Marketplace - When unemployment becomes endless

Episode Date: August 21, 2026

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, at least 1.8 million Americans have been actively looking for a fulltime job for more than 27 weeks. That’s over six months. In this episode, two people tell us what it’s like to navigate a never-ending job search. Plus: A surge in lone star ticks threatens the cattle industry, McDonald’s keeps huge amounts of data on frequent customers, and the national debt passes that $40 trillion threshold.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:The national debt hits $40 trillionTicks increasingly threaten the health and livelihood of ranchersAn Alabama cattle farm with a bird-tourism side hustle“Put me in, coach”: Navigating long-term unemployment in the low-hire economyHow the McDonald's mobile app compiled 515-page dossier on one reporter

It's going to be tough, but we're going to try to say the phrase bond market no more than five times in the program today. From American public media, this is Marketplace. In Los Angeles, I'm Kyle Rizzdahl. It is Friday. Today, this one is the 21st of August. Good as it always is. To have you along, everybody. It has been a week in this economy. I will tell you that. So we're just going to start. Honest Swanson is at the New York Times. Sidip Reddy is at MS. Now. Hey, you too. Hey, Kai.

Hey, Kai. All right, here are the rules. I get to say, this one doesn't count. I get to say bond market three times because it's my show. You each get to say it one time. So proceed accordingly. But Anna Swanson, the first question goes to you, it's not about that part of this economy. It's about the trade part of this economy.

I would like you, please, to Crystal Ball for me, where we are in the trade war, with our neighbor to the north, the deadline being like this weekend, right? Oh, nice. So I can save my B market reference. So, okay, so, yeah, I have been covering Canada negotiations this week. And, you know, if there's anything that Trump loves as much as tariffs, it's these ticking clocks. And we've had a couple of them with Canada. Tariffs on about $20 billion of Canadian goods were set to go into effect Tuesday at midnight.

But Trump delayed that for three more days for negotiations. Now the deadline is tonight at midnight. We still don't know what's going to happen as of taping. and it's hard to predict with Trump, but it seems like the U.S. is optimistic. They have some kind of deal to stop this. So the talks have been a lot about kind of the tit for tap measures that the two sides have been putting on each other over the past year after Trump initially put tariffs on Canada. But I think it's important that this is also kind of laying the groundwork and beginning

to address some of the issues in this bigger negotiation that's going on this year over the North American trade agreement. And U.S. officials want to wrap up those talks before the end of the year. So I'm going to be following that. I'm going to venture. This is not the last tariff deadline that we're going to see on that this year. Yeah, yeah, you think. All right, fair enough.

So that's Canada. Sudeep, here comes the first of my references to the marketing question. We're going to spend more time than we usually do on the podcast, talking about the Treasury Secretary. Secretary Bessent tried real hard to intervene in the bond market this week as the yield on the 30-year hit 5.3 and change percent, which is very high. The market doesn't seem to care what the Treasury Secretary thinks. Discuss, please. The market realizes that this Treasury Secretary knows what it's like on the other side of government interventions. You can't bring a water pistol to a bazooka fight, and they know you can't use $4 billion in a $2 trillion deficit

where the government's borrowing this much money and think you're going to actually have a meaningful impact. What they want to see is actual credibility from the people who are there. This is, uh, uh, it's not the same as the problem that the Fed has where there's a lot of confusion about what's the actual future course of Fed policy with dealing with inflation. But, uh, in this case, uh, the credibility is not that high. There, there were promises that inflation would be lower than it is. Uh, we're running well over three and a half percent. Uh, promises that deficits would be, uh, lower than they are. We went through all that Doge nonsense last year, and we have a two trillion.

After all of those empty promises, there were promises of higher oil production that we've had, and obviously a direct result of the Iran War, inflation is higher, sending bond yields higher, it's a problem all over the world. That needs actual solutions, and you can't just do a one-day intervention and think that's going to have any lasting impact because it won't. Honest, speaking of all over the world, it bears a mention here that lots of industrialized and modernized economies have political dysfunction. They have high debt levels. We're talking Japan. We're talking Europe. It is not just us. And so my question is, you know, I talked to Robin Brooks

this and I said, how worried are you about this? And he said, oh, you know, like a six or a seven. And I guess where are you? What do you think? Yeah, yeah. No, I think that's very wise. I mean, there are a lot of highly indebted countries around the world, you know, setting aside the U.S., which just surpassed 40 trillion. Japan, China, the EU, many of these countries are operating with huge debts and aging populations. And, you know, more and more of their budget obviously has to go to debt service. That forces governments to make really difficult choices about funding social programs, funding infrastructure, other things. And, of course, you know, results in stress on people trying to afford mortgages, companies borrowing.

