Education Department to go after student loan defaulters
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I'm David Brancaccio in Los Angeles. First, the jobs report is in, and while it was better than low expectations, hiring in the month just ended was less than in March. Still, 177,000 more people were on payrolls in April. The unemployment rate holds steady at a quite low 4.2 percent. Christopher Lowe, chief economist at FHN Financial, joins us now. Given the whiplash of trade policy and cuts to the federal workforce, the report is not bad. Chris?

Yeah, I think that's about right. It's not good either, though. And I think it is important to note that there's a few things that have been percolating this year, continued in April. People clearly frozen in terms of hiring and probably in terms of expansion as well.

while they're trying to figure out the economic environment. And then, of course, government hiring, while it's not as weak as you might expect, given federal layoffs, those layoffs are evident to some extent as well. What does this mean for the people who have to decide on interest rates next week? Yeah, I tell you, the market reaction was interesting. Market interest rates rose.

And the logic there is that for the Fed, which is worried both about an economic slowdown and a pickup in inflation because of the tariffs, this sort of tips the balance in favor of worrying about inflation. So the market expects that's the emphasis the Fed will put on next week. All right. We shall see. Christopher Lowe at FHN Financial, chief economist there. Thank you. Thank you, David.

The U.S. Department of Education will resume action against student loan borrowers who are in default. Collections start this Monday. Marketplace's Nancy Marshall-Genzer joins us now.

A little background here first, David. We're only talking about federal student loans, that is, loans funded by the federal government, not private loans. The first Trump administration paused federal student loan payments at the start of the pandemic. President Joe Biden extended those pauses repeatedly. But most borrowers were required to restart payments again in 2023. The Education Department says, though, more than 5 million borrowers are now in default.

That is, they haven't made a monthly payment in over 360 days. Now, the government says it hasn't collected on those loans since the first March of the pandemic. But what changes exactly three days from now?

The Treasury Department will start withholding money from government payments like tax refunds and starting early this summer from Social Security payments. The Education Department will start sending wage garnishment notices this summer. The government can order your employer to withhold up to 15% of your paycheck as repayment of your student loan. We like to keep it practical on this program, Nancy, right? What can people do today and over the weekend to prepare for Monday?

Well, the Education Department says you can enter into a payment agreement or rehabilitate your loan, which means making nine on-time monthly payments. You can also consolidate your defaulted federal student loans into a direct consolidation loan. That can have a longer repayment period, but be careful, you may end up with a higher interest rate and wind up paying more in the end. Nancy, thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.

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The Delta Blues-infused vampire film Sinners, starring Michael B. Jordan, keeps raking it in after bringing in more money at the box office in its first weekend of any film since before the pandemic. Its second weekend was almost as strong a rare achievement.

For a business program like this, let's focus here on the rare deal that Center's director Ryan Coogler won from the studio. I want to consult Dan Runcie. He's founder of the media research firm Trapital, which analyzes the intersection of business and culture. Good morning. Morning. Thanks for having me. The idea was to get people into real theaters. I don't know if you saw this 10-minute video in which the director, Mr. Coogler himself, makes the pitch. Here's a little piece.

For select sections of the film, sections of emotional intensity, musical intensity, or horror intensity, we chose to film those sequences with a bigger aspect ratio. And the film will pop out and expand for those moments. Be a really, really immersive way to watch the movie. That's part of this, getting people not to wait for streaming, getting them into theaters. And it seems to be working, right? That 10-minute clip was some of the best marketing that you could possibly do for a movie like this.

Coogler is someone that a lot of people have season tickets to. He's a director that can bring in box office. He's done this with franchises, his own original IP as well. So people were really excited about Sinners. The director has set up for himself a very interesting deal worth remarking upon because most directors don't get this. He starts to earn money when the first ticket is sold. He doesn't have to wait.

That's right. There's three things that make Coogler's deal stand out. First, as you mentioned, he has first dollar gross. So he starts making money from the first dollar that comes in, which is very different from most directors where even some of the higher profile names, maybe they'll get their money after the theaters or other distributors get their cut or back end profits. But no, he's getting first

So do you think the deal that Ryan Coogler has gotten for this film makes studio executives uncomfortable?

Whether it makes studio executives uncomfortable, I can't necessarily speak to, but I can say that it doesn't necessarily stand out from the unique deals that other top directors get. If you dig into the numbers that James Cameron has gotten for films like Avatar, what Nolan got for Oppenheimer, even some of Spielberg's stuff, or specifically...

Quentin Tarantino with Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. If you're a director at that level, these type of deals become table stakes. And I do think that Ryan Coogler, especially for someone that's as successful as he is, his movies have brought in over $2 billion thus far into his career. That's the level that he's at. Dan Runcie is founder of the media research firm Trapital, T-R-A-P-I-T-A-L.

Dan, always good to catch up. Likewise. Always great to be here. And when you see sinners, Wunmi Mosaku playing the character Annie, amazing, you will see. In Los Angeles, I'm David Brancaccio, Marketplace Morning Report. From APM, American Public Media.

Can we invest our way out of the climate crisis? Five years ago, it seemed like Wall Street was working on it until a backlash upended everything. So there's a lot of alignment between the dark money right and the oil industry on this effort. I'm Amy Scott, host of How We Survive, a podcast from Marketplace. In this season, we investigate the rise, fall, and reincarnation of climate-conscious investing.

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