Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio News. This is another very strong jobs report.
I'm not going to get tired of coming here and telling you that we are continuing to experience very strong, stable and steady growth. So it's two hundred and seventy two thousand jobs created last month.
The unemployment rate has remained at.
Or below four percent for thirty months straight. That's still the longest since the nineteen sixties. And at the same time, real wages, you know, over the year are up four point one percent, So workers are doing better in an economy in which the President has said, when we focus on workers and worker well being, we're going to do what's right for the economy and for the country.
When you look under the hood, you find that four hundred thousand, even more than four hundred thousand people left the labor force in May. The participation rate is not back where it was before COVID. Right now, how do you explain that?
Well, so let's say, you know, the prime age labor force PARTESIS patient rate remains very very strong, and it's worth noting that again women's labor first participation.
Rate hit another historic high.
So last month we said it was the highest since nineteen forty eight when this data was begun to be collected.
It's now a little bit higher than that.
Even so, women continue to power our economic recovery. At the same time, you know, we are seeing again strong participation. People are in the job market. People have come off the sidelines. People are looking for jobs and they're finding them. Where there has been a little bit of you know, of a very small uptick in the unemployment rate again still at or below four percent for the longest stretch in decades, but has to do with young people ages
twenty to twenty four, who are in a bit of transition. Really, if we think about May, right May is a period of transition for all of us, parents with kids who graduate and maybe move and you know, are looking for different jobs during that time.
You can tell a great story and put a great headline number on that unemployment story as you are right now. But when you look under the hood, you do see some elements of weakness compared to the payroll survey. And I wonder, while your happy word is now, if you worry about where we're going to be six months from now, if this is a slowing job market.
Well, the payroll survey really is the gold standard when it comes to the unemployment rate, right, this is the you know, it's the largest by far of any data set,
including the household survey that is used. And so again, I don't think there's any way to paint this as other than continued, strong, stable and steady growth under President Biden's leadership and proof of his theory that if we invest in America, we can create good jobs in communities and crowd in private investment in order to do that. And you know, as I travel the country, I'm seeing the benefits of that.
We've talked a lot about the impacts that immigration has on our job market. It can be for better or worse, depending on the trend that you're looking at. And there's an analysis from Steve England Standard Chartered Bank that we looked at this week that estimates about half of the job growth since October can be attributed to undocumented migrants. That it's somewhere in the area of one hundred and
nine thousand a month. If the President's executive order put in place just days ago lowers the threshold, lowers the numbers of undocumented immigrants entering the country, what does that mean for the job market. Do you see numbers like that in you're modeling.
I mean, I haven't seen that study.
I would actually question those numbers based on what we see. This is a situation where one we're not talking about dividing a small pie into smaller pieces.
We're talking about a much bigger pie overall.
So more jobs, more people in the labor market, more opportunity for all. Since the President came into office, again, we've talked about this, you know, fifteen million jobs created. That is a fifteen million families, fifteen million individuals who are having the benefits of a good job that might
not have had that before. I would also say that it is true that there has been you know, immigration based growth also, and that has been true throughout our nation's history, right that immigrants have helped to do jobs and help field the economy.
But the majority of this job growth.
That we're talking about has gone to native born workers.
We'll talk to me about the other side of this story, and that's immigration reform H one B, H two B. We spend all day talking about border security in Washington. What does our job market need in terms of attracting talent from other countries legally?
I mean, it's such an important question, right.
This is why since day one, President Biden has called for the kinds of comprehensive immigration reform that would address, you know, some of the challenges that our system has created.
Job market look like with that help, what what our job market look like with you got that reform? Right?
Well, so we do administer you know, we have in this administration increase the number of H two B workers that have come in. We recently did a rule around H two A workers making sure that when migrant workers come to this country through legal means that they're also protected right, that they are protected for their own good but also so that they're being here doesn't take away from you know, the good wages in those industries. So you know, but the bigger picture is that there does
need to be comprehensive reform. The President has called for that, and frankly, Congress needs to do its job.
