Marketplace All-in-One

The latest jobs report showed a loss of 92,000 jobs in February. After months of slightly easing, unemployment crept up too, to 4.4%. Even the health care sector, which reliably grows every month, lost 28,000 positions. In this episode, is it a blip or a sign of more cuts to come? Plus: Eli Lilly announced a new initiative to address the cost of GLP-1s, meteorologists build dedicated followings on social media, and we recap the week’s economic news.

Every story has an economic angle. Want some in your inbox? Subscribe to our daily or weekly newsletter.

Marketplace is more than a radio show. Check out our original reporting and financial literacy content at marketplace.org — and consider making an investment in our future.

This week’s Texas primary elections were heated — and historic in terms of campaign spending. On today’s show, Blaise Gainey, state politics reporter for The Texas Newsroom, joins Kimberly to share his election takeaways and the economic issues that brought voters out to the polls. Plus, what does the Texas Railroad Commissioner have to do with oil and gas? And, we’ll pit Texas icons against each other during a round of This or That.

Here’s everything we talked about today:

"Winners, losers and runoffs: How Texans’ November ballot is shaping up after the primaries" from KUT News 
"Across Texas, early voters share what’s pushing them to the polls for the 2026 party primaries" from KUT News
"Big money moved the needle and down-ballot chaos reigned in Texas' action-packed primaries" from The Texas Tribune
"Bo French, Jim Wright head to runoff for seat on Texas Railroad Commission" from The Texas Tribune
"Big Red Is Texas Barbecue’s Unofficial Signature Soda" from Texas Highways
"Why Topo Chico Is The Fizzy Water With A Loyal Fan Base" from Southern Living

We love hearing from you. Leave us a voicemail at 508-U-B-SMART or email [email protected].

The U.S. economy actually lost jobs last month. The number of people on U.S. payrolls fell by 92,000 in February, with big swings in education and health care. How might the Federal Reserve respond to this new data? Plus, the idea of having a robot to do all your household chores has long been a staple of science fiction. Today, we hear from a company designing robots trying to make that a reality.

War in the Middle East has caused oil prices to spike, and — right on cue — gasoline prices have risen quickly. They’re up 34 cents in a week, according to AAA. That's the fastest price increase at the pump since 2022. And diesel prices just topped $4 a gallon this week, which will likely push up the cost of anything shipped by truck or train. Also on the program: a look at what's driving Texas supermarket construction.

Meta and News Corp reached a licensing deal this week. Plus, defense contractors untangle Claude from their workflows.

But first, the online prediction marketplace Kalshi lets users bet on the outcome of many things that can happen in the future. One bet that saw a lot of action was whether Ali Khamenei would be ousted as the supreme leader in Iran. Khamenei was killed over the weekend during a U.S. military strike.

Kalshi didn’t pay out the bets that were placed after Khamenei’s death. Instead, it reimbursed those traders. And this outraged some users on the site. Marketplace’s Stephanie Hughes spoke with Paresh Dave, senior writer at Wired, about all these headlines from the week in tech.