Marketplace - What's sector growth without job growth?

Episode Date: June 1, 2026

Manufacturing production, new orders, imports, and exports were all up in May, according to the latest PMI report. The only piece of the manufacturing business that didn’t grow was the labor force — payrolls contracted for the 32nd month in a row. In this episode, how much can a sector grow without hiring more humans? Plus: Dollar stores dip into delivery, college campuses turn into robot training grounds, and new jobs data will tell us whether inflation growth keeps outpacing wage growth.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.

All right, give me a four-letter word for this economy, would you? Here's mine. J-O-B-S. From American public media. This is Marketplace. In Los Angeles, I'm Kyle Risdahl. It is Monday today. Somehow it is the first of June.

Good as always to have you along, everybody. We are going to learn over the next, what, one, two, three, four days in this economy. A whole lot about the state of the American labor market. The April jolts will be upon us tomorrow. That's the job openings and labor turnover survey from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. We'll get first-time claims for unemployment benefits on Thursday. That is not an A-list indicator, but it can give us some good context. And then Friday, the biggie non-farm payrolls is what the BLS calls it.

The jobs report is what the rest of us say. And it will include, among a whole lot of interesting data, how much people are getting paid. That's all the more relevant now, because back in April, inflation outpaced wage growth for the first time in three years. Daniel Ackerman gets us going with what's what with worker wages. Of course, everyone wants their pay to keep up with inflation. But Luzaina Abdalahad, head of economic research at Ravellia Labs, says there's a tough reality in the labor market right now.

Workers aren't in a very good negotiating position. She says there just aren't a ton of job openings. For like two years, consistently the hiring and separation rates are going. down and down. So if there aren't that many opportunities for workers, then it's going to be really hard for them to try to negotiate a pay increase. That's a very different situation from the inflation spike of 2021 and 22, says Betsy Stevenson, a labor economist at the University of Michigan. Back then, workers could pretty much demand whatever pay they wanted to deal with rising prices. The number of job openings swamped the number of people looking to change jobs. Basically,

anybody who wanted to change jobs could. And it was really one of the most dynamic periods I've ever seen in the U.S. labor market. And all that job switching meant workers came out ahead. They saw huge wage gains from those job changes that they made. But rapid wage growth was one factor that helped push inflation even higher. And since then, says Ron Hedrick, principal economist at Lightcast, We have thrown water on this economy to try to cool it down. Most critically, the Fed raised interest rates. Higher tariffs have also just increased economic uncertainty, says Hedrick. That has made the desire to hire much lower than it would have been in 21 and 22.

Still, the unemployment rate is at a relatively healthy 4.3 percent, says Michelle Meyer, chief economist at the MasterCard Economics Institute. The problem is, You're not seeing as much churn in the workforce. And less movement means fewer opportunities for pay bumps. Meyer says how much that matters will depend on how. how long the current inflation spike lasts. I'm Daniel Ackerman for Marketplace.

Wall Street, to start the week, tell me there's a disconnect between the markets and the news. Without telling me there's a disconnect between the markets and the news, I'll go first. Equities today, that's stocks, record highs, oil up 4.5 to 5.5% depending on which benchmark you like. Think about it. We'll have the details when we do the numbers. Jobs and job data, as it happens, come in all varieties. And we're going to look at manufacturing right now. Manufacturing, which was in a slump last year, doing part to the president's on-again, off-again tariffs, is growing pretty nicely right now, thank you very much.

Factory production, new orders, imports, and exports, all of them up. Manufacturing jobs, though, not so much. Factory payrolls are still contracting. It is 32 months in a row now that that's been happening. What gives you ask? Here's Marketplace's Mitchell Hartman. The data from the Institute for Supply Management is clear. The manufacturing sector has been expanding now for the past five months, and May was stronger than April.

But executives remain hesitant to go all in and hire more workers, says ISM survey chair, Susan Spence, because there's still so much unknown about tariffs and war and inflation. When things are uncertain, you don't invest in capital equipment. and you don't hire people because it's very costly to hire and train, and you don't want to have to lay off people if your order book goes the wrong way. And Spence says hiring managers are stressed out. They're telling her, We're not being allowed to back, Phil, people that are leaving,

and it's getting really, really hard for those remaining. The uptick in manufacturing is at least good for workers' paychecks, but not great for those looking to get hired, says University of New Orleans labor economist Ali Bustamante. We're seeing a job-lobustamante. We're seeing a jobless manufacturing rebound. A lot of firms, they're investing more in machines, more in overtime, expanding shifts, and we are probably going to see that in higher productivity per worker.

