{podcast} It’s never been a more important time to understand the labor market. The Fed is entering a rate cutting cycle, the government shut down, and private players are developing their own numbers to try and close the gap. I sat down with Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee to talk about what the Chicago Fed’s new real-time labor market indicators are telling us and how the Fed should navigate a steady-but-thin job market. We also get into how labor-force participation complicates the story, what AI is doing to early-career hiring, and why this moment might force a broader rethink of how we measure work itself. ... (full story)