Fox Business Panel Blames the Federal Reserve for ‘Very Weak’ Jobs Report

Several members of a Fox Business Network panel moderated by Maria Bartiromo blamed Federal Reserve for the “very weak” July jobs report published on Friday.

“I think this is more about the Federal Reserve. Again, we got a bifurcated economy. The Fed is — they have a regressive approach here, right?” submitted Charles Payne. “They’re trying to still clamp down on this economy, but it’s not working. It’s hurting just-, it’s hurting 70% of the folks out there. Look at delinquencies. Look at all of the things that are hurting the average household, I think, and also small businesses. Coming into this year, the biggest question was how would they even refinance? We’re talking about financing government debt, how do we help the small businesses out there? There are two economies, the Fed’s looking at the wealthiest folks out there and thinking it means everyone, and I think that’s hurting the jobs market more than anything else.”

“Yeah, it’s a great point, and I agree that this report is so critical for the Federal Reserve’s next move,” replied Bartiromo before asking Stephanie Pomboy, “How do you read things?”

“Well, I’m just stunned at another number in this report, and that is the downward revision to the June figure from 147,000 to just 14,000. So looking over the last three months, we’ve got 73,000 in July, 14,000 in June and 19,000 in May. Those are incredibly weak headline numbers and that’s the total, not just private jobs. So this is a very soft report,” answered Pomboy before continuing:

And I guess what I’m really blown away by is that July, generally, is a report where the seasonals are such that you can surprise on the upside very easily because a million people roughly drop out of the labor force with the school year, you know, the school vacations. So that sets a very low seasonal bar for the data to clear, and clearly we tripped over the bar. So this is a very weak report, and [crosstalk] and I guess, you know, it certainly strengthens the argument materially for the Fed to cut rates. It’s interesting because one presumes they had at least some of the preliminary components of this report when they were in their meeting on Wednesday and made the decision. They probably had an early early look at this, so that probably is one of the reasons why you had the two dissents, but amazing that [Chairman Jerome] Powell stood firm despite that in the face of this data.

“It’s a great point,” declared Bartiromo.

Watch above via Aaron Rupar on X.