Morning Brew Daily - Oil Prices Soar Past $100 & Workers Are Flocking to ‘AI Man Camps’

Episode Date: March 9, 2026

Episode 795: Neal and Toby talk about the oil price crisis deepening as more Gulf producers slow their output. Then, the Feb jobs report showed a widespread and unexpected downturn in the labor market. For our weekend winners, an authorized photo shoot of Goldman Sachs junior bankers has upset the old heads. And AI ‘man camps’ offer golf and steaks to lure workers to build data centers. Finally, what you need to know in the week ahead.  Learn more at taxact.com/business-returns Join us for trivia! https://mbdtrivianight-march2026.splashthat.com/  Subscribe to Morning Brew Daily for more of the news you need to start your day. Share the show with a friend, and leave us a review on your favorite podcast app. Listen to Morning Brew Daily Here:⁠ ⁠⁠https://www.swap.fm/l/mbd-note⁠⁠⁠  Watch Morning Brew Daily Here:⁠ ⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@MorningBrewDailyShow⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Good morning brew daily show. I'm Neil Fryman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, the energy crisis just got real. Oil prices shot through $100 a barrel. Then the economy is shedding jobs left and right. It's Thursday, March 9th. Let's ride.

Good morning and welcome back to a week that's going to feel like spring is finally here. Thanks to daylight saving time, sure, we lost an hour of sleep, but sunset tonight in New York is nearly 7 p.m. But I want to start on the opposite coast. The Los Angeles Marathon was, held yesterday. And an announcement before the race was ruffling some feathers. Due to expected high temperatures, organizers said that runners could stop at mile 18 and still collect a finisher's medal. There is no shame in making a smart decision for your body, the marathon's website read,

but that didn't stop many people from shaming the decision. Toby, as a marathoner yourself, is this snowflake culture gone wild or a reasonable health measure? Thank you for sliding in a marathoner there. I appreciate that. Obviously, I was very against this when I first heard it, but I was poking through the marathon training subreddit and got some additional context beyond the weather that made me more sympathetic. One, L.A. is unique in that there are 3,000 middle school and high schoolers that run through a program

called Students Run L.A. And as some pointed out, kids are very metal-motivated, so this might have been done to take some of the pressure off of them. And then two, L.A. has a very weird course. The 18-mile mark isn't arbitrary. You actually pass the finish line at mile 18 and then have to double back, which would just be horrible for my mental state at that point. So logistically, 18 miles makes sense if you wanted to provide an off-ramp.

Understanding all of that, I definitely wouldn't have accepted a medal, though, because it would haunt me to look at it knowing I didn't actually complete the race. We do just have to touch on the winner of the race, though, because it was electric. American Nathan Martin beat Kenya's Michael Kimau by 0.01 seconds, which was the closest finish in L.A. Marathon. history. I'm sure the 18-mile finish line was just as close as well. And now a word from our sponsor, Tax Act. Toby, you're a small business owner. I am not. Oh, wait, you're totally right. I am. I forgot about my pickled wall shoe company for a second. Answers like that are why I don't trust

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2022, as the war in Iran halt shipments from the Gulf, presenting an imminent threat to the global economy. Crude prices skyrocketed 15% overnight, extending their historic rise last week when they jumped 35% for their biggest weekly gain on records dating back to 1983. Investors are responding to troubling developments over the weekend. Major producers, Kuwait, the UAE, and Iraq said they are cutting oil production because their storage tanks are full and they can't ship any fuel through the Strait of Hormuz, the critical rotaway, which is now effectively seen. sealed off. Qatar's energy minister warned that oil prices could spike to $150 if the status quote, adding that the conflict in the Middle East could, quote, bring down the economies of the

world. It's already hitting the U.S. economy, where gas prices have soared in response to the oil supply shock, the last seven days brought one of the top 10 largest weekly increases ever in U.S. gas prices, rising 41 cents a gallon. Before the war started, the national average was $2.80 a gallon. Now it's over $3.40 and well on its way to climbing above $4.4.4. $4. President Trump has downplayed the price surge, writing that a gain in, quote, short-term oil prices was a small price to pay for taking out Iran's nuclear capabilities and suggested they'll come back down soon. Wall Street has a less optimistic view. The Dow just posted its worst week in almost a year, while the S&P 500 is now negative for 2026 after tumbling on Friday. Things don't look any better this morning. As of 6 a.m. Eastern stock futures are way down. Toby, lots of alarm bells going off, and energy crisis can quickly metastasize and, into an economic crisis. Yeah, oil is now about 50% more expensive than it was before the United States and Israel attacked Iran on February 28th.

