We're 'not quite understanding' the labor market: Mohamed El-Erian

SelfRugger · 2026-02-22T21:42:47+00:00

Mohamed El-Erian discusses the complexities of the US labor market ahead of key economic reports, highlighting a mismatch between job growth and GDP, and emphasizing the importance of understanding underlying supply and demand factors.

SelfRugger

2026-02-22 21:42:47

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We’re ‘not quite understanding’ the labor market: Mohamed El-Erian

Yahoo Finance Video and Julie Hyman

Wed, February 11, 2026 at 8:00 PM GMT+9

The January jobs report was delayed and is due out this Wednesday, February 11, followed by last month’s Consumer Price Index (CPI) on Friday, February 13.

Allianz chief economic adviser Mohamed El-Erian assesses the current forecasts for this week’s economic data and what that all signals for the US labor market.

El-Erian is also the Rene M. Kern Practice Professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.

Watch Mohamed El-Erian’s full interview by clicking here.

Also be sure to read up on Mohamed El-Erian’s op-ed for Yahoo Finance addressing investor rotation in the tech sector and AI.

To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Morning Brief.

Video Transcript

00:00 Speaker A

You mentioned macro and I you’re you’re historically a macro guy. So I do want to ask you about the two big reports this week. Um, one on the job market that is coming on Wednesday, one on consumer inflation that’s coming Friday. And there too, do you think that perceptions of the US economy are broken right now or do you think that what do you think the folks are sort of getting wrong as we ramp up for that data?

00:26 Speaker B

So, on the employment report, it’s it’s really striking the range of estimates. So the the medium forecast if you like is a drop creation of 70,000 last month. The range Julie is minus 10,000 to 135,000.

00:40 Speaker A

Wow.

00:41 Speaker B

So that’s an enormous range and it tells you that we’re not quite understanding the labor market. And there’s a good reason for that is that if you step back Julie, we have this phenomenon of job growth decoupling from GDP growth. So we we are an economy that’s growing by 4% a year, that’s really good, but we’re worried about a weak labor market. That is an issue. So I’m going to be looking at the internals seeing is it a supply issue in the labor market, is it a demand issue. On inflation, it is critical that goods inflation doesn’t go up too much as service inflation comes down. And that’s what I’m going to be looking at in terms of the CPI report on Friday.

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