Mitchell Hartman

Portland

Correspondent at Marketplace

Correspondent, Marketplace Radio

Articles

Tariff anxiety turns fun splurges into stress purchases

1 week ago | marketplace.org | Mitchell Hartman |Savannah Peters |Kai Ryssdal |Sofia Terenzio

Apr 16, 2025Some Americans, worried that tariffs will make life’s little luxuries too expensive, are proactively buying them in bulk. Plus, a country club in Altadena, California, used by local nonprofits has a long, expensive road to rebuilding after the wildfire. Segments From This Episodeby Mitchell HartmanOn the surface, the numbers look contradictory, but the reasons they behaved as they did can tell us something about the tariff-era economy.
Industrial production declined in March, but manufacturing was up. What does that mean?

1 week ago | marketplace.org | Mitchell Hartman

We got one of those economic reports Wednesday morning that seems, on the face of it, to be bad. Dig down a little deeper, and key data points are actually pretty good. But underlying it all, there are signs of more bad stuff to come. Industrial Production, The Federal Reserve’s report for March, showed industrial activity in this country was down, by three-tenths of a percent, after an increase of eight-tenths of a percent the month before. That’s a pretty big pull-back.
Dollar joins stocks and consumer confidence on downward path

1 week ago | marketplace.org | Mitchell Hartman

This week has seen sharp, shocking tariff hikes — and then tariff flip-flops — as well as turmoil galore in the financial markets, with the major U.S. stock indexes plunging, rebounding and plunging again. Through all this, the dollar has fallen sharply against other major currencies. The U.S. dollar index was down more than 0.8% Friday, after sliding at one point below the 100 level, last hit in mid-2023.
With consumer credit and interest rates up, should we be worried?

2 weeks ago | marketplace.org | Mitchell Hartman

On Monday, we’ll get the Federal Reserve’s February report on consumer credit — that’s borrowing on all different kinds of loans, like mortgages, credit cards, auto and student loans. Consumer credit was up 4.3% in January, after rising by double that in December.
Is there a "negative wealth effect"? You may be feeling it.

3 weeks ago | marketplace.org | Mitchell Hartman

With the first three months of 2025 behind us, quarterly statements for 401(k)s, IRAs and other investment accounts will be arriving soon in mailboxes and inboxes across the country. They’ll be full of minus signs, showing how much investors have lost recently. Now, we often talk about a “wealth effect” — basically, when the value of assets like stocks and homes goes up, folks feel richer, at least on paper, and they spend more because of it. So, what about the opposite?
Why does the government have 6 unemployment rates?

4 weeks ago | marketplace.org | Mitchell Hartman

When the March jobs report comes out in early April, Marketplace will note the new unemployment rate at the top of our newscasts. And we’ll be quoting what the Bureau of Labor Statistics describes as the official unemployment rate — identified as U-3 in the jargon of the agency’s statisticians. The U-3 unemployment rate was 4.1% in February, up from 4% in January. But buried in the monthly jobs report are five more unemployment rates, labeled U-1 through U-6.
Consumer confidence and expectation measures are tumbling

4 weeks ago | marketplace.org | Mitchell Hartman

We got another — honestly — lousy sign for the consumer economy Tuesday. March’s consumer confidence index from The Conference Board fell again, for the fourth straight month. And it fell more than economists expected. The expectations index dropped even more sharply. Like the name says, it measures consumers’ economic hopes and fears for the future. It’s now at its lowest point in 12 years and sitting well below the threshold that signals a recession is coming, according to The Conference Board.
An index of economic indicators ticked down. Should we worry?

1 month ago | marketplace.org | Mitchell Hartman

Where is this economy going? Honestly, we don’t know. Economists don’t know. The stock market — we say it all the time here— is not the economy, and it doesn’t know, either. Hard economic data about how different sectors have actually been performing, like home building, retail sales and job creation, have been holding up pretty well. The ‘soft’ data —how businesses and consumers are feeling — have been more downbeat.
These sectors are bracing for price hikes

1 month ago | marketplace.org | Nicholas Guiang |Justin Ho |Mitchell Hartman |Meghan McCarty Carino

Mar 20, 2025
The state of the current housing market depends on where you look

1 month ago | marketplace.org | Mitchell Hartman

The stock market, bond market and housing market are all kind of in flux these days with everything going on tariff- and inflation- and interest rate-wise. On housing, the National Association of Realtors’ report on existing home sales for February came out better than economists expected, up 4.2% from January. But for context, January had been down 4.7% from the month before.