well, who's coming down today? And when a charter bus pulls up, and there are groups of kids coming off that bus, and he's just, I can kind of see that twinkle in his eyes, too, because we're still making use of the farm. It really is a legacy thing, and then just making sure that the farm is sustainable for generations to come. That's Christopher Joe right there running bird-watching tours and some other stuff on his family's Black Angus cattle farm in New Bern, Alabama. Tell us, would you, about your family's multi-generational business, if you have one, or whatever else is going on with you in this economy. Marketplace.org is where you can do that. Music. Coming up. Oh, my gosh, what didn't I learn? The world is a classroom, gang, but first, let's do the numbers. Dow Industrials rebounded 517 points today, almost 1%, 53,277. The NASDAQ gained 113 points, about four-tenths percent, 26,180. The S&P 500 added 33%. Points also four-tenths percent, 76, and 74. For the week, the Dow lost eight-tenths percent. The NASDAQ subtracted 2%. S&P 500 down about 1.4%. Caitlin Tan had the story on tickonomics in this season. Oh, the tick. Merck trades under the ticker MRK, makes a chewable dog treatment and cat treatment as well, called Bravecto. It ticked up 2.4%. Spectrum Brands, ticker symbol there, SPB, makes repellents like Cutter and Black Flag. It lifted nine-tenths percent. Also, did you know there is an indicator called the NYSE Tick Index? Measures the net difference between rising and falling stocks. Bond prices, just because we've been talking about them. Here's my other uses of the phrase, by the way. Bond market, bond market, bond market. Didn't want to go to waste. Yield on the 10-year? Up 4.73%. You're listening to Marketplace. This is Marketplace. I'm Kai Risdahl. The unemployment rate in this economy, by the most common measure, was 4.1%. And in July. Historically, pretty good. But the Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks a bunch of other labor market parameters as well. More than a quarter of everybody who is out of work right now has been looking for a job for at least 27 weeks. Long-term unemployed is the official terminology. Unemployment benefits, meanwhile, only last about 26 weeks. And that's in the more generous states. Some states offer only 12 marketplaces. Samantha Fields has more on surviving as those job searches stretch on. When Will Thomas first got laid off last September from his job at a public benefits startup, he felt kind of relieved. In some respects, the job wasn't a stellar fit for me. The tech environment was new to me. And just the way that things were being run wasn't my favorite. But he was also aware that it wasn't a great time to be job searching, especially for policy jobs in D.C. So I knew that this was going to be a long and tough road. But by long and tough road, Thomas, who's 38, figured maybe it would take him six, eight months to find a new job. It has been far worse than my expectations. Almost a year later, he is still looking. Lately, it has largely felt like screaming into the void. I've been a finalist for roles three different times. But never the finalist, at least not yet. We are at a kind of historic position in terms of how many people are long-term unemployed, unemployed for economic reasons. Michelle Evermore at the National Employment Law Project says in addition to those who officially count as long-term unemployed, there's a growing number of people who are considered to have dropped out of the labor force, even though they would still like to be working. Between all of these numbers, people who are discouraged from looking, people who've dropped out of the labor force, people who are part-time, you're seeing a huge section of the labor force, that's not where they want to be. And she says that can have a lasting negative impact on those people and on the economy. Catherine Maddox is acutely aware of that. She lives in Alexandria, Virginia, and she's been out of work since April of last year, just four days before she was set to start a communications job at the Department of Homeland Security. I got a call and an email all at once, and they said, the job has been rescinded, you no longer have a position. She had already given notice at her job with the federal courts, court system. Maddox knew the market was bad, but she thought, I know how to do this, and I'm a hustler, and I'll get a job quickly. Maybe it'll take four months, six months. But four months passed with no job offers, beyond some freelance gigs here and there. Then six. Then her unemployment benefits ran out. Eventually, Maddox decided it was time to apply for a part-time job at an Aldi supermarket to make some money. She didn't get a call for that either. I had some savings. Not a lot. And I have raided my 401k four times. It's been miserable. It's now been almost a year and a half, and she is still looking. When I got to a year, I have to tell you, they really need to add that into unemployment numbers. There is something that happens to you mentally after a year where you're like, there's no job for me. Though she really hopes there is. Just across the river in D.C., Will Thomas is just about to hit that one year mark, which he can't quite believe. He's surviving by working a few nights a week as a bouncer at his neighborhood gay bar. I was a regular there. It's two blocks away from my house. And so I knew they needed someone, and I knew I needed a job, at least part-time. To help pay at least some of his bills and meet the work requirements for food stamps or SNAP, and soon for Medicaid, too. Working part-time has also helped Thomas extend his unemployment benefits long past when they typically would have. He only gets about $100 or $200 a week from