Marketplace - Unemployment filings hit a 55-year low

Episode Date: July 23, 2026

Sounds rosy, right? Not if you’re long-term unemployed, underemployed, or a new grad. In this episode, the labor market’s low-hire, low-fire status quo reaches a new extreme. Plus: States sue over new Medicaid work requirement protocols, Uber lays off a tenth of its customer service workers with plans to replace them with AI chatbots, and a family travel boom reshapes luxury resorts.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.Read the stories in today’s episode:It's still a tight job market, despite record-low initial unemployment claimsAs yields on Treasury notes rise, the bond market is changingStates sound alarm over new Medicaid work requirement ruleAn AI customer service agent will take your call nowThe life of a Hollywood freelancerFamilies are crashing honeymoon hot spots

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GEP combines agentic AI with three decades of procurement and supply chain data and expertise. Learn more at gEP.com. In exactly this order, the labor market, the bond market, the health care market. and the AI market, but we're going to make it interesting. From American public media, this is Marketplace. In Los Angeles, I'm Kai Rizzdahl. It is Thursday today, 23 July, good as always, to have you along, everybody. We begin today with an exercise familiar to anyone who deals with a lot of economic data,

an exercise that can fairly be summarized as, huh, what do you suppose that means? The proximate cause was today's update on first-time claims for unemployment benefits. They fell by 22,000 to the lowest absolute level they have been since literally 1969, when, obviously, the labor force was far, far smaller. So, huh, what do you suppose that means? Well, it could be a sign of a strong labor market with layoffs extra low and those who do get laid off finding new jobs so quickly they barely have time. to apply for unemployment? Or it could be something else. Marketplaces Mitchell Hartman gets us going.

It used to be that first time jobless claims provided a pretty good snapshot of the labor market. But says Michelle Evermore at the National Employment Law Project, Initial claims data is no longer a very reliable economic indicator. She says fewer people who get laid off are applying for unemployment insurance. Many states now offer less than 26 weeks of benefits, eligibility's been tightened, and unemployment checks are anemic. It replaces so little of prior income. People are better off taking some sort of terrible gig jobs than they are collecting unemployment.

Fewer than one in three unemployed people are even eligible, says University of Michigan economist Betsy Stevenson, meaning low and falling jobless claims. Doesn't mean we have a robust and healthy labor market. She says it is pretty good if you have a job and can, can keep it, but... A low-hire, low-fire environment is particularly hard for people to enter or re-enter the labor market. Meanwhile, the percentage of people who've been job searching for six months or longer is up sharply

over the past year. Economist Daniel Zhao at job site Glass Door says these workers are... Much less likely to reject any job offers they get. They feel like they don't really have options. Younger, less-experienced workers are also facing big. challenges, says economist Sneha Puri at the Indeed Hiring Lab. While senior-level job postings are up 15% year over year, they're actually down 6.3% for entry-level roles. At the same time, more experienced workers are applying for those entry-level positions, increasing the competition

for recent high school and college grads. I'm Mitchell Hartman for Marketplace. On Wall Street today, I mean, traders looked around and saw the war and all the years. AI spending and decided they were not having it. We will have the details, though, when we do the numbers. We spent some time yesterday talking about the bond market. We're going to do it again, but different because of what Greg Ip wrote in the Wall Street Journal the other day, a piece headlined how sky high deficits threaten the bond market. Greg, it's good to have you on. Oh, thanks for having me, Kai.

All right, from the headline of this piece, how sky high deficits threaten the bond market. How then? Explain, please? Sure. Well, we are running very large deficits. The largest deficits relative to GDP that we've ever run in peacetime on an ongoing basis. And what that means in practical terms is that every year the Treasury has to come to Wall Street and say, we need to borrow two trillion dollars by selling you Treasury bills and Treasury bonds. And it is getting more and more challenging to sell that debt. Somebody's got to buy it. And the nature of the people that buy those bonds has been changing. There are fewer patient investors, you know, like foreign central banks, and more sort of like impatient investors, like hedge funds.

