Tangle - Making sense of February's job numbers.

Episode Date: March 11, 2026

On Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported that nonfarm payroll employment decreased by 92,000 in February and unemployment rose from 4.3% to 4.4%. Healthcare, along with leisure and hospitality, accounted for the majority of losses, though the BLS recorded losses in nine of the 14 sectors it tracks. The numbers fell short of economists’ expectations, raising concern about the stability of the labor market. Ad-free podcasts are here!To listen to this podcast ad-free, and to enjoy our subscriber only premium content, go to ReadTangle.com to sign up!Did you know?We’ve got more offerings than just the Tangle newsletter. The daily email is where you get long-form, deeply considered analysis of the day’s big issues. But for up-to-the-minute coverage, breaking news, video clips and snap analysis from our team, you should follow our Instagram and sign up for Subtext. Both are completely free and provide two of the best ways to connect personally with the Tangle staff and community. For even more community engagement, check out our Reddit page. You can read today's podcast⁠ ⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠, our “Under the Radar” story ⁠here and today’s “Have a nice day” story ⁠here⁠.You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Take the survey: What do you think the latest jobs report tells us about the U.S. economy? Let us know.Our Executive Editor and Founder is Isaac Saul. Our Executive Producer is Jon Lall.This podcast was written by: Ari Weitzman and audio edited and mixed by Dewey Thomas. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Senior Editor Will Kaback, Lindsey Knuth, Bailey Saul, and Audrey Moorehead. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle podcast, a place where you get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking and a little bit of our take. I'm your host for today, Tango's managing editor, Ari Weitzman, and today's edition is about the February Jobs Report. Got some concerning numbers, and since we're talking about numbers, you get me today. We're going to unpack them, do our thing across left and right, and then I'll give you my take later on in the show. But first, just wanted to give you all a little bit of an update in case you didn't know. We have a text messaging service. It's called subtext.

You can sign up using a link in the description of this episode. You can also follow us on Instagram or our Reddit page if you want to get more up-to-date information and other areas where you can participate in commentary about Tangle. more than just the podcast, more than just the newsletter, and check us out across channels if you are interested. All right, with that said, I'm going to send it over to Audrey, who's going to give us the introduction and left-right for today's story before I'm back for my take. Thanks, Ari, and welcome everyone. Let's start with today's quick hits. Number one, the U.S. military carried out what Defense Secretary Pete Hegeseth called its, quote, most intense day of strikes in Iran. U.S. Central Command also said that

that it had attacked 16 Iranian vessels believed to be laying mines near the Strait of Hormos. Separately, White House Press Secretary Carolyn Levitt said that the U.S. Navy had not escorted an oil tanker through the strait, after Energy Secretary Chris Wright said that it had in a now-deleted social media post. Number two. Republican candidate Clay Fuller and Democratic candidate Sean Harris will advance to a runoff in a special election to fill the seat vacated by former Republican representative Marjorie Taylor Green in Georgia. President Donald Trump endorsed Fuller, a district attorney. Number three, Senate Majority Leader John Toon said Senate Republicans lack the votes to abolish the filibuster or force Democrats to use a talking filibuster, requiring them to actively hold the Senate floor in debate

in an effort to pass the Save America Act. Number four. The Senate voted 89 to 9 to advance a bill that aims to increase the speed and lower the cost of new home construction. The chamber is expected to hold a final vote on pass in the coming days, after which the bill would go to the house. Number five. Two suspects allegedly discharged firearms at the U.S. consulate in Toronto on Tuesday morning and fled the scene. Authorities said no one was injured, but the shooting is being investigated as a national security incident. We are back with some breaking economic data, and it is big. The U.S. economy unexpectedly

lost 92,000 jobs in February. The unemployment rate inched higher to 4.4%. On Friday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that non-farm payroll employment decreased by 92,000 in February, and unemployment rose from 4.3% to 4.4%. Health care, along with leisure and hospitality, accounted for the majority of losses, though the BLS recorded losses in nine of the 14 sectors it tracks. The numbers fell short of economists' expectations, raising concern about the stability of the labor market. The BLS is the agency within the Department of Labor responsible for measuring market activity, working conditions, price changes, and productivity in the U.S. economy.

