Jobs numbers, immigrants in healthcare, and ... Jesus Christ?

What's up?

Hi Adrienne. And we are joined by the dapper Darian Woods.

On today's episode, we do not have flowers for you, but we do have

an analysis of new job numbers hot off the griddle.

A policy that might just save our

So my indicator comes from the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics jobs report. A few days late because of the partial government shutdown, but you know, better late than never. And the number is 130,000. 130,000 is the number of jobs the BLS estimates were added to the US economy in January.

This is awkward because we just retired the air horn, but this is in the olden times, an air horn worthy number.

Yeah. So like what do we do in lieu of an air horn?

Like a different sound.

Snaps.

Snaps. Or what about an old fashioned car horn? Oooga. Ooga.

So on top of aooga worthy jobs numbers, the unemployment rate in January also ticked down from 4.4% to to 4.3. And for some economists, this latest report suggests that the job market might be stabilizing after a year of lackluster hiring.

It is. And just to expand on the lack of luster in last year's hiring situation, this also made an appearance in the jobs report which had a big revision to the net number of jobs created last year. So the Revised estimate is 181,000 jobs created, which is almost get this 70% lower than its initial estimate.

We've been seeing these huge revisions lately. They're really keeping us on our toes.

Yes, it does seem that way for now. I mean there are still clouds hanging over the job market. Like job posts are down and AI is still threatening to displace workers. And of course there's still uncertainty kind of spilling out from some of President Trump's policies around things like immigration and tariffs. But overall, pretty good jobs report. And particularly one sector of hiring looked really strong, which was healthcare.

Awooga.

Yes, sorry awooga for that. Because more than half of the jobs created last month were in healthcare.

Well, I got a little excited. Sorry about the, you know, random ooga I shouted right there.

But never apologize for an old timey horn sound effect.

But my indicator is about healthcare jobs. I got super excited. My number is 5,000. That is how many elderly lives could be saved every year by allowing a net 25% increase in immigration to the US because some of those newcomers could fill, you know, some of these healthcare jobs. 5,000 lives. I got this number from a new economics working paper. The authors are David Grabowski of Harvard Medical School, Jonathan Gruber of MIT, and Brian McGarry from the University of Rochester.

So 5,000 lives saved a year. That sounds pretty significant.

Yeah. The paper called this finding a quote, striking and statistically meaningful decline in elderly mortality.

And that is like the Economist's equivalent of screaming from the rooftops.

For sure. It's like the Economist. It's significant. They're like saying, I want the world to know it and I know, I want everyone to know. Yeah, I don't care who knows. Actually, I do care who knows. I want everybody to know. All right, so here's what they want you to know. Around 18% of all healthcare workers in the US are immigrants. So it's already an industry that employs lots of foreign born workers. And then you see even larger proportions of immigrants in certain fields like nursing homes and home healthcare.

Yeah, we do. And this paper says upping the flow of immigrants to the US Would lead to more foreign healthcare workers. Interestingly, they say there would be more US born doctors too, possibly because employers can add more doctors when they have support staff.

So they're saying that these immigrants are not taking away jobs from US born workers.

Yeah, that's what this paper is saying. Now the researchers say it's not automatic that more immigrant healthcare workers would lead to better outcomes for elderly patients because there might be language barriers or xenophobia. But these researchers numbers do show improved outcomes. For example, they found that increased immigration led to less use of nursing homes. And there's evidence suggesting that Elderly patients prefer to be cared for at home rather than in an institution.

Yeah. I mean, reality is of course going to be more complicated than what's presented in one paper, but I thought it was a very interesting finding.

Thank you very much. Waylon and Darian, bring us home. What do we got?

That is higher than I would have thought. So this is what people are betting, is that Jesus Christ will come back. They're giving it 4% odds.

I love the audacity of betting on what is literally a black swan event, Maybe the ultimate black swan event.

All I know is the Bible says that the day of the Lord will come like a thief in the night. So I think it's very hubristic that anyone is making these kinds of predictions.

Are they agnostic Jesus is coming back as a resurrected Lord and Savior?

So you can bet on the bet itself.

It sounds like this could really result in some financial shenanigans.

Not to call a youth pastor on you guys, but you know what the Bible says is the beginning of wisdom. Tell me fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, not what they say on Kalshee.

Well, we should follow up on this at some point.

All hail. I don't think that's what you say to St. Valentine.

Oh, hey, let's St. Valentine.