And these are the kinds of people that will trade in and out of markets a lot faster, and they may flee if something goes wrong, such as inflation or a big deficit. And I think those are things to worry about because of that were to happen. You could get big moves in markets and possibly much higher long-term interest rates. One of the things that made me want to talk to you about this piece is the crisis next time. So as you say, we're running two trillion dollar deficits, give or take every year. There will be another crisis, and we will need some fiscal space with which to handle that crisis and keep this economy going. It seems to me that we don't have that space now. I think it's absolutely

correct. I mean, with the size of the deficits we're running now, it's getting harder and harder to find ways to raise those funds. Congress apparently doesn't want to raise taxes. Congress apparently doesn't want to cut spending. So where in the world is the extra money going to come from? But, you know, Kai, there's another risk here, which is that it's not just the inability of the Treasury or the Congress to respond to a crisis because it's so short of money. What if the fiscal situation is itself the cause of the crisis? What if the Treasury itself is the cause of the crisis? I mean, what if people decide they're not going to buy the bonds or they're going to demand a much higher return in order to buy the bonds? Okay, wait, what if? Keep going. I know where you're

going. But maybe everybody doesn't, so you keep going and explain it. Well, like I said, we have to sell a lot of bonds to people, and those people are not out there trying to do favors to us. They want a return and interest rate that's commensurate with the risk of our deficits and our inflation. And if they get a sense that either of those things are going to be much worse in the future, and we've had a lot of troubling signs of that lately, they could decide not to buy the bonds. We won't see as many investors showing up at auctions.

we might have disruptions in the market, the people who we rely on to buy those bonds, whether it's the dealers with the hedge funds, having troubles of their own. A couple of sort of nitty-gritty things that I want to touch on that you brought up in this piece. The first is the way the Treasury Department is approaching selling our debt. They're selling less long-term debt, more short-term debt. Explain that, please, and why it matters. Sure. Well, there's basically two ways to borrow.

You can issue treasury bills, which mature in less than a year. And the interest rates tend to be lower, but the problem is they mature, and then you have to refinance them and go back to the market. Or you can issue longer-term debt. The problem is the interest rates are higher. And if you issue a lot of those bonds, then it tends to make interest rates and the market go up, which then ripples through to market rates, and voters and President Trump don't like that. And what we've seen for the last years, and in fairness, this happened under President Biden also,

is that even though the deficits are very large, the Treasury has kept down the size of the auctions of long-term bonds because it doesn't want to put upper pressure on long-term interest rates, but that causes a problem. It means by relying so much on Treasury bills, more and more of the debt comes due and must be refinanced every month and increases the risk that something goes wrong. And that rises also with who's buying this debt, the hedge funds and all of those. Exactly. So not only are we coming to market much more often to refinance this debt, but we're asking people who have no long-term commitment as patient holders of that debt to step up and lend us the money.

All right. So here's the $64,000 question. You are a respected voice in the business and economic journalism community. You talk to people in Washington. Do you get the sense that they understand this and are concerned? They do. Everybody has known for a long time that the combination of the very large deficits we're running and the shifting nature of the market means,

the probability of some severe disruption is going up. But nobody wants to say that that probability is high enough to say it's going to happen soon. It's just the way it is, Kai, is that crises are like that. We can see the contributing factors. Nobody can call the moment when it's going to happen. And the problem is that you have both parties, Republicans and Democrats, making lip service about why it's a problem, but basically politically incapable and unwilling to deal with the underlying problem, which is that our taxes are too low and our spending is too high. Greg, Ipp, Wall Street Journal, and on a Friday every now and then with us. Greg, thanks a lot.

