Marketplace - New Congress, same debt drama

Episode Date: January 2, 2025

A new congressional session begins on Friday and, like so many before them, the fresh cohort of lawmakers will have to come to a consensus on what to do about the national debt ceiling. Will they raise it, lower it or get rid of it entirely? We explain. Plus, job seekers use social media to market themselves, a few areas shine in an otherwise so-so construction spending report, and longshoremen stand firm against port automation.

From all of us at Marketplace, we want to say Happy New Year and a special thank you to everybody who stepped up to donate and help us plan for the year ahead. The support of our Marketplace investors is so important to keeping our public service newsroom running strong. If you didn't have a chance to donate, it's never too late to support the news you rely on, you know. Give now at Marketplace.org slash donate and thanks. On today's show, it's a shiny, sparkly brand new year. But the themes of the economy? They're everlasting. From American public media, this is Marketplace. In New York, I'm Kristin Schwab in for Kyra's Doll. It's Thursday, January 2nd. Thanks

for tuning in. We have finally moved into the new year. But when it comes to the economy, we're still gathering intel on 2024. Today's data dump is construction spending from November. The figures from the Commerce Department's Census Bureau take construction spending from November. The figures from the Commerce Department's Census Bureau take in everything from home building to putting up new power plants, hospitals, and schools. Also, the repairs and rebuilding of public infrastructure like highways, ports, and water treatment plants. In November, spending was flat from October and up 3% from the year before – numbers that are lower than what economists expected.

But as Marketplace's Mitchell Hartman reports, there are pockets of strong construction growth. Mitchell Hartman Nearly half of all construction in this country is residential. Single-family home building has held up well, with spending up about 8% year-to-date through November. Multifamily constructionfamily construction though is down nearly 6%. Demand for rental units is strong but builders are deterred by high interest rates says Gary Schlossberg at the Wells Fargo Investment Institute. And we do expect to see rental inflation picking up this year. Meanwhile home renovation is booming says Ken Simonson at Associated General

Contractors of America. Homeowners have a lot of discretionary income, and they are putting some of that into fixing up their existing homes. In non-residential construction, the big story is a surge in manufacturing, up by double digits year over year. One out of five total non-residential dollars is going into giant manufacturing plants,

producing semiconductors, electric vehicles and batteries. A lot of that is driven by billions of dollars in federal spending from the Inflation Reduction and CHIPS Act. But with the incoming Trump administration promising to sharply cut government spending, Paul Ashworth at Capital Economics says, The risk would be we got some of the IRA and CHIPS out, provisions undone, reversed, and then we saw a drop back in manufacturing construction spending. One specific type of commercial construction, meanwhile, is really hot, says Ken Simonson. Data centers jumped 43% year over year, and the appetite for them seems to be unabated.

That's partly the demand for more energy and processing capacity driven by AI. The only thing getting in the way, aside from a shortage of skilled construction workers, says Simonson. More and more people are saying, we really don't want those giant ugly white boxes. Going up across the street from where they live. I'm Mitchell Hartmann for Marketplace. Next week, talks are set to resume between dockworkers from the East and Gulf coasts and their employers, if they don't reach a contract agreement. These workers already went on strike for a brief period this past October. The main sticking point between the two sides is automation. It's

a growing part of port operations around the globe, but the International Longshoremen's Union doesn't want ports to adopt technology that could eliminate jobs. Marketplace's Henry Epp reports. doesn't want ports to adopt technology that could eliminate jobs. Marketplace's Henry Epp reports. Ports were built for loading and unloading things from ships in many kinds of containers. As Johns Hopkins Professor Tinglong Dai points out, it was up to humans to understand the nuances. We knew the differences between different ships, different sizes of those boxes.

But for several decades now, shipping containers have come in standard sizes, meant to easily move between boats and trains and trucks, says Phil Evers, an associate professor at the University of Maryland. So the handling is pretty straightforward. The ships are pretty straightforward in terms of how they hold the containers.

Very easy to automate that process. That's happening at some ports in the US, but easy to automate that process. That's happening at some ports in the US, but especially in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, says Margaret Kidd, who studies supply chain technology at the University of Houston. Go to the most automated ports in Europe, she says. You don't see people.

People are in the background. They're in offices. They're in safer locations to execute their work. And robots are operating cranes to move containers around. That can make ports safer for the humans who are still around, Kidd says, since they don't have to be near heavy equipment. But it's not entirely clear that automation actually makes ports more productive or efficient. Phil Evers at the University of Maryland says that's in part because the work that needs to get done doesn't change.

