Markets veteran Jane King of Lila Max Media joins us live from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange to break down a pivotal moment for the economy. In this episode, Jane digs into September’s surprisingly weak jobs report—just 29,000 jobs added versus the 90,000 expected—and explains why AI appears to be creating jobs in construction, manufacturing, and healthcare rather than eliminating them.
Transcript:
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
We’re going to welcome back to the program, Jane King of Lila Max Media. Jane appears on so many networks, there’s too long a list to name.
Jane, it’s always great to see you. Thanks for joining us this morning. Good to be here, Jeffrey.
And also, I should also mention, you are coming to us from, I think, the second deck of the New York Stock Exchange. So hello to all the traders down there.
Jane King, Financial Journalist, LilaMax Media
Yes, kind of loud.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Jane, what’s that?
Jane King, Financial Journalist, LilaMax Media
Kind of loud. You can hear the traders.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
I can’t even hear anybody. It’s like silence. But maybe there’s the robots doing all the trading.
All right. Jane, I want to get to September in a second, but we had the job reports on Friday morning. And full disclosure, we are recording this Friday morning.
So you took a look at the jobs numbers that came out. Give us the deep dive there.
Jane King, Financial Journalist, LilaMax Media
Yeah, you know, it’s actually, these are always interesting reports. This one was too. Overall job growth in September was weaker than expected.
So 29,000 jobs created. We expected 90,000. So it fell short by quite a bit.
Unemployment rate ticked higher to 4.2%. But we saw job growth in manufacturing. Manufacturing has been pretty strong the past few months. Construction jobs.
There’s your data center, construction and the AI impact on the economy. So healthcare also strong again, as it has been for several years. So it’s just showing us that AI is having an impact on the job market, but not how we thought.
It’s actually adding jobs, construction jobs. And we don’t see a lot of evidence yet that white collar jobs are leaving, are being eliminated due to AI. And the other thing interesting about this report is it was weak enough that it will probably keep the Fed on the sidelines later this month for an interest rate change.
And right ahead of the elections is probably what they wanted.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
So I’m not a AI doom and gloomer. I mean, there’s been a lot of people out there that have said the world’s going to end. It’s going to be Skynet, which is the adversary and the Terminator series.
I don’t believe that. I think that what typically happens, you know, you think back to the industrial revolution, the dotcom era, it recalibrates and repositions people. So I think that is ultimately what’s going to happen.
I don’t think it’s going to end the world.
Jane King, Financial Journalist, LilaMax Media
No, I don’t either. You know, it’s interesting. If you saw Anthropx IPO prospectus this week, they actually mentioned the risk.
One risk was elimination of entire humanity. It’s like, well, I’ve never seen that before in an IPO prospectus. But I think the world is handling this wisely by coming together, understanding the risks, trying to mitigate those, having public-private partnerships, working on this together.
I think we’re going to be okay. But I’m glad to see they’re working on it because you could see some of these bots get loose and do something. But I’m always up to it.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Yeah, I think guardrail is obviously important. It’s always interesting to see the industry say, hey, government, regulate me. I’m trying to figure that one out because as far as I know, anyone in business typically doesn’t want that.
So obviously they see some reason to do that. It’ll be interesting to see what comes of that. So Jane, let me just, I want to get, take a look at September because here we are, it’s the day the show airs will be October 3rd, the day we’re recording, or October 4th, the day that we’re recording it is October 2nd.
So the jobs report just came out. But let’s look back at September from what I have seen as a lay person, as an individual, is markets were kind of mixed for the month. Not great like it had been earlier in the year.
Jane King, Financial Journalist, LilaMax Media
Well, you know, September is traditionally the worst month of the year for the stock market. It’s weird how this works, right? I mean, all of a sudden like the calendar turned over, we got worried about inflation again, and Iran things heated up.
The Dow did have a negative month. I believe the Nasdaq was positive. And a lot of that had to do with Meta unveiled their new Muse AI agent that was one of the top downloaded free apps.
People loved it, loved what it could do. So the tech stocks did well last month. So yeah, it’s kind of a mixed picture for September.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
So September seemed to follow the historic trends of being the worst month. When you look into the month, and we don’t do prognostications, I’m not asking you to take out the eight ball and do that. But what are the tea leaves that you’re looking at in terms of the earnings?
I’ll get to the election in a few minutes. But I’m wondering what you’re kind of looking at the remainder of the year in this fourth quarter.