Now, remember, President Trump's tariffs were supposed to give domestic producers a competitive edge, leading to reshoring and more manufacturing jobs. But Bustamante says that hasn't happened. The first year and a half of these tariffs during the second Trump administration, we can say pretty unequivocally they're having. hasn't been an employment rebound in manufacturing. Michael Gritten sees all this playing out in Louisville, where he runs Kentucky-A-Works, the Regional Workforce Development Agency.

Last year... Manufacturing, we lost 2,700 jobs across the region. Local manufacturers like GE appliances and Ford are planning to expand in the coming year. Output for manufacturing is going to keep going up. But he doesn't expect a lot of net jobs to be added, because AI and automation are doing more and more of the work. I'm Mitchell Hartman for Marketplace. My colleague David Brancaccio did a series a number of years ago called Robots

ate My Job. And then a couple of years later, he did a series called Robot Proof Jobs. This next story is kind of a hybrid. Forget artificial intelligence for a second and what it is and will do to the labor market. On some college campuses, actual robots are metaphorically anyway, hiring students, teaching those students, and in some cases, rerouting their careers. Julian Picard has the story. Five years ago, robotics company Starship rolled out 20 food delivery robots at Oregon State University in Corvallis. Today, close to 80 of the bots, do 1,000 deliveries a day.

They look like motorized storage bins on six wheels with a bright orange flag sticking. out of the top, making them easy to spot on campus. I'm on the trail of one of them. Hey there. I'm Sunshine. And I'm delighted to be here with your delivery. Where some students might have once delivered for DoorDash and Grubhub, they now work as attendance and technicians for the robot fleet. Seize the day, my friend. Scott McCurdy was studying business management at Northern Arizona University when his roommate told him about Starship. But he kind of approached me and said, hey, there's a no robotics company coming to campus, focusing on food delivery. The opportunity proved to be so valuable it changed the entire course of his education. McCurdy, a self-avowed hands-on learner,

left college after sophomore year to join Starship. They allowed me to go on launch trips where I launched Oregon State University, Arizona State University, and assisted with some of the mapping that goes around campuses as well. Starship and other robotics companies like Robot.com and Austin-based A-V-Ride are quietly turning campuses into real-world training grounds. According to Starship, about two-thirds of its student hires are pursuing engineering or computer science degrees. Jacob Olson is one of them. The nuclear engineering student says his experience working hands-on as a fleet attendant gave him insight for his work with a professor studying robots to detect radiation. I was basically integrating a robot with a radiation detector. And

being able to model a room and detect the radiation around it. Five years ago, Starship product engineer Marcus Hall was majoring in computer and electrical engineering at Oregon State. He was designing an autonomous delivery platform when COVID hit. While classes were paused, Hall noticed a robot technician job for Starship on campus. This is a perfect fit because I interested in robotics. I've always worked with that sort of space. Hall got the job and quickly found that even though class had talked to, taught him design principles, he was now seeing how they are stress-tested in the real world. If you get to build it to the full fruition, you would see your machine driving around how it interacts

with the foliage, with the roads, with the people. Oregon State Robotics Professor Ross Hatton says the more hands-on time engineering students get with robots, the better. But he cautions that learning how an existing robot operates isn't the same as having the knowledge to build one yourself. It very much speaks to the idea of being someone who has done something versus someone who is doing something. Hatton says that the base layer of learning for students who might one day build their own robots is still tinkering in labs, robotics clubs, and internships. Still, he finds it beneficial for students to witness a viable robotics company in action. It's still a very young field.

And so seeing a successful company able to go through and deal with the whole monetization tree of those. out from there is something that's really exciting to see. Starship now operates in more than 60 colleges, where students are learning to fix robots and maybe launch their careers. In Corvallis, Oregon, I'm Julia Picard for Marketplace. Speaking of deliveries, as we kind of were, they don't usually come to mind when you're talking dollar stores. Turns out, though, they are becoming more of a thing dollar deliveries are.

Dollar Tree announced last week its customers can now get their purchases delivered with DoorDash. And you can get your stuff delivered from the other two big dollar store chains as well. That would be family dollar and dollar general, and it's you're confused. This caught our eye because the dollar discounters are supposed to offer value, right? But you tag delivery fees on top of that. Is there still a deal being had? Marketplace's Stephanie Hughes is on the dollar store beat for us today. Today I opened up the DoorDash app and did some shop.

topping at the dollar tree a couple miles for my house in Baltimore. We need like a sippy cup for the baby. A dollar 25 for two is pretty good. I also bought some snacks, toilet paper. The total bill was $5.25. Definitely a deal. Fee's at another $6.48. Plus the tip, and I ended up paying more to have the stuff delivered than for the actual stuff. It arrived at about 20 minutes. Thank you. David Smith, my Dasher, says a lot of his deliveries these days are from dollar stores. I talked to him on my breezy. front stoop. It's convenient. You might be at work. And you can't leave those, but you need these items. If I can pay door days, six, seven dollars to bring me everything that I need, why not? Smith doesn't get stuff delivered himself, but he says his wife does it all the time.

