On the Wednesday, March 11, 2026, episode of The Excerpt podcast:Alarm bells on the health of the U.S. economy are ringing. Could a recession be next? USA TODAY Money Reporter Andrea Riquier joins The Excerpt to share her latest insights as to where the economy is headed.
Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it.This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
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Dana Taylor:
Alarm bells on the health of the US economy are ringing. An unexpectedly dismal jobs report, growing unemployment, and the ensuing uncertainty over trade policy piled on top of surging oil prices make the financial outlook particularly bleak this month. Could a recession be next?
Hello, and welcome to USA TODAY's The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Wednesday, March 11th, 2026. Joining me to discuss recent economic indicators and what might lie ahead is USA TODAY Money Reporter Andrea Riquier. Andrea, thank you so much for joining me.
Andrea Riquier:
Hey, Dana. Thanks for having me.
Dana Taylor:
Andrea, you wrote that economists, analysts, and investors are concerned right now about the possibility of stagflation. What is stagflation and is this something we should be concerned about?
Andrea Riquier:
So stagflation refers to a really uncomfortable moment in the economy where economic growth is stagnant, it's not growing or even receding, and yet inflation is high. Typically, you see inflation higher when growth is strong, but this is uncomfortable because the policy responses are opposite for each one. When you have high inflation, you might want to raise interest rates to keep demand lower, and when you have slow growth, you might want to drop them in order to stimulate demand. So stagflation is a really difficult place for the economy and for the policymakers.
Dana Taylor:
A big concern with American consumers right now is the US-Israel war on Iran. Trump has waffled on his estimation of how long this conflict could last and how much it might cost Americans. Meanwhile, gas prices have been spiking across the country. What can you tell us here?
Andrea Riquier:
So I actually checked the nationwide gas prices just before we started recording. Across the nation, the average is $3.55. Obviously, there's huge local disparities, but it has been suggested that the $3.50 cent mark is roughly where things start to get a little uncomfortable for American consumers. If this is as high as we get and prices fall back from here, maybe it's not so difficult for most American consumers, most households. If it stays elevated like this, things could start to get very uncomfortable for people. The President has said that people should be okay with a little short-term discomfort in order to settle things for the long term, but American households are strapped for enough money to go around to buy everything that they need already. We'll just have to see where things go from here. There could be a quick resolution to this war, or it could drag on.
Dana Taylor:
Let's turn now to the latest jobs report, what does it say? And are you at all surprised?
Andrea Riquier:
It was a surprising jobs report. The labor department said that 92,000 jobs were lost in the month of February. They also downgraded the overall number for the full year, '25. And when you average out the 181,000 jobs that were created throughout 2025, that comes down to about 15,000 jobs a month, which is barely treading water. So take any one month with a grain of salt, but when you look at the longer trend over say 14 months, it does not look good.
Dana Taylor:
Andrea, help me put the latest unemployment numbers into perspective here. We saw robust hiring numbers in January, right?
Andrea Riquier:
Right. Again, take any one month with a grain of salt, but when you smooth it all out over a period of time, it looks like a slower growth, slowing economy.
Dana Taylor:
PresidentDonald Trump's signature economic policy centered on his trade policies involving tariffs. Those have recently been thrown out by the Supreme Court. He says that he has other ways to accomplish the same thing, but that it might take a little time to implement. How big of a role is that uncertainty playing here?
Andrea Riquier:
I think it's playing a big role. There's a lot of uncertainty around the tariffs that quite likely makes a lot of businesses a little bit more hesitant about committing to long-term plans like hiring, like capital expenditures, other than the AI infrastructure boom that we've talked about a lot, but it's certainly not helping on the margins. The Supreme Court decision on the tariffs is not the only big headwind out there in the economy. Obviously, the war is another one, and it's just a lot of uncertainty in a midterm election year as well for businesses to process, and it doesn't necessarily look like every business is going to go out and start shedding workers the way they did say in the COVID-19 pandemic, but it doesn't give a lot of comfort for wanting to commit to things long-term either.
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Dana Taylor:
Economists with the Joint Economic Committee have put the cost of tariffs for the average American family at $1,700. Can Americans expect to see this money refunded at any point?
Andrea Riquier:
Yeah, that's the $1,700 question, right? I think we would all like to see some money back. I'm not sure that there's any way to know for sure. We know that a lot of companies have filed lawsuits about this. I think everybody would like a little bit of that money back, but I think that that could drag on for a while and I wouldn't bet on it, let's put it that way.
Dana Taylor:
What are we hearing from the Fed on the state of the economy? I believe their next meeting is next week.
Andrea Riquier:
That's right, the March meeting is next week. A lot of them have come out recently since the start of the Iran War and said exactly what we said at the top of the hour, this really complicates things. Again, a slow growth economy could be stimulated by rate cuts, but higher inflation, which to some extent they're a little more concerned about, would call for rate increases. Mary Daly of the San Francisco Fed said last Friday that a perfectly acceptable response to where we are right now is just to hold steady, to not do anything. And that's what most investors expect them to do for the foreseeable future.
Dana Taylor:
Andrea, we're also expecting to see a new Fed chair in May. That might change things, right? Tell me about that.
Andrea Riquier:
So first of all, Kevin Warsh still has to be confirmed and that process hasn't started yet, but yes, Donald Trump has nominated him with the belief that Kevin Warsh will be a little bit more amenable to cutting rates than Jay Powell has been. We know that Kevin Warsh, he has served on the Federal Reserve Board before, and we know that he has a pretty good understanding of the lay of the land. And I don't think anybody can expect any particular policymaker to move in one direction or another, given all the uncertainty, all the crosswinds that are going on right now. We'll just have to wait and see.
Dana Taylor:
I know consumer sentiment plays a big role in the economy. What's the news on that front?
Andrea Riquier:
We've talked a lot over the past say year or so about this K-shaped economy where higher income Americans are seeing their fortunes go up and moderate and lower income Americans are seeing things deteriorate. Consumer sentiment has really been in the toilet. There was a little bit of an improvement over the past couple readings, but not much. There's been this real discussion among economists and other analysts about whether Americans are just complaining because the health of the economy actually is pretty strong or what the disconnect is.
I think that seeing some of these official numbers start to reflect more what we're seeing in the sentiment numbers is pretty telling. Seeing, as we talked about earlier, a downgrade in the jobs picture from last year that helps explain some of the negative sentiment that we've been hearing about a lot. One person I talked to for this story about stagflation made the very, very prescient comment that we don't have to have an official diagnosis of stagflation for people to feel like we're really in a slow growth, high price environment, and that's just not fun for anybody.
Dana Taylor:
And finally, Andrea, how are you feeling about using the R word right now, are we teetering on the brink of a recession at this point, or is it too soon to tell?
Andrea Riquier:
I don't think it's too soon to tell. I think that teetering on the brink might be a little bit too dramatic, but I do think that there is reason to watch very closely. Some economists have increased the likelihood of a recession over the next say 12 months, but only to say 25% from 20%. Things would have to go pretty wrong for us to have sustained negative growth, but as we've talked about this entire session, there are a lot of headwinds in the economy right now.
Dana Taylor:
Andrea Riquier is a USA TODAY money reporter. Andrea, thank you so much for sharing your insights here.
Andrea Riquier:
Thanks, Dana. Take care.
Dana Taylor:
Thanks to our Senior Producer Kaely Monahan for her production assistance. Our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to podcasts@usatoday.com. Thanks for listening, I'm Dana Taylor, I'll be back tomorrow morning with another episode of USA TODAY's The Excerpt.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY:Low job numbers combined with high inflation sours economists' views | The Excerpt