Santa’s warehouse workers

Summary

Marketplace Podcast Summary: "Santa’s Warehouse Workers" Release Date: November 23, 2024

Introduction In the "Santa’s Warehouse Workers" episode of Marketplace, host Kristen Schwab delves into the intricate web of holiday shopping, retail dynamics, economic indicators, and workforce trends shaping the season. With expert insights from Sadeep Reddy of Politico and Courtney Brown of Axios, the episode offers a comprehensive analysis of the factors influencing both consumers and businesses during the bustling holiday period.

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1. Retail Earnings and Holiday Spending Forecast The episode kicks off with a discussion on the recent retail earnings reports from major players like Walmart, Target, T.J. Maxx, and Gap. These reports have presented conflicting narratives about the state of U.S. consumer spending ahead of the holidays.

Courtney Brown (Axios) highlights the inconsistency:

"Walmart says yes, Target says no. And so now it's a question of which one should you believe?" [02:30]

This divergence creates uncertainty about the strength of the upcoming holiday season, making it challenging to predict consumer behavior accurately.

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2. Consumer Sentiment and Political Influence Kristen Schwab transitions to consumer sentiment data, revealing a partisan split:

"Democrats are more likely to feel bad about the economy. Republicans are more likely to feel good." [03:51]

Sadeep Reddy (Politico) explains the impact of recent elections on consumer sentiment:

"The national mood is so tied up with who is winning the White House that these numbers shift in some direction within weeks of the election." [03:51]

Reddy suggests that despite fluctuating sentiments, the robust job market—evidenced by low layoffs—supports continued consumer spending.

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3. Tariffs, Inflation, and Business Inventory Strategies The conversation shifts to the implications of potential tariffs and global inflation trends. Courtney Brown shares firsthand accounts from business owners adjusting their inventory strategies in anticipation of tariffs:

"Clients asking how they could get goods from overseas faster in order to front load on inventory to escape tariffs." [05:33]

Sadeep Reddy adds context on global inflation:

"In the US, we've got to be on the lookout for a potential resurgence of inflation." [07:05]

He emphasizes that rising oil prices and labor costs could further exacerbate inflationary pressures, influencing both consumer prices and business operations.

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4. AI Adoption in Businesses A segment explores the integration of artificial intelligence in the workplace, marking the two-year anniversary of OpenAI's ChatGPT. Matt Levin discusses Google's AI product, Notebook LM, and its practical applications:

"Notebook LM can basically turn anything you feed it into a podcast." [12:47]

Despite advancements, Shane Cummings, president of Acrolinx, notes:

"Convincing businesses to pick up those low hanging dollars is part of my job." [13:41]

He observes that while tech and finance sectors have embraced AI, other industries remain cautious, slowing the overall adoption rate.

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5. Seasonal Hiring in Retail Kimberly Adams provides an overview of the seasonal hiring landscape:

"With holiday sales expected to increase between two and a half to three and a half percent this year, the National Retail Federation estimates stores will need to hire between 400 to 500,000 seasonal workers." [10:19]

Challenges arise due to low unemployment rates, forcing retailers to adopt flexible scheduling and target diverse worker pools to fill positions.

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6. Spotlight: Fantasy Island Toys In a heartwarming segment, sisters Stevie Bell and Amanda Calhoun share their experiences as co-owners of Fantasy Island Toys in Fairhope, Alabama. They discuss the preparation and optimism surrounding the holiday season:

"We have definitely picked up in the past two weeks. People are starting to think about Christmas and holiday shopping." [26:14]

Their commitment to local business and community support underscores the vital role small retailers play during peak shopping periods.

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7. Holiday Credit Card Interest Rates Warning The episode concludes with a cautionary note for consumers regarding rising credit card interest rates:

"At least 50 retailers, including Macy's and T.J. Maxx, have raised credit card interest rates to an all-time high of more than 30%." [29:38]

Kristen Schwab advises listeners to be mindful of these high rates when considering credit options during holiday expenditures.