Thank you, Kai. In their big tax cut and spending law last summer, President Trump and Congressional Republicans made some big changes to Medicaid, the health insurance program that covers about 70 million Americans. Work requirements were by far the biggest change. Healthy adults, 19 to 64, have to work or do selected other community engagement in the of the law, unless they qualify for one of a limited set of waivers, one of which is that they are too sick to work. But proving you are too sick to work is complicated and the stakes are very,

very high, as Alex Ogan reports. The last time B. Velasquez lost Medicaid coverage was 2017. My anxiety went up, my PTSD went up, you don't want to go to the doctors. You don't even want to make a phone call at that point because you're like, what kind of bill am I going to get? The 45-year-old relies on a daily medication for her HIV. Without insurance, it costs between 4 and 5,000 per month. Velasquez has Medicare because of her disability and Medicaid because of her low income. So her meds are fully paid for. But when a mistake in the system left her without coverage, she desperately searched for free medication. People will send medication. And so I was able to find resources for someone to send me to supplement the medication that I needed in that time.

It's a nightmare she worries could happen again. with the new rules tying Medicaid coverage to work. Starting in January, 18.5 million people will need to show they're working 80 hours a month or that they're too sick to do so. Velasquez works and volunteers her time as an HIV advocate. But hours are inconsistent, and she worries about all the documentation she'll need to prove she should be exempt. I rely on the health care system in a way that some people don't.

One of the biggest threats to my health shouldn't be paperwork. Mehmet Oz, the head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services, defended the requirements to reporters in a June press conference. It's a, I think, beautifully written effort to try to define for our nation what you're part of the puzzle is. Because if you are going to get something that are of value from the American people, there should be some obligation. States have been racing to build systems to verify who's working and who qualifies for an exemption. For months, federal health officials informally told states that existing data like diagnoses and medical records, would be enough to show someone was medically frail. Then, in June, the agency reversed course. Starting in 2027, many patients will also need documentation, like a doctor's note, showing they're currently too sick to work.

CMS didn't respond to questions about why it added the new requirement. Dr. Mohamed Dar, the former medical director of the Massachusetts Medicaid program, says it's causing chaos. These Medicaid systems are made to be like 100-mile-per-hour trains going solidly on. a track and cannot deviate without a year worth of work. And what's been handed to them is a bureaucratic train wreck of there are no train tracks. There is no route. Just go north. Massachusetts, 24 other states and D.C. are suing federal health officials to stop this extra requirement. The states say it goes further than the federal law. And many already spent a lot of money making plans to use data they already have. Maryland said in court filings, it spent more than $30 million, and the extra test means they'll have to spend another $2 million,

at least. Extremely worried, is the mood. Estimates are Medicaid changes could jeopardize coverage for 7 million people. They'll still need care, but they won't be able to afford it. And that's going to leave hospitals and clinics like DARS to absorb the cost. He's now the chief medical officer of a network of 25 community health centers in Massachusetts. It's going to cost care. It's going to cost outcomes.

It's going to cost jobs. The Commonwealth Fund estimated that hospitals and states, with more expansive Medicaid coverage, could see operating margins fall by 11 to 30%. Never have we hit our own health care system with such a battering ram. Patients, doctors, and states are trying to prepare for next year, but they're waiting to hear from a judge later this month, which rules they'll be prepping for. In Portland, I'm Alex Olgan for Marketplace. Coming up.

These destinations, they're not abandoning romance. And thank goodness for that, am I right? But first, let's do the numbers. Oh, my, the Wawa's. Down industrials down 506 today. 1% finished at 51,711. The NASDAQ subtracted 533 points, rather 553 points. It gets worse.

2 and 2 tenths percent, 25,137. The S&P 500 down 90 points, 1 and 2 tenths percent 74 and 8. All right, here we go again. Brent Crude spent the day a little bit. above $100 a barrel, climbed six and a tenth percent. West Texas intermediate. Finish the day just below $90 a barrel after adding three and a third percent. Alphabet, as we told you yesterday, posted a bang-up quarter for its cloud computing division, but Google's parent also missed its first posted, rather its first ever negative free cash flow,

missed earnings as well. Alphabet slumped seven and a tenth percent on the day. Bonds down, yield on the 10-year T-note rose, 4.69 percent. You're listening to Marketplace. This is Marketplace. I'm Kai Risdon. Most of the headlines about artificial intelligence lately have been about the tens and tens and tens of billions of dollars that companies are spending to build it, use it, and one assumes is the plan, profit from it. A once and future story of AI, though, is what it's going to do to the labor market, about which Uber.

