We Recorded This One In Person — And Brought Someone New to the Table

This week’s episode looked different. For the first time, Jack and I sat down at a table together instead of across the internet, and we brought a second student voice into the discussion.

Meet Claire Maddox.

Claire Maddox is a first-year student; she starts her second year in August at the Haile College of Business, and she's my research assistant on a project we’re running this summer on housing affordability policy. This was her first episode, and the in-person setup was actually her idea. We weren’t sure if it would work. We think it did, but we want to hear from you. Tell us in the comments if you want more episodes like this one.

And do us a favor: this was Claire’s first time on the mic. Drop her a comment and welcome her to the show. First episodes are nerve-wracking, a little encouragement goes a long way.

Here’s what we got into:

The jobs report looked fine on the surface: 170,000 jobs added, unemployment holding at 4.3%. But almost half of those jobs came from hospitality and leisure, and there’s a real chance a lot of that hiring is World Cup-driven and temporary. The number that actually worries me is long-term unemployment: over 2 million people have now been out of work for 26+ weeks. That’s not a “create more jobs” problem anymore; that’s a skills-depreciation problem, and it calls for a completely different policy response.

Then we layered in this week’s inflation data. CPI came in at 4.2%, PPI was close to 6.5%, and 80% of that increase was due to energy prices. Real wages went negative. So if your grocery and gas bills feel like they’re outrunning your paycheck, you’re not imagining it, the math backs you up.

And here’s the complication for the Fed: the market expects them to raise rates to fight inflation, but this isn’t a demand problem. Raising rates won’t touch energy and supply costs. It’ll just slow things down without solving the actual issue.

We also got into the economics of the World Cup (hosting it is probably a wash — or a loss — once you account for crowding-out effects), and a conversation about picking a major that I think is one of the more useful things we’ve said on this show: it’s not about whether your degree has “ROI.” It’s about whether you understand the risk profile of the path you’re choosing and budgeting accordingly.

Timestamps

• 0:40 – Welcome back + introducing Claire’s first episode

• 1:34 – Does hosting the World Cup actually pay off?

• 6:27 – The jobs report: 170K looks fine, until you look at long-term unemployment

• 11:48 – Real wages went negative — what that means for your wallet

• 12:34 – Claire’s take: how this economy hits students at the pump and the grocery store

• 13:08 – Rethinking the “is college worth it” question

• 22:22 – Retirement, the FIRE movement, and why doing nothing is harder than it sounds

One more thing:

Next week the Fed meets for the first time under Kevin Warsh. We’ll be watching that press conference closely, see you then.

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