In today’s news and commentary, a weak jobs report, the NIH decides it will no longer recognize a research fellows’ union, and WNBA contract talks continue to stall as season approaches.

On Friday, the Labor Department reported that employers cut 92,000 jobs in February while the unemployment rate rose slightly to 4.4 percent. A loss in healthcare jobs also emphasized the economy’s increasing reliance on care professions for job growth, without which the U.S. would have lost nearly 570,000 jobs last year. Estimates for December and January were also revised downward, showing almost zero job growth over the past three months. These revisions followed large changes to the 2025 job growth data, which showed that initial estimates had greatly exaggerated the pace of growth, raising more questions about data health and uncertainty in broader economic measurements.

Last week, the NIH also notified a union of early-career researchers, the NIH Fellows United, that it would no longer recognize the group “in its entirety.” NIHFU represents 5,000 researchers ranging from graduate students to postdoctoral fellows who work at the NIH’s research facilities. The NIH now claims that they are trainees rather than employees, and that the union was wrongly certified by the Federal Labor Relations Authority in December 2023. NIH wrote that it would file a petition with the FLRA, likely to seek decertification. In January 2025, the researchers had just seen a new contract go into effect that limited work hours, guaranteed paid parental leave, and promised to boost pay. It remains unclear how the NIH’s refusal to recognize the union will affect the contract provisions.

Meanwhile, the Women’s National Basketball Players Association (WNBPA) are locked in a standoff over contract talks with the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA). After historic growth in game attendance, viewership, and merchandise sales, new founds of capital funding, a lucrative media deal, and the addition of new franchises, the players have sought higher salaries and a better revenue-sharing system from the WNBA. While players in the NBA receive roughly 51% of the revenue earned by the league, the WNBA players receive less than 10% of the revenue made by their league under the most recent collective bargaining agreement. Last week, two players from the WNBPA released a statement concluding that the league’s most recent offer is “not worth taking” and reiterating that they are “united and focused on delivering a transformational CBA…[and] negotiating for as long as it takes.” The WNBA has previously called the players’ demands “unrealistic,” potentially causing “hundreds of millions of dollars in losses.” The two parties are trying to hash out a deal before March 10, the last day for a new CBA to avoid delaying the start of the 2026 season.