It was whiplash over the last few 24 hours, honestly, when the oil markets opened on Sunday night, oil prices rocketed past $120 a barrel. And everyone's like, holy moly, we went to bed, we woke up this morning, and they actually started falling once again. That's because we got a piece of news early this morning that are mellowing. that helped mellow things out. The Financial Times reported that the group of seven nations were planning a call on Monday to discuss the release of oil from their strategic reserves, which would help exacerbate some of the supply crunch that we are in right now.

And if you look even further down the line, September oil futures are still trading around $70 a barrel, which shows that traders are still optimistic that things get resolved. I just want to put this in historical context. There isn't any. This is the largest oil shock we've seen in history. 20% of global output has been taken off the market. It's 20 million barrels a day that was flowing through the straight-up Hormuz in normal times. It's just not flowing anymore. 20 million barrels a day just dwarfs any other historical comparison. The second biggest oil shock was the Iranian Revolution in 1978. That took off 5.5 million barrels per day. Some of these quotes from analysts who cover the energy sector are pretty mind-boggling. Mizzuho's head of

FICC's strategy, Jordan Rochester said, this may be a war, but it's also perhaps the biggest energy supply logistics crisis we've ever seen in modern history. And then JPMorgan Chase analyst Natasha Keneva said, in the whole written history of the straight, it has never been closed ever to me. It was not just the worst case scenario. It was an unthinkable scenario. So you have some energy analysts saying we're going up to $150 barrels, some saying we see this being resolved, not in the short term, but in the median term. Still, oil prices remain. elevated at over $100 a barrel this morning? The world is more resilient this time around, even dating back to the 1970s, because the crude

market is just more flexible. There's less long-term contracts. Traders can push cargo to places that they need at a greater flexibility than in time's path. China's also has a big stockpile of oil these days enough to cover 200 days of imports. The U.S. obviously has turned from a net importer to a net exporter when it comes to oil. Saudi Arabia has different ways to get oil out of the country, not just through the Strait of Hormuz. They have a pipeline that reaches its Western codes. Obviously, all of these measures are half measures. It's not the same as opening the strait itself. And it does show that which parts of the world are very exposed to a supply shock like this, which is Asia. Myanmar has launched a rationing system for cars. Thailand has

suspended some of its fuel exports. And then the Philippines are actually having people turn off computers at lunch and set their air conditioning no lower than 75 degrees Fahrenheit in order to ration their energy. Huge global ramifications. Now, I said earlier that an energy crisis can quickly become a broader economic crisis. How can that happen? Well, I want you to look at one thing, diesel. So diesel prices are skyrocketing far more than crude prices.

They just recorded their largest single price increase ever recorded, which was $0.22. cents last Friday. And the reason that diesel can impact everything in the economy is that everything that you buy essentially gets to the store or gets to your house on diesel trucks, trucks that run on diesel. So if diesel is skyrocketing, which it is, then that's essentially a tax on everything you can buy. Even agriculture, diesel runs the agriculture industry because farmers use diesel to power tractors and combines. So essentially, inflation can go way up as diesel prices go up because it just infiltrates everything in the economy, every consumer product and every industrial product. And then just to throw another wrench in the supply chain, jet fuel is also

going up. You know, what do planes run on? Planes move stuff around the world. Jet fuel prices have risen 58% since the start of the war. So that's going to mess with things getting to your home, but also your summer vacation plans. Airlines are struggling right now, as are the cruise industry, but maybe not is impactful on the entire global economy as the other two industries that we mentioned. What is the big picture here? Like, what are we looking at in terms of this war with Iran? It is not ending any time as soon. Iran selected Mohatba Khomeini as the country's next supreme leader. That is the successor to his father, Ali Khomeini, although he has seen as potentially even more hardline than his father. So the Israel and the U.S. have said that they would not accept him as a new

leader. So again, no immediate end in sight. Moving on, February's jobs report dropped on Friday, and it was enough to make a Pisces cry. The economy unexpectedly lost 92,000 jobs, one of the largest declines since the pandemic, while the unemployment rate ticked up to 4.4%. It was a whiplash-inducing report, not only because it surprised economists who forecasted a 55,000 jobs gain, but also because it's a sharp reversal from January when the economy added 126,000 jobs. Now, there are signs that this was potentially an aberration. February had horrible weather, which factors into hiring choices for industries like hospitality and construction.