Every month, the Bureau compiles an employment report from a monthly survey of about 631,000 worksites selected to represent all U.S. employers. The initial numbers released by the BLS are based on partial data for the first portion of a month and revised as data from more work sites and the rest of the month becomes available. The losses in the healthcare industry,

which has grown significantly in the past 12 months, come after a weeks-long strike by roughly 31,000 Kaiser Permanente employees in Hawaii in California, which ended on February 24th. In Friday's report, the BLS also revised job data for December and January. December's payroll figure was lowered by 65,000

from a gain of 48,000 to a loss of 17,000. January's gains were decreased from 130,000 to 126,000. In a quote to CNBC, Mary Daly, President of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, said, I think it just tells us that the hopes that the labor market was steadying, maybe that was too much. We also have inflation printing above target and oil prices rising. How long they last, we don't know. But both of our goals are risks now, and we have to keep our eyes on both. Labor Secretary, Lori Chavez-Duremer, said the economy is still strong,

and February's poor jobs numbers are not part of a broader trend. In a statement, Chavez-Duremer wrote, While record-breaking strikes in bad winter weather dragged down February non-farm employment, the unemployment rate held steady. Democratic lawmakers suggested the drop in employment is due to President Trump's mishandling of the economy. Ways and Means Committee, ranking member Richard E. Neal, a Democrat from Massachusetts, said, quote, the warning signs about this economy have been flashing for months. Now the data has caught up with them, and the verdict is clear. Trump's policies are a disaster for the economy. Today, we'll explore reactions from the right and the left to the latest employment numbers. And then I'll pass it off

to managing editor Ari We'll write's written for his take. We'll be right back after this quick break. First up, what the ride is saying. The ride is mixed on the jobs report, with some arguing the economy isn't as bad as the report suggests. Others suggest the jobs numbers reflect bad policy, and some argue that the numbers show the public sentiment was right all along. In the daily caller, Alfredo Ortiz argued the American economy, is much stronger than the Jobs Report suggests. February job loss is due to several factors that don't reflect the strength of the underlying small business economy.

Mainly, the worst winter storm since 1996 paralyzed the Northeast, trapping people in their homes, shutting down job sites, and closing retail doors. Generally, the Bureau of Labor Statistics highlights such large external events affecting job creation in a special section of the Jobs Report, but not this time. Any analysis of the February Jobs Report needs to,

to include this angle. However, BLS did note another external factor responsible for job losses, widespread strike activity in the healthcare sector. A decline in health care jobs is overdue and not necessarily a bad thing. However, in positive news, the jobs report shows real wages continued to rise, increasing 3.8% over the last year, more than 50% faster than inflation. That's a stark contrast to the Biden administration when living standards declined month after month. This real wage growth is helping Americans overcome the Biden affordability crisis. Republican small business tax cuts, including restored immediate expensing, a permanent 20% Main Street deduction, and locked in lower rates will set the economy up for

a strong 2026 as the spring hire season begins. The Wall Street Journal editorial board responded to a Friday economic panic attack. There's no denying the February report was lousy. The question is what to make of the declines. The monthly job data has been noisy lately, and the household survey was less gloomy. That survey showed the number of workers employed part-time for economic reasons declined by some one million over the past two months, and the unemployment rate has remained more or less steady at 4.4%.

The labor market has been cooling, with health care and social assistance driving most gains. Job growth notably stalled after President Trump began his tariff barrage last April, which created economic uncertainty and raised business costs. His immigration raids have reduced the supply of workers, especially in construction. Many employers say that an aging population and skills gap makes it hard to find workers in the trades. And rising productivity, 2.8% in the last year, may also mean employers need fewer workers and could explain why wage growth has remained strong, despite a slowdown in hiring. In the Washington Post, Jim Garrity said, look who is wrong about the economy now.

In his 2024 state of the union address, Biden boasts. our economy is literally the envy of the world. Yet Americans were unimpressed with both the aging Biden and the state of the economy during his term. Then Donald Trump took the presidential oath of office for a second time and declared the golden age of America begins right now. But the net effect was no change. And overall, in the Pew Research Center's latest survey,

just 28% of U.S. adults rate economic conditions as excellent or good, while 72% say they are only fair or poor. Friday's jobs numbers brought evidence suggesting that the gloomy types accurately saw a weakness in the economy that the official numbers obscured. Why are Americans economically gloomy? Because it feels like the pace of change is accelerated well beyond our ability to keep up. We can live with a dynamic economy, but we also want some stability and predictability in our lives. A president and his administration can't control a lot of things about the economy, but they can usually control their own statements, decisions, and policy choices. Now for what the left is saying. The left broadly argues Trump's tariffs and military actions are hurting the job market.

