Democrats tout solid jobs report as ‘Bidenomics’ success: Live updates

Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee said the Fed was trying to “Johnny Cash this thing” and walk the line between bringing prices and not triggering a recession.

He didn’t indicate whether he supports additional interest rate hikes, but he told Bloomberg Television the Fed should start thinking about how long interest rates should remain elevated.

The July jobs report was largely in line with what he expected, with low unemployment the “strongest part of the economy by far,” Goolsbee said.

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) touted Bidenomics as a remedy to trickle-down economics, which he says failed middle-class Americans.

“Bidenomics is growing our economy from the middle out and bottom up, not top-down,” the Judiciary Committee chair tweeted.

Acting U.S. Labor Secretary Julie Su said the July jobs report is “an example of what slow and steady growth looks like.”

“This is a number that reflects we are continuing to grow jobs at the same time that we continue to see historically low unemployment rates,” Su told CNBC on Friday.

“Altogether a strong report and sign of good strong steady growth and why President Biden’s economics policies are working for the country.”

— Taylor Giorno

The America First Policy Institute criticized lower-than-projected July job numbers.

The conservative think tank tweeted a clip of Club for Growth co-founder Stephen Moore telling Fox Business that a majority of Americans feel like the economy is “heading in the wrong direction even though we have a good jobs market.”

Republicans have highlighted high inflation that ate into wage growth for several years, although wages finally started to outpace inflation earlier this summer. We’ll see if that trend holds when new July inflation data comes out next week.

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) held up the July jobs report as proof that “Bidenomics is working.”

“Thanks to Bidenomics, the Biden-Harris administration has helped create over 13 million jobs, the unemployment rate has been under 4 percent for 18 months in a row – the longest stretch since the 1960s – and annual inflation has fallen for 12 months in a row and is down by more than half since last summer,” DNC Chair Jaime Harrison said in a statement.

Harrison also called out “MAGA Republicans” he said “continue to campaign on rolling back Bidenomics and returning to their reckless agenda centered on the same failed trickle-down economic policies of the past.”

— Taylor Giorno

Democratic lawmakers are hyping Bidenomics as a driver of jobs and wage growth in the latest jobs report.

“That’s #bidenomics in action!,” Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Wis.) wrote on X.

It’s interesting to see lawmakers specifically highlighting wage growth, while the Fed has signaled it’s watching to see if that growth cools ahead of the September meeting.

— Taylor Giorno

The Republican National Committee (RNC) criticized the jobs report, saying it is coming in lower than economists’ expectations.

“Bidenomics is simple: you pay more to get less. Families and small businesses, who are already failing to keep up with sky-high prices and falling real wages, are left to foot the bill as Biden bounces from vacation to vacation avoiding any accountability or responsibility for his failed economy,” RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said in a statement.

“Come next fall, Americans will choose commonsense over crazy and vote Biden out,” she said.

— Alex Gangitano

The latest jobs report has given some economists more evidence that the U.S. economy can avoid a recession.

“Today’s July jobs report shows a job market that’s still on a glide path to a soft landing,” Daniel Zhao, lead economist & senior manager on the Economics Research team at Glassdoor, wrote on X.

While a recession seemed inevitable and imminent to some economists earlier this year, Fed Chair Jerome Powell told reporters last month that the Fed was no longer forecasting a recession.

“A lot can change in 3 or 4 months, but as of now, the soft landing narrative is taking hold,” said Jeffrey Roach, chief economist for LPL Financial.

— Taylor Giorno

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), chair of the Senate Budget Committee, celebrated the “great” jobs numbers on X, formerly known as Twitter.

“Bidenomics continues to grow the middle class and create good-paying jobs,” Whitehouse wrote.

President Biden hailed the jobs report on Friday, saying it’s a result of Bidenomics, which is his economic agenda.

“Unemployment near a record low and the share of working age Americans who have jobs at a 20-year high: that’s Bidenomics. Our economy added 187,000 jobs last month, and we’ve added 13.4 million jobs since I took office — more jobs added in two and a half years than during any president’s four-year term,” the president said in a statement.

Biden argued that the “economy continues to grow” and touted that inflation has fallen, costs are lower for families, and his administration is “making smart investments in America.”

— Alex Gangitano

Center for American Progress Action, the policy and advocacy arm of the left-leaning CAP, hooked into Barbie mania, tweeting out a hot pink graph comparing the average of 176,013 jobs created under Democratic presidents since 1939 to the average of 67,192 jobs per month under Republican ones.

“This Ken’s job is…jobs. #democratscreatejobs,” CAP Action tweeted.

— Taylor Giorno

Policymakers from both parties reacted to the strong jobs report released by the Labor Department on Friday. Democrats touted its solid job gains as a result of policies from the Biden administration. “Another great jobs report! Bidenomics continues to grow the middle class and create good-paying jobs,” Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) tweeted.

