Marketplace - Small businesses (finally) get to hiring

Episode Date: June 3, 2026

For a while now, we’ve talked to small business owners who say they want to hire more employees, but aren’t in a financial position to do it, can’t find qualified applicants, or are too concerned about the economy to make the jump. But two new reports show small business hiring picked up this spring. In this episode, whether that’s a blip or the start of a positive trend. Plus: An AI prescription renewal tool is launched in Utah, Macy’s tries to turn things around, and we visit a river in the Pacific Northwest with two aging bridges at risk of collapse.Every story has an economic angle. Want some in your inbox? Subscribe to our daily or weekly newsletter.Marketplace is more than a radio show. Check out our original reporting and financial literacy content at marketplace.org — and consider making an investment in our future.

Right now we are living through some of the most tumultuous political times our country has ever known. I'm David Remnick, and each week on the New Yorker Radio Hour, I'll try to make sense of what's happening, alongside politicians and thinkers like Corey Booker, Nancy Pelosi, Liz Cheney, Tim Walts, Katanji Brown Jackson, Newt Gingrich, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Charlemagne the God, and so many more. That's all in the New Yorker Radio Hour, wherever you listen to podcasts. On the program today, jobs and banks and infrastructure, some other stuff, too, from American public media. This is Marketplace. In Los Angeles, I'm Kai Rizzdahl. It is Wednesday today, the 3rd of June, good as it always is. Tad me along, everybody.

We're going to get the May jobs report on Friday morning. But ahead of that, we have gotten a private sector sneak peek of sorts. ADP said this morning that private companies added 122,000 jobs last month, more than people had been guessing, and two other firms, Gusto and Paychecks by name, both of which do payroll for small businesses, reported the best outlooks they've seen so far this year. Gusto said almost every sector and every region added jobs, paychecks said small business employees saw their wages and hours increase last month. Whatever happened to the low-hire, low-fire labor market, you ask?

Well, marketplaces Kaylee Wells makes it all make sense. Even before this month's data, the low hiring numbers weren't all by choice. Lots of small businesses have been wanting to hire more people for a while. A few years ago, everybody was looking to staff up because of the huge layoffs or pauses in hiring after COVID. Holly Wade, executive director of the National Federation of Independent Business Research Center, says ever since then, small businesses have been happy. having trouble hiring. That's one of their main problems that they tell us every month, is, you know, labor quality,

finding applicants, filling those positions. But then big businesses started cutting their workforces, says Frank Fiorelli at payroll processor paychecks. And now, there's a better pool of talent because the bigger enterprise companies have probably laid some people off. So now there's, you know, there's people there that they couldn't find or pick from previously now. Small business hiring is also getting a boost from some changes at the federal level. The tax bill, obviously, and the deregulation and, you know, just to maybe an overall better environment.

Now, some labor force growth at small businesses is seasonal. The report from payroll processor Gusto, for example, said hospitality added 14,000 jobs in May, second only to the consistently strong health care industry. But that in itself is a vote in confidence for the summer. Nick Trumper, senior economist at Gusto, characterizes this investment in new jobs as cautious momentum. This isn't a life-changing number, but it is a steady number. This is showing small businesses looking for opportunities to grow and finding them.

And there's probably more growth on the horizon, says Frank Fiorelli with paychecks, with more tail wins than headwinds for the rest of 2026. I'm Kaylee Wells for Marketplace. I'll take cautious. momentum, right? Wall Street today, all rallies must come to an end. Today it did in equities, anyway. We'll have the details when we do the numbers. The death of the American mall has been fodder for the business press for a good long while now. Present company included to be

completely transparent. Malls, department stores, also specifically Macy's, but the retailer does kind of look like it's turning things around on its earnings call this morning, the company, which also owns Bloomingdale's and Blue Mercury, said sales are up for a fourth straight quarter. Marketplace is Kristen Schwab. Has more on that one. Macy's has learned something over the last handful of years that bigger isn't always better. Steve Hockman is a managing director at the consulting firm Ngaro. There's kind of this notion that you sometimes hear called Edit to Amplify.