So, you know, it does result in a tougher picture that definitely, raises some longer term worries. Sudeep, that $40 trillion in debt that Anna mentioned, the Treasury Secretary, here he is again popping up, came out today and said, you know what, or came out, I guess, yesterday, maybe two days ago. I forget, frankly, it's a blur. He said, yeah, you know, nothing magic about $40 trillion, which is true. It is just a number.

But then he said, we can grow our way out of it. And that's maybe not the case. We are definitely not seeing growth levels that would allow you to grow your way out of it. we're seeing growth levels that allow you to plow along, and that's not enough. This argument's been going on for so long that we need to grow our way out of it, which obviously does need to happen. But the deficit has taken off. This is the highest deficit we've seen in peacetime outside of COVID and emergency measures in wartime. But as a peacetime deficit, being this high, we're spending a trillion dollars on just interest

payments on the debt alone, that is going to require some other type of action. It will probably ultimately require the Fed and Treasury to get together and figure something out there, but it's not a good situation and you can't just say, oh, we're just going to have higher growth and it's all going to go away because it's not. It's going to really constrain policymaking for decades to come. Sorry, I think it's really, Sudibath. Different kind of handle on it now. Yeah, no, totally. I think it's interesting you said the Fed and the Treasury have to get together, Hello, Congress, right? Oh, absolutely. In Congress, this problem has taken off in the last 25 part because of the way tax policy has been driven in multiple administrations of just

total fear of dealing with this through tax policy. And if you want to cut taxes for everybody, eventually somebody will pay for it. But this is clearly an unsustainable path. All right, we got to go. I don't think we're using. used our full quota of bond market. Anyway, on a Swanson, New York Times. So deep ready at MS now. Wasted opportunities right there. Thanks, too. Thank you. Thanks, Scott.

Wall Street, today. Stocks were up. Oil was up. Bond yields were steady, which we're just going to go ahead and call the win. Details numbers when we get there. Credit work credit is due for the inspiration for this next story. The New York Times reported yesterday that some parts of this country are about to be hit with a massive new batch of lone star ticks, the really aggressive ones that can give you. you that extremely dangerous allergy to red meat?

It is not just public health and your mental well-being and tourism that suffer in those tick hotspots. Livestock and agriculture in general take a hit, too, as Marketplace's Caitlin Tan reports. Holly Gaff leads Old Dominion University's tick lab, and she's bracing for the hatch. You do get these larval bombs. It sounds awful. It is pretty awful. Yes, tick larval bombs.

Gaff says they look like pepper. And then imagine if each pepper flake has legs and starts to walk off. On to you. You can try getting them off with a lint roller. That's a tip from Becky Trout-Frixel at the University of Tennessee. She's a tick expert. When I was in graduate school, it was listed as one of the top five worst jobs in the country. Because of the disease risk, with climate change, ticks and their germs are exploding into more areas.

One study says it's easily a $13 billion hit to the last. livestock industry. University of Nebraska's Sean Cross says ranchers can be particularly vulnerable. It's not so much of, oh, I take some medical leave. It's if I'm not in the field or I'm not doing wherever it may be, this is impacting my livelihood. Especially with Alpha-Gal syndrome, which causes that red meat allergy. That's a big problem if you're, say, delivering a calf. Because the fluid from the cattle could trigger an allergic reaction. Scott Cummins is a medical doctor at the University of North Carolina Allergy Clinic. We've seen some people where they've transitioned their cattle farm to now they're raising emu and ostrich.

Apparently emu and ostrich kind of tastes like beef and their alpha gal safe. I'm Caitlin Tan for Marketplace. All right, Caitlin did bugs. Here come birds. An estimated 96 million Americans, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said a couple of years ago, are bird watchers who spend more than $100 billion a year on it. That's $100 billion with a bee. Some of them travel internationally to see exotic birds around the world.

Others find birds closer to home. Here's today's installment of our series My Economy. My name is Christopher Joe. I'm the owner of Connecting with Birds and Nature tours of Newborn, Alabama, and we are a multi-generational farm, which does eco-eco-economic. tourism on our property. A farm, unless you're going strictly to scale, you're not

going to quit your day job doing what you're doing. Dad is a retired ag teacher and basically the farm is kind of a passion project. My professional career, I am a district conservationist with the Natural Resources Conservation Service.

I work with landowners to try to get them to utilize their property. I kind of to have the bright idea or it just zapped me kind of like one of those aha moments of I should help our own farm. On the conversation with my oldest brother, me and him were talking about different things that we can do. He likes to cook.

