Latest / Markets with Megan: A Quick Financial Markets Update / What Slowing Job Growth Means For The Economy | S2 E106 | 12-17-25

Transcript

What Slowing Job Growth Means For The Economy | S2 E106 | 12-17-25 · Markets with Megan: A Quick Financial Markets Update

• 0:00
  Megan Horneman: We're finally starting to get some of that much-needed economic data.
• 0:04
  Megan Horneman: It is Wednesday, December the 17th, and this is Markets with Megan.
• 0:08
  Megan Horneman: If you'd like this podcast, please subscribe.
• 0:10
  Megan Horneman: You can hit that alarm bell, share with friends, family, or colleagues.
• 0:14
  Megan Horneman: But we're here today to go through some of the data we've received this week, and it's coming out in chunks.
• 0:20
  Megan Horneman: This week we got a couple different months of the labor market report.
• 0:24
  Megan Horneman: We got the the amount of jobs that were created for both the month of October and November.
• 0:29
  Megan Horneman: And what we saw is that in the month of October, the U.S.
• 0:33
  Megan Horneman: economy lost 105,000 jobs.
• 0:36
  Megan Horneman: Now that was primarily due to the fact that some government employees took the pay package back when the government was cutting the budget and cutting employees, and that rolled off in the month of September.
• 0:48
  Megan Horneman: So these people showed up in that October data.
• 0:52
  Megan Horneman: For the month of November, we added a small amount, 64,000 jobs.
• 0:58
  Megan Horneman: It actually brought the 12-month rolling sum of job creation to 933,000.
• 1:05
  Megan Horneman: That's the slowest since March of 2021.
• 1:09
  Megan Horneman: So we are getting some weakness in the labor market.
• 1:12
  Megan Horneman: Let's break down where we saw that from.
• 1:14
  Megan Horneman: If you look, the gains were led by the goods producing, construction, and then also private education and health care, but we did see big losses in trade, leisure, and hospitality.
• 1:27
  Megan Horneman: The unemployment rate, as well, that did rise to 4.6%.
• 1:31
  Megan Horneman: That's the highest we've seen since September of 2021.
• 1:35
  Megan Horneman: So this softening in the labor market does continue.
• 1:38
  Megan Horneman: We will get more data for the month of December, and the Fed will have that before they meet in January.
• 1:45
  Megan Horneman: We think this does allow the Fed to take one more insurance cut in either January or March to just assure that the labor market does not weaken too much where it puts the economy at risk.
• 1:58
  Megan Horneman: That's all we have.
• 1:58
  Megan Horneman: If you want a history of this podcast, you go to marketswithmegan.