Trump Economic Advisor Admits New Jobs Report ‘Bit of Disappointment Right Now’
Director of the National Economic Council Kevin Hassett admitted on Friday that the latest jobs report is “a bit of a disappointment right now.”
Hassett joined CNBC’s Squawk on the Street on Friday morning shortly after the latest jobs report dropped, showing the labor market continuing to cool down. Jut 22,000 jobs were added by employers in August, a drop from more than 70,000 in July and far less than the 70,000 additional jobs that were being predicted by some for August. Unemployment also ticked up to 4.3%.
The jobs report is the first to drop after President Donald Trump canned the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, accusing her of faking numbers, including in the disappointing July report.
On CNBC, Hassett admitted the latest numbers were not up to par while also claiming they could be revised down the road and encouraging people to look at the whole economic “portfolio” of the administration.
“This jobs number was certainly a little bit of a disappointment right now, but one of the things, there was a Goldman Sachs study that came out yesterday that showed that because the BLS hasn’t really done a good job on its seasonal adjustment in August, that they tend to revise this number up by almost 70,000 jobs when they give the revised number a month later,” he said.
Hassett further claimed that the specific jobs numbers don’t reflect a “capital spending boom” under Trump.
“We’re having a capital spending boom. Capital investment is up 8 percent over the first half of the year, which is really, you know, record, record growth in capital spending,” he argued. “We’ve got industrial production at the highest level it’s ever been. And so we’re really cruising into, I think, the kind of capital spending boom we had the last time that we had the big corporate reform.”
Watch above via CNBC.