And I'm going to ask you and watch the TV beside her. Just tell me to go get it. I don't go get it, but she said, I don't want to bother. You need your rest. So. And dollar store customers need delivery. Brian Eschleman is with Alex partners. He's done some consulting for Dollar Tree in the past. They have a customer that in the urban and suburban environments are less likely to have access to a car, and so having this kind of delivery service is a good service for them. He also says in-store purchases may be in cash and are kind of anonymous. This allows these retailers to have a better visibility to what their shoppers are actually shopping for.

Being on these delivery apps gives dollar stores a chance to be discovered by new customers, says Natalie Cutler, who follows retail trends for the advisory firm BDO. Historically, they can only reach the consumer when the consumer comes into the store. By offering a delivery service, this creates a whole new revenue stream for them. Cutler says there's something kind of democratizing about being able to get discount goods delivered. Basically, whether people have less money or more money, sometimes convenience is something they're willing to pay for. In Baltimore, I'm Stephanie Hughes from Marketplace. up. Right now my main role is to be a good mom, you know, and watch my son grow up.

While running a business on the side. But first, let's do the numbers. Dow Industrial's up 46 points today, about a 10th percent, 51,078. The NASDAQ added 114.4.4%. 10th percent, 27,000 to 86. The S&P 500 ticked up 19 points, one quarter of 1%. 7.59. Right there. Manufacturing was Mitchell's assignment today. Caterpillar. right, big manufacturer there, ticker symbol C-A-T, down 1.2%. Parker Hennepin, which makes everything from adhesives to valves, tumble 2.5%. Dollar Treesank, four and, sank, rather, sorry. 4-4-10th percent, dollar general reports earnings tomorrow by the buy, subtracted 6 tenths percent,

DoorDash, up 3.4%. You are listening to Marketplace. This is Marketplace. I'm Kai Risdahl. We have covered many a food trend on this program. A lot of them having to do with more. people focusing on their health. I'm thinking cottage cheese. We did beans also. Just the other day, people wanting so much protein right now, there is a shortage in the offing. There is, though,

another new entry on the list of foods that Americans want more of. Honey. Alina Pong wrote about it in Bloomberg the other day. Welcome to the program. Thanks for having me. This is, it seems to me, as many things are, a supply demand story. So first of all, what's up with Americans and honey right now? We're eating more of it. Yes. Absolutely. So overall U.S. sweetener consumption is relatively flat. But when we look at honey in particular, that has jumped up quite a bit. And that's being fueled by sort of a combination of trends. So honey sort of benefits from this healthy halo. It has simple ingredients and it has antioxidants. On the other side, just from a pure flavor standpoint, there's a lot of interest in spicy, sweet flavors.

and so hot honey in particular is sort of on everything nowadays. Yeah, I never understood the hot honey thing, but I guess that's a whole different interview. Okay, so that was the demand side. Let's talk supply here. You know, we did a thing on the program a number of years ago about honey bees, how we thought they were all dying out, but not really. And where are we now with bees and actually getting honey? Yeah, supply is where I think it gets really interesting. So U.S. production is actually way down.

You're right that a few years ago, there was this whole thing about the Save the Bees campaign. And the industry is still sort of struggling with that same parasitic varroa destructor, it's what it's called, very scary name. Some of those mites have seemed to develop some resistance to the industry's most widely used pesticide. The other thing that's sort of disincentivizing honey production is just the overall fact that beekeepers, in the U.S. make most of their money from pollination. And they can do both pollination and honey production at the same time. And they do. But the requirements for both of those markets are a little bit different. Okay. There's actually a lot to unpack in there, which I never thought I'd say about the honey market. But here goes. Number one, production. Where are we getting our honey then? Are we

importing now? Yes, we are importing a lot more honey. Some of the top producers are India, Argentina and Brazil. So we are getting a lot more imports to fill that gap. Okay. And then the pollination thing. Why is it that beekeepers can make more money pollinating, as it were, than growing honey? I guess you don't grow honey, but you know what I mean? Yeah.

