A sunny jobs report ahead of this holiday weekend
08:50 Share

This Marketplace podcast is supported by Dell. Introducing the new Dell AI PC powered by Intel Core Ultra Processor. It helps do your busy work for you. So you can fast forward through editing images, designing presentations, generating code, debugging code, summarizing meeting notes, finding files, managing your schedule, responding to long emails.

leaving all the time in the world for the things you actually want to do. Get a new Dell AI PC starting at $699.99 at dell.com slash AI dash PC. How those ahead stay ahead. This Marketplace podcast is supported by Palo Alto Networks. Enterprises are deploying and experimenting with AI apps and agents.

There's news that some sectors of the economy are still hiring despite tariffs and other uncertainties.

I'm David Brancaccio in Los Angeles. The government reported today that 147,000 more people were on payrolls in June compared to May. That is a stronger outcome than forecast. Lauren Seidel Baker has just gone through the data. She's with the consultancy ITR Economics in New Hampshire. Good morning.

Hi, great to be here. Nice way to launch ourselves into the holiday weekend, right? That looks stronger than expected. Very much stronger than expected. We saw the unemployment rate tick down unexpectedly. So after some more pessimistic numbers, estimates of the labor market earlier this week, this is a pretty big beat. What explains this? I mean, when I talk to CEOs, they're all talking about uncertainty. We don't know which way tariffs are going. We're going to hold back on hiring. It's not quite what everybody's actually doing.

That's true. A lot of employers got caught shorthanded during the last growth cycle. They don't want that to happen again. So I think they are starting to scoop up talent where they can. However, beneath the surface, we did actually have job losses, especially in the manufacturing sector as those tariff impacts start to come through. I also see a lot of people who are not able to get a job.

immigration playing out negatively. We are due to lose immigrants net-net this year due to some of those tough-on-immigration stances from the administration. So that's going to be a challenge in certain sectors like construction, like agriculture. But again, as far as services go, the kind of professional services especially, this is still a pretty tight labor market, still tough to hire. Now let's talk about this

which on the face of it looks good. You want the unemployment number to go down. It dropped slightly to 4.1%. But

I've been doing this long enough to take a look at the labor force participation rate. Looks like some people stopped looking for work. We have seen kind of stretching in the amount of time someone is seeking work before they find it. I think in certain sectors, that's very clear. Something like health care, which was a big contribution to this feat. We will just always need more health care workers. And again, state and local government, maybe some of those laid off federal workers are finding different routes back to employment.

Lauren Seidel Baker is an economist at ITR Economics. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you.

You're a professional web creator who needs a platform that works as hard as you do. Wix Studio is built for you, whether you're a designer, developer, or marketer ready to amplify your impact. Build intuitively with advanced design features and AI-powered tools. Manage your clients and projects efficiently from one workspace. Scale with dynamic systems and fully managed infrastructure. Create exceptional websites with hyper-efficiency on Wix Studio.

This Marketplace podcast is supported by Dell. The Black Friday in July event from Dell Technologies is here. There's never been a better time to upgrade. Now's your chance for great offers on popular, trusted technology. You'll also discover huge deals on exciting new AI-ready laptops, like the Dell 14 Plus featuring Intel Core Ultra processors, starting at $699.99.

Don't forget to explore big savings on top electronics and accessories. Plus, enjoy fast, free shipping and other exclusive benefits like Dell Rewards, Premium Support, and Dell Care Premium, which provides 24-7 support with no hidden fees or deductibles. Upgrade for a limited time only at dell.com slash deals. That's dell.com slash deals. ♪

Now to the live music money-making machine known as the Reunion Tour. The hyped-up Oasis Reunion Tour kicks off tomorrow in Wales, and with it comes pop-up stores and a veritable oasis of merch. My Marketplace BBC colleague Leanna Byrne filed this report for us.

Manchester, home to Oasis and the first Oasis Live 25 store, giving fans a chance to stock up on everything from bucket hats to branded cutlery sets. Five more stores will follow in cities hosting the band on its UK and Ireland leg. So what have fans been buying and how much are they spending? I've got a collection of vinyls. That's for a friend actually who lives overseas, so he's not going to be able to make the concerts. And then a couple of T-shirts for myself, iron-on prints.

