Gas vs. gas

kinds and look maybe poor one out for those iconic country stores from American public media. This is Marketplace. In Los Angeles, I'm Kai Riznole. It is Friday to this one is the third of April.

It is always to have you along, everybody.

We are going to dig right in on this Friday because I mean, have you been following the news? Heather Long is a chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union Jordan Holman is at the New York Times. Hi, Kai.

Heather, we start with you. We start with the jobs report from this morning for the month of March 178,000 new jobs and employment rate falls to 4.3% headline numbers. Very nice. Very good.

Thank you very much. Look under the hood for me, would you? Yes, sure.

It's so much is moving around the job market.

“But I think the big picture, if you step back, is we're in a frozen job market and it's”

been that way for about a year. And the unemployment rate has been stuck between 4.2 and 4.5%, which as you point out, not too bad. But the encouraging news here in 2026 is if you look across January, February, March, we're averaging about 68,000 job gains a month and it's more than health care.

It's manufacturing, construction and hospitality. But if you look at some downsides, a lot of people left the labor force in March. Overall, 400,000 and many of those were young people in their 20s, early 20s. And then wage growth is cooling off just as a lot of people are getting hit with these higher gas prices and other commodities rising.

Yeah, we're going to go wages in a minute with Kelly Wells.

But Jordan, let me turn for just a second to the humble American consumer.

You cover retail and corporate stuff for the New York Times. Yeah, sales up this week, consumer confidence, not so bad. I personally find that pretty interesting, given, oh, you know, the news. You? Right.

Yes. I mean, the retail sales does not capture the impact of the war yet.

“And I think it's still fair to say that when it comes to the pressures that consumers are”

facing is definitely one battle after another. Like we have the war. We still have, you know, an Oscar reference. We still have the war, we still have inflation. And what we've been hearing from CEOs of airlines, for example, is saying that, yes,

the prices are higher. And it will be very dependent on fuel prices. I recently chatted with the CEO of Kraft Heinz and he said, right now, everything's fine, but it really is dependent on how sustained this issue is, how high the oil goes, because that will flow through the system and will eventually hit consumers.

Well, Heather, let me ask you this, Dan, and I want you to draw on the data you have at Navy Federal. When do you guess how long do you suppose it might be before the war starts showing up in the data? Because the president the other day said, we got two to three more weeks of this.

Yeah, it's a really interesting question kind. So we're looking every day at debit card and credit card data. And I have to tell you, March still looks pretty good. And obviously people are spending more on, at the pump on gas. There was also a ton of spending on airfares.

“People got the message that if you want to book a summer vacation, you should book ASAP.”

And we saw a big surge in spending on airlines and March. But even across other categories, we didn't really see a pullback. The overall spending picture still looks pretty good in March. But I think you're right, we can start to see some slow down at the end of March. And I'm really watching carefully eating out, particularly at fast food, fast casual restaurants.

That's the easy stuff to cut back on. Wait, say more about fast casual and eating out stuff, Heather. Would you? It's easy to cut back. So people just do without and they cook at home, is that the deal?

Yes, particularly when you're trying to make up $50 extra a month and spending at the pump. Again, we're seeing a little bit of sign but not much of it yet. Right. Jordan, I want to ask about, and I know, well, it's been a while since I've asked you this, but I'm going to go back to the well.

We've been relying on consumers in this economy for low these many decades. And yet we keep seeing them come through for us. And how much longer do you suppose this can go on? Because there is the war, there is uncertainty. There is, as we're going to hear from Kelly Wells in a minute, wage concerns, right?

Consumers, at some point, have to say, you know what, I'm out, man, forget it.

that companies are relying on.

“I think there's a huge acknowledgement that for low income consumers for those $50 work matters,”

like Heather was talking about, you cannot tap the well with them. They are trading down, they're looking at the pennies on the dollar, all of that. So where companies are trying to turn their attention to are the business travelers or the higher income consumers. And that's where you're seeing them try to push out new products to people who do have

that disposable income. And that is who we are relying on now. And we're not hearing from companies that they're seeing pull back in that way. But we have been seeing people pull for their purchases. So we'll get interesting as we move towards the summer months.

And people continue to spend at the same levels that we're seeing at this very moment. Heather Long, that is the case shaped economy, right, that we've talked about so many times. I do want to ask you though, Heather, about the chopiness that we're seeing in the data that we're seeing in this economy, not to borrow a phrase from J. Powell, egregiously.

“But how does one look through all that to figure out what's really going on, right?”

Looking through the the chopiness and the unease and uncertainty? Yeah, it's a really complicated time. Obviously, I think on the job market side, you got to look at the unemployment rate, which has been sticking and right in that narrow range. And obviously, we're 4.3% sitting here today.