There was also a physician strike that dented the only reliable employment engine in the labor market, the healthcare industry. But the losses were pretty broad-based with payrolls sinking in the government, manufacturing and tech sectors too. given that, it's looking more like January was the aberration, since the report also showed December was revised down from a gain of $48,000 to a loss of $17,000. Neil, a lot to unpack here, but one can't help but think about the Fed here, which is now dealing with accelerating price growth due to the war with Iran, pushing up energy costs,

and what looks to be a very weak jobs market. Yeah, companies aren't hiring. There's too much uncertain day. They haven't been hiring for almost a year now. The U.S. has lost jobs since May 2025. The only industry that's gained any jobs and is keeping the job market somewhat afloat is health care, the 4.4% unemployment rate while still pretty low is one of the highest rates since 2021.

Young workers and workers of color are struggling the most in this job market. Blue collar workers getting absolutely smashed. Construction lost 11,000 jobs manufacturing, lost 12,000 jobs, leisure and hospitality. That employs about one in 10 American workers lost. 27,000 jobs. You go down the line. It was just a horrible report all around the board. Yeah, Omar Sharif, the president of Inflation Insights LLC, which is a great name for a firm, said, this is about a labor market that is so soft, it cannot withstand a strike of 31,000 physicians in health care because no one else is hiring. We have talked a lot about how technically we were getting jobs gains, but if you look deeper,

like only one industry was propping it up. And now that a single strike happened, it kind of tanked the entire labor market. It's also maybe shows that companies are falling through on some of the layoffs that they were planning a few years ago. They've, or not even years ago, a few months ago, a lot of people have been saying artificial intelligence is going to eat into white-collar workforces. Maybe this is them falling through on those AI promises. So you are right, though, that you do not want young people to struggle to find a job because

that's kind of the bedrock of the labor market right now. It seems like the labor market had found its footing a little bit with, that blowout January report, turns out it is like Bambi on ice still. And you mentioned the Fed. The job just got a lot harder. It was already hard to begin with in this particular economy. But you have the war in Iran, which leads to higher inflation. That supports rates staying where they are. But then you have a weakening, a deteriorating labor market here that bolsters the case for a rate cut. The Fed is meeting later this month and will probably hold rate steady. But they're between Iraq and a hard place. Every single maneuver that they can

make, we'll probably send something in the wrong direction elsewhere in the economy. We also talk about one job that I don't think anybody wants right now, which is a TSA officer. So I don't know if you saw this over the weekend, but there were insane lines at a couple airports, some of the busiest in the United States. Hobby Airport in Houston, insane lines. They told passengers to arrive as early as five hours before their flight. Security wait times were much longer than three hours. Hartfield Jackson in Atlanta and the New Orleans International. airport also said that passengers should arrive at least three hours early because TSA officers

are not getting paid right now. Remember, we are still in a partial government shutdown. They just collected their paychecks. They just got 30% of their pay because DHS is not being funded. And then next weekend, they're going to miss their second paycheck. So some are calling out sick, sick because they're not getting paid and it's leading to absolute chaos this weekend at airports. I mean, you combine the TSA lines with the fact that jet fuel prices are rising and that gas prices are rising. You can't go by car or plane anywhere. I'm walking. I'm running. You're stopping off in mile 18. Yeah, at least 18 miles. All right, we're going to take a quick break and come back with our winners of the weekend right after this. Neil, I'm ready to make an announcement. Toby, we all know. It's okay that you're afraid of horses.

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And by understanding your body, you can adopt behaviors that help you feel and perform at your best every day. Try whoop on for size at join.org.com slash brew daily. That's join. dot whoop.com slash brew daily. Neil, have you ever had a deal with 10 of something all at once? Yeah, live vs. And let me tell you, big outchies. Well, managing that many campaigns all at once can mean big outchies for those in the agency world. That's why there's Disney campaign manager, With one unified dashboard, it lets you launch and manage every client campaign in one place with reporting that highlights insights insights vast. Built-in optimization feeds those insights back into future planning, helping agencies deliver strong results.

Get started today at Disneycampaignmanager.com. That's Disneycampaignmanager.com. Let's head to our winners of the weekend, the segment where we picked two things that didn't have to change their clocks because they never changed them in the first place. I won the pre-show arm wrestling match, so I get to go first. And my winner is AI man camps. As data center construction expands into sparsely populated rural areas, Bloomberg reports that companies are setting up so-called man camps to lure hesitant dudes

to build the giant structures. The man camps, more politely known as workplace hubs, are temporary dorm-like campuses adjacent to construction projects that house hundreds or even thousands of workers at a time. There are a function of data centers being increasingly built in far-flung areas, such as remote Louisiana, Texas, and Indiana that don't have existing housing or infrastructure to accommodate all the employees needed to set them up. Working in construction far from your family in the middle of nowhere is not the most desirable job.