A standard bucket hat and a mug and then the wife's convinced me to get a poster for the bottom of the stairs. Just under £300. The six retail outlets are part of a wider commercial push surrounding what is already being dubbed the most lucrative reunion tour in British music history. Barclays Bank has estimated fans could spend up to $1.3 billion across tickets, merchandise, hotel bookings...

and food and drink during the tour. Charlotte Broadbent is the UK general manager for FAIR, an online wholesale marketplace connecting indie brands with indie retailers. She's seen a big spike in demand for Oasis-themed goods. We've seen sales up 150% year on year. And actually outside of the UK...

And globally, that's up 230%. So it's really not just a UK phenomenon. It truly is global. And it's been so interesting to watch as retailers kind of place their orders ahead of the tour and buy into this trend.

The way that this band has captured hearts and wallets in the US was surprising to us. We've seen that Liam really is the fan favourite in our search data, whereas Noel is slightly behind on the trend, which I'm sure he wouldn't be happy about. About 1.4 million people managed to buy a ticket for one of the 17 UK gigs...

with 10 times more trying their luck. So for everyone else, there's always the merchandise. Dr Matt Grimes is a music business expert at Birmingham City University. Merchandise has become quite a big thing within the music business. I mean, it's always been there. It's a way of people keeping that connection with that particular event. There was this big issue around tickets.

and dynamic pricing, and people not being able to get tickets. And clearly there's fans out there that want to be part of what's going on, but may not have the opportunity to see them perform live. So it's a way that they can connect with what could be seen as pretty much a global event or global phenomena.

So for fans, the final countdown has begun and so far the merch is going down well. I've just bought a poster, but we had a good look around. There's lots of different t-shirts and added ass things and many bucket hats. But I think make the money while you can, absolutely. Go for it while you've got it because you just don't know what's around the corner. So no, good for them. Make your money while you can. The 41-day tour wraps up in Brazil on the 23rd of November. But will the famously fractious band last the distance?

Whatever happens, the fans will always have the merch. In the UK, I'm the BBC's Leanna Byrne for Marketplace. The internet infrastructure company CloudFlare says it's launching a system to let its customers block artificial intelligence bots from scavenging material from their websites. There's also an option to allow the AIs to take stuff if the AI companies pay for the privilege.

AI software systems are on the hunt for material, often to try to make their intelligence simulation models stronger. But content creators are concerned that this could break the business model of the Internet. Marketplace's Megan McCarty Carino explains.

Web crawlers have been doing their thing since practically the beginning of the World Wide Web, says Chirag Shah at the University of Washington. Before search engines indexed the web with bots, it was pretty hard to navigate. It was mutually beneficial because website builders had a way to be found through being crawled. And eventually, a way to make money with advertising. We've developed this whole ecosystem around that.

where a publisher can earn revenue by being seen being crawled. That ecosystem could be collapsing. AI bots crawl a lot more pages and don't often send users to those sites. They're just using the content from that site to generate the answer right there. What is the incentive going to look like for people that are going to decide to create high-impact content that feeds these machines?

Daniel Newman is an analyst at Futurum Group. He says some publishers, like the New York Times, have made deals with AI companies to license their content. But there's only so many New York Times. Look at the trickle, and the trickle gets really, really to a point where there's only a few people left to make money. He says AI companies have a stake in keeping internet publishing alive because the models are only as good as the content they crawl. I'm Megan McCarty Carino for Marketplace.

Trump administration's top housing regulator is leaning on Congress to investigate Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell for what he suspects is political bias and Powell's role in the renovation of the Fed's Washington headquarters. The push is coming from the head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Bill Pulte, who's been critical of the Fed keeping interest rates higher for longer.

It's also true that Pulte's boss, President Trump, has repeatedly made it clear he wants a new chair of the central bank to go easier on interest rates. Lower interest rates can stimulate the economy to counteract, for instance, the administration's higher import taxes. Interest rates that come down too quickly can spark inflation. In Los Angeles, I'm David Brancaccio. It's the Marketplace Morning Report from APM American Public Media.

Summer's here and it's time for your kids to have fun in the sun, but it's also a great time to nurture growing minds. Million Bazillion, a podcast from Marketplace, teaches your kids about something that impacts all of us, money. From a fun explainer on tariffs, yes, it's possible, to why some athletes make so much money, Million Bazillion tackles big questions with easy-to-understand answers. Listen to Million Bazillion all summer long, available wherever you get your podcasts.