The 2025 consumer sentiment rollercoaster

0:00Love browsing art galleries but frustrated by the limited choices and time it takes? Saatchi Art provides a large curated selection with zero hassle. Shopping on SaatchiArt.com is like browsing hundreds of the world's best galleries in minutes. Trusted by collectors worldwide, discover an unparalleled selection of one-of-a-kind art that transforms your space. Use code MARKETPLACE for 10 % off original art at SaatchiArt.com. That's 10 % off at S-A-A-T-C-H-I-Art.com. This podcast is supported by Odoo. Some say Odoo business management software is like fertilizer for businesses because the simple, efficient software promotes growth.

0:38Others say Odoo is like a magic beanstalk because it scales with you and is magically affordable. And some describe Odoo's programs for manufacturing, accounting, and more as building blocks for creating a custom software suite. So Odoo is fertilizer, magic beanstalk building blocks for business. Odoo, exactly what businesses need. Sign up at odoo.com. That's O-D-O-O dot com. Five days in this economy. What do we know now that we did not know a week ago? Also, some songs about monetary policy. Seriously. From American public media, this is Marketplace.

1:27in los angeles i'm carl risdahl it is friday today this one is the 19th of december good as it always is to have you along everybody well everything's good now right we're getting data the fed's got a plan what is not to like and maybe some things i think amara mochwe is at Bloomberg. Heather Long is at Navy Federal Credit Union. Hey, you two. Hi, Kai. Hey, Kai. Heather, let me begin with you. We got some data this week, as I said, CPI and the jobs report. Did you have a moment of clarity where you said, OK, now I know what's going on in this economy? Yeah, it almost feels foggier than it did a week ago.

2:07I've been sort of comparing it to that fairy tale. The emperor has no clothes. It's like the data walked out in the undergarments And we're all trying to extrapolate what it might look like if these undergarments were tuxedos or ball gowns. But, you know, I think sitting here at the end of the week here, I would say that the job market is probably the same or a tad worse than what we thought it was looking at September data. And the inflation seems the same or maybe a tad better than what we were thinking. And I don't know that it's a ton better, but, you know, that's sort of where I'd read in the margins from what we saw this week.

2:49Amar, do you think J-Powell and the gang would have made a different decision had they had the data? Because, of course, it came out, you know, like 10 days after the meeting, a week after the meeting, whatever it was. No, I feel like they probably feel like with this data in hand now that they made the right decision at their meeting last week. As Heather was saying, some parts of the job report that we got show this continued slowdown. We had a rise in the unemployment rate, the continued slowdown in the pace of job creation. And so if you're a Fed that wanted to give the labor market a little bit of cushion here with the cut last week and the cuts that they've done since September, I think you feel good about those moves.

3:30You have been writing, though, Amara, about Stephen Myron and John Williams in New York and sort of their diametrically opposed views on what will be happening with interest rates, right? That's right. I think, you know, what we have at the Fed now is sort of policymakers that are in two camps. You have one group that is still very much concerned about inflation. They flag the fact that inflation has been above the Fed's 2 percent target for several years now. And so, you know, for the most part, policymakers were on board with the cuts that happened since September. But you have a group that's saying, OK, from here on, we need to be a little careful because we do still have an inflation challenge on our hands.

4:11And then you have another group that doesn't see it that way. Right. Stephen Myron, Governor Waller, they are flagging concerns in the labor market and saying, you know, we don't want the labor market to weaken further from here. But interestingly, you heard Chris Waller come out and say, look, we don't have to necessarily be in a rush. You heard John Williams today also saying, you know, there's not necessarily an urgency to cut again. And so I think a pause in January is very much on the table. It's interesting, Heather, because, you know, and Powell said this last week, we have one tool, monetary policy, and we have competing problems, right?

4:46We have inflation, which is higher than we want it, and we have a labor market that's weaker than we want it. And the solution is not the same thing for both of those. Yeah, it's not exactly an easy time at the Fed. And I think you layer on top of that one other big issue that's going on, or really two, how do you read AI's impact on this economy? And how do you read the big decline in immigration that we're living through this year? And so, you know, certainly I'm very concerned about what I'm seeing in the labor market, as many Fed leaders have been. But you can make a case that most of the reason that there's no hiring right now is because there simply aren't enough workers and we have an aging population and a big decline in immigration right now.

5:32But I will say what troubles me, I'm almost ready to call this a hiring recession. And that is just how many industries over the past six months are in negative job loss, layoff territory, mining and logging, manufacturing, wholesale trade, transport and warehouse, information, financial services, professional and business services, of course, government. That's not just one or two industries that are cyclically in a downturn. That's more and more of the economy. Yeah. Yeah. Amara, let me ask you about the long term consequences of of the data gap that we have now. Right. Like we are never, ever going to see the consumer price index for October of 2025.