unemployment. But that's still money I can throw at my landlord. That's still money I can throw towards other bills. But even with that, plus the occasional contract gig and some help from his church, Thomas is still a little behind on rent. And he's just really ready to be working full-time in nutrition and food policy again, getting the kind of paycheck he was used to. It's one of those, like, you want to be like, okay, put me in coach. I don't care who the coach is. I just want to be on the team again. I'm Samantha Fields for Marketplace. Take a second, would you, and scroll through the apps on your phone for me. It's better than even money that you've got some kind of loyalty or rewards app from your community. Favorite grocery store or coffee place or a fast food chain. You get discounts and freebies, what have you. But as we all know, there ain't nothing actually free. Rhys Rogers is a senior writer at Wired, also a user of the McDonald's app. Rhys, it's good to have you on the program. Thank you for having me today. So how long have you been using the McDonald's app and its rewards program? Just so we have some sort of baseline here. Absolutely. At least a few years. Okay. And the company, of course, keeps a dossier on you because they have all your data and all this jazz. You requested to see it, which you can do here in California. What did you learn? Oh, my gosh. What didn't I learn? Well, when you sign up for any kind of customer loyalty app, you know that there's going to be some kind of data collected. I had no idea that it was going to be this extensive and granular. Especially the. Predictive algorithms with it. They were very specific with using this data to model what my next purchase at McDonald's would be, when it would be, what I'm going to buy. So I found this to be really illuminating. Illuminating and mildly terrifying. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. My partner would not stop making fun of me for my top orders being a Diet Coke, a spicy snack wrap. And the Grinch McShaker fry, which was like a limited time thing. If I knew you in real life, I'd make fun of you, too. Let me back up for a minute. Extensive and granular. So the granular part we've covered, how. I mean, was this like hundreds of pages? What was it? Yeah, this was a 515-page report. Far bigger than anything I expected when I placed this privacy request. And. It was kind of hard to read. There was multiple privacy and data experts that I spoke to. And while many were excited that this kind of transparency is available to consumers, they also pushed back, saying that actually understanding what was going on was still difficult, even with this giant document. Was it like technical language? Is that what you mean? Absolutely. It was technical, and it was formatted not for reader's consumption, right? Right. It was a document. It was a document for them to use to process, maybe use an AI to model what your next purchase could be. Right. So other than the embarrassment over them, you know, guessing what your favorite order is and all of that stuff, how did it make you feel? I think it really made me feel like there's this power imbalance between the consumers and the companies. Even though I did sign up for this loyalty program, seeing the data, seeing that I visited a certain McDonald's 61 times, they predicted that I was going to visit in the next six weeks 2.16, and that I was going to spend exactly $29.15 was eye-opening. But the actual data point that really made me feel called out the most and was really eye-opening was my customer attrition likelihood, which is the score that McDonald's gave me for how much I would. would ever stop being a customer. Yeah. They gave me a zero. They predicted that I would never stop buying from McDonald's. Okay. So now that you know what they think, what are you going to do? I mean, I just kind of want to stop eating there just to prove the algorithm wrong. I haven't visited since I received the report. But if anything, I just want this to be kind of illuminating for consumers to say, if you live in a state where you can, you know, request your data, I think you should. You know, it's very interesting to look into this. And there's not that many people who are actually placing these requests. It's in the hundreds, maybe low thousands. So if you have access to this, like definitely exercise your rights. You as a Californian can request that the company delete the data, did you? Oh, absolutely. I put in, you have to do separate requests for that. Of course you do. Yeah, I sent a second request to have this all be deleted. It's going to be deleted. Unbelievable. Just a crazy, crazy, creepy story. Rhys Rogers of Wired. Rhys, thanks a lot. I appreciate your time. Thank you so much for having me today. This final note on the way out today, in which facts and context continue to be relevant when discussing this administration's economic policies. The president said on his social account today that he's going to let 300,000 metric tons of beef into the country tariff free so as to lower currently high beef prices. One might reasonably infer then from that context that he knows tariffs raise prices for American consumers. The president also said he's got commitments from those beef importers that it will be sold at 25% below market prices. The relevant fact here is that importers don't actually control retail prices. Do they? Our theme music was composed by BJ Lederman. Marketplace's executive producer is Nancy Fargali. Joanne Griffith is the chief content officer. Neil Scarborough is the vice president and general manager. I'm Kyle Rizdahl. Have yourselves a great weekend, everybody. We will see you back here on Monday, all right? I'm Kyle Rizdahl. This is APM.