Employers and workers wait and see
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Tune in and subscribe to Threat Vector wherever you get your podcasts. Later this morning, we'll get the economic version of what the theater world might call an out-of-town tryout.

I'm David Brancaccio in Los Angeles. The ADP Payroll Company counts up the paychecks it processes for a reading on the strength of the job market ahead of the official report that comes out later. The prediction is the June tally will come in nearly three times higher than in May. We'll get the report shortly. Meanwhile, another measure shows the job market treading water. It's about churn. Do we have the confidence to leave and take a different job? Marketplace's Justin Ho goes deeper.

Job churn can tell us a lot about how easy it is to find a job. For instance, if the quits rate is high, it's a sign people feel comfortable quitting because they see plenty of other opportunities. When it's low, it indicates workers are more apt to stay put because they don't see that many opportunities out there.

Nancy Vandenhouten is lead economist at Oxford Economics. The quits rate and the hiring rate have been trending lower for more than three years now. Vandenhouten says while that is concerning, it's not yet a red flag. You know, the low hiring rate has not alarmed us as much as it would otherwise because layoffs remain low.

Layoffs remain low because employers are nervous to let go of workers, says Bill Adams, chief economist at Comerica Bank. Likely because of all the difficulty that they experienced in the pandemic and post-pandemic period in getting back to being fully staffed.

Adams says all of the uncertainty around tariff policy is also making it harder for businesses and workers to make any decisions. That's likely a contributor to the low level of hires from employers' perspective and to the low level of job quitting from workers' perspective. In other words, workers and employers are simply waiting to see how the broader economy shakes out. I'm Justin Ho for Marketplace.

The Labor Department's big hiring and unemployment reports are due tomorrow morning, unusual for a Thursday, but the first Friday of this month is a holiday. Some hardline Republicans who want deeper cuts to government programs could derail a procedural vote in the House of Representatives today that could bust the Republicans' self-imposed deadline of getting the sweeping tax-cutting and program-cutting bill to the president's desk before the Fourth of July holiday.

Australia, India, Japan and the U.S. have a new push to lock in supplies of critical minerals from sources other than China. The BBC's Archana Shukla has more.

Countries realise that they need to have a different diversified supply chain for critical minerals is concerned. And hence these countries have come together now to talk about sourcing from each other, building the supply chain. There are certain several countries like Australia or certain countries in Africa that have critical mineral mines, which are now, you know, countries are seeking more partnerships there to source and have a separate supply chain. In fact, in

One of the statements made there, they said that reliance on any one country for processing and refining these critical minerals kind of exposes the industries to economic coercion, price manipulation and supply chain disruptions. That rare earth group is called the Quad, Australia, India, Japan and the U.S.

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It's been less than a month since President Trump took control of California's National Guard and later ordered active duty Marines to police parts of Southern California. And the U.S. bombing of nuclear facilities in Iran is also a reminder to military families that deployments come with little notice. Marketplace's Nancy Marshall-Genzer reports.

Megan Byram's spouse just deployed on Memorial Day. He's a maintenance officer in the Air Force now in South Korea. He will be gone for a full year. Byram says the Air Force pays her husband's rent, but he has to buy new bedding and kitchen stuff and a car to get around.

Anytime we deploy or we move, we can realistically, we need to set aside $3,000 to $5,000. The couple has three sons, aged 8, 10, and 13. Child care costs for the younger ones are going up. Byram's paying her 13-year-old to watch his little brothers. He can make a good $80 to $100 a week. Yeah.

So Byram says her husband will get about $300 a month in extra pay during his deployment. The military offers different kinds of incentive pay, like for dangerous assignments. Service members may also qualify for a family separation allowance. The Defense Department puts some effort into helping families prepare. They have to make plans for child care and managing household expenses.

Raleigh Smith-Dutweiler remembers getting ready with her spouse for his last deployment about six years ago. Make sure your wills are in check. Make sure that the bank knows that this guy is gone and can't repossess the car. But all that financial planning isn't going to do much for Kayla, another military spouse. She asked us to use just her first name because she's worried about repercussions in her work with military spouses.

Her husband's aircraft carrier group left port late last month, bound for the Mediterranean. The deployment was planned before the U.S. attacked Iran, but its commander told reporters it's mobile and maneuverable. And he told families to prepare for a deployment of up to nine months. But we just don't know, are they going with their original plan that they might have had? No.

before everything started happening in the world. Kayla says the uncertainty around this deployment makes it hard to plan financially. They have two sons under five. She expects to spend an extra $200 a month on babysitting or more. It's just hard to know for sure what a deployment is going to cost.

Every spouse knows that when there's a deployment, Murphy's Law comes into full effect. You don't know what those expenses look like. Every single military spouse I spoke to for this story made one point—

Our families signed up for this. Our spouses weren't drafted. Here's Raleigh Smith-Duttweiler. We did sign up knowing that things would be hard. We just don't usually expect them to be as hard as they are. Duttweiler says military families are working families, trying to make ends meet, just like everybody else. I'm Nancy Marshall-Genzer for Marketplace.

And holders of stocks in big banks had a bountiful Tuesday with the news that those extra payouts known as dividends would spike. Goldman Sachs dividends up 33 percent. Bank of America up 8 percent. Citibank and JPMorgan Chase both up 7 percent. This is in part because financial stress tests set up after the last financial crisis were made easier, allowing banks to disperse more of their profits.

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