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Conclusion "Santa’s Warehouse Workers" offers a thorough examination of the multifaceted elements influencing the holiday shopping season. From retail earnings and consumer sentiment to the challenges of seasonal hiring and the cautious embrace of AI, Kristen Schwab and her guests provide valuable insights into navigating the economic landscape as the festive period approaches.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps:

• Courtney Brown: "Walmart says yes, Target says no. And so now it's a question of which one should you believe?" [02:30]
• Sadeep Reddy: "The national mood is so tied up with who is winning the White House that these numbers shift in some direction within weeks of the election." [03:51]
• Courtney Brown: "Clients asking how they could get goods from overseas faster in order to front load on inventory to escape tariffs." [05:33]
• Sadeep Reddy: "In the US, we've got to be on the lookout for a potential resurgence of inflation." [07:05]
• Matt Levin: "Notebook LM can basically turn anything you feed it into a podcast." [12:47]
• Shane Cummings: "Convincing businesses to pick up those low hanging dollars is part of my job." [13:41]
• Stevie Bell: "We have definitely picked up in the past two weeks. People are starting to think about Christmas and holiday shopping." [26:14]
• Kristen Schwab: "At least 50 retailers, including Macy's and T.J. Maxx, have raised credit card interest rates to an all-time high of more than 30%." [29:38]

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Attributions:

• Kristen Schwab – Host, Marketplace
• Sadeep Reddy – Politico
• Courtney Brown – Axios
• Kimberly Adams – Marketplace Reporter
• Matt Levin – Marketplace
• Stevie Bell & Amanda Calhoun – Co-Owners, Fantasy Island Toys
• Shane Cummings – President, Acrolinx

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This summary captures the essence of the "Santa’s Warehouse Workers" episode, providing listeners and non-listeners alike with a coherent and detailed overview of the key discussions and insights presented.

Transcript

[Kristen Schwab]

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Tis the season for consumption. So today we'll talk about the businesses, workers and shoppers who make it happen. From American Public Media, this is Marketplace in New York. I'm Kristen Schwab in for Kyra's doll. It's Friday, November 22nd. Thanks for listening. Yeah, a lot happened this week. News of the political kind, also about the economy, from inflation to retailers to consumers. To help sort through it all, we have Sadeep Reddy at Politico and Courtney Brown at Axios here with us. Hey you two.

[Sadeep Reddy]

Hi Kristen.

[Courtney Brown]

Hey, Kristen.

[Kristen Schwab]

Hello. Hello. Well, it was a big week for retail earnings ahead of a big week for retail. There was Walmart, Target, lows, the Gap, all reported. Courtney, what do you think? What they had to say tells us about where holiday spending might be headed.

[Courtney Brown]

Something really unsatisfying is that we kind of got divergent narratives about the state of the US Consumer. And if you're an econ nerd like me, like Many of your listeners, maybe you look at these earnings reports from Walmart, from Target, to try to get an understanding of how the consumer is doing. Is this going to be a strong holiday season? Walmart says yes, Target says no. And so now it's a question of which one should you believe? We're in this kind of confusing economic moment where we can't tell whether we're at kind of a pivot point and things are going to start to weaken. And I think that makes it really difficult. It makes it possible that Walmart could be right and Target could be right.

[Kristen Schwab]

A little bit of both. Well, maybe we could turn to consumer sentiment numbers that we got an update on today. Then we got the November revised consumer sentiment numbers, which are on the up and up. And a big bullet point here is that sentiment was split by party. Democrats are more likely to feel bad about the economy. Republicans are more likely to feel good. And I want to know, sadeep, what that tells us about what Courtney was just talking about. And also, if we are so fickle, does consumer sentiment even matter what just.

[Sadeep Reddy]

Happened an election two weeks ago? That's what just happened. And that's, this has been one of these, the last few election cycles, one of these enduring features of consumer sentiment that, that the national mood is so tied up with who is winning the White House that these, these numbers shift in some direction within weeks of the election, sometimes within days. We'll know with some of these gauges next month. There's a saying when you look at consumer sentiment, watch what consumers do, not what they say. And this is a clear indication that job market is still quite healthy. Layoffs are low. There's no reason to expect that consumers are going to pull back on their spending, even if they feel a little bit gloomier because their candidate did not win two weeks ago. So I wouldn't put too much stock in this. But there are, there are other factors going on right now that we will see in the coming months. Will Republicans suddenly feel better about the inflation picture after January 20th than they did before November 5th? Will Democrats flip a little bit? Who had been a little bit more on board with where inflation was headed? Will they feel differently? That's actually a really important indicator of inflation expectations. That does matter a little bit more than consumer sentiment does.

[Kristen Schwab]

Well, we don't know exactly what's to come in January, but we do know that it's likely that tariffs probably will be part of the picture. Courtney, you recently wrote a story about business owners stocking up on goods. What are you Hearing from them and how worried are they?

