Below is a copy of the latest Daily Wrap email from Marketplace.
Sign up for the Marketplace Daily Wrap to receive updates directly in your inbox each weekday evening.
Plus: The hardest job on election night? 
We hope you enjoy today's briefing from Marketplace. Subscribe to more Marketplace newsletters here.
This election is about the economy
You rely on our reporting on affordability, energy, immigration and tech. Your support helps keep our work free for everyone long after the race is over.
DONATE TODAY
Happy Election Day! I’ll be straight with you: You shouldn’t expect much coverage of the most expensive midterms ever in this issue. As a Minnesota transplant by way of California, I’ll be keeping an eye on MPR News and LAist tonight, and I encourage you to check your local station, online and on-air, as polls close.

Expect coverage of the election fallout from Kimberly Adams and the “Marketplace Morning Report” bright and early tomorrow, but today we’ve got some new jobs data to digest before the October numbers drop Friday. Doesn’t that seem so far away right now? — Tony Wagner, newsletter editor
A stock photo of businesspeople holding boxes from quitting their jobs.
Getty Images
It’s still a terrible time to leave your job, economists say
Job openings, hires and separations didn’t change much September, according to the government’s annual labor turnover survey, but the quits rate rose a bit. Marketplace’s Samantha Fields reports why you still may want to hang on to your job a bit longer.
Generally, when more people start quitting their jobs it’s a good thing.

“It signals a labor market that is healthier, where workers have more mobility,” said Angela Hanks, chief of policy programs at the Century Foundation.

She said people tend to quit when they’re confident they can find another job. But one month of data showing more people quitting doesn’t mean all that much.

“And then also, this is sort of in the context of a bunch of other numbers that we get reporting on the strength of the labor market,” Hanks said.

So far, she said, none of those other numbers — on job growth or wage growth — indicate now is a good time to quit your job.

Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute, said it’s quite the opposite, actually.

“If you have a job, the right thing to do is to hang onto it if you can,” she said. “All the data point to, it’s really, really hard to find a job right now.”

The hiring rate is about where it was in 2012 and 2013. Back then, Shierholz said, the economy was just coming out of the Great Recession and the labor market was very weak.

“That's the kind of world that people who are looking for a job are facing right now. … It's rough,” she said.
READ MORE


 
News you should know
Let’s do the numbers
  • Most stocks fell today, but the S&P 500 closed up 0.4%. The Dow lost 0.4%, while the Nasdaq composite rose 0.8% thanks to solid gains for Nvidia.

  • Marriott shares jumped yesterday after the hotel chain reported a great third quarter. But not all brands are growing at the same rate — it’s a k-shaped economy thing.

  • With online shopping expected to grow 6.7% this holiday season, warehouse space is filling up fast. There’s a whole logistics industry betting big on consumers’ generosity. Ho ho ho?
More on the labor market
  • It was a modest gain, but the number of open jobs rose in September to 7.5 million. That’s the most since May.

  • We’ll get the government’s latest read on labor productivity Thursday. Signs point to continued growth among U.S. workers, not that you’d know it from their wages.

  • The portion of men between the ages of 25 and 54 in the workforce has fallen hard in the past 50 years. What’s going on? 

  • The youngest job seekers face an especially bleak job hunt right now. Some of them told the New York Times (gift link) about the dehumanizing process of being screened, interviewed and rejected by artificial intelligence.
Tech
  • Google’s products are ubiquitous in classrooms. The company told schools they would have to opt into AI starting next year — and if they didn’t, students wouldn’t be able to search at all.

  • OpenAI said its models solved one of math's famous Millennium Prize problems, plus hundreds more. That’s created a bit of an existential crisis in the field of mathematics.

  • Commercial refrigerators are connected to the internet, for some reason, and someone is hacking grocery stores across Europe.
Two brothers pose for a portrait in a hanger-like office space.
Neel and Karan Kunjur, CTO and CEO of K2 Space Corporation. (Maria Hollenhorst/Markeptlace)
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“The weird, counterintuitive thing we discovered is that actually, if you allow the satellites to get a bit bigger, you can use simpler, cheaper materials.”
— Neel Kunjur, co-founder and chief technology officer at K2 Space
Kunjur and his brother, Kuran Kunjur, founded K2 four years ago on the premise that bigger, more powerful satellites could take advantage of economies of scale. They launched their first satellite with SpaceX earlier this year, and a recent fundraising round valued the company at $6.8 billion.

“Marketplace” host Kai Ryssdal toured K2’s headquarters in Torrance, California to learn more about the brothers’ vision for orbital AI data centers and why they say bigger is better.
HEAR MORE


A screen grab shows Steve Kornacki gesturing at the big board on NBC News.
Screengrab via NBC News on YouTube
Final note
Let this man rest
I told you I’d be watching my local station tonight, but that’s only half of my Election Night battle station. As a numbers nerd, I’m also watching the Kornacki Cam, an NBC News livestream that trains a camera on chief data analyst Steve Kornacki at all times.

Kornacki ran the big board for hours during the primaries. Viewers saw him break down returns and, uh, spill water all over his computer. Tonight he’s slated to broadcast an unbelievable 13 hours — he started hours before you even opened this newsletter, when polls are still open, and he’ll continue until 6 a.m. Maybe next cycle they’ll make him go until Alaska’s ballots are counted.
 
Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this newsletter, forward it to a friend. If this newsletter was forwarded to you, subscribe to Marketplace newsletters here.

 Got feedback for us? Just reply to this email. We can't get back to everyone, but we read it all.
Terms of use | Your privacy rights | Contact Us | Donate

© 2025 American Public Media Group. All rights reserved.

Terms of use | Your privacy rights | Contact Us

© 2026 American Public Media Group. All rights reserved.