Job Seekers Are Paying to Get Hired & Elon Pivots From Mars to the Moon

0:28Recently, I got an ad for the best lawn fertilizer. Just go to LinkedIn.com slash MBD. That's LinkedIn.com slash MBD. Terms and conditions apply. Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, the labor market is down so bad that people are paying recruiters to find jobs for them. Ben, Elon Musk is ditching Mars for something a little closer to home, the moon. It's Tuesday, February 10th. Let's ride.

1:00So I went to the gym yesterday, no big deal, and was obviously listening to Bad Bunny on my AirPods after a Super Bowl halftime show. I was looking around wondering, how many people here are also listening to Bad Bunny? And the answer is probably most of them. On Monday, the singer saw a 470 % jump in Spotify streams in the United States and a 210 % increase in global streams. As of this morning, he held the first six spots on Spotify's U.S. Daily Top Songs chart. He also holds the top six spots of Toby's personal Spotify songs chart. We're also getting some more data into about how locked in people were for the halftime show.

1:38New York City Water on X posted that they saw a significant reduction of water usage during the halftime show. But in the 15 minutes after the show ended, they saw a spike in usage equivalent to 761 ,719 toilets flushing across town. I was one of them. The homemade wings I attempted to chef up didn't go down. so well. But now a word from our sponsor, FlavCity. Neil, my smoothie budget is getting crazy. I'm buying all kinds of berries, powders, tonics, and don't even get me started on the price of mushrooms. That is crazy, especially when FlavCity's all-in-one smoothies have the benefits of those ingredients in one bag.

2:15No blunder needed. Okay, well, there's no way it tastes better than my super secret smoothie recipe. No, they absolutely taste better than your gross weird smoothie, whether that's the pleasantly pepperminty shamrock, banana bread, brownie batter, or any of their wide range of flavors, you get a tasty protein-rich smoothie. All that and with 25 grams of protein, 10 grams of collagen. Wow. Head to shopflavcity.com to try any of their delicious flavors. That's shopflavcity.com. It's becoming so hard to find a job that people are paying recruiters to find one for them. According to the Wall Street Journal, applicants have gotten so fed up with the job hunting process that they're signing up for so-called reverse recruitment programs to help them stand out in a sea of 10 ,000 resumes.

2:59This isn't how it's supposed to work. Typically, recruiters are hired by employers to help them identify great candidates for open positions. But as hirings come to a halt, the tables have turned. Recruiters are increasingly looking to people, not companies, for their next batch of customers. Here's an example of how this works, per the journal, at least on the high end of things. A firm called Reverse Recruiting Agency charges$1 ,500 a month for its services, which include LinkedIn profile writing and resume and career coaching. It'll submit as many as 100 job applications a week on your behalf while contacting current employees at the companies you're interested in.

3:34Once you nab the job, because of course you will, you'll fork over 10 % of your first year salary minus the first month fee. Toby, desperate times call for desperate measures. The rise of reverse recruiting is a pretty perfect indicator of where this job market is right now. There's always been some ethical and even just practical concerns around this practice because charging job seekers, people at vulnerable moments in their life and career is not something usually looked favorably upon in the industry because maybe you're not even providing a good service, either mass applying on behalf of candidates, but also you and I have been out of the job market for a while now.

4:09So we wanted to get a second opinion on the rise of reverse recruiting. So we hit up our backup host and our friend, Kyle Hagee, who also has a work life podcast of his own called per my last email for his thoughts on the rise of reverse recruiting. Thanks guys. And also thanks for having me as a morning brew daily show field correspondent. It is an honor. I'm adding it to my resume. Now let's talk about the reverse recruiting story. First, I'm a little skeptical and there's definitely questions you want to ask them. What is their success rate of placing candidates and jobs? How many candidates do they work with at one time?

4:40Is this white glove or is this just a, you know, spray and pray type scenario? And then the lastly, what is their fee structure? Are you paying them up front or are the incentives actually aligned where you pay them after you get a job? I think that really matters. And I would make sure it's the latter and not the former. Back to you guys. One anecdote that the Wall Street Journal highlighted that I think speaks to what Kyle was saying was Sean Cole. He paid a reverse recruiter up front on Fiverr,$400 total to ostensibly resume, customization, do everything a reverse recruiter is supposed to do.

5:14he found no roles, didn't get many leads. And actually what happened afterwards, he said, I might start a reverse recruiting side hustle myself, try to make a little cash on the side by doing this thing that didn't work for me. So exactly what Kyle was saying, like, make sure the incentives are in line, because if you're not, you know, paying for the product, you end up being the product and you make money that way versus actually getting a job. Let's talk about the big picture numbers about why there has been a rise in this cottage industry of reverse recruitment. It's because very few companies are hiring and people who are unemployed are staying on the job market for a very long time.

