This is The Indicator from Planet Money.
I'm Waylon Wong.
I'm Darian Woods.
And I'm Adrian Ma.
Guys, if you could have one wish, what would it be?
I would wish...
That it were Friday.
That way we could do Indicators of the Week.
Well, you're in luck.
Wish granted, because it is indeed Indicators of the Week.
Yes, it is that day where we pluck out the most interesting numbers from the economic headlines.
I wish it could be Indicators of the Week every day.
No, Darian, be careful what you wish for.
That's a FEMA My Indicator.
And also on the show, we'll be talking about the Trump administration's new green card policy.
Plus, in China, there is a lot of interest for some jobs herding sheep.
We'll be back.
It is Indicators of the Week.
Darian, you're up first.
My indicator is 700.
That's roughly how many people applied for two shepherd positions in rural China.
Some of them even had university degrees, as according to Reuters.
Is this like a recession indicator in China?
It's hard to tell, you know, the official unemployment rate is 5.2% there.
Which is not a recession, it sounds like.
But you know, Chinese statistics are notoriously hard to trust.
I was drawn to this anecdote because it shows how lots of people are feeling about China's economy that might not be shown in the government's indicators.
And didn't this job posting go viral?
Yeah, on the social media site Weibo, that drove a lot of interest.
And what people were basically saying is that good jobs are feeling hard to find.
Now, it's not that these jobs don't exist.
They do.
But the conditions are often incredibly demanding.
They call it 996, right?
So it's 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. six days a week.
Yeah, that is the grind culture in some workplaces.
One of the people who applied for this shepherd position spoke to Reuters.
He said he was working in a factory making shipping containers and fastening screws for more than 13 hours a day.
Maybe when you've been working at the screw factory, that pastoral life seems very appealing.
And this job actually paid above the national urban average for private companies, with food and board covered too.
Do you get a cute sheepdog?
That would be a plus.
Wouldn't that be so cute?
You know, let's not romanticize these shepherd jobs.
They involve looking after 3,000 sheep just south of Mongolia.
It's far away from many people.
In the winter, you'll have to feed and clean the sheep, with temperatures dropping to minus 22 degrees Fahrenheit.
Jeez, okay.
So all that makes me wonder like, what kind of people actually ended up getting these jobs.
With so many candidates, the farm owner actually ended up hiring two couples with farm experience.
Honestly, that makes sense because it's like, do you want someone with farm experience or do you want someone who's coming from the city, who's never touched a sheep in their whole life?
Potentially,
Yeah, it doesn't matter if you have a PhD in poetry or engineering.
It's people who have work experience, probably preferable.
Waylon Wong, why don't you go next?
Okay, my indicator is 39 and that is the increase in ticket sales between opening weekend and the second weekend for the new horror movie Obsession.
And this is notable because most movies that get a wide release do not see this kind of jump in box office between their first and second weekends.
They usually see a decrease.
And so Obsession has pulled off something quite rare in the movie industry.
All right.
And Waylon, were you one of these people buying a ticket?
I was not.
I'm a total scaredy cat, so I will not be seeing this movie.
What I did, though, is because I am a connoisseur of Wikipedia plot summaries of horror movies.
So I read the plot summary on opening day. things go very wrong as a result.
Here's a clip from the trailer.
Do you still think I
Jeez.
Okay.
I got to lie down.
I can't even get to listening to that.
That really escalated.
So not your typical boy meets girl rom-com, I gather.
No, I think this takes a much darker turn.
And the other notable thing about Obsession is the background of the filmmaker.
His name is Curry Barker.
He's an aspiring actor who started making comedy videos with a friend.
And then they got a big following on YouTube and other platforms.
And then they actually made a full-length horror film. movie that they put on YouTube for free.
That got a lot of attention.
And then he wrote and directed Obsession.
He took it to the Toronto International Film Festival and it made such a splash that he picked up a distributor.
And now he has this bona fide box office hit on his hands.
The movie costs under a million dollars to make, but it's made over $60 million so far.
From YouTube comedy videos to the theaters in kind of a straight line.
That is a hell of a jump.
I know.
And Curry Barker seems to be part of maybe what's a growing trend, because there's actually another horror movie that is coming out this week in wide release in the US.
It's called Back Rooms.
And the director is also a young guy like Curry Barker who got well known for making web videos.
So there's something about YouTube and web videos that seems to be very fertile ground for this kind of new generation of horror movie makers.
Well, speaking of panic, I think that's how a lot of people would be thinking when they heard your indicator, Adrienne Maher.
That is correct.
My indicator is 1.4 million.
That is the number of immigrants who got green cards in 2024.
And in any given year, the majority of green cards are actually going to immigrants who already live in the US.
That's because those people have applied for what's called adjustment of status.
Right.
So that could be somebody who initially came here say, on a student visa, but maybe they married a US citizen.
Could be that.
Could be a bunch of other situations.
It might be somebody is here on a work visa and they just decided hey, I like it here and I want to stay.
But now these people applying for green cards are probably freaking out because the agency that decides green card applications has a new policy.
So, according to a spokesperson for US Citizenship and Immigration Services, quote from now on, an alien who is in the US temporarily and wants a green card must return to their home country to apply.
So that means someone who's already been in the US would then have to go home and then wait for this process to play out.
And that could take months, years.
Like what kind of time are we talking about?
Yes, those are both potential scenarios here.
But the agency says there may be exceptions in, quote, extraordinary circumstances.
Problem is, the agency does not explain what they mean by extraordinary circumstances, right?
Does it mean a person has a spouse and kids here?
Does it mean somebody going back home could lose their job and maybe they work at a I don't know rural hospital where they're really needed?
Doesn't say.
Yeah, like a lot is up to the discretion of the case officer, right?
That's right.
And this clearly is a part of the Trump administration's broad push to curb not just illegal immigration but also legal immigration.
It will no doubt face legal challenges, but this is something we are really interested in watching.
And in the meantime, we want to hear from people affected by this announcement.
So here's a call out.
If you listening or somebody you know is affected by this new policy, we want to hear from you.
Send us an email at indicator at NPR dot org.
Tell us a bit about your story and we may get in touch.
You can also reach me on Signal.
The handle is AdrianMa.10.
That's a number 10.
And we promise we won't share any of your information without your permission is a production of NPR.