The counterintuitive notion is that to grow, sometimes you actually have to prune back. Macy's is pruning back. It's in the process of closing 150 stores, and Hockman says it's refocusing on what sells best. Prom dresses are in. Furniture is out. Also in high-end retail. Bloomingdale leads the company's portfolio, with same-store sales up more than 10% last quarter. Sales at mid-tier Macy stores were up less than 2%. Simeon Siegel, a senior managing director at Guggenheim Partners, says those numbers do show promise. Macy's growth is working in the right direction and is very encouraging relative to its own prior history. But it's not necessarily encouraging relative to the performance of its competition. The retail sector in general had a strong first quarter.

If consumers pull back on spending, Siegel isn't sure they'll keep choosing Macy's. And so the question will become, looking out over the next six months, who still looks like they're growing versus who gives it back. Here's something Macy's does have on its side. It's often an anchor store in the big corner space at shopping centers, and mall traffic is up. Now, I'm always going to be a fan of the department store. Michael Lysicki has written 10 books on department stores, so yeah, maybe he's a little biased. But he says shopping centers are becoming exciting again with new restaurants and pickleball courts and grocery stores.

I think there's some hope, but you can't just throw in a couple Starbucks these days and expect that to be a destination. Malls have to offer an experience that's enticing enough to get people past the hurdle of the parking lot and eat, shop, and play for a while. I'm Kristen Schwab for Marketplace. We're at the tail end of a 15-year stretch now in which the average number of new banks created every year in this economy has fallen to its lowest level since the 1960. According to S&P Global, in 2023, only four new bank charters were approved.

But I said tail end of that stretch because we do seem to be at the beginning of something of a banking boom. Stacey Cowley is a business reporter at the New York Times. She wrote recently about the race that companies are in to secure banking charters. Stacey, welcome to the program. Good to have you on. Thanks for having me. Can I ask a very basic question here to start? What is a bank charter?

So a bank charter is what you need to legally be able to operate as a bank, to hold customer deposits, to issue most loans, to do all the things we traditionally think of as a bank doing. And the White House, you write in this piece, wants more companies, and I'm leaving that very vague because that's the point of this interview in this piece. He, the president and the White House, want more companies to apply for federal banking charters, right? Yes. The number had fallen to a very low rate in the last decade. or two, and they want to see that changed. Okay, let's talk about motivation here for the first part. Why does the government want more companies to be involved in banking? The way the Trump administration casts this is that they want to see innovation in the marketplace.

So their view is that letting more fintechs, more cryptos, more crypto companies, things like that come into this market, is going to increase choices for consumers, it's going to increase the competitiveness of the market and, you know, potentially create new products and things like that they can benefit people. That's the official story of why they're interested in this. Well, now you've got to give me the unofficial story. I mean, what's your sense? There's also a very clear sense that President Trump and his family are deeply invested in crypto ventures and that it would certainly personally benefit them for there to be an easier pathway for crypto companies to become banks. Setting aside the president's motivations,

what's in it for all of these companies? The crypto companies, the fintech, there must be a business advantage to having a federal banking charter. Sure. I mean, being a bank is a pretty good business. One of the big advantages is that you can directly take money from customers and use that to fund other operations. So you'll hear cost of funds cited frequently as an advantage of this that if you don't do this, it's more expensive to go out and raise money for lending from other pathways. It also lets you have more control over your product offerings across the country. So with a banking charter paired with federal regulation, FD.S. I see insurance, things like that, you'll be able to issue loans in places that you might not otherwise be able to do that without a banking charter. We should be clear here. This is not going to – these are not going to be banks like we know banks to be in the vernacular, right? I'm not going to be able to walk down to the corner of local office and cash a check

and get a safe deposit box or whatever, right? For many of them, that's the case. We are seeing some more traditional companies take advantage of sort of the relaxed regulatory environment to come in and look for a charter. But we're also seeing a lot of companies that, as you said, are not. not looking to do anything like traditional banking operations. So give me a, for instance, here, would you? You mentioned this company called Upstart holdings in your piece. Tell me about them. Sure. So they've been around for about 14 years, and they've been underwriting consumer loans

for most of that time. However, because they are not a bank, they have to work with banks. So what Upstart does is you would go to them, apply for a loan. They would do all the number crunching with their algorithms and decide the terms on which they think you should have that loan, and then they would have to go out to a partner network of around 100 different banks and find one of them to actually issue and actually hold the loan. Getting a charter, which is what Upstart is now seeking, would let them do that directly. And then, obviously, they get to make more money, right? I mean, I hate to be base about it, but that's kind of what's going on.