But if you dig under the hood, it's just a really weird situation where you've got an,

basically, an all-time high for workers ages 25 to 54.

So those workers with some experience are doing pretty well right now. But people over 55, and those young people under 25, it's tough right now, no doubt about it. And it feels similarly like Jordan was saying on the consumer side, you know, for the top of the K families earning over 150,000 a year, not so bad right now. They're, you know, don't love the pump, but they're doing it.

And still spending, but, you know, the middle class, it's the Costco economy. People are really shifting their spending, trying to stretch every dollar. Jordan, last word to you, and we go back to the labor market on this one, it has to be said that there are, for as good as the data was, and for all the things that we've

“said about it the last six or seven minutes, there are some losers, right?”

I mean, black unemployment is still very elevated, plus 7% or something like that. The long term unemployed is up as well. So, you know, there's a cautionary tale in there somewhere. Absolutely.

I mean, the black unemployment is always a canary in the coal mine when it comes to the

economy and the fact that it's double what it is for overall unemployment really tells you something. What we are starting to see, particularly with black women, is they've left the, for those who have left the job force, they're turning to entrepreneurship. So, maybe this is also a period of time that we'll see a lot of new companies start, but

when they're selling to consumers in that shaky economy, who knows what that equation looks like. Yeah. Jordan Holman at the New York Times, had their long, at the Navy Federal Credit Union. Thanks, you too.

Appreciate it. Thanks, guys. I have a good weekend. You too, have a nice weekend. Quiet as can be on the corner of Wall Street in broad, today markets were closed for

good Friday, which given the way things have been going, maybe isn't so bad. I don't know. Nonetheless, we will think of something to say when we do the numbers. With the monthly jobs report comes a whole slew of things. With the monthly jobs report comes a whole slew of other data, particularly, interest to

us today, as we were talking about, just a minute ago, up on top of hourly wages, compared to last year, up 3.5%, not so bad, it's ahead of inflation, right? Month to month, though, since February, hourly worker wages at each up just 2/10 of 1%. That is the slowest increase in nearly five years. So short term, somewhat eyebrow-raising, but as Marketplace's Cayley Wells reports, economists

are content to just wait and see what happens. Yes, this month looks bad for wage growth, but let's remember, it's been declining for a while now, after the inflationary post-pandemic high, and it's just one month. The data doesn't really point to a sharp deterioration. Daniel Jowchef economist at Glassdoor says slowing wage growth makes sense in a slow job

market. Rosehires are very low by historical standards, and so it's very hard for people to go and find a better paying job on the open market. The bigger concern isn't that wage growth is slowing, it's that it's slowing while inflation

And that's a hit too, disposable income and a hit too consumer purchasing power.

“Because if things you have to buy, like food and electricity, go up faster than your wages,”

your actual purchasing power goes down. So you're maybe spending more on gas, and maybe you have to offset your consumption elsewhere in your monthly budget. And inflation is expected to get worse because of the war in the Middle East. Joe Bruce Whales, Chief Economist for the Consulting Firm RSM, says it's unleashed a prodigious

oil and energy shock. It should the war continue. There's a chance that real wage growth could go from slowing, noticeably to outright contract. That's when the rate of inflation exceeds the rate of job growth. So industries that rely on discretionary spending, hotels, restaurants, leisure, could

weaken right at the time of year that they would be taking off.

“And the war in Iran for American households may mean it's staycation rather than a vacation”

is sheer. Just how high inflation will climb after the war won't show up until fresh consumer price index date gets released next week. I'm Kaylee Wells for Marketplace. gasoline in this country right now for dollars nine cents a gallon that's the national average

says triple A. The US oil benchmark 111 dollars a barrel. Thank you straight of our moves. But the other high profile hydrocarbon that comes from that part of the world, natural gas

prices here are relatively flat while they have spiked roughly 70 percent, 70 percent,

over in Europe and in Asia. Marketplace is Elizabeth Troval explains why the United States is mostly protected from the natural gas supply shock, but not the oil shock. The war has disrupted roughly 20 percent of the world's liquefied natural gas and crude oil. Two vital commodities both abundantly produced here in the US says right universities can medlock.

The US is actually the largest producer of crude oil and natural gas on the planet.

“But crude oil and natural gas have a really important differentiator.”

crude oil and petroleum products are liquids. Because of that they're actually very easy to put on vessels and move around the world. Being so easy to move around is why crude oil is a truly global commodity. And why the supply shock abroad is driving up everyone's prices. But natural gas is different.