6:15So what does that mean? Like next year when October rolls around and we say the year over year change in CPI was, oh, wait, we didn't have it last year. You know, what do we do with this? Yeah, I mean, I think that's going to be a big question going forward. And I think at the press conference last week, you heard Chair Powell talk about the fact that these distortions that we have because of the government shutdown mean that, you know, some of these data have to be taken with grains of salt going forward. And so I think the jobs report and the inflation report yesterday, all of these things have kind of added to this discussion that we've been having this year about BLS data, government data, and how reliable it's been.

6:59the big revisions that we saw over the summer. All of these things are kind of adding to this whole question about how useful the data is and how reliable it is as the Fed faces this very difficult policy outlook. Heather, I'm going to turn now to consumers, and we've got Sam Fields coming up on consumers here in a second, but we are still spending, even though we are cranky. It is, of course, what drives this economy, and yet we're in a hiring, you believe, a hiring recession. Six, eight months from now, where are we if we are still relying on consumers? I mean, where's economic growth? Where's the labor market?

7:36Put your crystal ball on this for me. Well, looking into 2026, so far, it looks a lot like 2025 in the sense of, you know, the rich consumers continue to spend and continue to power the economy. And the AI boom is contributing to that. But it remains a K-shaped economy. And I've been calling this the Costco Christmas. I think what we're seeing in our data is just huge growth in spending on the wholesale clubs and the discount retailers, whether it's the Amazons, Costco, Sam's Club, BJ's, you pick your favorite one. That's where people are spending their money trying to stretch their dollars. That's where the middle class is.

8:16And so they're still spending, but I wouldn't say you can see the cutback on dining out and travel and the fun stuff. Right. Mara, last word to you. What is the single biggest thing about this economy that worries you? I think this idea that we are in a low-fire, low-hire environment. I think Fed officials take a lot of comfort in that, like that we aren't seeing a whole bunch of layoffs. But if you are a person who is looking for a job, there are a lot of signs that it is very, very difficult. And as we see the unemployment rate tick up and we just understand, especially in my reporting, I hear it, that it's just really hard to find a job.

8:54That really makes me worried for people, their well-being, and also just what we were talking about, consumer spending, which has been such a big, important part of the overall economic story. Amara Mokwe at Bloomberg on this Friday, Heather Long, she's chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union. Thanks, you two. Happy holidays. Have a nice weekend. Wall Street on this Friday. Investors got their mojo back, kind of. We'll have the details when we do the numbers.

9:52All right. And as promised, we're going to take a little trip in the consumer sentiment time machine right now, prompted by this morning's release of the December data. Subdued is a word you might use. We are feeling better than the lows of the mid-2022 post-pandemic lows, but close. Might be hard to remember at this point, though. As Marketplace's Samantha Fields reports, consumers didn't start this year feeling quite so down on this economy. This year has been an emotional roller coaster for consumers. And that rollercoaster shows no signs of stopping. Neil Mahoney at Stanford says people actually started off the year feeling relatively good about the economy.

10:30Trump had campaigned on lowering prices and consumers were optimistic that he would address the cost of living crisis. But that optimism started to fade pretty quickly. It hit a low in April around when Trump announced sweeping global tariffs. Then Mahoney says coming into summer. Trump backed down, consumers started to feel better. But heading into the fall and winter, consumers have become more dour again. Looking back, Erin McLaughlin at the conference board says if she had to sum up 2025... It's sort of the year of the tariff and how that has impacted consumers. And the year of uncertainty.

11:10But Joanne Chu at the University of Michigan's Surveys of Consumers says for all the ups and downs, the sentiment rollercoaster has been heading in a clear direction. Consumers definitely have been telling us that the outlook for the economy deteriorated over the course of 2025. The reason economists care about how consumers are feeling is that it generally drives how much they spend. And consumer spending is one of the main drivers of the U.S. economy. Today, Xu says people are feeling almost as bad about the economy as they were when inflation was at its peak in the summer of 2022. But we're in a very different situation right now.

11:44Back in 2022, people were, of course, very, very unhappy about inflation, but labor markets were really strong. And because most people had jobs and many were getting raises, they just kept on spending, even though they felt bad about the economy. For a while, it seemed like the longtime link between sentiment and spending had broken. But one of the big things that's different about this year is that consumers are quite worried about labor markets. And Josh Bivens at the Economic Policy Institute says there seems to be more of a connection again between how people are feeling and behaving this year.

12:17Sentiment was pretty bad and you saw a noticeable deceleration in actual spending. So I would say historically they're pretty linked. They became delinked for a while. 2025, I think they started to come back together. And he says that's probably largely because the labor market and wage growth are slowing. I'm Samantha Fields for Marketplace.

