Just how bad are these job numbers?

0:01NPR.

0:11This is The Indicator from Planet Money. I'm Darian Woods. And I'm Waylon Wong, and it's what should be Jobs Friday. The Bureau of Labor Statistics was scheduled to give us the jobs numbers for January. But due to the partial government shutdown, we're going to have to wait. We still have some jobs numbers. We have the Chicago Fed estimate of U.S. unemployment for January. That rate is 4.4 percent. And it's an unemployment rate that is essentially unchanged from December. We also have private sector estimates of how many jobs were added to the economy in January. Reveglio Labs, which is a workforce analytics company, it estimated that the economy lost 13 ,000 jobs.

0:52HR and payroll company ADP, though, estimated the U.S. gained 22 ,000 jobs. Now, you might be wondering, do those numbers really justify an air horn? About a year ago, we were announcing numbers like 140 ,000, 260 ,000. That, we were saying, meant a pretty strong labor market. Yeah, losing 13 ,000 jobs or gaining 22 ,000, that doesn't necessarily mean that the jobs market is going down the drain. Today on the show, we speak with somebody whose story sheds light on what's happening with all these topsy-turvy jobs indicators. And we learn about what economists call the break-even jobs number. We'll explain after the break.

1:37To better understand why lower jobs numbers aren't meaning spiking U.S. unemployment, we spoke to Guy Berger. Guy is a senior fellow at the Burning Glass Institute, which is a labor market think tank. You know, a good jobs number is not what it used to be. The standard has fallen a lot. That's because the unemployment rate has two parts. It has the numerator, the number of people out of work and looking for a job. And it has the denominator, what you divide that unemployment number by. You divide it by the total number of people in America in the labor force. And when the total American labor force isn't growing by as much, you don't need as many new jobs to keep a steady unemployment rate.

2:17You might need very little. You might not need it. You might be able to lose jobs and still keep the unemployment rate steady. I mean, if you look at places with really rapidly aging populations, like parts of Southern Europe or Japan, that's the kind of world they're already in. That seems to be the population trend that the U.S. is hurtling towards. We have very few people coming into the country, maybe some people leaving, and our working-age population has probably peaked. And this is where the break-even jobs number comes in. Guy explains that this number is the amount of jobs needed each month to stop the unemployment rate from rising.

2:54He says it used to be one or 200 ,000 new jobs a month. That's how much you needed to keep the economy on an even keel. Now it could be in the low tens of thousands. One thing that's hard is we actually don't have very good real-time estimates of population. The U.S. Census just released its population estimates, and it reckons we've seen the lowest increase in the American population since the pandemic. It's caused by fewer people coming into the country and people being deported or leaving voluntarily. And that's something we're going to focus on today. We know that the number of undocumented people leaving the U.S.

3:31voluntarily is significant and growing. We spoke with a group that works with this population. Yeah, when I did a call out to hear people's stories, I was flooded with people wanting to share. One of those people was Alessandro Negrete. Alessandro, an Angelino through and through, is wearing his Cal State LA sweater. Hey, Darian, good morning. Alessandro's mother brought him across the border from Mexico when he was three months old. Alessandro grew up in inner city LA undocumented. He says this was never on his mind as he went to school. My status hadn't really come up. It wasn't something that we openly talked about, but it wasn't also something that I openly noticed that made a difference.

4:12Until one day, it really did. Alessandro received a scholarship to go to the University of California, Berkeley, sometimes known as a public ivy. He proudly showed his mother the acceptance letter. I'm like, hey, I'm really excited. And she starts to cry. And I'm like, what? What's wrong? She's like, you don't have a social security. And I'm like, I don't have a social security. Well, what's a social security? and she's just like, it's a number and, you know, it means you're legal here. And obviously my mom being undocumented herself didn't really understand the legalities of it and what it meant in the broader context, except for we don't belong here.

4:52This was around the year 2000, years before Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals or DACA made life easier for some undocumented kids. Alessandro learned that he couldn't easily accept that UC Berkeley scholarship and head off to college. he'd possibly have to pay international fees, which wasn't feasible. And so it hit me a bit deeper. I was like, oh, okay. So Alessandro instead got an under-the-table job working in LA's garment district. I was just a receptionist and just helping people process their orders or direct them to the designs that they wanted. And working for the clothing company meant Alessandro could help pay his way through a local community college where he got his associate's degree.

5:36He'd only have to pay in-state tuition and could save money by living at home. He then enrolled at California State University in LA for his bachelor's in sociology. Alessandro went on to work as a contractor for social justice organizations, helping with fundraising and strategy. So career-wise, he was doing well, even though he never went to UC Berkeley. But in the first Trump administration, he started noticing an immigration crackdown. His workplace even made preparations for any potential immigration raids nearby. And that's when I started having those thoughts. Like, you know, I am pretty capable.

6:12I have a natural hustle in me. And, you know, I can do this. I can leave and I'll be OK. But what kept me around during that time of the administration was my mom. Like, I wanted to help her and she had cancer. She was also undocumented. So I couldn't just leave. Fast forward to 2025, President Trump was inaugurated a second time, bringing an even stronger anti-immigration push. The broader immigrant community is under attack. Like all these things are just forms of weaponized mental anguish. But there was a ray of some good news for Alessandro. His mom's cancer was in remission and she finally received residency.

6:51This cleared an obstacle for him to leave. After that news from my mom that I was just like, you know what? I'm doing it. Alessandro joined the millions of others leaving the U.S. over the last year. In September, Alessandro boarded a plane to the city of Guadalajara in Jalisco. It wasn't until I boarded the plane that I'm like, I'm having a panic attack. You know, it really hit me, like, the magnitude of this decision. Like, I'm not going to see a lot of people for some time. And, you know, that first week was rough. But once I found a place to live in, I've been in my new apartment for two months.

7:29I brought my dog with me. She's been a saving grace. I've created a sense of normalcy and community. The anti-immigration push has had enormous costs for Alessandro. And for the U.S. economy as a whole, he represents a skilled worker that the country is losing. All that education and work experience that Alessandro gained over four decades is now out of the country. And widening the lens as people leave the U.S. and have fewer babies, economists are debating whether a larger population is good overall for the economy. Some point out that innovation is more likely when we have more people in the workforce sharing ideas.

8:08Others point out that there are real adjustment costs in getting more roads and houses and schools built if the population is growing. As for Alessandro, he's feeling more relaxed being out of the U.S. But he's thinking of everyone in L.A. He says it will always feel like home to him. On a smaller scale, was there something that you missed from home? There are no bagels where you are. There are no bagels in Guadalajara except in Costco, and they're not that great. I was very intrigued to hear there's Costco in Guadalajara, though. I wonder how much the hot dogs cost. Yeah, don't forget your card when you go and visit.

8:46This episode was produced by Cooper Casper-Kim with engineering by Robert Rodriguez. It was fact-checked by Sierra Juarez. Kagan Cannon is our editor and The Indicator is a production of NPR. So with all this subtlety about what even is a good jobs number, we thought we'd retire the air horn. You know, it's been a good eight years. Ah, what a run. Should we do like a 21 air horn salute to commemorate? Let's do it!

9:16Okay, baby, that was too many air horns. Yeah, with truly saturated air horn desire, now put to rest. I'm overstimulated.