Jobs Report and Tariff's Future Impacts
Media Hit, 4/4/25
I was on NTD News, talking about the latest jobs report as well as how tariffs may impact U.S. jobs going forward. Here are the talking points I came into the segment ready with:
Jobs Report
Link: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.toc.htm
+228,000 jobs overall, which is good.
However, looking beneath the surface reveals a few things:
Health care: +54,000
Social assistance: +24,000
Transportation: +23,000
Those three alone make up about half of the total job growth. They’re also some of the most government-subsidized sectors of the economy.
So while we did see declining government employment, particularly at the federal level, we’re still seeing an employment situation that is driven in large part by government.
Labor force participation remains about the same
Millions of people still on the sidelines and more are stuck in part-time work who want full-time jobs and the benefits that come with them.
Inflation is still occurring and earnings rose a mere 0.3%, leaving real average weekly earnings down 2.6% from four years ago.
It’s still too early to tell, but it looks like we may be headed toward stagflation, where we have slow economic growth and rising prices.
Tariffs
I’ll likely make similar points to those I’ve made in the past, but I’ll just add these new ones that I’ve been toying with today:
The simple fact is that, compared to the rest of the world, we are a gargantuan and wealthy economy. Other countries have set up their economies in such a way that they serve us by making products for our consumers. Because of this, we have a trade deficit with virtually every advanced economy in the world.
But this is not a problem in need of solving; this is a blessing that deserves to be celebrated! Other countries around the world find it more economically advantageous to produce things for us than for their own citizens. That’s amazing!
So the fact that we have a trade deficit with a country is not a sign that they are “ripping us off.” Far from it.
So What Happened?
We had a great segment together, where I laid out all of my concerns in what the control room called a “fair and balanced” approach. I’ll work on getting the clip and will share it once I get a copy.