13:00More than half a million people are expected to head for Kansas City, Missouri next summer for the World Cup. Six matches in all, including an appearance by defending champion Argentina. And if he's healthy, he said Lionel Messi. Kansas City is the smallest of the 16 North American cities that are going to host games. And it has nowhere near enough hotel rooms to accommodate all those visitors, which means Airbnb and VRBO and all the rest are going to be picking up the slack. Marketplace's Henry App reports on the crowds and the Kansas City housing market. Roxanna Chafé is stocking up the townhouse she rents out as an Airbnb in Parkville, Missouri, northwest of Kansas City.

13:36So this morning on my way over, I stopped, I picked up some Kleenex, some toilet paper, some paper towels, right? Soap to fill the soap dispensers. Turning over the unit between guests has become a fairly regular task for Shafé over the past year. Last November, she and her husband bought this property. Three bedrooms, two and a half baths, two car garage. With the World Cup in mind. And like, how do we kind of capitalize on this moment in our town? That moment will play out at Arrowhead Stadium, about 25 minutes away. They bought early because they wanted to get some experience. We wanted that time to sort of understand how these platforms work, how the processes work, not just using the technology, but what does it look like to flip a property in between guests.

14:23So far. It's a little more work than we thought. Yeah. But she's getting the hang of it and hopes that next summer could generate a bit of a windfall. She's looking to charge as much as$1 ,000 a night during the tournament. Plenty of other homeowners are looking to cash in, too. Susan Brown, head of the Kansas City Short-Term Rental Alliance, wants them to be prepared. Her group is holding crash courses to get new hosts up to speed. How do you stay safe, both yourself and for your guests? How do you be a good neighbor? What should your pricing be and what international visitors expect? The city of Kansas City, Missouri, usually charges$200 to register a short-term rental.

15:04For the World Cup, it's cutting that to$50. Brown says getting more hosts up and running will help spread around the hundreds of millions of dollars expected to flow into the region. It gives the average person a little bit of ability to make a little bit of extra money this year. The average homeowner, that is. But I'm worried about renters who have leases that expire somewhere around April. Michael Frisch is an associate professor of urban planning and design at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. He thinks some property owners might not renew leases in the spring so they can rent out their units to World Cup fans, even though he says there isn't enough housing in the region.

15:46Rents are going up faster than the national average. I think that's a sign of a shortage. Advocates for renters are bracing themselves. Tara Roggeveer heads up the local tenant union KC Tenants. She says she hasn't seen many renters getting pushed out yet. But we are kind of preparing ourselves for the almost inevitability that tenants will be displaced in order for landlords to make a quick buck. But the cup is also pushing some developers to bring new housing online. Bob Mayer is a senior partner at Exact Architects in Kansas City. His firm is converting an old office building downtown. It's in the heart of the old financial district where some of the banks were, and we're doing multifamily with a little bit of retail on the lower level.

16:35The plan is for the 49-unit building to be open by April, a few months ahead of the World Cup. Mayer says half of those apartments will be available short-term during the Cup, then turn into longer-term rentals. To be candid, we know that we can get probably bigger rents in the short term than we will be able to the long term. But the long term will sustain it. In suburban Parkville, Roxanna Shafé is waiting for soccer fans to start reserving her place. I finish work every day and then I immediately open my personal laptop and start working the algorithms. So far, she hasn't gotten any World Cup bookings, but there's still six months to go.

17:15I'm Henry Epp for Marketplace. Music

17:44Coming up You can ask the same questions but you have different answers depending on what's going on in the economy, right? Yes, yes, you can. First, though, let's do the numbers. Dow Industrial is up 183 points today, four-tenths of one percent, 48 ,134 for the blue chips. The NASDAQ grew 301 points, one and three-tenths percent, 23 ,307. S &P 500 added 59 points, nine-tenths percent, 6834 there. For the five days gone by, the Dow dipped 7 tenths percent. The Nasdaq increased by about a half percent. The S &P 500 rose one tenth of one percent. TikTok's potential move to the United States, kind of because the algorithm stays in China.

18:28Anyway, it's giving lead buyer Oracle a boost. China's ByteDance finally agreed to a group of U.S. buyers led by that technology company. The deal still does have to be approved by Chinese regulators. Oracle today jumped six and six tenths of one percent. And Sony is buying a majority stake rather than Peanuts. Charlie Brown, Snoopy, and the gang. The Japanese technology and media company is going to own 80%. The remaining 20 % will stay with cartoonist Charles Schultz's family. Sony Group down 2 % on the day. Vince Guaraldi. We ought to play him right here. I'm just saying. You're listening to Marketplace.

19:03This podcast is supported by Odoo. Some say Odoo business management software is like fertilizer for businesses because the simple, efficient software promotes growth. Others say Odoo is like a magic beanstalk because it scales with you and is magically affordable. And some describe Odoo's programs for manufacturing, accounting, and more as building blocks for creating a custom software suite. So Odoo is fertilizer, magic beanstalk building blocks for business. Odoo, exactly what businesses need. Sign up at odoo.com. That's O-D-O-O dot com. This Marketplace podcast is supported by Wealth Enhancement, who understand that dreams don't happen by chance, it takes a plan.