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. If I am a regular consumer in this economy, and I see what the White House wants to do, and I see other kinds of companies get into banking. What's my concern level here? I think consumers are going to have to be a little alert about the fine print of what they're signing on for. The concern is that you can get in with companies that do not end up having sort of the protections you'd expect from a bank. Many of these crypto companies in particular are not looking to be FDIC insured, which means that assets you place with them, if you lose

them, there's no insurance there as a backstop. So that's the core concern. Yeah. As always, consult your own financial advisor on this one. Stacey Call at the New York Times. Stacey, thanks a lot. I appreciate your time. Thanks. Today being a day that ends in why there is news of tariffs to share. Trade Representative Jameson Greer announced last night, the United States is going to put new taxes on imports from 60 economies. Economies is their word, and that includes Mexico and Canada. There is a public comment period, so nothing's actually final, but handwriting wall, you know. There is a numerical and alphabetical stew of laws and subsections and deadlines that are in

play here. 301, 122, AEPA, those are the tariffs that the Supreme Court threw out. Point is, confusion around tariffs is real. So spare a thought, would you, for those caught in the middle? We caught up with our customs broker, Gretchen Blau. She's at Logistics Plus in Erie, Pennsylvania, to, you know, hear how things are going. It's a little crazy trying to adjust to all the changes that are out there and the IEPA refunds and all of that stuff. There still seems to be some confusion among

importers as to what tariffs are being refunded as far as the IEPA tariffs, which applied to everything. And then there's the 232 which apply to all the metals, the steel, the aluminum, the copper, and the criteria for the 232 tariffs changed if what's referred to as a derivative is more than 15% of the metal, then it's classified as metal, which has been kind of a nasty surprise for a lot of people. It was announced that there would be further derivatives added to the list. Basically, it's going to now include certain farm equipment and certain forklifts as well. I knew we had some shipments coming in with agricultural equipment and forklifts, which, you know, what are the chances they would be on the water when this happens?

There's no indication right now whether there will be an exemption for those being in transit or not. So kind of panicking and making sure that the ops team knows we don't know what's going to happen here and making sure the salespeople involved know we're not sure what's going to happen here. You know, we always kind of give that warning that when we let you know what the tariffs will be, they could change at any moment and you need to just have that kind of understanding. We all kind of have dark senses of humor, and so we just kind of power through it. We laugh because that's about all you can do. I mean, it's not funny, but you know, you find little spots of humor here and there to kind of deal with the stress of it all.

They're just a great group of people, and I'm just really happy to work with them. Can you imagine a crazy making all? That is Gretchen Blau, Customs Brokerage Manager at Logistics Plus, Erie PA. Coming up. I'll tell you stand up next to one. It's tough to grasp how big those really are. Bridges and container ships don't really mix. You know, first though, let's do the numbers.

Now industrial is down 620 points, 1 and 2 tenths of 1% finished at 50,687. The NASDAQ down 239. That is 9 tenths percent. 26,853. the S&P 500 subtracted 56 points. Seven-tenths of 1% 75 and 53. There are Macy's of Kristen Schwab's story, up 6 tenths percent on the day. At the other end of the retail spectrum, close-out chain Ali's bargain outlet holdings also reported today.

It missed estimates. Nonetheless, shares increased 6-tenths percent because, you know, capitalism. Banks, we were talking about them a minute ago. Wells Fargo down 1%. Bank of America slipped 2 tenths percent. James Morgan Chase, essentially flat. You're listening to Marketplace. On all of it with me, Alison Stewart, we'll talk about art, music, theater, literature, history, food.