There's something that I don't want to get too deep in the weeds called the birth death model that our analysts set Bloomberg Economics, are looking at that would suggest some of the companies that we've seen closing might not be reflected yet in the numbers that we saw in this monthly survey based on layoff announcements corporate closures. Where do we look in the middle of summer when these numbers start to emerge.
Well, you know, we will come out every month to report the data that we have. But everything that we have seen this past month, this past year, as well as you know the last year since President Biden came to office, is.
Historic job growth, more jobs created.
The same time period than any president in our history, and continued low levels of unemployment again historic lows, and more opportunity to come right. The investments in the President's Investing in America agenda, many of them are still coming out.
And that's why this summer I'm.
Going across the country talking about good Job Summer and focusing on the importance of what a good job does.
Good job principles. Summer Tour, You're like Beyonce, You're launching a national tour and it's not a mistake. I see some of the states are going through, like Pennsylvania and Michigan. What is your message to voters in those states?
Well, my message to working people is that we see you, we have your back, We know that you have talent and desire, and we want to create the kinds of opportunities that will allow working people to have a good job where they can be paid a living wage and live a secure life. And our message generally is that when you build a workforce that is ready, that is trained, that is skilled, that pulls the full talent of the American people, it's good for employers, it's good for economy.
And we see that time and time again in these jobs numbers.
Getting back to the household survey, which is important to us and our viewers and listeners. The fact that it reflects agriculture, the fact that it reflects what's happening in people's households. Does that not raise the level of importance of the household survey at this point? When we look at that against payrolls, they get a sense of not even as much where we are now, but where we're going.
I mean, I think the bigger you know, the answer is the payroll survey is the survey that tells us how many jobs have been created, what industries they'd be created in. And again, this the growth we're talking about is not just single industry, right, it has been for the entire time, but certainly this last month is no different,
very very broad based. We saw growth in leisure and hospitality, we saw it in construction, we saw it in professional services, we saw it in healthcare, and so you know.
There's really the numbers don't lie.
It's really you know, broad based, solid continued growth. And I think that coveted soft landing that so many people bet against.
Well, I haven't even mentioned that yet. It's my job to ask you if we're in the soft landing. I haven't heard words like goldilocks this morning. What's your broader thirty thousand foot view on that. You're looking at your slice of the economy, that's the labor market. Is a soft landing intact?
I think so.
I mean again, it's the kind of thing where we're always vigilant about where the economy is going, but based on where we were. Remember in twenty twenty one, right the president came into office, COVID was raging, there was no national strategy to address it.
Unemployment was very very high.
People didn't know if they were gonna get toilet paper if they went to the supermarket. And now we have historic job growth, low levels of unemployment. I think it is the very definition of a soft landing.
You mentioned COVID. It's not the first time we've brought this up as a barometer or maybe a baseline for where we are now versus where we were before the pandemic. It's still impossible to forecast, isn't it. You see these payroll numbers blowing off the charts based on estimates no, not just by the government but by Wall Street and economists who are a lot smarter than I am. When will we be able to get a handle on what comes next?
Well, I mean, I think you know the reality is. That's why we don't look at any one month's numbers, as you know, over relying on them to tell a story. But the story of this economy from January twenty twenty one until now is of steady, stable growth, shared prosperity, and more investments to come.
We know that, you know that there's more work to do. We're also seeing the lowest.
Levels of like black white unemployment in a very long time, so it's equitable growth too, and that matters a lot.
What would a second Biden term mean for the job market?
I think we continue to deliver, right, We continue to build a strong economy, We continue to invest in American industry in a way.
That hasn't been done in decades. So building, you.
Know, restoring roads and bridges, making sure that every family who turns on the fossgate clean drinking water, making sure that everybody breathes clean air, has access to high speed, reliable internet. Those are the kind of infrastructure investments. You know, we're you know, we want to build the things that we invented, right, So bringing manufacturing back to the United States, I think it means, you know, continued opportunity for the American people.
Will you still be in this building if there's a second term, Well.
You know, I don't want to make predictions about that. I do serve us the pleasure of the President, but it has been an honor to help to deliver on that vision.