[Courtney Brown]

Yeah, I spoke to someone who said that, you know, the moment after, you know, the election was kind of decided the next morning, he felt that he was getting kind of an influx of calls from his clients asking how, how, how could they get goods from overseas faster in order to kind of front, front load on inventory to escape tariffs. And I think that there are some anecdotes that that's actually happening. Stanley Black and Decker, for instance, toolmaker. They told investors this week that their inventory was looking on the heavier side because a few things were happening. But they said that because of tariffs, they had imported more goods than maybe they might need. Now, I want to be clear, I mean, there's only so much stuff you can import to, you know, get ahead of tariffs. I mean, it looks like these tariffs are coming whether retailers want them or not. But how bad they are, you know, we won't know yet.

[Kristen Schwab]

Sure. Well, I want to pull back for a second and look at the bigger picture with inflation, which tariffs may or may not have something to do with, because central bakers in Australia, Russia and India have expressed concerns about maybe an uptick in inflation. Inflation rates in Canada and the UK came in a bit hotter than expected this week. Sadeep, what does that mean for us.

[Sadeep Reddy]

In the US it really means that we've got to be on the lookout for a potential resurgence of inflation. Inflation as a rate has come down quite a bit. Price levels, of course, have not adjusted and that's what's got a lot of consumers still concerned. Businesses are now worried about what if that price level goes up. And that's where the tariff and the stocking concerns come in. If you were concerned, as we, we just said, if you're concerned about prices going up overseas, you want to bring product in. But there are other factors as well. If the economy does hold up, oil prices could go a little bit higher and create a little bit of that resurgence. In the US we have other factors with labor costs, particularly low end labor, and concern about deportation of workers who might be filling the gap in the lower end and on, and farms and factories. These are all things that are going to weigh on mines. The fact that it's a global phenomenon though, really is something that has carried on through prior bursts of inflation. So that's why everybody is watching it so closely now.

[Kristen Schwab]

Well, Courtney, what are you looking at next week to give us a, to thread the story of the macro picture? When we get a bunch of data, what data are you keeping your eyes on?

[Courtney Brown]

Okay. Data. Okay. I won't talk about the fact that I'm looking forward to my mom's cooking for Thanksgiving. But very important data front on the data front for what is for a lot of people a short week. There is some interesting data coming out next week including inflation, personal consumption expenditures, price index, not as sexy as cpi, but that is the one that the Fed cares about. So we get an update on that next week. One other thing I'm watching is we get a revision on gdp so we'll see whether the economy was is as strong as we thought it was or is there a bump up, a bump lower. I think that'll be on my radar for sure.

[Kristen Schwab]

Gotcha. Sudeep Reddy is at Politico. Courtney Brown is at Axios. Thanks again. You too.

[Sadeep Reddy]

Thanks Kristen.

[Courtney Brown]

Thanks Kristen.

[Kristen Schwab]

Wall Street Today was feeling a little thankful this week before Thanksgiving. We'll have the details when we do the numbers. Sudeep and Courtney and I were just talking about holiday retail and what it says about the economy. Holiday retail hiring can tell us something too about how much shopping stores expect people to do and about the job market and how many people are looking for seasonal work marketplaces. Kimberly Adams has more.

[Kimberly Adams]

With holiday sales expected to increase between two and a half to three and a half percent this year, the National Retail Federation estimates stores will need to hire between 400 to 500,000 seasonal workers. Ben Meadows teaches economics at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

[Kristen Schwab]

It looks like hiring is back to kind of the pre pandemic level but on a year by year basis. That is actually a lower hiring level than last year.

[Kimberly Adams]

But unemployment is pretty low too, which means retailers are struggling to fill all those jobs this season. One of the strategies, says the National Retail Federal Ed Iggy, keep things flexible.

[Kristen Schwab]

Many of my members go out of.

[Sadeep Reddy]

Their way to make sure that their.

[Kristen Schwab]

Employees are accommodated in providing opportunities for them to work at and when they.

[Kimberly Adams]

Deem appropriate flexible shifts, app based scheduling. Another strategy be more accommodating to different kinds of workers, perhaps luring in retired workers who want to make some extra cash over the holidays.

[Kristen Schwab]

And says Iggy, certainly on the disability.

[Sadeep Reddy]

Front many of our members have been.

[Kristen Schwab]

Very aggressive going out to disabled workers and trying to accommodate them in the.

[Kimberly Adams]

Workplace because there are all kinds of jobs that need filling over the holidays.

