Marketplace Morning Report A month of job losses
Mar 6, 2026
Joe Tidy, BBC tech and robotics reporter, tours companies building domestic humanoid robots. Diane Swank, KPMG chief economist, breaks down February's surprising payroll decline and which sectors drove it. They discuss sector concentration, labor swings, robot demos, autonomy limits, privacy tradeoffs, and timelines for household robots.
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February Payrolls Fell Due To Health Care Shock
- The U.S. economy lost 92,000 payroll jobs in February, driven mainly by a drop in health care and social assistance.
- Diane Swank attributed a 27,000-job hit to strikes and noted other sectors like tech and leisure were also shedding jobs.
Labor Market Reliance On Health Care Raises Fragility
- Heavy reliance on health care and social assistance makes the labor market fragile to disruptions.
- Diane Swank said that sector is countercyclical and tied to aging demographics, so losses there disproportionately affect overall payrolls.
Job Gains Were Narrow Not Broad Based
- Payroll gains were narrow with only financial services adding 10,000 jobs while leisure, hospitality, business services, and tech shed jobs.
- Swank emphasized the lack of broad-based hiring beyond a few sectors.