Jane King, Financial Journalist, LilaMax Media
Well, of course, the situation with Iran, you know, what’s going to happen there that seems to oil prices up stocks down. I mean, it’s just so predictable. So that is a big thing.
Continue to watch earnings micron just came out. It just came out a huge blockbuster quarterly report. So we’ll continue to watch that.
And I think that, you know, just the consumer, there’s a lot of worry about consumers interest rates have been climbing this year. That’s causing concern like to multi decade highs. And if that keeps going, that would be a problematic too.
So oil interest rates, earnings elections.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Let me ask you a Halloween is right around the corner. I think I’m going to go as a journalist. I don’t know what you’re planning to go up go as but in all seriousness, I mean, you’re ads, holiday seasons right around the corner.
Can you talk a little bit about travel, booking travel, maybe some of the Halloween candy costumes, Thanksgiving? I know it’s right. It’s not here, but it will be here soon.
Jane King, Financial Journalist, LilaMax Media
Well, the back to school season was pretty strong. And that’s kind of our first indication of how consumers feel as we go into the holiday season. And, you know, from National Retail Federation makes predictions about this, they think that will hit a trillion dollars in holiday spending this year.
Part of that’s inflation. But also part of it’s just, you know, people, you know, they might go into a store with a budget and you blow it when you get in there. We as Americans do that.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Yeah.
Jane King, Financial Journalist, LilaMax Media
Yeah, I think that I think there’s some optimism about the consumer right now.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Yeah. And I apologize. I’m sorry to interrupt you or trying to interrupt you.
That’s my bad. I want to ask you about credit card spending, because from what I’ve read, you talked about the one trillion dollars in potential holiday sales. That’s great.
But if people are putting dumping on their credit cards or buying out paid later sites, that potentially could be a bigger problem when they go to pay off the debt in January, February and into twenty twenty seven.
Jane King, Financial Journalist, LilaMax Media
Absolutely. I mean, we’ve already seen one interest rate hike from the Fed recently, and credit cards are the first things they get impacted by that. And if we would happen to see another one later this year, those credit card interest rates are going to payments are going to go up even more.
So it’s a personal financing. You know, I would encourage people to not use them as much as possible. Look for deals, look for sales.
There’s going to be we’re airing this on Sunday. Next week, we start to see sales from Amazon and Walmart and Target. Look at those and just try to spend wisely over the holidays.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
And to that point, I have been noticing some of the grocery stores. You know, we did a show recently on couponing. It’s coming back.
It’s in vogue. We’ve also done something on thrifting. But I’ve seen some of the grocery stores actually recalibrate their pricing to account for some of these challenges.
So I think, you know, at the end of the day, it’s a it’s a market and you have to in order to attract people to your store. You’ve got to keep the prices somewhere that they can afford it. And you don’t want to bury people with outrageous costs and prices.
Jane King, Financial Journalist, LilaMax Media
And what are your competitors doing? I mean, you don’t want to be much more expensive than them to target just lowered prices on two thousand items. A lot of that was apparel.
So the deals are there. Look for it. And then also just, you know, discipline yourselves and your spending.
I think, you know, that’s the key.
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Our show, Jane, as you know, is not political, but politics does play a role. We’ve got the midterms in markets and how markets global markets perceive what’s going to happen. How do the you know, we don’t I don’t believe any polls that you see right before.
In fact, I don’t believe any polls until Election Day. But that being what it said, I mean, there there is an anticipation that there could be a change in the House, could be a change in the Senate. How does the market remind us of the market?
Does the market process any of that? How does it take that into account?
Jane King, Financial Journalist, LilaMax Media
Well, the markets used to like gridlock. They didn’t like big change. Now that we’ve got kind of the socialist movement coming in, that might be a little bit different.
And I think, you know, if I think the market wants to see a resolution to the Iran situation, and I’m not sure how, you know, mixed Washington would deal with that or, you know, or if that would prolong things. So it’s hard to tell. And these it’s going to be really close.
I think this year, the polls we know haven’t been great. They were terrible in some of the primaries this year. So I, you know, what they would wake up in November and be like, okay, you know, what are we dealing with here?
Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement Network
Yeah, I think pollsters and weather people, and I respect both. I mean, they do a great job, but they’re often more wrong than they’re right, because it’s so difficult to measure the weather on the planet. And it’s difficult to measure the sentiment of your fellow citizens.
We’ll have to see how it falls out. Jane, always great to see you. Thanks so much for joining us.
And we look forward to having you back on the program again very soon.
Jane King, Financial Journalist, LilaMax Media
Thanks, Jeffrey.