So according to Bloomberg, companies that operate the man camps have been rolling out the red carpet with dude-focused amenities to lure workers, including free steak dinners, gyms, golf simulators, and ping pong rooms. Tell me, man camp sounds like a fun home way from home until some guy ruins it by pulling out his guitar at the campfire and playing Wonderwall. I wish I could play my guitar out of man camp. Let's go back to the labor market, actually, because the Bureau of Labor Statistics kind of forecasted what are going to be the jobs that drive employment growth over the next few years. And it does look to be construction. All jobs are projected to grow 3%, but construction trades are

projected to grow 6%, which is double the average. Electricians specifically are projected to grow 9%. So this is maybe the new hospitality. industry because, or the new healthcare industry, because as this AI buildout needs to happen, you need people to build these data centers, and it looks like man camps are going to be the place where that happens. It's also a really good gig. Not only do you have the really fun perks, like, you know, free steak, but the average electrician wage, if you're just a normal electrician, is 30 bucks an hour. A data center electrician wage is $130 an hour, according to ZipRecruiter. So kind of a good game to get.

I'm sure your fiance will absolutely love you, headn off to Man Cap to build a data center in the absolute middle of nowhere. What's interesting is this is pretty much a carbon copy repeat of what happened in the 2010s during the shale boom. There was huge boom in oil rigging in the Permian Basin, which is West Texas and New Mexico. So they had to build all these things and get oil workers to work in these places very much in the middle of nowhere in West Texas. think Friday night lights. So a bunch of companies back then also set up a man camps and they're just kind of repeating the same playbook. And you mentioned that they are happening in very remote parts of the country. So remote in fact that sometimes it doubles the country, the county's population when a man camp descends upon it. I'm thinking about Dickens County, Texas. Not a lot

going on there. But when you, when they added a 1500 bed site, that did double the county's population right there. So it does lead to questions, though, of, hey, these man camps descend on this place. It brings an economic boom for a short time. But what happens when that data center leaves? It's not a long-term man camp. You're not going to live in these dorm like environs for a long time. So it is kind of a blessing and a curse for these smaller rural areas.

My winner of the weekend is a group of finance fellows that did a little photo shoot and broke some unspoken Wall Street rules in the process. of Wall Street's various insidery do's and don't. One of the biggest one for junior employees is keep a low profile. But for young guys working at Goldman Sachs, Barclays, and PWC, decided to do the opposite, posing for a glossy photo shoot in designer suits at a famous Wall Street Steakhouse. The shoot was published by Interview, a magazine founded by Andy Warhol, and the article was titled, Meet the Finest Boys in Finance, and it was exactly as cringy as it sounds.

One talked about blowing $3,000 on a Montclair jacket they didn't even need. Another about working until their Excel spreadsheet froze at 3 in the morning. These answers were given in between espousing Sage financial advice like telling readers to live below your means, all as they were lounging on velvet couches in Celine suits. The internet saw it and the memes immediately flowed. Goldman Sachs saw it and immediately led it be knowing that nobody in their press office had signed off on any of this. One of the guys, a consultant named DeMar Johnson, who works for PWC, said, my initial reaction was, oh, they're going to clown us because we think we're pretty, and that's exactly what happened.

Neil, this struck a chord with a lot of people because everything was just so extra from the quotes to the fits, the style of the photography. Should we do a little shoot? I think we should pass, Toby, based on the reaction here. Finance Youngings flaunting their wealth isn't new, but it has always been frowned upon. Last week, the former CEO of Goldman Sachs, Lloyd Blank Fine, published a memoir. And there's an episode in this particular memoir show. He recalled a 1986 incident in which a 31-year-old retail broker at Goldman, who his name is Jim Kramer, was boasting about his wealth of the New York Times.

He told the Times back then, there isn't anything I see in a store that I can't buy. And then Blank Find said he was gone from the firm shortly thereafter. Kramer went on to have a pretty good career after. he was sacked at Goldman Sachs. But it's just one example of how if you kind of upstage your bosses, whether it's by flaunting your wealth to the media, then the firm is going to take notice and they did this time too. I just want to go through some of the more notable quotes from this piece as well.

Mason Clark, who works at Goldman Sachs as an investment baking analyst said his idea of hell is mediocrity. He also talked about the hours that he works and he did say, I work until my Excel crashes. Clay Nelson, which is the sales trading associate at Goldman Sachs on his idea of heaven. He said it's a continuous DJ set, everybody dancing and having the time of their lives. I wonder if that actually was a little homage to David Solomon, the CEO of Goldman Sachs, who is a DJ. He moonlights as a DJ, so maybe he'll keep his jobs because he's kind of, you know, alluding to the culture that David Solomon likes as well.

