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Day or night. VRBoCare is here 24. 7 to help make every part of your stay seamless. If anything comes up or you simply need a little guidance, support is ready whenever you reach out. From the moment you book to the moment you head home. We're here to help things run smoothly because a great trip starts with the right support. And hey, a good playlist doesn't hurt either. Oh, the places your tax dollars will go From Marketplace, I'm Sabri Ben, ashore in New York. The US And Iran could go back to the negotiating table in Islamabad this week. That's according to Reuters. Meanwhile, on the first day of the US Blockade of Iranian ports in the Persian Gulf, a handful of ships did manage to transit the Strait of Hormuz. Oil is at $98 a barrel. Tomorrow is a big day for procrastinators. It is tax day. And while some of us may have waited till the last minute to do our taxes, the federal government sure won't be wasting any time spending them. Marketplace's Samantha Fields has more on where your money is going. In Dorothy Brown's experience, most people prefer not to even think about taxes. April 15th comes around. I'm like Brown teaches at Georgetown University Law School. It's like I'm at a reception and somebody says, what are you doing? I go, I'm a tax law professor and, you know, sometimes I could clear the room. Doing your taxes isn't exactly popular either. When your W2 comes and you see in black and white how much of your hard earned salary went straight to the government, it doesn't always feel great, especially if you're struggling with your bills. But Brown says your money does pay for critical things. It pays for Social Security. It pays for food stamps. It pays for school lunches. It pays for science and medical research. That's why Elaine Mogg at the Urban Brookings Tax Policy center feels differently than most. I'm excited to pay taxes, really. She finds it exciting because of where her money's going, like the nearly 23% that goes to Social Security. These are benefits we've promised to people. They've typically paid for many, many years working, and they expect them in retirement. Another 24% or so goes to health care. This is mostly Medicare, which, again, this is a promise we've made to people as they age. We're going to put them into, you know, public health care. It's also Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program for low income families, along with what's left of those Affordable Care act subsidies and then about 13% goes on what's called non defense discretionary spending, things like housing, transportation, education and the environment. Another 13% or so is divvied up among safety net programs like food assistance, veterans and unemployment benefits and child nutrition programs. The next category is we spend 14% just on interest on the debt is the fastest growing category. And the last roughly 13% pays for defense or Mogg says it did before the war. These numbers are all before we went into Iran. And so that number is going to be a lot bigger at the end of the year. How much bigger? No one knows yet. Erica York at the Tax foundation says the other thing most people don't think about and might be surprised by is how much our taxes don't cover. People might feel like they're taxed a lot right now, but when you compare all of the tax revenues that the federal government generates, it falls short of how much the federal government spends. In the last fiscal year, our taxes covered less than 75% of total spending. I'm Samantha Fields for Marketplace. It's tax season and at Lifelock. We know you're tired of numbers, but here's a big one you need to hear. Billions. That's the amount of money and refunds the IRS has flagged for possible identity fraud. Now here's another big number. 100 million. That's how many data points Lifelock monitors every second. If your identity is stolen, we'll fix it, guaranteed. One last big number. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit lifelock.com specialoffer for the threats you can't control. Terms apply. Expanding to the US Market doesn't have to mean higher costs. Puerto RICO is a U.S. jurisdiction with federal regulatory alignment, strong IP protections and seamless access to the U.S. mainland. It's why companies like Amgen, Honeywell and Lufthansa Technik operate high value manufacturing and aerospace services from the island. Add competitive tax incentives in a highly skilled bilingual workforce and the advantage is clear. It's not what's next, it's where Puerto Rico. Learn more@investpr.org the guy at the helm of the steering wheel of this economy. I'm talking about Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell. He said at his latest press conference that the labor market hasn't been doing much recently. He put it differently, of course. He called it zero employment growth, equilibrium in economic ease. But the bottom line is there's been no net job creation over the last six months and the non economic term for that is precarious. Marketplace's Justin Ho reports The labor market's in equilibrium for a couple of reasons. Nicole Servy, an economist with Wells Fargo, says, on one side, there's demand for labor, which has been slowing. You have employers that have just really had a rough year in terms of uncertainty. You have changes in trade policy. Now we have the conflict in the Middle East. And on the other side, there's labor supply. Survey says that's slowing down, too, thanks in large part to the Trump administration's crackdown on immigration and what we've seen with the changes in immigration policies. Net immigration to the United States was likely zero, if not negative, in 2025, and that's really weighing on the extent to which the labor market can grow. In other words, the supply of labor is weakening at a time when there's also less demand for it. So at the end of the day, you have both lower employment and lower population, and, you know, those two will largely cancel each other out. That's Preston Moy, senior economist at Employ America. He says that's why the unemployment rate has been holding steady for several months, despite the fact that jobs growth has been weak. Because if there's also fewer people in the labor market, you might see payroll numbers falling or even, you know, hit zero or perhaps even negative, and it could be totally fine. When you're thinking about, you know, what percentage of the population is employed, that is a sign that the labor market is stable right now, says Courtney Shoupert, an economist with Macro Policy Perspectives. We know that there's not, you know, a huge increase in the number of people being laid off right now, and that's good, right? That's healthy that we're not seeing unemployment spike. But Schubert says this equilibrium that we're in can also shut people out of the labor market. For instance, she says, there are plenty of younger workers who are struggling to enter the workforce right now. Another concern is that if employers aren't adding new jobs over the long term, economic growth can slow down. If fewer people are joining the labor market every month, or people aren't able to change jobs as frequently as they'd like, or demand the wage gains that they might have been able to get in, say, 2022, that limits the consumption potential. Shubert says that can also make the economy more vulnerable, especially if something else affects consumption, including a spike in energy prices. As we have an energy shock, households may be slightly more constrained just because they're facing a slightly different labor market than they were a few years ago. Shubert says this doesn't mean the economy is headed toward a recession, but it does mean that the economy is less resilient. I'm Justin Ho for Marketplace. Our producers are Emma Condon, Tamar Fagan, Ashley Rodriguez, Ariana Rosas, and Erica Soderstrom. Our senior producer is Alex Schroeder. Our supervising senior producer is Meredith Garrettson Morby. And in New York, I'm Sabri Benishore with the Marketplace morning report. From APM American Public Media. What happens when your kid's childhood becomes your business? I'm Reemaj Reis. And this week on this IS Uncomfortable. We step inside the world of family influencers, where childhood turns into content and content turns into income. What does it do to the kids at the center of it all? And what does it reveal about modern motherhood? I think part of the reason that mom influencers and family vloggers are so popular in the United States specifically, is because American motherhood is so lonely. Be sure to listen to this Is Uncomfortable. Wherever you get your podcasts.