5:49For the first time since the pandemic, there are more unemployed people than open roles. As of late last year, the average job search, according to federal data, is now approaching about six months. Meanwhile, workers aren't leaving the jobs they had. The quits rate as a share of employment was 2%, which was way below the 2.3 % it averaged in 2019 before the pandemic. We also had the fewest jobs added of any year outside of recession in 2025. People not quitting is a problem, and it leads to this chicken or the egg situation where people aren't leaving the jobs they have because they don't think they're going to find an open position in the future.

6:25But one of the reasons there are no open positions is because people aren't leaving their jobs. So we are in a stuck moment in the labor market. And you also have to talk about the rise of AI, and you can submit a job application anywhere using AI very easily. And so with all this coming into the fore, you're seeing the rise of reverse recruiting. Yeah, the data is just so bizarre right now in the labor market because 4.4 % unemployment rate is historically low. And yet why does the job market feel just so stuck? And why is there no jobs out there? It's because people are just holding onto their jobs.

6:59They're clinging to what they have, which is what you spoke to with that quits rate. So you have technically employment growing, but at a glacial rate, like you can't even observe it because you still are having like these unemployment rates sitting at a place where most people are comfortable with it. So that's just a weird oxymoron on the center of all of this. I do just want to dive into some other things that people are doing to try to get jobs. I was reading this Business Insider article. Someone hired a resume consultant who basically told her to appear younger on their employment history.

7:33They said, remove everything but the last 10 years of experience, remove your college graduation date, erase more than half of your career to, the explicit rationale was to appear younger. So in addition to reverse recruiting, you're seeing like these other tactics that only really appear when you have a labor market as stuck as this one. Yeah, the Wall Street Journal wrote an article called, it costs up to$10 ,000 just to get a job right now. We're in this era where it takes a lot of money to make money. Talked about paying a reverse recruiter, but you can also pay$200 for LinkedIn premium, which experts actually say is a pretty good ROI.

8:06You pay monthly fees for maybe Claude or ChatGPT to help massage your resume. You pay$500 for study materials. You got$50 for a career coach. And you are looking at thousands of dollars just to get yourself in a reasonable position to get a job because there are thousands and thousands of people you are competing with for this one position. Let's move on. For years, one of Elon Musk's core promises was that SpaceX would take humanity to Mars. He wanted to, quote, extend the light of human consciousness by making humans multi-planetary. But in a sudden change of tune, Musk is ditching Mars for the moon.

8:41For those unaware, Elon wrote on X, SpaceX has already shifted focus to building a self-growing city on the moon. We can potentially achieve this in less than 10 years, whereas Mars would take 20 plus, he explained. The abrupt recalibration of expectations took many by surprise. Elon called the moon a distraction as recently as a year ago. even if it does make logistical sense. Musk's stated goal was to send an unmanned rocket to the red planet by 2027, but Mars is really hard to get to. The voyage can only be attempted every 26 months due to planetary alignment cycles, a needle in a celestial haystack.

9:18Also, don't sleep on the moon. It is still a very important place to reach for. It has a lot of sunshine. It's got some natural resources. It makes sense to work on establishing a lunar manufacturing hub that can be used as a launch pad for other missions, maybe even to Mars. Neil, shoot for the Mars, and if you fail, you'll land amongst the moon, which maybe isn't such a bad thing after all. This is a bigger head fake than the Super Bowl Coinbase karaoke ad because it's worth drilling down on just how core to the DNA of SpaceX Mars is. This was in the founding charter back in 2002. He founded SpaceX with basically one goal, which was occupy Mars, colonize Mars.

9:56If you go to his executive suite down in Texas, the carpet is rust red to resemble Mars. He had this vision that other executives at SpaceX talk about of creating something called Oasis Mars or Mars Oasis, where the main goal of this company was to get humans in a permanent colony on Mars. So the fact that there's been this huge pivot just in recent days, and I know he said in his tweet, you know, if you haven't been paying attention, we've been doing this for a while. It's a really significant shift and speaks to a lot of different factors going on right now. Yeah, and the idea is that the moon is a very helpful stepping stone.

10:34It's so funny that we were saying like overlooking the moon, but for a long time, Elon did just ignore the moon. He laughed at it. He like looked down upon it. But now, depending on how sci-fi you want to get, it could be very helpful to have a lunar base there. One thing that Ars Technica kind of brought to the forefront was building a catapult-like thing on a world with far less air that could be a much more efficient way of transporting materials to space and beyond to build stuff. So maybe if you're talking about orbital factories, maybe you're talking about data centers, solar farms, and then eventually bringing those things to Mars, you would need a lunar base set up.