I do think it's very funny, too. I was looking at the LinkedIn that some of these guys. one of them worked as a Morning Brew campus ambassador. So I think there's just painting the archetype of the person that always profile. What are you saying about Morning Brew? I don't know. I'm just good for him or good for us. I don't know. And I don't know. One reason that I think this also struck a court is that first of all, no one dresses like that on Wall Street anymore. No one's wearing these designer suits

and these designer bags and these designer shoes. It's a much more casual atmosphere. here since the 1980s and Wall Street, the movie, you know, showed, depicted this type of dressing. It's just not like that. People wear Jay Crewe and Lou Lemon. It's supposed to be this understated thing. And second of all, yes, these guys are making a lot of money, but they could not afford what they were wearing in the photo shoot. This magazine just gave it to them. So for those reasons, this all was a bit extra. We'll see what happens with these fellas and whether Goldman Sachs is going to crack down. Okay, it's Monday. So here's what you need to know to stay ahead in the week ahead. on Wall Street, nerves will be high and market moves will almost exclusively be driven by developments

from the war in the Middle East until Wednesday, that is, when the monthly inflation report drops for February. Inflation was tamer than expected to start out the year in January, though any hopeful report for February may be shrugged off by investors since it doesn't account for the spike in oil prices to begin March. Which is why a surprise spike in inflation could be extremely scary because if that happens without the shock of the Iranian war being, factored in, then that is big alarm bells going off as well, especially when you compare it with the weak jobs data that was released on Friday. That brings up fears of the S word, which is stagflation, which could be something you hear us talking about going forward. In sports,

it's time to start thinking about your March madness bracket with college basketball conference tournaments running all week leading up to Selection Sunday on March 15th. Toby, you're going to have to catch me up on the contenders this year because I have not been locked in this season. It's actually very similar to last year. We have four historically strong teams as well. Duke, Michigan, Arizona, Florida. Not Maryland. You're close. I will

eat something of our listeners choosing if one of those four teams don't win. That's how confident. That's how outlier of a year we have once again with just four teams head and shoulders above the rest. You can maybe toss Yukon in there as well, although they just lost to Marquette over the weekend.

For the women, Texas just upset South Carolina. So I like them as a sneaky pick. All right. Well, what I have been locked into is the World Baseball Classic, which is already generating tons of buzz and wraps up pool play on Wednesday before the quarterfinals begin. The vibes are absolutely incredible. You have to watch videos of this.

There have been a couple of walkoff homers already. The Japanese and Dominican fans are next level and team Italy, even as an espresso machine in their dugout. I open X and I see a random walk off every other day. seeing the Netherlands hit dingers is just so hilarious to me because you just don't associate D.D. Gregorius. I know. It is very funny. So I only see the highlights though. Are you watching games on the streaming service? Is there anywhere to find them? No, I'm watching the highlights. Once the quarterfinals come and we get USA, Japan, hopefully in the championship game, I will absolutely

be watching. And then finally, it's Oscars Week ahead of the Academy Awards on Sunday. Not the worst idea to set aside some time to watch as many nominated movies as possible so you can get all the references. I have to ask, too, have you been up to date with this Timothy's Salome backlash that's broken out over the weekend? I'll catch people up. Timis-Shalemay is under a lot of heat right now because of the conversation he had with Matthew McConaughey about the need to keep movie theaters alive. And in it, he said, I don't want to be working in ballet or opera or things where it's like, hey, keep this thing alive, even though it's like no one cares about this anymore. So that got a lot of people up in arms. But a bunch of opera and ballets are leaning into it and cashing in.

on it. The Seattle Opera used the actor's name as a promo code, posting on social. Use promo code Timothy to save 14% off select seats. And then the English National Opera also offered free tickets to Timothy to help him fall back in love with opera. So you just check this morning, Michael B. Jordan has surged ahead on prediction markets when it come to Best Actor. I wonder if this has anything to do with it. All right. We'll always be selling opera houses. That is all the time we have. Thanks for starting your morning with us and have a wonderful Monday. If you'd like to reach us, an email to MorningBrewdaily at MorningBrew.com or DM us on Instagram at Embeddyly Show. Let's roll the credits.

Emily Milliron is our supervising producer. Raymond Lue is our senior producer. Our producer is Olivia Graham and our associate producer is Olivia Lake. Hair and makeup is tapping the Strategic Mascara Reserve. Devin Emery is our president and our show is a production of Morning Brew. Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.