[Kristen Schwab]

Transportation, warehousing, retail. Obviously these are the biggest areas.

[Kimberly Adams]

James Atkinson is with the Society for Human Resource Management or shrm.

[Kristen Schwab]

We have seen kind of a larger percentage of retail hires this year compared to some of the recent years. So a larger percentage of the overall all seasonal hiring.

[Kimberly Adams]

And more of those jobs are in E commerce rather than brick and mortar shops. So Santa's elves are more likely to be packing a box at a warehouse than ringing you up at a cash register. In Washington, I'm Kimberly Adams for Marketplace.

[Kristen Schwab]

On yesterday's show we told you about the Department of Justice's plans to end Google's Internet search monopoly. More specifically, its plans to try to restrain Google from influencing the development of artificial intelligence, which got us thinking more about AI because next week will mark two years since the debut of OpenAI's ChatGPT. Two years of hype and bans and scary predictions about the end of the world as we know it. So we had Marketplace's Matt Levin take stock of how much people and businesses are actually using AI.

[Matt Levin]

I hesitate to tell you this, but Google has a relatively new AI product called Notebook LM that can basically turn anything you feed it into a podcast. Economist Anton Coronek at the University of Virginia uses it all the time, mostly to summarize research papers that are a slog to actually read.

[Kristen Schwab]

I sometimes do that now because honestly, those voices, they're so engaging and it's so well done. It's, it's quite impressive.

[Matt Levin]

Notebook LM is just one of the many leaps that tech has made over the past two years. Generative AI is also less likely to just make things up. And yet AI is not being adopted as quickly as Coronac would have thought.

[Kristen Schwab]

There is this almost free tool that's extremely powerful and it's like $100 bills lying on this floor and nobody's picking them up.

[Matt Levin]

Convincing businesses to pick up those low hanging dollars is part of Shane Cummings job. He's the president of acrolinx, a company that offers AI content standard services to big enterprises. He says while tech and finance have been early adopters, other industries are just more risk averse.

[Sadeep Reddy]

One of the things that hasn't changed in the last two years is that large enterprises, all enterprises, they are accountable for the content they produce. They're legally accountable, they're ethically accountable, they're financially accountable.

[Matt Levin]

Yet about 40% of the US working age population uses generative AI in some way, according to a recent study co authored by Vanderbilt University economist Adam Blandon. He says the early spread of AI mirrors the pace of a previous tech revolution.

[Kristen Schwab]

Our overall adoption rate among workers looks.

[Courtney Brown]

Very similar to the overall adoption rate.

[Kristen Schwab]

Of computers in 1984. Just to give you some perspective, 1981 was when the IBM PC was released.

[Matt Levin]

Blennon also says there may be more AI going on in the workplace than we know about. It may be a few more years until employees are comfortable telling their bosses they use ChatGPT to whip up that PowerPoint. I'm Matt Levin for Marketplace SA.

[Kristen Schwab]

Coming up, people are starting to think.

[Stevie Bell]

About Christmas and holiday shopping.

[Kristen Schwab]

Starting to think about shopping and starting to shop are two different things. But first, let's do the numbers. The Dow Jones industrial average rose 426 points, about 1% to close at 44,296. That is a record. The Nasdaq advanced 31 points, a 10% to finish at 19,003 and the S&P 500 added 20 points, 3/10% to end at 59 69. For the week, the Dow gained nearly 2%. The Nasdaq picked up 1 1/4%. The S&P 500 finished 1.7% higher. Matt Levin just told us about that chat GPT anniversary. OpenAI is private, but checking some public companies in the AI business. Nvidia lost 3%, Meta retreated 7. 10%, Alphabet fell 1.6% and Amazon shaved off 6. 10% after it announced a new $4 billion investment in AI startup Anthropic. Gap surged almost 13% after the clothing retailer boosted its full year outlook. Department store chain Ross lifted 2% after a quarterly earnings report. Investors liked bond prices rose. The Yield on the 10 year T note fell to 4.41%. You're listening to Marketplace.

When you think about businesses growing their sales beyond forecasts. Sure, you think about a product with demand, a focused brand and influence driven marketing. But an often overlooked secret is the businesses behind the business making selling and for shoppers buying simple. For millions of businesses, that business is Shopify. Nobody does selling better than Shopify, home of the number one checkout on the planet. And the not so secret secret with shop pay that boosts conversions up to 50%, meaning way less carts going abandoned and way more sales going. So if you're into growing your business, you're your ecommerce platform better be ready to sell wherever your customers are scrolling or scrolling on the web, in your store, in their feed and everywhere in between. Businesses that sell more sell on Shopify. Sign up for your $1 per month trial period at shopify.com marketplace. All lowercase go to shopify.com marketplace to upgrade your selling today. Shopify.com marketplace gifting is hard, but here's a hint.