It's a gas and that gas needs to become a liquid to move across international waters. When you get to liquefied natural gas, you actually have to cool methane down to negative 260 degrees Fahrenheit, so cryogenic so that it becomes a liquid. The US has a limited amount of that liquefaction infrastructure, says Tom sang with Texas Christian University.

We are constrained by the ability of our export facilities, specifically the LNG export facilities to provide any additional natural gas that other countries need. Even if the US wanted to export more natural gas to Europe or Asia, it just can't. It is almost one of those, sorry guys, there's no price at which we can increase what we're doing presently because you can't overnight build the liquefaction facilities.

So natural gas prices and supply in the US are insulated from the crisis in the Middle East. That is shielding the US from challenges happening abroad, says Jameson Cochlan with natural gas intelligence. In Europe right now, the energy ministers have asked a scale back energy consumption.

Asia has scrambled for extra cargo and they're taking a hard look at efficiency measures. But consumers here don't have to worry about that, can medlock again. You're not going to see higher peak prices for electricity, for example, and we're approaching the summer when air conditioning bills go up. Cheap or natural gas prices are a silver lining, as consumers here grapple with higher

diesel, gasoline, and jet fuel. I'm Elizabeth Troval for Marketplace. Coming up, there's a lot of emotion that gets evoked with these stores.

Old-time country stores in the modern economy, but first let's do the numbers.

US and European markets closed today for the good Friday holiday, but for the week ending Thursday, that is the four days gone by. The Dow is up one and two-tenth percent.

percent.

“American spending on Easter has expected to reach a record 24.9 million dollars this year.”

That's from the National Retail Federation.

It's a budget of about $195 per person, 92 percent of those surveyed are planning to

buy candy, 64 percent gifts, 51 percent clothing, you're listening to Marketplace. This is Marketplace, I'm Kai Rizdahl. We've been talking about the price of crude oil nearly daily of late both a global benchmark, Brent, North Sea, going today for a bit more than $109 a barrel. And West Texas intermediate, that's the US standard price today, as I said, a minute

to go at $11 a barrel. The thing I want to point out, though, is that that price gap with the global benchmark cheaper than the US standard is exactly the opposite of how things usually go. West Texas is usually less expensive than Brent. So we have called Tom Closer, he's the Chief Energy Advisor at Golf Oil, to help

explain. Tom, thanks for coming on the program. Good to be here. Could you just briefly explain the difference, like, physically between Brent, North Sea, crude, and West Texas intermediate?

Sure. Not really much difference in the spec. They're all suitable to make gasoline and diesel, but they trade in different months. And right now, we're trading WTI for May delivery, and we're trading Brent for June. And believe it or not, that difference of month has, you know, difference of tens of dollars

a barrel in the price. But right now, the thing to remember about crude is, everybody needs it now, and they're going to pay $10, $20, $30 more for it now than what sometimes the futures market might indicate.

So let's go there for just a second and briefly, the difference between a spot price, which

is what people are paying to get it now, and these future prices, what usually gets quoted.

“That's actually affecting the market right now, that difference, isn't it?”

Absolutely. I mean, yesterday we saw the highest price that were paid in the North Sea, it's $142 a barrel. Oh, sorry. Sorry.

Say that again, $142 a barrel? Yeah, $142 a barrel. The actual physical prices for spot, you know, they call them wet barrels. And those prices are much much higher than the futures numbers, you see. Gotcha.

Okay, so on the futures numbers, usually what happens is there's a spread between West Texas, on the low end, and Brent, on the high end. Why do they trade futures specifically differently that way? Well, it has vagaries in the way that it's delivered, and in WTI they have to make it available at Oklahoma around the 20th of month.

For North Sea crude, it trades out further, because they have to schedule the crude so far in advance. And normally WTI is cheaper than Brent, but right now, if you were looking at the same month, Brent is much more expensive, and the physical prices for both crude are way more expensive than what you're seeing in the futures markets.

Right. Do you read anything into the fact that the usual spread between West Texas on the low end, and Brent on the high end in the futures market is now inverted, and that Brent is cheaper

“and West Texas is more expensive, or is that nothing to think about?”

Yeah, it's really, it's a little bit misleading, and this is incredible.

But, you know, it used to cost just a few dollars to send WTI from, let's say, the Gulf Mexico to Europe. Nowadays, it probably cost about $15 to $20 a barrel, so you've got incredible free prices around the world right now. The biggest winners in this entire enterprise are the people that owe tankers.

Hmm. Okay, spitball this for me, would you, we were talking before we turn the microphones on. You've been doing this for almost 50 years now. Yeah. Apply that knowledge to this situation and tell me what the next, I don't know, six

months in the energy economy looks like. You know, it's tough to really pick it for six months. I've been doing this for about 50 years, and this by far is the greatest loss of actual physical barrels that we've ever seen, unprecedented, and quite frankly, to figure out the price three or six months from now is really kind of a mathematical abstraction.