Well, all of it. Hear in-depth, insightful interviews with authors like Zadie Smith, musicians like Steve Earle, actors like Kate Winslet and beyond. You never know who you'll hear next on all of it. But it's always worth listening. That's all of it. Available wherever you get your podcasts. This is Marketplace. I'm Kai Risdahl. Artificial intelligence is everywhere in our daily lives.

One need not count the ways, I think, but it is worth a note that AI is increasingly moving into health care. In Utah, state regulators have decided to let AI renew some prescriptions. Easier and cheaper care? Quite probably. Complicated? Quite definitely. Alex O'Gon has more. Across Utah, people are. are seeing billboards and commercials for Doctronics AI prescription refill program.

Now with Doctronic AI, you don't have to imagine. Patients on medicine for high cholesterol, diabetes, birth control, or depression, answer a few questions, verify their identity, and then voila, Scrip is refilled. Doctronic co-founder Matt Pavel told me, since this experiment is so novel, the company is actually turning to humans. We have a street team. We have people who walk around inside Salt Lake and they go up to strangers and hey, do you have a prescription? Do you want to try this? The irony of an AI bot, but using people to market, it's a little funny. Isn't it great?

The year-long experiment is supposed to make it easier and cheaper to get medicine. It can take weeks or months to get into the doctor and cost over $100. In the first phase, doctors reviewed each renewal. In the next phase, only 10% of the prescriptions will be reviewed. Utah's Office of Artificial Intelligence Policy, which was created in 2024, waived normal licensing rules to allow the AI to make clinical decisions. The state's medical licensing board was blindsided. They pressed the state to pause the program fearing patients could get hurt, but regulators are pushing ahead. Brooks Barr, a dermatologist and president-elect of the Utah Medical Association, has mixed feelings about it. We want to be able to preserve the physician-patient relationship. I think that's the thing we're most worried about.

Doctronic is not charging for the service now. Patients just have to pay the cost of the medicine. Most of the company's revenue still comes from a television service available across the country with human doctors. We're excited about cost savings and efficiency savings and all that. But what's murky is accountability for mistakes. Normally, the doctor

signing the script is responsible for any problems the patient has. Michelle Mello, a health law professor at Stanford, says it's unclear whether the company behind the AI will have the same responsibility. The courts have not worked that out, mostly because they have not been asked to yet. We don't

have evidence of a lot of those kinds of claims percolating. Doctronics says it has a first-of-a-kind AI malpractice policy. Mello says, while there's a lot of uncertainty, most of the 190 medications the pilot covers are low risk. She does warn it's important to watch out for scope creep. Something I see is that we say yes to a particular AI deployment and then pretty quickly we end up admitting a much larger presence of AI in health care than we originally envisioned. Expansion is already happening fast. Utah just gave the green light for another

AI company, Legion Health, to renew some psychiatric medications. And Doctronic is in talks to move into Arizona and Wyoming. I'm Alex Olgan for Marketplace. Two years ago, after that container ship brought down the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, the National Transportation Safety Board had a good long look at other bridges around the country that it was worried could face similar risk. All in, it found 34 such bridges that had identified as critical to the U.S. Transportation Network. The Lewis and Clark Bridge on the Columbia River in Longview, Washington is one of them, part of a huge inland river network that takes grain and mineral exports out to the global economy. Our story comes from Marketplace's Mitchell Hartman.

A steady stream of ships from bulk carriers to towering container and cruise ships navigate the Lower Columbia from Portland to the Pacific. past rail yards and port facilities loading grain, potash, logs, cars. I've hopped on a small launch that shuttles around pilots, crew, and the occasional journalist. The rides a little rough as launch Captain Tyson Hill motors us towards the Longview Bridge, one of those identified by NTSB as most at risk of a ship collision. You can see the channel right here. It definitely gets close to Washington side.

