Speaker 1: Just this morning, the Bureau of Labor Statistics put out
Speaker 1: its jobs report for the month of July, which fell
Speaker 1: well short of expectations.
Speaker 2: Take a look at this.
Speaker 1: Analysts expected in net gain of eighty three thousand jobs.
Speaker 1: What do we get The data shows we lost twenty
Speaker 1: three thousand. The government also revised down the last two
Speaker 1: months of job gains by the way, by one hundred
Speaker 1: three thousand jobs. The President, though, was still selling and
Speaker 1: a plus that's a quote economy, but voters aren't buying it.
Speaker 1: Let's bring in Henriette Tres, co founder of the Veda Partners. Henriette,
Speaker 1: what's your biggest takeaway from the job's numbers that came
Speaker 1: out this morning, again falling Wubbelo expectations.
Speaker 2: Good morning, Britt, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 3: Absolutely the jobs report data is so impactful in this
Speaker 3: particular release that we are now changing our forecast about
Speaker 3: whether or not the Federal Reserve hikes interest rates next
Speaker 3: month and instead decides to hold them flat. That's how
Speaker 3: impactful this job's number is. And importantly, it's not just
Speaker 3: the lost jobs that you need to look at, it's
Speaker 3: where they're coming from. And then also what's happening to wages,
Speaker 3: average hourly earnings are the weakest they have been.
Speaker 2: Since May of twenty twenty one.
Speaker 3: So this is a real indicator of why the American
Speaker 3: public feels so disconnected from the economy, from stock market gains,
Speaker 3: from any a plus. As you mentioned that the President
Speaker 3: might be giving the economy, voters just aren't feeling it,
Speaker 3: and it's because their wages aren't keeping up and jobs
Speaker 3: are being lost.
Speaker 1: And this is all while the inflation ready is sitting
Speaker 1: at three point five percent. So when you have, you know,
Speaker 1: a weaker jobs market and the inflation, what effect is
Speaker 1: that half four Americans at home?
Speaker 2: It's a double waymie.
Speaker 3: In addition, I would go one step further and say
Speaker 3: some of the adjuta that the American public feels, which
Speaker 3: creates this general sense of malaise around the economy, is
Speaker 3: because we're fearful of AI. We don't know what that's
Speaker 3: going to mean for our children, for our own jobs,
Speaker 3: for their prospects into the future. And this was one
Speaker 3: of the first jobs prints that went right after the
Speaker 3: first step, there's sort of the first shoot to drop
Speaker 3: on the AI front. The jobs that were lost were
Speaker 3: disproportionately in a white collar space, financial services, payroll services,
Speaker 3: things that can be easily automated and you can be
Speaker 3: replaced effectively by a computer.
Speaker 2: That's what we saw in this payroll report. And the
Speaker 2: combination of.
Speaker 3: That plus inflation, whether it's from tariffs or the Iran war,
Speaker 3: those are all compounding and it's just a slew of
Speaker 3: bad news for the US consumer.
Speaker 1: So I guess that's sort of confusing to me is
Speaker 1: when you hear the President just this week saying that
Speaker 1: the United States has the greatest economy in the history
Speaker 1: of the world, calling it the Golden Age economy. How
Speaker 1: does this report then fit into that narrative.
Speaker 3: Right, That's exactly why the president's approval rating on his
Speaker 3: handling of the economy, of jobs, of inflation is so
Speaker 3: deeply underwater.
Speaker 2: It's completely disconnected from what the average American is feeling.
Speaker 3: The President is very fond of talking about the stock
Speaker 3: market earnings been incredibly small, strong, the US economy has
Speaker 3: just created a brand new invention.
Speaker 2: In AI that is booming. The US consumer is.
Speaker 3: Also globally very very resilient, as we always have been.
Speaker 3: You know, the adage is don't fight the US consumer
Speaker 3: just like you don't fight the FED. So the disconnect
Speaker 3: that the average American is feeling in terms of seeing
Speaker 3: all this growth in the stock market that's coming from
Speaker 3: the mag seven, from AI adoption, from this generation of
Speaker 3: massive capital expenditures into these huge data centers just doesn't
Speaker 3: translate when you're not earning.
Speaker 2: Enough to keep up with inflation.
Speaker 3: And again, like I said, it's the lowest weakest hourly
Speaker 3: earnings rate that we've seen.
Speaker 2: Since May of twenty twenty one.
Speaker 3: So the American public is looking at their pocketbook and saying,
Speaker 3: I just don't see it.
Speaker 1: It's a big double whammy. As you said. You know,
Speaker 1: when you talk about gas prices, that's another layer that's
Speaker 1: sort of added to this problem. Here, the national average
Speaker 1: for a gallon of gas right now, it's on our
Speaker 1: screens four oh four, ups from two ninety eight since
Speaker 1: the start of the war. Right, So, where do you
Speaker 1: expect gas prices to go from here? Because I don't
Speaker 1: know if we can afford any more than this.
Speaker 3: You know, one of the things that's most important about
Speaker 3: the data set you've got up here in this four
Speaker 3: dollars and four cent gas is that we're just not
Speaker 3: breaking below that three dollars barrier.
Speaker 2: We've been at what three h nine. All through the.
Speaker 3: Last couple of weeks, the war continues to be volatile.
Speaker 3: Maybe we get a ceasefire, maybe we don't. Maybe it
Speaker 3: lasts sixty days, maybe it doesn't. But the gas market
Speaker 3: is tight, the crude market is tight, and so that
Speaker 3: creates a situation where the President can't just snap his
Speaker 3: fingers and get us back to that two dollars ninety
Speaker 3: eight cents figure. There is a very real cost to
Speaker 3: closing the Straight of Hormuz, not just for a couple
Speaker 3: of weeks, but now for.
Speaker 2: Almost six months.
Speaker 3: And to not have a path forward that doesn't include
Speaker 3: iron controlling the straight means that these prices, which are
Speaker 3: set by a global commodity are going to be high
Speaker 3: for the foreseeable future, easily well into the end of
Speaker 3: this year. So for the American consumer to bring it
Speaker 3: back around to what we're all feeling, you might be
Speaker 3: earning less, but you're also paying more, and so you're
Speaker 3: really having a hard time buying what the President is
Speaker 3: selling by saying this is an excellent economy. Everything's more
Speaker 3: expensive and you're earning lesson your wages aren't keeping up
Speaker 3: with job growth if you're keeping your job, so It
Speaker 3: is across the board, very disconcerting and uncomfortable for the
Speaker 3: American consumer who has to get to their job, must
Speaker 3: buy the gasoline to get there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this affordability issue is much more like a crisis.
Speaker 1: I think we need a triple whammy at this point.
Speaker 1: Harry Henrietta Chance, thank you so much for your time today.