Uploaded August 2026 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago

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The July job report came out last Friday. Markets were expecting a modest growth of 80,000 jobs… instead, the report showed that we’d lost 23,000 jobs. We also learned that the positive numbers from previous months were actually not as positive as we thought. Is this the biggest sign that the economy is in a bad place? For Justin Wolfers, the answer is a resounding yes - and he’s here to explain why. 

Podcast production by Rob Gunther, Evan Campbell, Madeline Thames-Ducharme and Patrick Fort. Video production by Evan Campbell.

Paige Osburn is the senior supervising producer of What Next and What Next TBD.

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