What are corporate outlooks without federal data?

This podcast is supported by Odoo. Some say Odoo business management software is like fertilizer for businesses because the simple efficient software promotes growth. Others say Odoo is like a magic beanstalk because it scales with you and is magically affordable. And some describe Odoo's programs for manufacturing, accounting, and more as building blocks for creating a custom software suite. So Odoo is fertilizer, magic beanstalk building blocks for business. Odoo, exactly what businesses need. Sign up at odoo.com. That's odoo.com. No two companies are alike. That's why the American Express corporate program can help you customize rewards, reporting, and billing options, all designed for your business. Build your program with American Express at americanexpress.com/corporate. Terms apply. How exactly does one operate in a data deprived economy? From American Public Media, this is Marketplace. I'm Kai Risdahl, Tuesday, October 21. Good as always to have you along, everybody. We are gonna continue today with the thought experiment that we've been running pretty much since the shutdown started. Without actual government data to depend on, which way do we think the labor market is going? We've seen plenty to convince us it's kinda slowed to a crawl. The last four monthly job reports that we got were pretty meh. Job openings have been trending lower. Kristen Schwab was telling us yesterday recruiters are seeing a pretty mixed picture as companies hold off investing in new people. But we're gonna examine the flip side of that labor market coin today because there is something happening out there that could turn things around. Marketplace's Justin Ho gets us going with labor productivity. Hiring is a lot weaker than it was back when companies were scrambling to staff up after the pandemic. That means people are staying in their jobs longer. And as people have gotten used to their new rules that they got during the pandemic high turnover period, they've been more productive in their jobs. That's George Perks, macro strategist at Bespoke Investment Group. He says businesses have made themselves more productive since the pandemic too. Imagine you run a bakery. Maybe you rearrange the layout of your bakeries or change your production process somehow, and suddenly you're now producing a lot more than you were per worker relative to a few years ago. And producing more bread means generating more profit. And eventually, businesses will have to step in and say, okay. If we wanna sell more bread, we need to hire more bakers. In other words, strong productivity growth can send a signal to businesses that they could rake in even more profits if they hire more workers. That's why Perks expects hiring overall to pick up. Whether that's in the next couple months or in the next couple quarters is hard to say. But at some point, it'll be hard for firms to grow without investing more in labor. But right now, many companies are nervous about hiring, says Nicole Servi, an economist at Wells Fargo. And so even …