11:10Also, don't sleep on the moon's resources. It's obviously not Earth, but it does have reliable stores of oxygen. It's got stores of silicon as well. So Elon, I was going through his Twitter account this morning, which don't do that. He tweets way too much. Elon responded to someone saying there's enough of everything on the moon. So clearly he's kind of recalibrated what it represents and the opportunity it does present. All right. Sounds like you want to go to the moon. I would love to go to the moon. But there are three things here that have changed, I think, outside of Elon's control that has reshifted this focus from Mars to the moon.

11:42The number one one is that there is now competition for years, for decades. There was no competition with SpaceX to go to the moon or land people on the moon. Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin is coming on strong. And there's a possibility that they will land on the moon, land people on the moon faster than SpaceX with Blue Origin. So that is certainly one competitive factor that has Elon Musk a little scared. The other is, remember, SpaceX just bought XAI. There's a newfound confluence of Elon Musk's business vision, which is centered around AI. And his main goal with merging SpaceX and XAI is to get all these data centers in space.

12:20You can do that from the moon. You can't do that from Mars. So that's reason number two. Number three is SpaceX is IPOing in a few months. I don't know. We've never seen a Mars IPO before. You have to go to public shareholders, public investors and say, you need to buy shares in my company. And I don't know if how strong a pitch it is, is we're going to go to the we're going to go to Mars in 10 to 20 years. And we can only get there once every 26 months when the when the planets align like that is. I don't know if you would put your money in that particular company. So I think those three factors are really driving this pivot.

12:52Moving on, next time you fly into Cuba, don't ask for a top-up. The government warned international airlines that they won't be able to refuel their planes at Cuba's airports over the next month as an energy crisis grips the Caribbean nation. It's a worrying development since international flights bring much-needed tourists and basic necessities to the island. Fueling the fuel shortage is the United States, which has been putting intense economic and diplomatic pressure on Cuba's communist regime since the start of the year. After capturing Venezuela's Nicolas Maduro in early January, a close ally of the Cuban government, the Trump administration effectively cut off fuel shipments to Cuba, then later threatened tariffs on any country that sells or provides oil to the island.

13:31Russia, another Cuban ally, called the energy shortage truly critical, and it does seem that way. On Friday, Cuba announced an emergency plan to ration fuel for certain sectors, which includes shortening school days, going to a four-day work week, and limiting public transportation services. It's also closing some hotels and consolidating tourists into certain resorts to make sure there are no disruptions from gasoline shortages. And Toby, all this when Cuba is already suffering the worst economic crisis in its modern history. Yeah, it is bad on the ground in Cuba right now. One of the issues is, in addition to this fuel shortage, is that tourism has taken a nosedive.

14:07In 2025, only 1.8 million visitors came to the island. That is down 17 % from the year prior. Their goal was 2.6 million tourists. So when you factor in the fact that they can't produce a lot of their energy themselves, you know, 40 % of the oil comes from Cuba. The rest they have to import in order to fuel this island. And then you factor in the fact that no tourists are coming as well. You have this economic crisis that isn't new, but it's been exacerbated extremely by these sanctions from the U.S. There are tourists there, which is pretty wild right now. What they're experiencing, there are 4 ,500 Russian tourists.

14:45And what Cuba is doing, basically Cuba right now is doing the equivalent of when you're in your house, it's getting really cold and you just energy efficientize the crap out of the place. Like turn all the lights off, make sure all the doors are closed. That's essentially what they're doing to their economy right now. So they can just provide basic services. So there are all these resorts on the north coast. They're consolidating tourists. They're closing two down and moving them all into one. Meanwhile, Russia is sending an emergency plane to get them out of there. You can, as an international airline, refuel elsewhere in the region.

15:18This has happened in the past. This last happened a decade ago where there was just not enough jet fuel to refuel planes. And you basically just go to Cancun or the Dominican Republic, refuel your plane, go to Havana, and then come back. But Air Canada said we are not flying, at least for the foreseeable future, down to Havana. So, yeah, all this tourism money is about to dry up. And it's a big deal because they provide hard currency, which the government really needs just to keep the lights on. Yeah, and conditions in Cuba have actually gotten so bad of late that the U.S. itself is sending humanitarian aid into the country.

15:51Washington obviously wants to replace Cuba's regime. But in the meantime, they are saying that there is a humanitarian crisis developing right near our border. So we're sending some money there, even though it is a crisis, particularly of the United States making as well. So what are they saying at the top level? Like, will this resolve and how will this resolve? Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel said, we're open to talking with the Trump administration. Our sovereignty is not on the table, but we will have discussions. And then last week, also, President Trump said negotiations were taking place with top Cuban officials.

16:25And he said, I think we're pretty close to an agreement. All right, we're going to take a quick break and come back with Toby's Trends right after this.