Some suggest weather could have affected the month's numbers. Others say Trump's immigration tactics haven't been beneficial for U.S. workers. In MS Now, Philip Bump argued that Trump's bragging about the economy doesn't match reality. Trump's re-election in 2024 was powered heavily by the surging prices that followed the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, a surge that Trump promised to reverse. But, in part because he couldn't, he hasn't. As a result, only 33% of Americans approve of his handling of the cost of living

with two-thirds disapproving. Trump and his administration's insistence that economic problems are fleeting, that affordability is an invented issue or that an economic boom is imminent or underway, simply don't match Americans' actual experience. Friday's jobs report showed a decline in unemployment rather than ongoing growth.

Trump's decision to launch military strikes on Iran upended the always unsteady market for oil, rippling out into markets broadly. The extent to which presidential policy affects the economy has long been debated. But in this case, and at this moment, it's clear that Trump himself is having a robust effect on the trends he is pretending don't exist. For the Center for Economic Policy and Research, Dean Baker said, Bad Jobs Report, blame it on the weather. It wasn't that February weather was especially bad,

that January's weather was likely better than a normal January. This could help to explain the better than expected jobs numbers in January. The weather was better than normal in the northeast and Midwest in the second half of December and first half of January. This means that businesses that might ordinarily have been forced to close for a few days because of snow, were able to stay open throughout the period. Let's take December to February together, so we remove the impact of an unusually mild January.

Average drop growth over these three months was 6,000. Many of us are debating how much job growth we need in the absence of immigration to keep pace with the growth of the labor force. Most estimates put the number in the range of 30 to 60,000 a month. And we did see some evidence of labor market weakening in the February report, most obviously in the slight uptick in the unemployment rate to 4.4%. In Bloomberg, Justin Fox suggested the native-born jobs boom was a mirage. An estimated 130,000, 985,000 Native-born Americans had jobs in February, according to the Employment Report released Friday.

That is better than nothing, but a far cry from the huge gains in Native-born employment that the Bureau of Labor Statistics was reporting last year. I argued a couple of times last year that the Native-born jobs boom was a statistical mirage, so in some sense, it's nice to see my suppositions confirmed. But it's also a dispiriting indication that the Trump administration's deportation campaign doesn't seem to have left anybody better off, at least not yet. The mirage resulted from the interaction between how the BLS estimates population for the purposes of its employment reports and the effects of the administration's deportation campaign. I suspect the employment numbers are still being skewed a bit by immigrants both legal and illegal, avoiding CPS survey takers or fudging their answers out of fear of being turned into immigration authorities.

But for the moment at least, the illusion of a native-born jobs boom has vanished. That wraps it up for what the right and the left are saying, so now let's head to Ari for his take. Thanks, Audrey. That's it for what the left and right are saying, which brings me to my take. There's no way around it. This is a very bad jobs report. The U.S. economy lost 92,000 jobs in February. Unemployment ticked up to 4.4 percent.

It's 13th consecutive month of budget. above the 4% threshold. Figures for January and December were revised downward by combined 69,000. Meanwhile, the latest CPI, which measures inflation, was up 2.4% over the last 12 months, even as the Fed continues to chase its elusive post-pandemic 2% benchmark. And all the while, consumer sentiment, even after four straight months of improvement, remains well below where it was a year ago. Extrapulating from whole data is relatively easy to forecast gloom on the horizon for the U.S. economy.

The lack of optimism from the usual pro-Trump pundits following this report speaks as loudly as the almost gleeful descriptions of just how bad Trump's promised golden age has been from the president's usual critics. The negative case for the economy is relatively easy to make, and it looks like this. Going back to Joe Biden's presidency, economic sentiment has been low. A lot of that was driven by inflation as well as concerning personal financial metrics like the high cost of gasoline and low rate of personal savings. After some improvement at the end of Biden's term and the beginning of Trump's, gasoline is once again high while personal savings are going back down. Trump's deportation agenda is driving out low-wage employees,

which we can see in the lethargic agriculture and hospitality industries. And since healthcare has been the only reliably strong sector, the economy is in a tenuous position. One large strike could and did set our numbers back and cause ripple effects that can't be absorbed elsewhere. Two more disruptions are poised to deliver a twin coup de grace to our economy, tariffs and war. In theory, if tariffs were working, investment in manufacturing would increase,

along with federal revenues to displace fired federal workers. That investment would take time at least a year or to show up in jobs reports. Instead, February's numbers are the worst sign yet for that theory. 11,000 jobs were lost from transportation and warehousing, and 12,000 were lost from manufacturing. We could be getting the worst of all worlds. Manufacturing continues to post losses. Federal employees are losing their jobs. Revenue from tariffs is flatlining and will likely have to be repaid, and yet the federal budget expands.

