Stocks Slide After Weak February Jobs Report

Alex Ossola (0:00)

Hey, this is Alex from What's News. Thanks so much for being a listener of the show. If you're looking for more insights and tools to understand the latest headlines, consider becoming a subscriber to The Wall Street Journal. Visit subscribe.wsj.com/what'snews to subscribe now. In an unexpected downturn, the US lost 92,000 jobs in February. Plus, President Trump's new pick to head the Department of Homeland Security is a signal that the president doesn't plan to back off his signature immigration tactics.

Lindsay Wise (0:35)

I think the Mullen is 100 percent on board with Trump's immigration policies and deportation efforts. What will be interesting to see is whether his relationships on Capitol Hill might make his job a little bit easier.

Alex Ossola (0:48)

Trump calls for Iran's, quote, unconditional surrender. It's Friday, March 6th. I'm Alex Ossola 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.

The Labor Department today reported that the US lost 92,000 jobs in February. It's a significant downturn from January's gain of 126,000 jobs. And it's also worse than the 50,000 jobs the economy was expected to add last month. And one more number, the unemployment rate rose slightly to 4.4%. For more on these numbers, I'm joined now by WSJ economics reporter, Justin Lahart. Justin, healthcare jobs in particular have propped up the labor market for some time now. In February, the healthcare and social assistance sector lost more than 18,000 jobs. What happened there?

Justin Lahart (1:42)

Yeah, a couple of things happened. There was a strike at Kaiser Permanente, and that did knock several thousand jobs off of healthcare employment. Also, there was a really outsized gain in healthcare in January. So, some of this was a give back to that. And some people think that the data may just be a little more volatile than it used to be. But, you know, overall, this is a very weak report. Construction shedding jobs, manufacturing shedding jobs, information shedding jobs, leisure and hospitality shedding jobs. I mean, it was really, you know, just not a good report at all.

Alex Ossola (2:24)

The unemployment rate caught my eye because that's kind of been creeping up steadily over the past few years. What does that tell us about the strength of the labor market?

Justin Lahart (2:32)

Yeah, I mean, so the unemployment rate went up to 4.4%. That's still relatively low. One thing that's going on here is that we don't really have, like, a strong sense of how many jobs the economy needs to add each month to keep unemployment rate steady anymore. That's because with immigration restrictions, the population just isn't growing like it used to, especially the working age population. So you may just not need to create as many jobs to keep up with population growth as we did before.

Alex Ossola (3:08)

The Fed has to watch the jobs market and also take into account what happens with inflation. Now, energy prices are rising with the Middle East conflict. So if we see this job market weakening, what does that mean for the Fed's next meeting later this month?

Justin Lahart (3:20)

This month's Fed meeting, you wouldn't really expect to see any action on interest rates. They like to see more than one report to give them a direction of where things are going. But it does open up the possibility of more rate cuts this year.

Alex Ossola (3:36)

That was WSJ economics reporter, Justin Lahart. Thanks Justin.

Justin Lahart (3:39)

Thanks.

Alex Ossola (3:40)

In news today about the war in the Middle East, President Trump is calling for Iran's unconditional surrender and quote acceptable leadership in the country. He said the US and allies would then work to strengthen Iran's economy. A State Department spokesman said today that nearly 24,000 Americans have returned to the US from the Middle East since the war with Iran began. But getting them out hasn't been easy. We're exclusively reporting that some 1000 people who were in Dubai for a Google corporate sales extravaganza got stuck there. Google has since arranged for many to leave. The company says it's focused on the safety of its employees in the region. Meanwhile, US military investigators think American forces were likely responsible for a strike that killed dozens of children at a girls' elementary school in Iran. That's according to a US official. A Wall Street Journal analysis found that the school is located on the edge of a compound linked to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said this week that the US is investigating the strike. The US hasn't publicly acknowledged that its forces struck the compound. And from Iran to Cuba. President Trump told CNN Today that he believes the Cuban government quote is going to fall pretty soon. It's his second comment in two days suggesting he anticipates a near-term change to the country's government. And the journal has learned that a federal prosecutor in Florida is looking to build criminal cases against leaders of Cuba's government and Communist Party. The US attorney in Miami has created a working group across several government agencies to gather evidence for potential crimes related to drugs, immigration and other violations. The Trump administration used criminal charges as a pretext for the ouster of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro. A Justice Department spokesman said that federal prosecutors' work include efforts to combat transnational crimes.