Morning Joe's Joe Scarborough was astounded over the new job numbers.
"Our economy July job numbers have just come out. You talk about a resilient economy, man. It keeps rolling," he said.
"This is an incredible jobs number. The July jobs report is in and much stronger than expected," Willie Geist said.
"The U.S. economy added 528,000 jobs last month. With the unemployment rate ticking down to 3.5%. That jobs number notably higher than what we've seen in recent months. Economists are expecting gains to slow this month and in months to come. Let's go right to NBC News senior business analyst Stephanie Ruhle. By my count, this is about twice as many jobs as most analysts expected to be added in July."
"It sure is. For every analyst out there, this is a reminder that covid changes everything. The way we analyze things, the we we predict things," Ruhle said.
"This is a huge number. At this point, for private sector jobs, we're above pre-pandemic levels. Wages keep going up. And yes, inflation is eating into wages. But if you're trying to make the argument it's all doom and gloom out there and we're on a fast track to a recession, you can't.
"And when the Fed is going to be looking at this, you can expect the one thing they will look to do is probably continue to raise rates. Because the balancing act they have had to play where they're trying to slow down the economy, but not tip us into recession, it doesn't look like they're going to be tipping us into anything if so many employers are out there still hiring in such a big way."
"You said something important that is worth underlining, which is now all of the jobs lost in the early days of the pandemic, and there were many of them, have been recovered officially coming off this number. But as we -- you were speaking, Stef, we had the Wall Street numbers up next to you. The Dow is down a couple of hundred points. I guess because now the markets are expecting the fed to in fact raise the rates again to slow this down," Geist said.
"Absolutely. And so that has to be forward looking. What is Jay Powell going to do? Interest rates higher and it becomes more expensive to borrow. Not just for you and me but for businesses, for businesses looking to grow. For how they finance themselves, so from the market perspective, they're looking ahead to Jay Powell's next move.
"But for everyday Americans, whether you're looking at gas prices, which are now -- which have now gone down for the 51st day in a row, or people out there seeking employment, this is a very good picture," Ruhle said.
"Yeah, and Stef, we've actually again, as Willie had said, we've added more jobs than we lost in the early days of the pandemic. Unemployment rate, 3.5%. That is down to pre-pandemic lows. So here is a question. Like, what is fuelling this economy? You know, we all hear people saying, oh, you can't find workers here, you can't find workers there, because of the covid relief package. No, that dried up a long time ago. And as big as the covid relief package was at the beginning of the Biden Administration, it is not strong enough to fuel this economy. So what is driving this economy?" Scarborough said.
"Listen, Joe, for anyone saying people are still living off of all their covid relief, come on," Ruhle said.
"Come on, those stimulus checks cleared a long, long time ago. One thing we hear from employees across the country, it is the low wage jobs they can't fill. If the government really wanted to address that, the number one place they could do that would be immigration reform. The likelihood that that is going to get done is very slim. But you're also seeing a lot of jobs created, remember, around infrastructure. Remember the huge infrastructure package that passed. That is creating jobs across the country.
"We saw during covid a huge explosion in entrepreneurship in new businesses out there. And because so many people could work from home, Joe, there's a lot more creativity around jobs."