My second brother, he's an artist. So we're just brainstorming. And I'm like, man, it would be neat to do like a tourism thing. We have probably six, seven miles of trails, wildlife areas. We have a creek that borders our northeast corner. Birdwatching was one that I was like, sounds kind of easy. I don't think we have to do much for that. Our first official tour was February of 2019,

and we're busing well past 3,000-something people at that farm since we started. We started a nonprofit as well. That's an educational component to it. So I'm giving school groups coming based off of them. teaching. I had a group from Texas to come. Two Mondays ago, they brought about 30 kids, and those kids had the time of their lives. All inner-city kids that may have never seen a black man on land. And dad, he loves it too, because he always said, well, who's coming down today? And when a charter bus pulls up and there are groups of kids coming off that bus, and he's just,

I can kind of see that twinkle in his eyes, too, because we're still making use of the farm. It really is a legacy thing, and then just making sure that the farm is sustainable for generations to come. That's Christopher Joe right there running birdwatching tours and some other stuff on his family's Black Angus Cattle Farm in New Bern, Alabama. Tell us, would you, about your family's multi-generational business, if you have one, or whatever else is going on with you in this economy. at place.org is where you can do that. Coming up. Oh my gosh, what didn't I learn? The world is a classroom, gang.

But first, let's do the numbers. Dow Industrials rebounded 517 points today, almost 1%. 53,277. The NASDAQ gained 113 points, about 4 tenths percent, 26,180. The S&P 500 added 33 points, also 4 tenths percent, 76 and 74. For the week, the Dow lost 8 tenths percent. The NASDAQ subtracted 2%. S&P 500 down about 1.4%. Caitlin Tan had the story on Tickonomics in this season, O the Tick.

Merg trades under the ticker MRK, makes a chewable dog treatment and cat treatment as well, called Bravecto. It ticked up 2.4%. Spectrum brands, ticker symbol there, SPB, makes repellents like cutter and black flag. It lifted 9, 10%. Also, did you know, there is an indicator called the NYSC Tick Index? measures the net difference between rising and falling stocks. Bond prices just because we've been talking about them. Here's my other uses of the phrase, by the way, bond market, bond market,

didn't want to go to waste. Yield on the tenure, up 4.73% you're listening to Marketplace. This is Marketplace. I'm Kai Risdahl. The unemployment rate in this economy, by the most common measure, was 4.1% in July. Historically, pretty good. But the Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks a bunch of other labor market parameters. as well. More than a quarter of everybody who is out of work right now has been looking for a job

for at least 27 weeks. Long-term unemployed is the official terminology. Unemployment benefits, meanwhile, only last about 26 weeks, and that's in the more generous states. Some states offer only 12. Marketplaces Samantha Fields has more on surviving as those job searches stretch on. When Will Thomas first got laid off last September from his job at a public benefit startup, he felt kind of relieved. In some respects, the job wasn't a stellar fit for me. The tech environment was new to me. And just the way that things were being run wasn't my favorite. But he was also aware that it wasn't a great time to be job searching, especially for policy jobs in D.C. So I knew that this was going to be a long and tough road.

But by long and tough road, Thomas, who's 38, figured maybe it would take him six, eight months to find a new job. It has been far worse than my expectations. Almost a year later, he is still looking. Lately, it has largely felt like screaming into the void. I've been a finalist for roles three different times. But never the finalist, at least not yet. We are at a kind of historic position in terms of how many people are long-term unemployed, unemployed for economic reasons.

Michelle Evermore at the National Employment Law Programme. Project says in addition to those who officially count as long-term unemployed, there's a growing number of people who are considered to have dropped out of the labor force, even though they would still like to be working. Between all of these numbers, people who are discouraged from looking, people who've dropped out of the labor force, people who are part-time, you're seeing a huge section of the labor force that's not where they want to be. And she says that can have a lasting negative impact on those people and on the economy. Catherine Maddox is acutely aware of that.

She lives in Alexandria, Virginia, and she's been out of work since April of last year. Just four days before she was set to start a communications job at the Department of Homeland Security. I got a call and an email all at once, and they said the job has been rescinded. You no longer have a position. She had already given notice at her job with the federal court system. Maddox knew the market was bad, but she thought, I know how to do this, and I'm a hustler, and I'll get a job. job quickly. Maybe it'll take four months, six months. But four months passed with no job offers,

beyond some freelance gigs here and there. Then six. Then her unemployment benefits ran out. Eventually, Maddox decided it was time to apply for a part-time job at an Aldi supermarket to make some money. She didn't get a call for that either. I had some savings, not a lot, and I have rated my 401K four times. It's been miserable. It's now been almost a year and a half, and she is still looking. When I got to a year, I have to tell you, they really need to add that into unemployment numbers. There is something that happens to you mentally after a year where you're like, there's no job for me. Though she really hopes there is.