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21:05Trusted by collectors worldwide, discover an unparalleled selection of one-of-a-kind art that transforms your space. Use code MARKETPLACE for 10 % off original art at SaatchiArt.com. That's 10 % off at S-A-A-T-C-H-I-Art.com. This is Marketplace. I'm Kai Rizdahl. We got an email the other day from a guy named Scott Simpkins. He's an economist, teaches at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University. And it turns out he's a bit of an early adopter in integrating artificial intelligence into the classroom, specifically for our purposes today, because I know you are wondering where this is going.

21:45Having his intermediate macro students use AI to write songs about monetary policy. So of course, we had to get him on the phone. Professor Simpkins, thanks for coming on the program. It's great to be here. We use your marketplace clips in class all the time. Well, I appreciate that. I'll be sure to send that along to the marketing folks. Just so we all know what we're talking about here, just baseline, what does one learn in your Econ 313 class, Intermediate Macroeconomic Theory? So it's an upper division course. Our majors are in that course. It's one of our core theory courses in the major.

22:24And so they're learning to develop the theory about the economy. And then also in my course, it's really important. One of my key learning goals is to connect that to what's happening in the actual economy. Amen. Now, tell me about this assignment to use AI to come up with these songs. How did you come upon that? We should say here, AI and macroeconomic education is kind of your thing. Yeah, I'm trying to make. I've thought a lot about it in the last year. Other people are in that space as well. But the origin story with this is Nolan Gasser, who was the co-creator for the Pandora Radio Music Genome Project, was a keynote speaker at an AI conference that we hosted at North Carolina A &T.

23:06At the end of that, he played a song that he had developed, you know, for A &T. He's a composer. He's a musician. So it was really good, you know. And I said, I turned to a colleague and I said, I'm going to do this in my class. It was toward the end of the class after we developed this comprehensive model. And the idea was to help them crystallize what they had learned, apply it, but also as a way, as a lead into a final project in the course, which they do a macro briefing report. And I will say they came up with some amazing stuff. December's coming in the feds back in the room, staring down decisions that could shift the boom.

23:43is curved trembling from investment on hold. LM's tight money keeping credit cold. Feline steady at potential they see, but output keeps drifting from where it should be. Markets say cut it, labor says wait. Inflation's still sticky at a higher than safe rate. Do you think that they met your bar? Well, that's an interesting question. The original thing I was going to... Okay, let me just say they're probably listening to this, sir. Exactly. So the original thing I wanted to do was to use it as an exercise to see and maybe actually have them vote on each other's songs to see which one might be the best, whatever that might mean, but best in terms of the economics and incorporating the models in it.

24:31And then to connect that and see whether there's any correlation between that and the prompts they use to get the lyrics. I didn't actually do that, but I have some semblance that mattered in terms of their final project. I think it was better this semester. One part of that final project is how their use of AI. They have to reflect on that and report on that. And I think they did a better job of that this semester. IS whispers. Spending slowing. LM hums. Money's tight. GDP stands tall, but shadow's growing. Where is full employment tonight? AD liens left with fading fire. AS unclear, but holding fast.

25:18GDP growing slowly. Let me get a little bit more substantive here on the issue of artificial intelligence and education and how you as an economist are trying to work that in. You have likened it. I think I saw this in a presentation you did to the St. Louis Fed about building the plane while you're flying it or something like that. You all in the education world are trying to figure this out as you go. Yeah, that's right. We are as well as businesses in the corporate world. One of the key things for me was about a year ago, this was National Academy's consensus study, really pointing out that the value of AI in the future for people making high stakes decisions is going to be for people that have some expertise.

26:07So if our students are offloading that development of expertise, just using it to get answers, then that's not going to help them. So the question then really focuses on how do we help students develop both disciplinary expertise, but alongside that, AI skills that use AI as a complement to their own thinking. This goes back to that thing you mentioned with your students and these songs about making sure they had the right prompts, that they have to have the technical expertise to get the right prompts to get the desired outcome. Right. Exactly. Here we are in the boardroom light. The Fed's holding tight, trying to do what's right.

26:48Inflation's stubborn, creeping high in the sky, but the job market's wobbled hard not to ask why. On the ISLM, demand feels weak. Investment slows and consumption's on a streak, but on empty, full employment slipping away. Should we ease now? Oh, wait, that's what they say. Getting back to where we started, you going to do this song project again next semester? What do you think? Yeah, I think so. One of the nice things about macroeconomics, writ large, is that you can ask the same questions, but you have different answers depending on what's going on in the economy, right? And who the economists are.