[Amanda Calhoun]

Give the gift of connection from US Cellular. Not sure what that means. Here's a slightly more specific hint. You can choose four free phones and get four lines for $90 a month from US Cellular. Your family wants new phones? How do we know? They told us. The good news is that compared to wrapping presents, you're great at getting hints. So take the hint and get them four free phones and four lines for $90 a month. US Cellular built for US Billy Bob.

[Kristen Schwab]

Thornton stars in Landman, the newest series from Taylor Sheridan with Demi Moore and Jon Hamm. Landman is a modern tale of fortune.

[Matt Levin]

Seeking in the world of West Texas oil.

[Kristen Schwab]

Stream it now exclusively on Paramount+ head to paramountplus.com to watch now.

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I'm Kristin Schwab. There is a real shortage of medical workers in this country. We need more dentists and physicians and nurses and specifically nurse midwives. These are registered nurses who have graduate level training and provide pregnancy care, including delivering babies, mostly in hospitals. In California, there's just one school training nurse midwives. The only other program in the state has paused admissions as it shifts to a doctoral degree program, which requires significantly more training. The move worries maternal care advocates because they say the change will make training longer and more expensive at a time when access to care is dwindling from laist, Ellie Yu reports. Label them and keep tabs.

[Angela Sojobi]

The room is buzzing at the Women's Health Simulation Lab at Cal State Fullerton. That's because today everyone gets their own anatomic model of a pelvis and a baby head.

[Kristen Schwab]

Pelvis out.

[Angela Sojobi]

Professor Angela Sajobe is teaching a class to midwives in training. She holds up an example pelvis and mimics how baby moves through the birth canal.

[Kristen Schwab]

Go through that mechanism of labor with your baby ending up.

[Angela Sojobi]

Today the class is learning about the first stage of labor. Last week, students practiced catching babies with a mannequin in a birthing bed. Next week, they'll learn how to suture using foam and raw chicken for practice. Student Janine Ruiz says it's a sort of hands on experience that helped her choose the school's program.

[Kristen Schwab]

We got to practice, like how do we position our hands?

[Courtney Brown]

And it's not a person, it's a mannequin.

[Kristen Schwab]

So if we mess up, if we.

[Courtney Brown]

Drop the baby, it's okay, nobody's getting hurt. I couldn't imagine my first experience of.

[Stevie Bell]

This being at the bedside.

[Courtney Brown]

That would be terrifying.

[Angela Sojobi]

Ruiz and other students are training to be certified nurse midwives. Studies have shown that being cared for by midwife has led to fewer C sections and fewer preterm births. But only about 12% of births in the US are attended by a midwife. So joby, the professor says midwives can fill a critical gap as the country faces a shortage of thousands of maternal care providers.

[Kristen Schwab]

So we need more people providing care for women. Nurse midwives are very capable to provide this care.

[Angela Sojobi]

But Cal State Fullerton only graduates about 10 to 12 midwives a year, and now it's the only master's level program left in the state training these nurses. This year, the other program in California, UC San Francisco, paused admissions to switch to a doctoral program. Sojobi says that will make it harder, especially for people of color, to enter the workforce.

[Kristen Schwab]

It's already difficult to recruit people of color. Now we're going to increase the amount of time you're going to be in school and the amount of money you're going to pay for school, she says.

[Angela Sojobi]

Midwives can play an important role in the black maternal health crisis, where black birthing parents are three times more likely to die from pregnancy related complications.

[Kristen Schwab]

For us to be able to start really changing the data on disparities between care the people to do it are the nurse midwives and those are the people we have less of practicing.

[Angela Sojobi]

The doctoral program at UCSF will cost around $150,000, nearly 90,000 more than the master's program. It'll also be longer by six quarters. The school says a shift is part of a national movement to change advanced nurse degrees to doctoral ones and will better prepare graduates with more expertise as they navigate a complex healthcare landscape. Students can take classes in things like health policy, leadership and healthcare innovation, but the American College of Nurse Midwives is opposed to a doctoral require. Ginger Breedlove is past president of the group. She says there's no evidence that a higher degree increases the ability to safely provide care as a midwife.