I've never noticed that before. The channel for ocean-going vessels makes a tricky turn, then passes close to one of the bridge's spindly support towers. The towers have no protective bumpers to defend against a wayward ship. It's a single-point failure bridge, much like the Francis Scott Key Bridge. So if you hit that support tower, the top of the ship hits the underside of the bridge, that whole bridge is coming down. That's Captain Jeremy Nielsen, president of the Columbia River pilots,

who go on board to guide every large ship navigating the river. He says there have been close calls. He shares a video with me. A huge cruise ship, sounding like a train engine, churns toward the bridge on its way back to sea from a Portland shipyard. There's no sound from the crew as the ship's front radar tower passes close under the bridge span, cars and trucks whizzing by overhead. Then the rear tower, even taller, barely seen.

squeaks by with just four feet to spare. Other heavily laden ships have lost power and barely missed hitting the bridge. Part of the danger, says Nielsen, comes from the size of today's ships. The largest vessels that we see, 1,200-foot container ships, until you stand up next to one, it's tough to grasp how big those really are. So our safety margins have decreased dramatically. The problem certainly isn't limited to the Columbia. Maria Lehman is past president of the American Society of Civil Engineers and says bridges erected before the 1990s weren't built to accommodate today's big ships. In the 70s, container ships had 3,000 or 4,000 containers. Today, it's 20 to 24,000. So that's 5 to 8 times increase, their length, their beam, their draft.

They have much more mass than they did, which means they have more momentum. If a Columbia River Bridge did fail, the economic repercussions would be felt for hundreds of miles inland. As far as Idaho, Wyoming, Nebraska, and the Dakotas, says Neil Manu with the Pacific Northwest Waterways Association. Our river system is the number one wheat export gateway in the country. Number two and three for corn and soybeans. Annually, that's over $31 billion worth of commodity value. So what's to be done? Well, Washington and Oregon now plan to spend more than $1.3 million for new safety measures at Longview and Astoria.

That includes studying just how vulnerable to a vessel collision these bridges are, also setting up a virtual coordination center to better track river traffic, and installing what are called air gap sensors. Neil Manu explains. An air gap sensor accurately measures the distance between the bridge and the top of the top of the, the river, the channel. We need to have real-time data and the technology exists for not a lot of money. Right now, a pilot, along with a river surveyor, who's required to be on board, have to estimate their clearance under these bridges, which have sagged and settled with age on a river that rises and falls with storm surge, tides, snow melt, and dam releases, says Captain Jeremy Nielsen. We're highly trained. We are very, very good pilots. But our skill only goes so far. We need

infrastructure improvements, technology to make sure this river stays safe. Nielsen says he's hopeful additional safety measures will be put in place by 2027, as promised, but he hasn't seen any changes yet, and he's not holding his breath. I'm Mitchell Hartman for Marketplace. This final note on the way out, today's selected anecdotes from today's beige book. That is, of course, the Federal Reserve's eight times a year survey of the various regions of this economy. from the Minneapolis Fed, a person running a hospitality company said consumer spending has been flat and that given fuel prices and, quote, the cold shoulder Canadians are giving us, I'm not very optimistic.

Also from Minneapolis, companies with younger workers, it seems, are switching to staycations over vacations because of fuel prices. On the other hand, though, this from the Atlanta Fed, higher income consumers drove strong demand for premium goods and services with one contact describing a focus on in This is a quote, unapologetic luxury. K-shaped economy indeed, huh? Our media production team includes Brian Allison, John Fokie, Montana Johnson, Drew Johnston, Gary O'Keefe, and Charlton Thorpe. Alex Simpson is the manager of media production. And I'm Kai Rizzdahl. We will. See you tomorrow, everybody. This is APM.

It's almost time for the World Cup. And as we're cheering on our favorite teams and hopefully watching them win, I know at least some of us are wondering, why do athletes get paid so much money? This week on Million Bazillion, Bridget and I learn how scouting works, how teams decide what to pay their star athletes, and why those are important factors in making games fun to watch. Leagues or team owners have an interest in making sure that all the teams have somewhat equal talent because it makes it way more fun when you don't know in advance which team will win.

We call that uncertainty of outcome. and the way that players are paid is one way that league rules can improve competitive balance. Listen to Million Bazillion on your favorite podcast app.