You know, a crane can only operate so fast safely, whether there's a human running it or whether it's automated. What automation can lower, he says, are labor costs, as in not having to employ as many workers, which is what the Longshoremen's Union is worried about. Daniel Fleming, president of the Economic Roundtable, argues human workers should stick around ports because despite those standard containers, glitches and anomalies are inevitable. Ships that are coming in through rough seas may have containers that aren't as well aligned as they should be.

There may be damaged containers. And people, he says, are better than robots at catching and fixing those kinds of problems. I'm Henry Epp for Marketplace. It's been more than three months since Hurricane Helene hit the US, and communities are still dealing with the aftermath. That includes tourism businesses that depend on the white water rapids of the Nolichucky River, which flows freely through a deep gorge from North Carolina into Tennessee. When Hurricane Helene hit in September, flooding changed the river's flow. It also wiped out a portion of an important rail corridor that runs from Kentucky to the South Carolina border.

The company that runs the rail line needs to make repairs, but river guides want to keep the river pristine. So now the two industries, trains and transportation versus tourism, are butting heads over the approach. From Blue Ridge Public Radio in Grist, Katie Myers has more. Jubal Rowe is bushwhacking along the riverbank of the Nolachucky Gorge in eastern Tennessee. He's here with a couple of other river guides to see how Hurricane Helene changed the river. The river actually flowed closer to where that road is down through here so it completely changed. This ledge is rock, bedrock sticking out. Dennis Ashford, also a rafter, points to a shallow spot along the bank which used to be filled with river rock.

Now it's just mud. This was kind of where we first discovered what was happening. What they realized is that the railroad company CSX removed rock from the river to repair its nearby train tracks. The railway transports quartz and other commodities that are vital for domestic semiconductor chip production. So it's important that trains get running again. But repairs seem to be changing the rapids and channels of the river, which is a huge

concern for Ashford and Roe. When you divide the river up to so many different channels, it becomes more shallow, right, and possibly inavable for rapid companies and stuff that rely on this river for, you know, economic tourism. After environmental groups sued, regulatory agencies forced CSX to stop. Now, CSX says it's working with those agencies to complete repairs in a safe and responsible way. Meanwhile, a lot of workers who make a living in the outdoor industry are kind of up the creek, including outfitter and guide Trey Moore. Hurricane has already had a significant impact on my business.

That's on top of the trauma and stress that a lot of guides experience in the aftermath. Since most guides have swift water search and rescue skills, they help to look for survivors. Tourism wasn't happening anyways. I have been out of work for almost eight weeks now, so I have no paycheck for the foreseeable future. Grafting and other outdoor recreation is a $17 million annual industry to Unicoi County. It used to be that the railway was the economic engine for the county, but now CSX no longer employs many locals, especially since it closed the town's biggest employer, the railyard,

in 2015. What happened to that point, the rail yard, in 2015. What happened to that point, we were always at railroad town. That's Michael Baker, one of Irwin's city leaders. He says his community already struggled with high poverty and unemployment. And then, flooding from the hurricane dismantled a couple of major employers, including two factories and the county hospital. The river and forest are what's left. There's not as much available land for new industry, for new housing, but we do have

54% national forest land, which is the people's land that we can use and market. In early December, regulators ordered CSX to stop mining river rock, which river advocates say is a win. CSX says stop mining river rock, which river advocates say is a win. CSX says it will comply. Rafters like Dennis Ashford say they're not against the railroad. They just want the work to be done in a way that doesn't change this wild river. Rivers like this are unicorns. The wildness of the river, Ashford says, is what makes it special, and what has united

the area's tight-knit raft guides. It draws young people to this rural community. It's a free-flowing river. It's in one of the deepest gorges in the East Coast. It's incredibly remote and rugged, so when you're in there, you get that sense of true adventure. But if the river isn't runnable or fun for tourists, they might take their money somewhere else.

In Erwin, Tennessee, I'm Katie Myers for Marketplace. Coming up… So I think of it as a bit of a Tetris exercise or a Rubik's Cube. Tricky problems demand thoughtful solutions. But first, let's do the numbers. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 151 points, almost 4 tenths percent, to finish at 42,392. The NASDAQ subtracted 30 points, almost 2 tenths percent, to close at 19,280. And the S&P 500 lost 13 points, 2 tenths2% to end at 58.68. The number of vehicles Tesla delivered on an annual basis declined for the first time

in more than a decade in 2024. Analysts estimate the EV maker delivered just shy of 1.8 million vehicles, down a little over 1% from 2023. That's despite incentives aimed at perking up sales. Shares hit the brakes to the tune of 6.1%. Electricity utility Constellation Energy heated up 8.4% after announcing more than a billion dollars in contracts to supply nuclear power to federal agencies. Bonds rose, the yield on the 10-year T-note fell to 4.56%. You're listening to Marketplace. This to Marketplace.

