Up First from NPR
Jobs Report, White House Crypto Summit, Gaza Ceasefire Uncertainty
Fri, 07 Mar 2025
The Labor Department is expected to show a modest uptick in hiring as part of its monthly jobs report card, but layoffs could cast a chill over the job market in coming months. The White House meets with founders and investors in the crypto industry to discuss how to grow the sector. And, rival ceasefire plans create uncertainty in Gaza, the Trump administration is demanding Hamas release hostages immediately, while holding secret talks with the group.Want more comprehensive analysis of the most important news of the day, plus a little fun? Subscribe to the Up First newsletter.Today's episode of Up First was edited by Rafael Nam, Roberta Rampton, Russell Lewis, Alice Woelfle and Mohamad ElBardicy.It was produced by Ziad Buchh, Nia Dumas and Chris Thomas.We get engineering support from Neisha Heinis, our technical director is Stacey Abbott.And our Executive Producer is Jay Shaylor.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Chapter 1: What does the latest jobs report reveal?
We get a picture today of employment, a snapshot slightly out of date.
Future job reports will reflect federal job cuts and employers who paused as U.S. trade policy keeps changing. Where's the economy heading?
I'm Ian Martinez, that's Steve Inskeep, and this is a first from NPR News. The president takes an opportunity today to promote cryptocurrency.
Bitcoin has set multiple all-time record highs because everyone knows that I'm committed to making America the crypto capital.
Trump himself has invested in crypto, so how does he plan for the government to promote it?
Also, why did Israel change its terms for extending a ceasefire in Gaza? With U.S. help, Israelis are pressing Hamas to accept a different deal and withholding food and fuel. Stay with us. We've got the news you need to start your day.
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Employers added 151,000 jobs in February. That's according to today's jobs report from the Labor Department. And 151,000 is a fairly healthy number, although it does not reflect the economic turmoil of the past several weeks. This is a snapshot of the economy, useful but ever so slightly out of date. NPR's Scott Horsley is here. Good morning, Scott. Good morning, Steve.
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Chapter 2: How will federal job cuts affect the economy?
So what is in and what is out of this snapshot?
Well, the monthly jobs report is always based on a survey that's taken around the middle of the month. And that timing is important here because a lot of the federal government job cuts began around the 14th of February, a Friday, which some people referred to as the St. Valentine's Day massacre. Yeah.
People who got their walking papers that Friday are still counted as employed in this February jobs report. The overall report actually shows somewhat more job growth in February than the month before when cold, snowy weather was blanketing much of the country and keeping a lot of construction workers idle, for example.
But even though the report looks pretty good on the surface, there are some warning signs out there.
Okay.
When you look below the surface, what are the warning signs that you see? Yeah, the outplacement firm Challenger Gray and Christmas keeps a running tally of layoff notices, and its count for February shows the biggest job cuts since 2020, which is the early months of the pandemic.
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Chapter 3: Why is the White House hosting a cryptocurrency summit?
Andrew Challenger says there were 172,000 layoffs announced last month, and that includes more than 62,000 in the federal government.
This is a really big number in terms of what we've ever recorded. The fact that we've reached that level so quickly this year is surprising to us and certainly something worth taking note of.
Now, the official jobs report today shows just 10,000 federal jobs cut last month, which we know is a fraction of the real total. We also know the Trump administration is considering much more widespread layoffs as it seeks to radically downsize the federal workforce.
Yeah, and it's numbers that couldn't affect the employment numbers in a measurable way. So what would that radical downsizing look like?
The administration reportedly wants to cut tens of thousands of jobs, for example, from both the VA and the IRS. The IRS already cut more than 6,000 workers last month. Eddie Walker represents some of those workers at an IRS office in Austin, Texas.
Of course, there's a lot of crying. I'm looking at some of the emails and stuff I've got, like they are ripping apart my work family. I left a job of 13 years to come here, and what do I get? How am I going to survive? I'm a single mom.