Today's economic environment is one of disruption and uncertainty, which will discourage investors from building in America and reduce the likelihood of those manufacturers. jobs coming in future reports. The jobs numbers bear that out, and there's no end to this policy of disruptive or theoretical tariffs in sight. Even though the Supreme Court recently found Trump's reciprocal tariffs to be unconstitutional, the president responded by announcing more tariffs under different authority. Many of us were bracing for the impact of tariffs to come as a traumatic thud. Instead, it's been a weight around the ankles of the economy, constantly slowing progress. Meanwhile, the war in Iran is causing the price of crude oil to spike.

If the war continues and it doesn't show any sign of stopping, those prices will remain high. And remember, high crude oil prices mean much more than just high gas prices. Oil is the price of economic agency. More expensive oil means higher shipping costs and higher manufacturing costs, along with higher commercial travel. If tariffs are weight around the ankles, then oil prices are another around the neck, and there's only so much weight we can take. And that's the negative case. But if I were to make the positive case, it would look like this.

We should be careful not to read too much into one report. For one thing, the decrease from January to February coincided with bad weather. When the weather's bad, we'd expect to see job site cancellations that impact exactly the industries that showed signs of struggle. Second, the job losses in health care may actually signal some job gains when you account for the now concluded 31,000 person strike at Kaiser Permanente. Not only were those losses temporary, and they will show up as growth in the next report, but striking workers are a sign of a labor force with leverage.

This temporary disruption ended as a net positive for workers in this industry, producing a deal for better salaries and better benefits. Lastly, as I wrote the last time we covered jobs data, the Bureau of Labor Statistics has quietly improved its predictive model. So we should expect these numbers not to face as much of a dreaded downward revision as past reports numbers have. And as an aside, January was revised downward by only 4,000 jobs. And it's entirely possible these figures get revised upward in next month's report. When you zoom out even further, you can see a job market starting to stabilize.

Not only are hourly wages and inflation moving in the right direction, but job losses are starting to flatten out. As Robert Armstrong wrote in the financial time, As a measure of cyclical activity in the job market, we like to look at private employment without health care and social assistance. On that front, you can see an improving trend, towards less job losses in the six-month rolling average, but you have to squit a bit. Furthermore, hourly wages are continuing their post-pandemic rate of increase. Put differently, wage growth is outpacing inflation, and it has been for the past two years. On top of that, if you were particularly bullish on artificial intelligence,

You could even see productivity gains from AI in the latest jobs numbers. All in all, the labor market may be bearing some strain, but it has some legs and is getting stronger. So is the February report a signal of a strong jobs market or a weak one? Saying this doesn't take a lot of scale as a media analyst, but you can easily look at these negative and positive cases and say that both are true. The labor market is lopsided towards a few industries and tariffs and war are going to seriously. drastically drag down our economy, all things you can criticize Trump for. But wage growth remains high, business investment is healthy, and our metrics are improving all things that you can credit Trump for. February's report is the starkest sign of the negative impacts of Trump's policy

so far, but beneath the most recent developments is a stable economy, or, to quote Armstrong again, we have a pretty good understanding of why we are in a sluggish job market, COVID hangover, bad trade policy, immigration control, and why the economy is growing. High business investment, strong household balance sheets supporting consumption. I hesitate to make economic predictions because I am not an economist and even if I were, that's a great way to look like a fool. But in the interest of accountability, I'll go out on a limb here and say that I don't see even this objectively bad report as a sign of an imminent recession.