Pollination is just so crucial for, I mean, the U.S. food supply system. And so it's the case that, especially in California, a lot of the farmers there will pay beekeepers. to move their hives to California for the season. On the honey side, it's hard because as imports flow in, prices essentially get dragged down. Because if you're a beekeeper, you're usually not selling that honey direct to the farmer market for premium. You're probably selling it to like a large-scale commercial processor,

who may also be buying from India and Argentina and other places. And so therefore, you're going to end up getting less money for it. Right. So how does this, because they always do eventually balance out, supply demand and price, right? How does this eventually balance out? Because, you know, it might get crystallized and kind of looking gross, but you can keep honey in your, in your cabinet forever, right? Yeah. Honey doesn't expire. It can be stored for quite a bit. And so that's helped companies like Mike's hot honey, for example, in terms of like sort of hedging against that commodity exposure. They can procure more when the market is good. And there's some hope that like the higher demand will sort of help right size the situation

in that if you as consumers keep paying up for honey and keep buying honey, that might incentivize more investment in the domestic industry. And we're seeing private equity players like sweet harvest foods get increasingly involved in the industry. Yes. So they figure if they can invest the right amount in processing and in research, that could be a good opportunity for them. Could be. Private equity is everywhere. Alina Peng at Bloomberg, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Mexico and the United States wrapped up their first round of negotiations over revisions to the USMCA last week. That's the NAFTA replacement that President Trump insisted on during his first term. No Canada in those

talks last week, I should tell you. Negotiations are scheduled to pick back up later this month. But while the two governments work on the future of that trade agreement, the bilateral U.S.-Mexico economic relationship just keeps chugging along. And that brings us to today's installment of our series, My Economy. Hi, my name is Cynthia Vicente. I am from Bellflower, California. My name is Rufina Gutierrez. And our business is called the Zapotech Weaver. Yes, so what my mom said is that she is the founder of the Zapotech Weavers.

and I am co-founder of the textile business, the Sapotech Weavers. My idea was to help my family with the pandemic, so what my mom was saying here, the reason why we started the business was to help my family back home, and they are always in my mind. So once the pandemic came, there was no income. So I asked my daughter, Cynthia, to help me, start this business for my family and with them.

When I was younger, I was an artistist myself, and it's what I used to do as a living. I used to help my dad dye the wool and clean the wool. And so it's very important to me to preserve this and to help my family out. My mom's like brothers, sisters, cousins from Oaxaca who are artisans. They weave handbags such as like satchel bags, cross bodies, and rugs. So we basically represent their work. The smallest bag will start at $85 and it'll go up to $2.85, whereas our rugs start from $150 and they will go up to thousands. Let me explain the situation in Waxaca. So the homes that are made out of bricks and normally it starts with like just one really little small room.

And recently they've been able to construct, like, rebuild their homes and add more rooms and second floors. And so that has a lot to do with us because we provide that work for them and sell their pieces and that money goes back home to them. And so right now, my cousin, he actually just had a baby. And this baby is really fortunate because, you know, he's growing up with toys and new clothes and a crib. and he has things that my cousin never had in the past. So I'm a first time mom. I gave birth to Clyde last year in May, so he just turned one. He's right here in his playpen with grandma now because he wants to cry.

He's coming right now. It's the reason why I kind of had to go part-time because I don't want to miss a single moment. And thankfully, my mom is here to help me out with them. So she's the one who does our pop-ups or she helps me ship stuff sometimes. And hopefully not too far, we'll be able to resume full-time to the Zapotech weavers. But right now, my main role is to be a good mom, you know, and watch my son grow up. And I really hope to share this project with him one day. Cynthia Vicente and her mom, Rufino Gutierrez.

Also a little baby Clyde, too. Cynthia and Rufino run the Zappotech Weaers. They're based in Anaheim, California. Take a second, would you? Let us know what's going on. Marketplace.org slash my economy. This final note on the way out today, should you be looking for a high dollar initial public offering to get in on? First of all, retail investors virtually never get in on the ground floor of those big IPOs. So there's that, caveat emptor and all that. But also Anthropics said today, it has filed the first sets of paperwork it needs to do to go public.

If it does beat Open AI to the capital markets, and Open AIs, Thinking about it anytime soon. It would be a big deal. Whoever goes first, first mover advantage in all. SpaceX, by the way, nominally a rocket company, but also a hodgepodge of other Elon Musk stuff

is expected to start trading round about June the 12th. Amir Bibawi, Kailen Ash, John Gordon-Noyek, are the marketplace editing staff. Kelly Silvera is the news director. And I'm Kai Rizdo.

We will see you again tomorrow, everybody. This is APN. I'm Amy Scott, and this week on our podcast, How We Survive, I travel to an undisclosed location in the San Francisco Bay Area to learn about a controversial solution to the climate crisis. It's called solar geoengineering, and it's basically a way to dim the sun in order to cool the planet. Proponents view this as a necessary intervention. Others are not convinced. If we do this, this is a decision that will end up. affect all life on the planet. I don't think it should be up to a couple guys in California. And while so far, solar geoengineering is happening at a small scale, what happens if a rogue

nation or a rogue billionaire makes the decision for us? I don't see that we have a world government that is capable of making a decision on behalf of everybody who lives on the planet. to this week's episode of How We Survive on your favorite podcast app.