This is Marketplace. I'm Kristin Schwab. With the new year comes a new congress, as of tomorrow. A new congress that will face a familiar old problem. The debt ceiling. The limit on how much money the United States can borrow, which the Treasury is close to hitting. Last time this happened in 2023, Congress decided to handle the problem by temporarily suspending the debt ceiling. The plan was to reinstate it at the beginning of this year. It means if nothing changes, the Treasury will hit the ceiling and won't be able to borrow any more money, and the country will default on its existing debt, which would be catastrophic. But akin to the boy who cried wolf, we've been here before. Marketplace's Kaylee Wells has more on how the U.S. might avert the crisis

this time. The U.S. started this exercise back in 1917 when the Treasury wanted to issue a bunch of bonds to pay for World War I. Before then, if the Treasury was going to issue a loan, it needed authorization from Congress to do that. Political scientist Philip Rocco of Marquette University says the debt ceiling got rid of that tedium by allowing the treasury to borrow up to the limit Congress set, but that created a new problem.

Debt ceiling has really become a political pot potato or a way for congressional majorities to secure their sort of policy priorities. Every time the debt approaches the ceiling, Congress must decide whether to default, cut spending, or, and this is what frequently happens, raise the ceiling. In 2023, Congress decided to instead suspend it. That move has become much more popular in the past 15 years, says Laura Blessing of Georgetown's Government Affairs Institute. To me, there are a number of different things that have mapped on to this as a trend

that include higher congressional dysfunction and higher deficits. Blessing says Congress has tweaked the debt ceiling more than a hundred times. Most likely, that'll happen again this time. Incoming President Trump has suggested abolishing the ceiling altogether. Blessing says it's not a bad idea because it isn't a useful tool for oversight. It's a landmine that you've planted in the calendar again and again and again. But she also says abolishing it is unlikely because that's not popular with fiscal conservatives. Kent Smetters directs the Penn-Warton budget model at the University of Pennsylvania.

He thinks the ceiling is useful. Because it has led to various things like budget control acts and pay as you go rules and things like that, which have curtailed some spending or tax cuts. Smetter says the debt is on a runaway trajectory, a crisis like COVID or the Great Depression. When the crisis is caused by debt itself, you can't issue more debt. Smetters and Georgetown's Laura Blessing agree that whatever happens to the debt ceiling, the country's budget deficit is not sustainable. I'm Kaylee Wells for Marketplace. We got new jobless claim numbers from the Labor Department this morning. The report says the number of Americans filing new applications for unemployment benefits dropped to an eight-month low last week. Great news for the economy and the Fed, but not so great news if you're one of the 211,000 people who will now have

to start job hunting, filling out applications, writing cover letters, networking and interviewing, trying to find some way to stand out in a sea of competitors. Well, there's a new social media trend among job seekers that calls for a little bit of creativity and a little vulnerability. Danielle Abrill wrote about it for The Washington Post. She joins me now. Danielle, welcome to the program. Danielle Abrill Oh, well, thanks for having me. This was a fun one to report. So excited to talk about it. Gigi Yeah, it's a super interesting one. In your story, you talk about how making your job

search public has traditionally been a little taboo, but there's been a bit of a shift. Can you tell me about that and what that shift looks like, especially online? Absolutely. So, you know, previously, looking for a job was a little bit more taboo. Maybe there was a little bit of self-consciousness tied to that where people might just go to their internet works, kind of whisper to the people they're closest to that they're looking for a job. But social media has really changed the game, specifically with LinkedIn and the way the market's gone with mass layoffs and people actually recording their layoffs and being very open and honest about what's happening

in the workplace. So that has really been a culture shift, which has also allowed people to leverage their networks more because people now are using LinkedIn more and more to try to reach the people they need to, even if they don't know them. Maybe they have connections at a company they want to work at. And so taking that chance and being really open and less mortified, less humiliated about the circumstance you're in has been a total change in the past several years. And what do those posts look like? What are people saying? Are they just saying, hey,

I'm open to work? Or is it, does it get a little deeper than that? Yeah. So the reason we wrote this story is really because we started seeing it go to a new level and that's people getting really personal, either sharing their personal stories, being really creative in their messaging or their attempts to get hired. So in one case, we saw somebody who really called out the company they were trying to get hired for and said, you know, here's all of the reasons why I'm a great candidate and I'm gonna tag a lot of the people that I've worked for before and they chimed in in the comments to kind of sing the praises of this person and really sort of create almost like a

marketing campaign and then going into the more sincere sort of touching side where people have been really open and honest about their experiences, about the fact that they might lose their home soon. And just like, if anybody has any leads, anything to get me somewhere, I'd be very grateful. So seeing that sort of vulnerability and creativity is sort of a new sort of light we're seeing here.