Just across the river in D.C., Will Thomas is just about to hit that one-year mark, which he can't quite believe. He's surviving by working a few nights a week as a bouncer at his neighborhood gay bar. I was a regular there. It's two blocks away from my house. And so I knew they needed someone, and I knew I needed a job at least part-time. To help pay at least some of his bills and meet the work requirements for food stamps or SNAP, and soon for Medicaid, too. Working part-time has also helped Thomas extend his unemployment benefits long past when they typically would have run out. He only gets about $1 or $200 a week from unemployment. But that's still money I can throw at my landlord.

That's still money I can throw towards other bills. But even with that, plus the occasional contract gig and some help from his church, Thomas is still a little behind on rent. And he's just really ready to be working full-time and nutrition and food policy again, getting the kind of paycheck he was used to. It's one of those like, you want to be like, okay, put me in coach. I don't care who the coach is. I just want to be on the team again.

I'm Samantha Fields for Marketplace. Take a second, would you, and scroll through the apps on your phone for me. It's better than even money that you've got some kind of loyalty or rewards app from your favorite grocery store or a coffee place or a fast food chain. You get discounts and freebies, what have you. But as we all know, there ain't nothing actually free. Reese Rogers is a senior writer at Wired. Also, a user of the McDonald's app. Reese, it's good to have you on the program.

Thank you for having me today. So how long have you been using the McDonald's app and its rewards program, just so we have some sort of baseline here? Absolutely. At least a few years. Okay. And the company, of course, keeps a dossier on you because they have all your data and all this jazz. You requested to see it, which you can do here in California. What would you learn?

Oh, my gosh. What didn't I learn? I while when you sign up for any kind of customer loyalty app you know that there's going to be some kind of data collected

I had no idea that it was going to be this extensive and granular especially the predictive algorithms with it they were very specific with using this data

to model what my next purchase at McDonald's would be when it would be what I'm going to buy so I found this to be really illuminating. Illuminating and mildly terrifying. Oh, absolutely.

My partner would not stop making fun of me for my top orders being a Diet Coke, a spicy snack wrap, and the Grinch McShaker fry, which was like a limited time thing. If I knew you in real life, I'd make fun of you, too. Let me back up for a minute. Extensive and granular. So the granular part we've covered,

How is, I mean, was this like hundreds of pages? What was it? Yeah, this was a 515 page report. Far bigger than anything I expected when I placed this privacy request. And it was kind of hard to read. There was multiple privacy and data experts that I spoke to. And while many were excited that this kind of transparency is available to consumers, They also pushed back saying that actually understanding what was going on was still difficult, even with this giant document. Was it like technical language?

Is that what you mean? Absolutely. It was technical. And it was formatted not for readers consumption, right? It was a document for them to use to process, maybe use an AI to model what your next purchase could be. Right. So other than the embarrassment over them, you know, guessing what your favorite order is and all of that stuff. How did it make you feel?

I think it really made me feel like there's this power imbalance between the consumers and the companies. Even though I did sign up for this loyalty program, really seen the data, seen that I visited a certain McDonald's 61 times. They predicted that I was going to visit in the next six weeks, 2.16, and that I was going to spend exactly $29.15. Wow. It was eye-opening. But the actual data point that really made me feel called out the most and was really eye-opening was my customer attrition likelihood, which is the score that McDonald's gave me for how much I would ever stop being a customer.

Yeah. They gave me a zero. They predicted that I would never stop buying for McDonald's. Okay. So now that you know what they think, what are you going to do? I mean, I just kind of want to stop eating there just to prove the algorithm wrong. I haven't visited since I received the report. But if anything, I just want this to be kind of illuminating for consumers to say,

if you live in a state where you can request your data, I think you should. It's very interesting to look into this. And there's not that many people who are actually placing these requirements. It's in the 100. It's maybe low thousands. So if you have access to this, like definitely exercise your rights. You as a Californian can request that the company delete the data, did you? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I put in, you have to do separate requests for that. Of course you know. Yeah, I send a second request to have this all be deleted. Unbelievable. Just a crazy, crazy, creepy story. Rees Rogers are wired. Reese, thanks a lot. I appreciate

your time. Thank you so much for having me today. This final note on the way out today in which facts and context continue to be relevant when discussing this administration's economic policies. The president said on his social account today that he's going to let 300,000 metric tons of beef into the country tariff-free so as to lower currently high beef prices. One might reasonably infer then from that context, then he knows tariffs raise prices for American consumers. The president also said he's got commitments from those beef importers that it will be sold at 25% below market prices. The relevant fact here is that importers don't actually control retail prices, do they? Our theme music was composed by B.J. Leatherman Marketplace's executive producer is Nancy Fargolly. Joanne Griffith is the chief content officer.

Neil Scarborough is the vice president and general manager. I'm Kyle. I'll have yourselves. A great weekend, everybody. We will see you back here on Monday, all right? This is APM.