WSJ What’s News - Hiring Slowdown Spells a Weakening Labor Market

Episode Date: September 5, 2025

P.M. Edition for Sept. 5. The latest jobs report fell far short of expectations—raising new questions about the strength of the U.S. labor market. WSJ economics reporter Rachel Ensign tells us how the Federal Reserve might respond. Plus, federal agents swept a Georgia Hyundai battery plant, arresting hundreds in an immigration raid. WSJ Korea bureau chief Tim Martin joins to discuss what this means for the future of the South Korean company in the U.S. Finally, Tesla’s board is seeking investor approval for a pay package worth as much as $1 trillion in stock for CEO Elon Musk. WSJ business reporter Theo Francis lays out the details of this potential pay deal. Alex Ossola hosts. Sign up for the WSJ's free What's News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

When you're with Amex Platinum, you get access to exclusive dining experiences and an annual travel credit. So the best tapas in town might be in a new town altogether. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Terms and conditions apply. Learn more at Amex.ca. The latest jobs report provides a snapshot of a weakening labor market. Plus, why the arrest of hundreds of South Korea nationals in Georgia could disrupt

trade negotiations between the U.S. and a key ally. This has thrown a lot of uncertainty and questions into an already complex and ambitious investment plan by South Korea. And Tesla's board proposes paying CEO, Elon Musk as much as $1 trillion in stock over the next decade. It's Friday, September 5th. I'm Alex Oslov for the Wall Street Journal. This is the PM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories that move the world today.

New data from the Labor Department showed that the U.S. added 22,000 jobs in August. That's below the gain of 75,000 jobs economists pulled by the Wall Street Journal had expected to see. Rachel Ensign covers economics for the journal and is here now with more. Rachel, 22,000 jobs sounds a little low to me. Just how bad is this? Well, it is definitely pretty significantly below what economists were expecting. They were expecting 75,000 jobs. And even that was a pretty big step down from job growth over the last few years.

There was this huge post-COVID boom. And in the last few months, we're seeing that that seems to have ended for now. It's not just the data from August. The government also revised its numbers from earlier in the summer and said the economy lost a net 13,000 jobs in June. That was the first such decline since December 2020. So what kind of picture does that paint together with the August numbers? It shows an economy where employers are not hiring. In fact, they're shedding jobs.

And why are they doing that? Well, because consumers are skittish. They are not buying as much stuff in certain. industries, and companies themselves are worried, too. This is the first jobs report since Trump fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Did that change in personnel affect this report at all? It's a great question. We contacted the Bureau, and they told us there are no changes to the methodology.

But just last night, actually, Trump was asked about the forthcoming report, and he said that there will be some new numbers in the future, like new data that we're going to be coming up with and just wait to look at that. The question we always get to when we talk about jobs numbers is what it means for the Fed. And they have their meeting in less than two weeks where they were widely expected to cut rates. Does that seem more likely now? Our story today says that they are all but certain to cut rates now. And they had talked about being concerned about the labor market and this report being pretty weak just seems to seal the deal. That was WSJ economics reporter, Rachel Ensign.

Thank you, Rachel. Thanks so much for having me. Stocks opened higher today on a bet that the weak jobs report will prompt the Fed to cut interest rates. But they turned lower at mid-morning, reflecting concerns that rate cuts won't necessarily jumpstart economic growth. Major U.S. indexes ended the day mostly lower. The Dow fell about half a percent, the S&P 500 dropped about 0.3 percent, and the NASDAQ was little changed. The world's richest man could soon be getting a whole lot richer.

Tesla's board is asking investors to approve a new pay package for CEO Elon Musk that could be worth as much as $1 trillion over the next decade. That's according to a financial filing published today. For more, I'm joined by WSJ business reporter, Teo Francis. Teo, what do we know about this deal? Well, we know it's complicated and we know it could if. Tesla does extraordinarily well over the next decade or so, give Elon Musk a lot of Tesla stock. He gets the stock in kind of 12 chunks if he meets 12 market capitalization targets.

In other words, if the company's total valuation reaches certain points. The first hits the target if the market cap goes to $2 trillion. So it's got to roughly double in value before he has any hope of getting. anything. There's another part to it, which is that in addition to those market value targets, there are also what the company is calling operating targets, some of them are financial, and there's what you might call product goals, having a certain number of cars, a certain number of subscribers to the full self-driving feature of Tesla cars, selling a certain number of cars, putting robots that are not vehicles out into customer.

hands, putting robotaxies on the street. There are some caveats and exceptions, as with most executive pay packages, but the gist of it is, if Tesla does very well, Elon Musk will do very well. And he could wind up with about 29% of the shares in the company, an additional 12% or so over what he owns now. The pay package is coming at what is kind of a low moment for Tesla. What is the board's goal in presenting this? The goal, first and foremost, is to keep Elon Musk engaged. He did not too long ago threaten that he might take his activity elsewhere if he can't get a bigger stake of Tesla's voting power. It's really a balancing act for the board because they want to give him an incentive to pay attention to Tesla rather than getting

distracted by politics or any of the other companies he runs. At the same time, they also need to make it something that he's actually going to have some hope of achieving. That was WSJ Business reporter, Teo Francis. Thanks, Teo. Thank you. Coming up, what we know about this morning's immigration raid at a Hyundai site in Georgia and what it could mean for international relations. That's after the break. Tim's new scrambled egg loaded croissant. Or is it croissant? No matter how you say it, start your day with freshly cracked scrambled eggs loaded on a buttery, flaky croissant. Try it with maple brown butter today at Tim's, at participating restaurants in Canada for limited time.