[Kristen Schwab]

You may want to do a post master's doctoral degree if you want to.

[Stevie Bell]

Teach, if you want to build your.

[Kristen Schwab]

Resume, to go into administrative leadership, but not to practice, she says.

[Angela Sojobi]

In a time when the maternal health care crisis is so pressing, schools need to make programs more accessible. In California alone, nearly 50 maternity wards have closed over the last Dec. In Los Angeles, I'm Ellie Yu for Marketplace.

[Kristen Schwab]

I was just a kid when Tickle Me Elmo broke Black Friday, but I still somehow remember all the news reports of shoppers causing an absolute frenzy to get their hands on the toy. Well, a lot has changed since then about how we shop, but Black Friday, which is one week from today, it's still the biggest shopping day of the year. And it requires a lot of prep for retailers, especially if you're one selling what's at the top of every kid's list. That's the setup for today's installment of our series, My Economy.

[Janine Ruiz]

I'm Stevie Bell.

[Stevie Bell]

And I'm Amanda Calhoun. We are co owners of Fantasy Island Toys in Fairhope, Alabama, and we're sisters. We had known before we went into business together that we wanted to own a business together. So when we found out in 2021 that Fantasy Island Toys, a children's toy store, was coming for sale, we knew that we had to figure out how to purchase this business.

[Janine Ruiz]

Amanda's kids shopped here growing up, and in my quest to be the best aunt that I could be, I certainly shopped in this store for my nieces and nephews prior to us buying it. This store is a landmark in the city of Fairhope and it's really an honor to be able to continue its legacy.

[Stevie Bell]

So far, we are off to a great holiday season. We have definitely picked up in the past, I would say about two weeks. With Thanksgiving being a week later, we're seeing people like it's been a little bit slower start to the season, but like I said, you know, I mean, in the past two weeks we have definitely picked up and people are starting to think about Christmas and holiday shopping.

[Janine Ruiz]

That's right. I mean, as a toy store, fourth quarter is absolutely the pinnacle and we are very optimistic. There's a lot of joy in the air. We know that the community is prioritizing shopping local and that is absolutely going to help our bottom line.

[Stevie Bell]

So to prepare for this holiday season, we did hire two employees in addition.

[Janine Ruiz]

To the six that we have on staff already.

[Stevie Bell]

Yes. So two seasonal employees.

[Janine Ruiz]

We have retired teachers. We have retired art teachers. We even have a seasonal employee that has a master's degree in dyslexia education. So I mean, like a really remarkable staff that will help talk about not just how fun the toy is, but the developmental benefits of each toy. Like all siblings, we have our moments, but at the end of the day, we know that we're in this together and that we have the support of our families as well as our friends and our staff.

[Stevie Bell]

We definitely balance each other out really well.

[Janine Ruiz]

Absolutely. And I think that it is very special to work together and also have the same vision for the company, which we definitely do. So it's fantastic. It's actually awesome. It's the best job that I've ever had.

[Stevie Bell]

Yeah, it's great.

[Janine Ruiz]

And I do say that like multiple times a day.

[Kristen Schwab]

That's Stevie Bell and Amanda Calhoun, sisters and co owners of Fantasy Island Toys in Fairhope, Alabama. Whether you have a business partner or you're flying solo, write to us about what's happening in your [e-mail] my economy this final note on the way out today, we're ending this consumer topic heavy show with a word of caution for you, the consumer, as you start your holiday shopping. In a new survey, Bankrate reviewed data from 100 major retailers and at least 50 of them, including Macy's and TJ Maxx, have raised credit card interest rates. And they did it right before the Fed made its cuts in September and November. Usually the two rates move in the same direction. This has put the average retail credit card interest rate at an all time high of more than 30%, something to consider when you're inevitably tempted by that intro offer at checkout. Our theme music was composed by BJ Lederman. Marketplace's executive producer is Nancy Fargalli. Donna Tam is the executive editor, Neal Scarborough is the vice president and general manager, and I'm Kristen Schwab. Have a great weekend. We'll be back here on Monday. This is apm.

[Amanda Calhoun]

Gifting is hard, but here's a hint. Give the gift of Connection from US Cellular. Not sure what that means. Here's a slightly more specific hint. You can choose four free phones and get four lines for $90 a month from US Cellular. Your family wants new phones? How do we know? They told us. The good news is that compared to wrapping presents, you're great at getting hints. So take the hint and get them four free phones and four lines for $90 a month. US Cellular built for us.