The company says it's cutting 10% of its customer service workers in a push to, and these are quotes, simplify operations and embrace AI. Setting aside for a moment the quality of the service that customers might get, as Marketplace's Supreme Benishore reports, a whole lot of companies are tinkering with AI customer service. Jordan St. Laurent does social work. He has to call hospitals, courts, schools all the time, and they all have AI customer service agents.

Nine times out of 10, it just ends up having me have to reach out to a live representative. If he can reach one. I've spent probably upwards to like 15 to 20 minutes simply just trying to get a fax number for like a hospital. In an age we're talking to Chad GPT or Gemini is so effortless, there is great hope for AI's potential in customer service. David Schwiedel is professor of marketing at Emory. Businesses are investing. They think they may be able to significantly reduce their costs. Have AI do the easy stuff, save the hard stuff for people.

Worcester research estimates a large call center staff could be cut in half in five years. Max Ball is a principal industry analyst at Forrester. He says despite the savings, companies aren't ready to just hand the customer service keys fully over to AI yet. Almost nobody's ready for that at this point. Also, who cares about company savings? Is AI going to make customer service any less miserable? It's a million dollar question, right? Emily Potoski is a senior director analyst at Gartner.

AI is proving helpful to customers. service agents. Translating, analyzing conversations, offering advice. A Stanford digital economy study found that when AI helped human agents, issues resolved per hour, increased by 15%. But AI can only go so far. At the end of the day, it's really more about business practices than it is about AI. Turns out AI can do a lot of things, but perform miracles isn't one of them. If your business is bad at customer service without AI, it's probably going to be bad at it with AI. In New York, I'm Subie Benishore for Marketplace. People earn their living in this country in all kinds of different ways. More and more, one of those ways is freelancing. Upwork, the freelancer hiring platform, says as many as

30%, 38% rather, of skilled workers are freelancing in 26. That's up from 28% last year. And that brings us to one member of that workforce that we've been checking in with ever since he got out of college. My name is Troy Swinard. I'm currently living in Glendale, California for about two years now, and I am a freelance production, art assistant, and voice actor. Last summer, I was working at the Lego store, and I quit to pursue freelance full-time to be able to open myself up and say yes, because a day on set was worth more than a week at the Lego store. And a year later, I can say that That's paid off, at least, that I've been able to do a lot of cool stuff that I would not have been able to do otherwise. An average good week in the life of a freelancer, if I'm lucky, is I will get a call or even just a text, maybe like a day before from a producer that I've worked with before, just asking, hey, we need some PAs tomorrow.

Are you available? I'll say yes. And that's, you know, signing on for a 12-hour day to, you know, basically be the extra pair of hands where we're nobody. else has the bandwidth to do it. I've had stuff before where like I will walk on to set and I've been handed a Geiger counter and been told, you know, hey, look up on a YouTube video, make sure this works. And then just left with that. I'm like, all right. You know, find a corner for myself that I'm, you know, teaching myself these absolutely random skills. But it's part of the fun. As chaotic as it is, I love it more than any office job.

It keeps it interesting and it's never boring. budget-wise, I do kind of go just month by month because if I went week by week, it would be so inconsistent. There are weeks where I make zero dollars. And then there are weeks where I make more money than I have in the past five months. That's just how it goes. I'm not profiting in any way. But I'm also not going down. It's more like at the end of the month being like, you know, can I pay off these bills?

Okay, I can't. Great. We'll hope that's the same in 30 days. Career-wise, you know, no one wants to be an assistant forever. I really want to ramp up the path to being like a genuine voice actor. I've gotten an animation demo done. I've hit the hallmark of convert closet into recording space. But I would love to be able to make this more of like the thing that I do out here,

getting to be able to do more of this like actual performing. As fun as it is to be behind the scenes, there is that part of me that, like, sees the performance aspect of it. And it's, you know, that thing is like, oh, gosh, that's what I want to do. Troy Swinard out in the labor force since he graduated a couple of three years ago. If you plan to travel with your kids this summer, it's going to be crowded out there. The Family Travel Association and New York University did a survey. 92% of parents say they are likely to vacation with their children this year.