Yeah. Well, I could see how this could grab the attention when your resume is in a sea of resumes, but it also seems a little risky. What do hiring managers and recruiters think about this? So you're right. You are taking a risk that somebody will look at it and be like, oh, this person really needs my help, or this is so creative. I like this person. I like the fact that they took this strategy.

We had one recruiter who basically said, anything you can do to get out of that stack is great. But we had another recruiter who kind of went the other way and said, this is just a lot of noise. Like if you tag me in a bunch of stuff, that's not what's gonna make me change my mind or make me more likely to hire you. And unfortunately, because of LinkedIn

and other applicant tracking systems, we've made it very easy for people to apply, which is great, right? We wanna take out the friction in the application process, but the problem with that is because everything's become so seamless, basically employers are getting inundated with candidates. And so sometimes these recruiters are like,

you know, you really need to get in early because sometimes they just don't make it down the stack. They kind of look at the top 100 or 50 and there's going to be at least 10 good candidates in there. So getting in early is really important. Yeah. Well, if proof is in the pudding, did this method work for anybody that you talked to of kind of shouting out on social media? So in the cases of the people we spoke to, I didn't see any actual like, this fixed everything

and I landed my dream job. But there was a couple cases where I actually saw that happening on social media where the person actually did land their dream job. In one case, we saw somebody go on TikTok. A little sad, you know, like I was laid off and I'm really upset about this, but I want to show you my profile and everything I can do." And she went through her skill set and a hiring manager saw it and was like, wow, I really actually like this person and their skills, reached out to her and offered her a job right there. So it can happen. What is the likelihood? Unclear.

Danielle Abryl writing about job seekers using social media in the Washington Post Danielle. Thanks again. Thanks so much for having me What's in a name? Well Shakespeare seemed to have thought names don't hold a lot of value. But try telling that to a business owner. Because behind every company or brand or product, there is a person who spent hours thinking about what to call it. In fact, there are people who do this very thing for a living. Which brings us to today's installment of our series, My Economy. My name is Leigh Bogolden-Culendros. I'm a professional namer and I live in Lowell, Massachusetts. I got into this business by accident. I met up with an old friend who happened to be working at a branding firm

where they had just developed the name Viagra. And I always had an inclination that I might be good at naming. I've always been a super word nerd, crossword puzzle solver, love a good pun. And I asked him to give me a try, he did. And I ended up sticking around as a contractor doing naming of pharmaceuticals for the first several years. When you get into the medical field

or the pharmaceutical field, there's a lot of regulatory issues that need to be addressed and a lot of legal issues that need to be addressed. So you're often more restricted in what you can say in a name. There may be regulatory requirements that you have to encode the name of the generic into the pharmaceutical name. So I think of it as a bit of a Tetris exercise or a Rubik's cube.

You're trying to shift together all these syllables into something that's pronounceable, ownable and able to be cleared legally. So one name I came up with for Lenscrafters when they were looking to update and announce their new state-of-the-art eye exam. We took a real word, clarify, and we added an E to evoke the word eye. And it's subtle, it's trustworthy because it's not totally a weird invented name full

of vowels and consonants that we can't make sense of. It actually communicates meaning, but with a little twist. When I'm feeling stuck, I dig into my Latin studies. I go online and look at other brands. I may go to other countries online and look at their brands. I'm just a super word nerd, always capturing a turn of phrase that catches my eye or my ear. And I tune into how things look in branding, because naming is only one piece of a brand, right? It's how it's shown in a logo. It's how the design looks, what the identity of the brand is. So if I stay in touch with all those innovations in branding in general, it helps me stay on top of how naming needs to work.

That's Leba Golden-Colondros, a professional namer from Lowell, Massachusetts. We can't do this series without you. Tell us what's happening in your economy at marketplace.org slash my economy. This final note on the way out today, read this in the New York Times. Today China hit dozens of US companies with trade controls, saying the country is safeguarding national security and interests. The list includes Boeing, Raytheon, and Lockheed Martin, all makers of defense systems. Experts say the move is mostly symbolic, and the symbolism here is that with just weeks to go before

President-elect Donald Trump takes office and possibly imposes new taxes on imports, China is showing signs it's ready for battle. John Buckley, John Gordon, Noya Carr, Diantha Parker, Amanda Peacher, and Stephanie Seek are the marketplace editing staff. Amir Vavawi is the managing editor and I'm Kristin Schwab. We'll see you tomorrow. This is APM.