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18:23Download the app and apply today. All right, real quick, check if you have a wedgie. Fix it, if so. Now check if you're wearing underwear created by a celebrity. Perhaps Skims, maybe something from Skylark. If you are, then you're part of the growing contingent fueling the latest Tobies trend, which is A-listers slinging skivvies. When Justin Bieber took the stage at the Grammys last month wearing just his undies, it wasn't some weird humiliation thing. he was drawing attention to his brand Skylark, spelled without any vowels, which recently debuted a line of boxers. His performance, Sans Clothes, came soon after Sydney Sweeney debuted a lingerie line of her own called Siren, again spelled without vowels.

19:02And of course, both Sweeney and J. Beeps are playing catch-up to the underwear queen Kim Kardashian's skims, that does have a value, which was recently valued at$5 billion. The Hollywood Reporter's James Hibbard noted all of these releases and posed an interesting question. is underwear the new tequila think back over the last decade or so if you're a movie star you launch or endorse a tequila brand george clooney has casamigos the rock has terramana heck even mark walberg has flecha azul which won cnn's blind taste test by the way but when you've got marky mark and the funky bunch creeping into a space it probably means it's oversaturated which is why celebs have been broadening out from agave and into tidy whities neil i'm just gonna turn the question right back around on you.

19:47Is underwear the new tequila? Well, I did have a bad experience with both in college, but no, I think these are very different products. Obviously to launch on these brand, you have to have a certain amount of sex appeal. Uh, but also at the same time, underwear is a much higher level of difficulty than tequila for tequila. I mean, I think there is not so much a discerning consumer. I don't, I know there was a taste test, but I'm not sure if you could tell the difference between Terramana and Fletcher Azul. I don't, Toby, I know you're a discerning person, but I don't think you can. Once you just go get some agave, you make tequila, you get the formulation, then you set it and forget it.

20:25It's marketing. It's marketing. For underwear, lingerie, this is a much more difficult market to crack. You have to constantly update styles for the different seasons, and it's just a much more nuanced thing. So I think you're seeing a lot fewer people get into this space, but there could be a higher upside than tequila. We are absolutely seeing, too, kind of the next wave of celebrity entrepreneurs figure out that maybe endorsement isn't the only way I can make money off my career. Obviously, you get paid to star in movies. Movies make you famous. And then usually you use that fame to endorse another brand.

20:58But we have seen this flock to ownership of late. I mean, Kim Kardashian is maybe the poster child of this. Her Skims brand is, you know, it's a$5 billion company at this point. We've also seen Ryan Reynolds dive much into ownership. He owns everything from Mint Mobile to a soccer team. Now, Sydney Sweeney is kind of doing the same thing. She has put her face everywhere. I mean, she has endorsed a lot of brands. She's not afraid of that. It's not shying away from that revenue stream, but also saying, it's time I start investing in my own products, in my own brand, which is Siren. Yeah, Hollywood does not pay like it did in the 90s and the early 2000s.

21:36Back then, in the 90s, Julia Roberts, Will Smith, Tom Hanks, Jim Carrey, they were commanding over$20 million per movie. Do you know how much Michael B. Jordan got paid for Creed II? Just$3 to$4 million, which is a good paycheck, but it's not the F you money that some of these celebrities want. So they're starting their own companies and moving from being endorsers to owners. Let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines. Google thinks it's going to be here for a good time and a long time. As part of its borrowing binge to fund AI investments, Parent Alphabet is reportedly planning to sell a 100-year bond, a move so rare that it's the first time any tech company will have done so since Motorola in 1997.

22:17I know what you're thinking. Who is going to buy it? What is the 100-year bond addressable market look like? Typically, ultra-long dated bonds are scooped up by institutions like governments and universities, as well as insurance companies and pension funds. The fact that Google is getting into the century biz is a sign it's casting as wide a net as possible to raise funds. After all, it's expecting to spend$185 billion on capital expenditures next year in pursuit of AI domination. So you mentioned Motorola, which is an app. It's the only thing we can compare it to because it's the only company that has gone down this path of 100-year bonds.

22:52How did it work out for Motorola? At the time that they issued it, they were top 25 market cap in the country. They were top 25 revenue corporation in America. They never reach those heights again. Yes, the company is still around. So I guess that's a win, but it is not near the heights of when it issued these bonds at its very peak. So that is one thing to look at. But another data point that I saw people putting out is that there is demand for this bond. It is already seven. This round that Google is trying to raise of debt is already 7x oversubscribed. So clearly the credit world is pretty comfortable with giving them the terms that they want, unlike most people or in my brain.

23:30It doesn't even seem possible to issue a 100-year bond. But clearly, people are saying that this is a build-out that they feel comfortable with and want to give Google money. What do you think the yield on this is going to be? I know. It's crazy. Well, I actually looked at it this because Google recently issued a 50-year bond. And the only thing you can compare it to is treasury yields, which usually pay back money over 30 years. The interest rate Google is paying is not that much more than what the U.S. Treasury pays, even though they're getting an extra 20 years to pay it back. So it was like less than a percentage point difference.