— Taylor Giorno

A slowdown in hiring is putting caveats around a still-strong labor market, experts said Friday. That could mean employers are beginning to pump the brakes on growth as they wait to see if a recession is in the cards. “Between lower-than-expected payroll gains for July and downward revisions for prior months, hiring has been moderating. Last month saw the smallest number for hiring since December 2020. June and May saw total downward payrolls revisions of 49,000,” Bankrate Senior Economic Analyst Mark Hamrick said.

— Riley Gutiérrez McDermid

“The Federal Reserve will take note of this report, including that average hourly earnings continued to rise at annual rate of 4.4%, well above its 2% inflation target. Before the September policy-setting meeting, Federal Reserve officials will have another employment report to process as well as much more data on inflation,” Bankrate Senior Economic Analyst Mark Hamrick said.

— Riley Gutiérrez McDermid

Hourly wages continued to climb in July, according to new Labor Department data, growing 0.4 percent from June to July, on par with 0.4 percent growth the previous month. Wages increased 4.4 percent annually in July, same as it was in June. It remains to be seen whether inflation eats into paychecks. The Labor Department will release new consumer price data next Thursday.

— Taylor Giorno

The US added 187,000 jobs in July, a sign that the labor market continues to roar despite Fed rate hikes. But it also showed signs of a slowdown in hiring, as employers look to de-risk ahead of any turbulence.

— Riley Gutiérrez McDermid

A recession is still on the minds of many people. Half of Americans in a poll released Thursday said the U.S. economy is continuing to get worse, despite recent positive indicators.

The CNN poll found that 51 percent of Americans said the economy is still in a downturn and conditions are continuing to worsen, while another 28 percent said an economic recovery has yet to start, but conditions are no longer getting worse.

Just 1 in 5 Americans said the U.S. economy is beginning to recover from its recent problems, according to the poll.

— Julia Shapero

Global bond markets are offering their highest long-term yields since November 2022 as investors pull back their bets that the U.S. will fall into a recession, Bloomberg reported yesterday. That’s wiped out the Treasury market gains for 2023, which lost 12.5 percent last year, and upped the ante as policymakers await new employment data.

— Taylor Giorno

New employment data may sour traders, who invest in less-risky bonds when the odds odds of a recession were higher, on the Treasury market. The U.S. is projected to add 200,000 in July and report slightly slower wage growth, a welcome sign for other areas of the U.S. economy that may lead the Fed to skip a rate hike at its September meeting.

— Taylor Giorno

While higher wages are good for workers, the Federal Reserve has worried higher labor costs could further fuel inflation, or at the very least keep it stubbornly above the central bank’s 2 percent target. While Fed Chair Jerome Powell told reporters last month that the central bank isn’t specifically targeting wage growth, he did say the central bank was looking for a “broader cooling in labor market conditions.” But price pressures are easing: the personal consumption expenditures (PCE) index — the Fed’s preferred measure of inflation — rose 3 percent year-over-year in June, down from a 3.8 percent annual increase in May, the Commerce Department announced last week.

— Taylor Giorno

While Republicans have focused on the negative effects of high inflation weighing on households and pocket books, Democrats have been eager to tout the expectation-defying job market, which they argue has been bolstered by public investment through a string of signature legislative packages. “Democrats are creating jobs, making smart public investments around the country, and educating and empowering workers as we continue to grow the middle class. Today’s jobs report is solid, and shows our sustainable return to pre-pandemic growth,” Ways and Means Committee Ranking Member Richard Neal said about the jobs report last month.

— Tobias Burns

The Labor Department is slated to release new employment data on Friday morning, and the Fed will be watching to see whether strong hourly wage growth eases its pace. Hourly wages in the U.S. rose 0.4 percent from May to June, and annual wage growth hit 4.4 percent year-over-year. Economists project those numbers will pull back to 0.3 percent and 4.2 percent respectively when the July data is released.

— Taylor Giorno

The number of Americans claiming unemployment benefits climbed slightly last week amid broader strength in the U.S. labor market.

Claims rose to 227,000 for the week ending July 29, up 6,000 from the previous week, ahead of more comprehensive jobs data to be released Friday by the Labor Department.

Despite the uptick, U.S. employers cut just 23,697 jobs in July, the lowest number in 11 months, according to employment research firm Challenger, Gray and Christmas.

— Tobias Burns

Quarterly worker productivity shot up in the second quarter of this year, the Labor Department reported, hitting 3.7 percent annually.

Labor costs for employers have also been going down, with unit labor cost falling to a 1.6 percent annual rate in the second quarter and the employment cost index for total compensation dropping to a 4.5 percent annual increase.

Wage growth has been outpacing the rate of inflation since April, with wages for non-managers increasing at 4.7 percent in June while the consumer price index was up just 3 percent in that month, a single percentage point above the Fed’s 2-percent inflation target.

— Tobias Burns