CNN Throws Cold Water on Trump Jobs Report: Monthly Avg ‘Pretty Low’ — Wage Growth ‘Meh’

CNN anchor John Berman and guest analyst Madison Mills of Axios threw cold water on a better-than-expected jobs report by pointing out the “pretty low” monthly average and “meh” wage growth.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics released an April jobs report on Friday that showed 115,000 jobs created, a sharp drop from the March number of 180,000, but well ahead of expectations of about 60,000 jobs created.

On Thursday’s edition of CNN News Central, Berman pointed out that despite beating expectations, “the three-month average is 48,000, which is pretty low,” and Mills pointed to other soft indicators:

JOHN BERMAN: Yes, with us now, senior A.I. reporter for Axios, Madison Mills, who also has covered the markets for a long time.

What’s your major takeaway to this report?

MADISON MILLS: I mean, that — that was a blow away number in some capacity. We were talking about closer to 60,000. But if you look under the hood, unfortunately not the best news, right? When you look at the revisions, we’re still negative over the last couple of months.

And I think it’s really interesting. We’re starting to see maybe cracks in this K-shaped economy narrative. You have roles where you’re not going to be getting paid as much being the ones that are growing, but the highest paying roles are still in the negative tech financials. Matt did a great job running through those numbers, and that makes me wonder whether we are starting to see a little bit of an A.I.-ification of this economy.

BERMAN: You know, it’s interesting because the report was what we call a major beat of what was expected here.

MILLS: Yeah.

BERMAN: But I’m looking at the numbers added, and I’m old enough to remember when we would have looked at 115,000 jobs. That’s okay. It’s an okay month.

So, the expectations I think are just much lower now. And I should say the three-month average is 48,000, which is pretty low.

MILLS: Pretty low. And again, under the hood, the wage growth numbers very — Meh, to your point. Some of the numbers that are going to actually be powering consumer spending, which is two thirds of GDP, that’s our economic growth indicator.

So those deeper numbers, things like underemployment, people struggling to get the amount of hours that they’re working, those still looked negative. And when I talk to sources, especially economists, they say kind of what you’re saying, John, that we maybe need to rethink how we look at these numbers that come out every month because our economy is changing so much.

I mean, this is the first back to back positive jobs print that we’ve had since May of last year.

BERMAN: Which is good, which is good.

MILLS: Of course.

BERMAN: Instability is something but stable but unspectacular. Yeah, I’m just curious what the impact of that could be if it continues this way for months longer. If we’re at the end of the year and the rolling average is 48,000 with all these shifting currents, what would that mean for the average person?

MILLS: Well, it means that the Federal Reserve is going to be confused and not necessarily know what to do and how that impacts the average person is that you may not get a more what we call loosening of financial conditions. You want rates to be low enough that you can get a good rate on your mortgage, lower credit card rates, but you don’t want them to be so low that they spike inflation and that the prices that we’ve already all been dealing with since COVID get even worse.

So, it’s going to leave the federal reserve potentially in the dark, a little bit longer about where we’re at in this economy, because the labor market is so choppy right now.

Watch above via CNN News Central.

New: The Mediaite One-Sheet "Newsletter of Newsletters"
Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting. Subscribe now!