“The real surprise, which I don't think anybody saw coming, was having this big surge in white-collar jobs, these professional and business service jobs. And sure, some of it's temporary help, but some of it is AI creating this need for consultants and technology and scientific space to come and help figure out how to implement AI.”

Marketplace (APM) · Money & Markets · November 2026

Context

Asked for her read on a much stronger-than-expected October jobs report, Long singles out white-collar hiring. She credits part of it to companies needing help implementing AI, which cuts against the story that AI only destroys office jobs.

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Transcript

Marketplace (APM) Around 01:13 into the episode

Speaker 3

Hi, Kristen.

Kristen Schwab

Hi. So I want to start with the jobs report today. The numbers go the U.S. added 165,000 jobs in October, which lowered the unemployment rate a tad, 4.1%. Heather, the headlines this morning were all about kind of shock and surprise. I'm wondering what your read is.

Speaker 4

I was pretty surprised too. It was a blowout jobs report, strong on almost every category. And the reality is there's always a little bit of a whisper number on Wall Street. And I was definitely one of many people who thought this had a chance of being a little bit stronger than the 65,000 or so jobs anticipated. But come on, we got a number that was almost three times as high as what was anticipated. You had almost 400,000 people who started looking for jobs in October, many of whom got them, and a stronger than expected wage growth. And the real surprise, which I don't think anybody saw coming, was having this big surge in white-collar jobs, these professional and business service jobs. And sure, some of it's temporary help, but some of it is AI creating this need for consultants and technology and scientific space to come and help figure out how to implement AI. And, you know, that was a pretty big surprise.

Kristen Schwab

Yeah, well, Catherine, you know, one thing I have been wondering about with the jobs report is it's been a month and a half since the Fed raised rates, and it seems like that hasn't shown up in the labor market yet. Will it show up when? How?

Speaker 3

Well, what's the line that rate changes always have long and variable lags? Monetary policy has long and variable lags. So who knows at this point? But it does seem pretty soon for that to be working its way through the economy. And I would be very curious to know how Fed officials are interpreting…

Kristen Schwab

Well, Heather, what do you think the Fed is thinking? I mean, we have a whole month and a lot of data between now and the December meeting. Will we see a hike and how big might it be?

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.

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