Yahoo Finance, February 2026
Consumer spending is soldiering on. Business investment continues to grow. And the economy’s expanding, albeit at a slower pace. So where are the jobs? The US saw almost no payroll growth last year, notching a paltry 181,000 positions, with more unemployed people than there were job openings. The mismatch may have something to do with artificial intelligence. Companies are dropping tons of money on AI while pulling back on hiring. “We’re making a big bet right now in terms of where AI is going, which is not the sturdiest thing to build your economy on,” Alicia Sasser Modestino, an associate professor at Northeastern University and former senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, told Yahoo Finance. “Most of the time,” she said, “the labor market is the engine of economic growth and can provide people with jobs and growing wages that create a virtuous cycle of consumption.” But only parts of that cycle are in evidence right now.