The catch is where they're traveling. Much to the chagrin of honeymooners and couples on getaways everywhere, a lot of those families are book and time at romantic luxury resorts. The Brina Jekhovah wrote about it in Bloomberg. Thanks for being here. Thank you so much for having me. I read the subheading of this piece, which is, and I will quote, some couples love their honeymoon so much they are deciding to come back with their kids. I read that and I said, wait, what? Is that really happening? It is. It is. And this story, so I've been. a travel reporter for over a decade now. And this story actually started with me just traveling and

noticing that, you know, when I go to places like French Polynesia, like Santorini, I just kept seeing more and more families and kids, you know, around the pool. And so I started talking to people, travelers, resort, you know, staff. And they all said the same thing, regardless of what part of the world they were working. Yes, we are definitely getting more families on property nowadays. If you're going to French Polynesia and Santorini for work, then I need to come work where you are working. So families, yes, kids, but also as you point out in this piece, grandparents, multi-generational travel now, I gather, is becoming more and more popular. Yes, we've definitely seen this trend, you know, post-pandemic. I think what happened was people just realized that

spending time with your loved ones, regardless of their age, is, yeah, is, you know, is really important. And so what's happening is, you know, maybe people have splurged on their honeymoon 10, 15 years ago. And now they're, you know, they're a little bit further along in their lives and their careers. Maybe they're a little bit wealthier. And they really want to share this destination with their kids, with their, you know, parents. And so they're going on these trips, bringing along the kids, you know, as well as grandma and granddad. Not to be very base about this, but one does imagine that with all these extra people coming, these families have to get two rooms. maybe three, and thus the resorts,

almost no matter where they are, are making more money on this, yes? Yes. So when I started working on this piece, I really, at first I really thought it was about, you know, just families traveling together. Resorts are responding to the demand, but of course there's something in it for them as well. But if you bring along your kids and maybe grandma,

then you are booking two suites, sometimes maybe even three, depending on how big your family is. You are going to be spending more on dining, activities. And so resorts are definitely investing, I would say, in responding to that demand. And they're seeing a return on their investment. Yeah, yeah. I feel obliged to advocate here for the young childless couples who are trying to get away and have a romantic getaway, you know? Yes, I know what you mean. But these destinations, they're not abandoning romance.

You know, there's still destinations where if you really truly want to avoid families and kids, these destinations are still there for you. Fair enough. Fair enough. DeBriene Zekhovah, writing in Bloomberg. Debrina, thanks very much for your time. I appreciate it. Thank you so much. This final note on the way out today, a couple of interest rate tidbits for you. First of all, the European Central Bank met today did nothing with its key interest rate. Christine Lagarde and the company, though, did offer a bit more than a hint that it is set to raise rates at its September meeting, if need be.

Kevin Warsh and the gang at the Fed meet next week, my guess is same outcome. Also, and somewhat related, the national average for a 30-year fixture. straight mortgage. Now the highest it's been in a year, 6.58%. Our daily production team includes Andy Corbin, Mica Ellison, Maria Hollenhorst, Sarah Leeson, Sean McKenry, and Sepia Serenzo. Will Story is the supervising senior producer. And I'm Kai Risdahl. We Will. See you tomorrow, everybody. This is APN. I'm Amy Scott, host of How We Survive, a podcast about the messy business of climate solutions. To a lot of people, geoengineering might seem like a dangerous, outlandish way to play God.

But some are embracing this sci-fi-inspired approach as a solution to the climate crisis. We're going to launch some balloons and send them into this stratosphere. A constellation of sunshades would cast an even dimming of shade across the entire Earth. Investing that much in building anything in space creates a whole space economy. Listen to How We Survive on your favorite podcast app.