Trump’s Top Economic Aide Says No Clear Job Data Coming: ‘Cloudy Weather For Awhile’

Trump White House National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett joined CNBC on Tuesday morning to discuss the latest news on the economy, including uncertainty about October’s jobs numbers.

Analysts at Goldman Sachs said earlier that “U.S. nonfarm payrolls likely shrunk by 50,000 roles in October,” reported the Wall Street Journal, adding:

The calculation incorporates the bank’s job-growth tracker, which slowed to 50,000 new jobs in October from 85,000 in September, and the government’s deferred-resignation program, which will likely cut payrolls by about 100,000 positions.

“Our job openings and labor market tightness trackers continued to decline, and our newly constructed layoff tracker also revealed an increase in layoffs over the past few months,” the bank added, marking the largest employment decline since late 2020.

The last data available from the government in early September found that 22,000 jobs were added in August, while June numbers were revised down to 13,000 jobs lost.

CNBC’s Sara Eisen pressed Hassett on when new data will be available. “When do we get the economic data releases? We’re craving data, especially those numbers on jobs,” she pressed.

“Yeah, I haven’t been briefed on that yet because there’s been quite a lot of disruption because of this terrible shutdown. And so, for example, I’ve been told that some of the surveys were never actually completed, so we’ll perhaps never even know what happened in that month. And so we’re going to be staring a little bit into cloudy, cloudy weather for a while until we get the data agencies back up,” replied Hassett.

Trump fired Dr. Erika McEntarfer, the Biden-appointed Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), in August after accusing her of “rigging” jobs data to make him look “bad.” Trump made the shock move after July’s numbers came in soft and the BLS revised down the numbers of jobs added in May and June. Trump’s removal of McEntarfer sent shock waves through DC and the economy as critics worried it meant numbers moving forward would only reflect what Trump wanted to see.

Watch the clip above via CNBC.