I've heard and I've written about the fears of a coming recession since the earliest rumors of a highly contagious virus spreading in China. Yet, here we are, on year six of asking when the other shoe is going to drop. Maybe a prolonged war will provide the final straw to break the camels back. The longer the straight of Hermes is choked, the likelihood that is. But until that weight starts to really buckle the labor market, I'm going to continue to believe that it won't. That's it for my take today, but our executive

editor Isaac Saul has a dissent. He's traveling right now, so I'm going to read his dissent to my argument for him. Here's what Isaac had to say. I appreciate Ari's two-pronged look at the optimistic and pessimistic cases for the economy after this jobs report, but I think that framework emits one crucial element, Trump's culpability. Ari says he can criticize Trump for tariffs and war, but you can also credit him for wage growth remaining high, business investment, and standard economic metrics improving. To me, Trump is much more direct. responsible for tariffs and war than he is for wage growth, investment, or standard economic measures improving, which are always hard to tie to a president's policies early on in a term.

Even as someone who has urged patience on tariffs, I think this administration's policies are much more visible in the negative case on the economy so far than they are in the positive, which feels central to this discussion. We'll be right back after this quick break. Okay, that's it for Isaac's dissent, so I'm going to send it back over to myself for today's reader question. Today's question comes from Ken in Lisbon, Wisconsin. Ken asks, do you assess the understandability of the Tango newsletter? Do you aim for a certain grade level? Do you do anything special to make sure it is understandable? Generally speaking, we have two sets of

standards, one for neutral reporting, like what you'll find in our story summary and under the radar sections and another for editorial language, as we use an A. My Take, and sometimes an answer to reader questions like today. We occasionally decide to avoid or choose one word or another because we want the writing to feel more accessible, but that isn't common. In our editorial language, we just try to write in a way that feels as if we are talking to you. That kind of writing should feel personal and as such it will tend to be a little less academic and a little more informal, but it isn't our goal to write to a specific grade level per se. Our editing process includes people who have been steeped in a story and those who have it.

Some editors spend the day before publication researching, editing, and writing the newsletter. Others come to it with fresh eyes that morning. This dynamic helps us get the relevant facts and points across while also making sure that any reader, whether uninformed or expert, won't be confused. If something doesn't make sense to us while editing, that's a sign that we should clarify. But, crucially, we will never choose to leave something out because we think it might be too hard for our readers to understand. I think we and you are a little smarter than that.

All right, that's it for your questions answered today. So I'm going to send it back over to Audrey for the rest of the pod. Thanks, Ari. Now it's time for our under the radar story. On Tuesday, the Food and Drug Administration, or FDA, approved lukevorin as a treatment for cerebral folate deficiency, or CFD, a rare genetic mutation. While the agency announced in September

that it was also exploring the efficacy of lukevoren for treating children and adults with autism spectrum disorder, or ASD, an FDA official said on Tuesday that it had not found sufficient evidence that the medication could treat autism symptoms. CFD shares several features with autism, but the FDA's review of the lukevoren found it produced the largest effect sizes for CFD, prompting them to rule out approval for treating ASD symptoms. CNBC has the story, and you can find it in the show notes. And lastly, it's time for our Have a Nice Day story. In February, a woman left her dog tied to a ticket encounter at Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas, Nevada,

while she allegedly tried to catch a flight. The woman was later arrested, but the dog was placed into foster care and left unclaimed after a 10-day hold period. Fortunately, police officer Skeeter Black, who responded to the first call about the dog being tied up at the airport, stepped in to adopt the pup, now nicknamed JetBlue. In a social media post, the police department said, quote, What began as a heartbreaking act of abandonment has turned into a powerful example of compassion, teamwork, and community partnership. NBC News has the story, and you can find it in the show notes.

All right, everybody, that's it for today's episode, as always. If you'd like to support our work, you can head over to retangle.com and sign up for a membership. You can also go over to subtext using the link in our show notes to sign up for more text messages from us, with updates and polls and a bunch of other things that only subscribers to the subtext messaging platform will get. Also, if you want more, consider following us on Instagram, checking us out on YouTube,

and logging into our community on Reddit where a lot of people are getting together now to discuss podcasts as well as daily editions. That's it for today. We'll be right back tomorrow. Until then, take care of yourselves. Have a good one. We'll talk to you soon.

Peace. editor and founder is me, Isaac Saul, and our executive producer is John Wall. Today's episode was edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Our editorial staff is led by managing editor Ari Weitzman with senior editor Will Kayback and associate editors Audrey Moorhead, Lindsay Canuth, and Bailey Saul. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. To learn more about Tangle and to sign up for a membership, please visit our website at retangle.com.