The people that I listen to and that I watch for this really believe that we're possibly going to $150 to $180 a barrel, there's even the case that could be made for $240, which would really knock the world good for a session without question. With that any question at all, Tom Closy, he's at Gulf now, been doing this for a very long time.

Tom, thanks a lot. I appreciate your insights. Nice to be here. Have a great weekend.

Even if you've never been to New England, you've probably at least seen pictures of the

“country stores that are so iconic in that part of the country.”

They've historically been gathering places and community centers and old-timey convenience stores all rolled into one. But they've struggled as big grocery chains and big box stores have become the norm. So they aren't innovating as Jackie Harris from New Hampshire Public Radio reports. Back in the day, meaning 100 or even 200 years ago, a town's country store was the nearest

place for miles, where you could buy nails, eggs and a cup of coffee all while catching up with your neighbors. When telephones first came out, sometimes the country store was the only place you could make a call. There's a lot of emotion that gets evoked with these stores for town, for people growing

up of what they remember. Beth Richards owns the barrel and basket in hop content. Though ownership and names have changed, there's been a store of some kind at the site since 1790.

“The original wood beams are still in place and Richard sells penny candy and local maple”

syrup. Both locals and tourists expect that cozy, nostalgic atmosphere when they come in. That is something that, as an owner, I need to balance with what are the economic realities and how things have changed in the world. No one has to go to the store to make a call anymore.

And it's often just as easy to grab a snack or whatever you need at your local gas station. So Richard's is adapting. This is our production area for the meal kits. This is where we are modern, so meal kits go out and get delivered. In addition to the meal kits, she's also started an online ordering option for customers.

She has to carefully balance expectations from the past and the economic realities of the present. Richard says her profit margins are tight, sometimes as low as half a percent. For another struggling general store in Harrisville, New Hampshire, the solution was to get out of the for profit realm altogether.

“You know, where historic preservation organization, so running a general store wasn't the”

original plan. John Knight is the executive director of historic Harrisville, a nonprofit that works to preserve the town's historic buildings. It bought the Harrisville general store in 2008 and hired a manager to operate it like any other shop.

But the nonprofit also runs a campaign each year, raising 40 to $50,000 specifically for the store.

That brings the bottom line to about zero at the end of the year.

And since we're in on profit, if we're breaking even and serving a community purpose, then that's really considered a success for us. Of course, most country stores operate on a more traditional for profit model. Demaris Graham and her sister, Mariana Gibaldi, are planning to reopen the gill some village store in a couple months.

The last owner closed it a few years ago, but it first opened in the 1800s. This is Graham. I'd live right down the street and I'd drive past the store every day. It's just been sitting empty, so when I saw the front sign, I thought, this is what I meant to do.

The sister's plan to stock basic grocery and convenience items like milk and toilet paper. The area is rural. Some people in the region have to drive an hour round trip to get to a grocery store in the nearest city. Logistically, it's easier to have a general store right down the street that you can get

all your essential stuff at.

But you can also chat with neighbors and everyone knows everyone and to me, it's just deeper than going in and out of the store. Graham is counting on what was true 200 years ago to still be true today. There's no need to slept the big city when you can just stop by your local country store. I'm Jackie Harris for Marketplace.

This final note on the way out today in which maybe it's just me, but this seems...ickey. SpaceX, as you perhaps heard, has found for its initial public offering details, TBD, probably coming in June. High-powered IPOs like this are big business for the big Wall Street banks that help bring companies to market, but I saw this in the New York Times today.

If they want a slice of what could prove to be the biggest IPO Wall Street has ever seen, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk is requiring those banks, as well as law firms, auditors and pretty much anybody else working on it to buy subscriptions to grow, which is Musk's. Sometimes, often times, troubled artificial intelligence chatbot. Those subscriptions run to the tune of millions or tens of millions of dollars.

Ikey, right? Our theme music was composed by BJ Leaderman Marketplace's executive producer, Nancy Fargale,

and General Manager.

“And I'm Kaar Rizgall, have yourselves a great weekend, everybody will see you back”

on Monday, all right? This is APM.

“Why do we keep voting off the financial tasks we know we need to do?”

I'm Riemach Reyes, and this week on my podcast, this is Uncomfortable.

I talk with a behavioral expert about commitment devices.

“The tricks we can use to force ourselves to follow through.”

The most extreme form of commitment device is literally saying you're going to find yourself.

Like, I'm going to have to give $50 to politicians campaign who I hate if I haven't done this by next Friday.

Listen to this is Uncomfortable wherever you get your podcasts.