Nearly 500 people were arrested as part of an immigration raid at a Hyundai Motor Battery Plant under construction in Georgia. A homeland security official said the raid was part of a criminal investigation into employment practices at the site. During a press conference, Stephen Shrank, special agent in charge of Homeland Security investigations in Georgia, said this wasn't a spontaneous raid. This was not a immigration operation where agents went into the premises, rounded up folks and put them on buses. This has been a multi-month criminal investigation where we have developed evidence, conducted interviews, gathered documents, and presented that evidence to the court in order to obtain a judicial search warrant. The factory is a joint venture between South Korea-based Hyundai Motor and a South Korean battery manufacturer LG Energy Solutions. The plant is part of a $7.6 billion Hyundai complex that the state has described as the largest manufacturing project in Georgia's history. I'm joined now by WSJ Korea Bureau Chief Tim Martin.

Tim, what do we know about the people who were arrested and why? Most of them are South Korean. More than 300 of the roughly 475 detained are. from South Korea. And what the U.S. has said is these people have overstayed their visas. They crossed the border illegally. But we don't have a breakdown of who did what allegedly. What we're hearing from our South Korean context is that the majority of these South Koreans are there on visas that allow some type of training. And they're there to help the workers on the ground, carry out their work. Is that a common practice for companies from elsewhere to bring in workers to

help build their manufacturing facilities? We haven't seen specific data tracking this, but under the new Trump administration, there's this big push by the U.S. to get foreign companies to relocate more of their manufacturing inside the U.S. So as a result, these foreign companies don't just outsource all of this work to local Americans. They often send officials from the home country to provide some of that overseas knowledge to operations and production on the ground. Now, Hyundai recently pledged $26 billion in U.S. investments. Could this raid affect that investment?

Hyundai, I think it will be difficult for them to unwind some of the money, but the timing certainly could be affected. They have to reassess, well, are we putting our employees at risk? Is there political implications? South Korea was not happy about this raid. So the company will have to factor in what this will do for their relationship with the sole government. So this raid and arrests come months after tense,

trade negotiations between the U.S. and South Korea, could this affect that relationship? Seoul was definitely upset. They were not given advance notice to this raid. And yes, we've had contentious trade talks for months, but they're still unresolved. There's no written agreement between Seoul and Washington. And a big impasse sits around roughly $350 billion in investment that South Korea has pledged for America. But there are still unresolved questions about when, where, and how that money will be spent. And if South Korean companies feel like their employees could be detained at a moment's notice, that will give them pause.

Should they do this now? What are the actual visas they need? This has thrown a lot of uncertainty and questions into an already complex and ambitious investment plan by South Korea. That was WSJ Korea Bureau Chief Tim Martin. We're exclusively reporting that the Department of Health and Human Services run by Health Secretary Harry Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., is expected to release a report this month that is likely to suggest, as among the potential causes of autism, low levels of folate, an important vitamin, and Tylenol taken during pregnancy. That's according to people familiar with the matter. Tylenol, whose active ingredient is acetamaphen, is a widely used pain reliever, including by pregnant women.

Some previous studies have indicated risks to fetal development, but others have found no association. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists say it is safe to use in pregnancy, though it recommends pregnant women consult with their doctors before using it, as with all medicines. Shares of Kenvue, parent company of McNeil Consumer Healthcare, which makes Tylenol, fell about 9% today. In tech news, the European Union fined Google nearly $3.5 billion for abusing the dominance of its advertising technology tools. The fine is the EU's second largest antitrust penalty ever after another Google fine in 2018. The block gave Google 60 days to propose how to resolve, quote, inherent conflicts of interest, but added that its preliminary view remains that Google must divest part of that business.

Fines alone haven't tended to change big tech company's business practices because even large penalties represent a fraction of their overall revenue. And AI company Anthropic agreed to pay at least $1.5 billion, to settle a copyright infringement lawsuit over its use of pirated books to train large language models. The settlement could influence the outcome of pending litigation between other media companies and AI firms and may push the tech companies to seek licensing agreements with content owners whose works are considered vital for training purposes. And that's what's news for this week. Tomorrow you can look out for our weekly markets wrap-up, What's News and Markets?

Then on Sunday, we're bringing you an episode of WSJ's take on the week. week, where co-hosts Gungan Benerjee and Telas Demos dive into markets, the economy, and finance. This week, they're talking with Dana Peterson from the conference board about consumer confidence and the importance of survey-based data. That's in What's New Sunday. And we'll be back with our regular show on Monday morning. Today's show is produced by Charlotte Gartenberg and Rodden Davis. Our supervising producer was Emily Martosi.

Michael Laval wrote our theme music. Aisha al-Muslim is our development producer. Chris Innsley is our deputy editor. and Falana Patterson is the Wall Street Journal's head of news audio. I'm Alex Osala. Thanks for listening.