This is obviously painful for the affected workers. Some context important, though. There are about 2.4 million federal workers, not counting the military and the post office. That's about 1.5% of the overall U.S. workforce.
Oh, thanks for the reminder. The vast majority of people are working state and local government or whatever, or in the private sector, of course. So how is the private sector holding up?
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Chapter 4: What are the implications of Trump's strategic Bitcoin reserve?
Yeah, restaurants and bars cut about 27,000 jobs last month. Temporary services cut jobs as well. There's been a lot of whiplash around the president's trade policy. I mean, just this week, we saw tariffs imposed, then relaxed, then mostly suspended on Mexico and Canada. Andrew Challenger says a lot of private sector businesses are considering their own job cuts.
There's just been this extra uncertainty that's entered into some industries around tariffs, around potential trade wars. We're seeing big announcements from very large Fortune 500 companies this month that are tuning down their growth forecasts for the next three or four years.
So it's just not an environment that encourages a lot of hiring. NPR Scott Horsley, thanks.
You're welcome. When he was campaigning for office, the president promised to make the United States the crypto capital of the planet. And he's taken major steps this week when it comes to digital assets.
Last night, the president signed an executive order creating a strategic Bitcoin reserve. He's expected to speak about it at a summit the White House is hosting today on cryptocurrency.
NPR White House correspondent Deepa Shivram has more on this. Good morning. Good morning. Would you just explain for me, I mean, I can understand why the U.S. needs a strategic petroleum reserve. If there's a shortage of petroleum, you'll let some out. Supply and demand keeps the price down. But why would Americans need a crypto reserve?
Yeah, the argument the White House is making is that the U.S. is losing money by selling the Bitcoin they already have seized from court proceedings. So Trump's crypto czar, David Sachs, said on social media last night that the government has about $200,000 in Bitcoin, which is worth about $17 billion. And the idea is that the reserve will be a, quote, digital Fort Knox.
all of that Bitcoin just stays there. And that was a campaign promise from President Trump. But the idea of having a crypto reserve is pretty controversial, even among those in the crypto space, coming down to details like which cryptocurrencies do you keep in the reserve and why is the president picking some over others? So there's a lot of lingering questions. Yeah.
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Chapter 5: How is the White House planning to regulate cryptocurrency?
And of course, it's an industry in which he's invested. So this is just one move the president is making. There's this summit coming today. What's going on?
Yeah, the White House hasn't shared a lot of details about who's attending today, who's going to be speaking, though we do expect the president to make remarks. But I will say the big overarching thing that people are expecting from this summit is a pretty wide open question, which is what are the rules when it comes to cryptocurrency?
a space that involves trillions of dollars, so many players and a lot of opportunity, but also a lot of volatility and risk and bad actors. So there's a desire here to build a regulatory framework.
And a lot of folks in the crypto space see this summit as an opportunity to get the ball rolling on those discussions, especially because there are a lot of conversations like this that they feel weren't happening under the Biden administration. Well, what was Biden doing then?
The Biden administration focused on enforcement in trying to crack down on cryptocurrency rather than coming up with the new rules of the road to help the industry and help consumers. Trump's approach so far has been to undo that.
In the last few weeks, his administration has backed away from a lot of the lawsuits and investigations that the SEC, which is the Securities and Exchange Commission, had been doing on crypto businesses. I talked to Campbell Harvey. He's a finance professor at Duke University about the change in approach to crypto.
Over the past four years, at least, the regulatory complex has been very combative, almost in a warlike situation against the innovators in the space. So it's time to step back and to look at the possible benefits of this new technology and weigh them against the costs.
And he says the summit happening today is important because it's a first step in making a framework for cryptocurrency that balances that innovation with protection for consumers.
I'm just thinking, though, when the government changes the rules, there are winners, there are losers. You may be picking winners and losers. And doesn't the president himself have a financial stake here?
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