"Brutal” and “really bad” were some of the adjectives used on MSNBC on Friday morning after the new jobs report came out, and it showed unemployment went up.
This, of course, comes after Donald Trump fired the previous head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics following several negative reports, claiming that the individual was biased against him.
Moments after the report was released, MSNBC’s Jonathan Lemire and Stephani Ruhle were ready to pounce –– and that is just what they did with an assist from the New York Times’ Peter Baker.
"The August jobs report was released moments ago, showing that the U.S. added just 22,000 jobs last month much, much less than the 75,000 that economists expected,” Lemire prompted his guests. “The unemployment rate also saw a slight increase to 4.3 percent. This, of course, the first jobs report released since President Trump fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics last month after that report showed not just a weak level of job creation, but also a dramatic reduction in previous month's totals.”
“There's no way to sugarcoat this. This jobs report is brutal,” he added.
“It's not good,” Ruhle, a former Wall Street executive, agreed. “What is it showing us? What we know is the economy is slowing. It does not matter what Donald Trump tells us. It doesn't matter what [Commerce Secretary]Howard Lutnick, what he wants. The economy is slowing, so Donald Trump and the market are going to get what they want: a rate cut.”
“That is the reality that we're living in and Howard Lutnick can say, ‘Oh, you're going to like the number six months from now,’ when you bring in a Trump ally and cook the books, it doesn't change reality,” she added. “Things cost more and the tariffs are making business more difficult in the United States of America. That's our reality.”
The Times’ Baker added, “Look, this is the kind of report that gets you fired, right?” which led to laughter before adding, “It's literally documenting the same trends that we saw last month that he [Trump] said were rigged and now this post-firing report suggests that the trend lines that were so problematic a month ago, in fact, are still there.”
You can watch below or at the link.
- YouTube youtu.be
