John Carney | 04-04-26

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So we had a big jobs number yesterday. Good Friday. Markets or the stock market was closed,

but we had a big number. Total non-farm payrolls, up 178,000 more importantly private payrolls,

up 186,000 and nobody expected that. So the economy is pretty resilient and I still think it's

backed by the one big beautiful bill tax cuts and deregulation. And I think we're going to see

better and better numbers as all prices come down and stock prices go up when the Iranian war is over.

But anyway, let's bring in our guru, John Carney, Bright Barton, his editor for economics and

finance and co-author of the Daily Bright Bart Business Digest, which is a must read. So John,

welcome. Pleasure to make these numbers. It's a lot stronger than anybody thought.

Much stronger than anybody thought. And I want to point out that you said exactly right. 186,000

private sector federal government shrank dramatically. So we're not getting a lift out of the

federal government. Now look, there were 89,000, 9,000 health care and social assistance jobs,

but even if we take those out, we're at about 100,000, you know, truly private sector jobs,

15,000 manufacturing jobs, all durable goods manufacturing. So this is at 26,000 construction jobs.

This is a very good jobs report. I think it will make a lot of people who press the panic button

after the February number, feel a little silly. I always feel bad when we get a bad number,

and you have to say things like, well, there was a strike and there was weather because it sounds

like you're making excuses. But this number really does show that, you know, what happened in February

was a one off. They also, by the way, increased the January number. So we are actually running,

I think, on a three month average, I think 89,000, 88,000. So this is a healthy market and keep in mind

that we need far fewer jobs to keep the economy and the labor market steady than we did when Biden

was flooding the country with illegal immigrants. Back then, we needed 150,000, 200,000 just to keep

up with the amount of people coming into the labor market because our borders were open. Now,

we don't need that many. And so this 180,000 is the Fed recently put out a paper that said,

we need 10,000 or maybe zero jobs a month just to keep the unemployment rate steady. So we,

one way to look at that is we have 18 times as many jobs in March as we needed.

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Don't wait for the markets to drop. That's asbgold.com. This is a key point. You're making this point.

You're really the only one I think is making this point in the business digest. I mean,

it's a very important point. John, it has its its immigration. We're now people coming across the

border is turned negative. And that's right. It's turned negative. It's probably close to three

million now. Self deportations plus what the ICE agents have done pushing criminals back over

to their home countries. So we're at 4.3% unemployment. That's a low number. It's a very low number

and it suggests a reasonably healthy economy. But we don't need massive jobs numbers.

This is going to be I think and this is going to be a startling fact and probably ignored by a

lot of people, but they shouldn't. No longer can we just look at the number and say, well,

we needed 150 or 200,000 jobs. It would be nice. I mean, if these trends continue, by the way,

constructions up 26,000, you're building new factories. You mentioned the manufacturing number.

And of course, federal jobs are off what, 350,000, 375,000. But we because Trump has closed the

border and stopped all that nonsense, it has a big economic effect. That's right. And jobs numbers

that once I think it will actually take people, particularly liberals in the media who

always look for a reason to hate the Trump economy, but it'll take even a lot of economists as well,

some mental work to readjust how they look at jobs numbers. It used to be, if you got 10,000

jobs, you said, uh-oh, that's not enough. Because, by the way, it's important that people have

said also, most of the negative net immigration is actually self deportation. I say,

they didn't throw out 3 million people. Most of those actually were people who realized that

America was now serious about border enforcement. The Trump administration is actually given

people incentives. They say, if you voluntarily go home, you can get back on the list to legally

apply to come to America. So people are leaving. And they will, you know, they'll try to come back

legally. They'll refalt far fewer of them. But what this means is that the, uh, that, and it's

actually going to be very good. Because sectors of the economy and businesses, instead of just

thinking that there is a open pool of labor, they actually will have to compete for that labor.

That will mean higher wages, but it also means that in order to be able to provide the higher

wages to compete, they'll have to increase their productivity. Businesses will become more efficient.

Competition, including competition for workers, is actually very good for the economy. Back in the

1950s, uh, we had very little immigration. And actually because there had been a, uh, birth

growth, uh, back in the 1930s, there were very few young people coming into the economy. Yet the

economy grew tremendously because businesses were innovating. Also, people were getting healthier.

So people in the middle of their life were actually more people were living. But we didn't have,

we weren't trying to grow the economy through immigration, which is what Biden did. When you

grow the economy through immigration, by the way, you don't grow, per capita, people are getting

better off. We could grow with the economy just by annexing the entire South America and saying,

you know, we just grew by the entire size of South America. What really matters is per capita growth.

And the only way you get that is innovation and productivity, which is rising productivity,

doing very, very well, uh, two and a half percent. Uh, interestingly for production workers,

average hourly earnings times aggregate hours worked over the past three months. It's an income

wage proxy. Uh, it's up five percent. Twelve month changes up five percent, uh, which is

much higher than the CPI. John, real quick, uh, the last 30 seconds. This job number affect the fed.

I think the job summer will give armament to the hawks. They're probably not going to.

It makes it harder to cut. And it should look, we, we are, we're not in an emergency. We don't

need a cut. I think it would be good to have a cut because I don't think we have much inflation.

But there's not, you know, it gives armor to, it gives a reason for them to say we can wait

and see a little while longer. That's probably not a bad thing to do. Uh, but after the war is

completed and so forth, presumably the Strait of Hormuz opens up and all prices come down. You

probably setting up for a rate cut, especially in the new Kevin Warsh era. If we can get him in,

if we can get him in hashtag free Kevin Warsh, but uh, that would probably, uh, let's see. Boy,

we're at April, early April, um, May 15th. Is that, that's the end for, um, for the current fed

German, your friend J. Powell, my friend J. Powell. He is, yes, he's out on May 15th as chairman. Uh,

and something that really do need to get worse confirmed, um, because frankly, you know,

I've said that I think the laws that Trump gets to a point, uh, one of the sitting governors,

if there's not a confirmed chairman, but this hasn't really been done very often in the past.

And so it is a, it's going to be a little chaotic, but for some reason Powell thinks he can stay

as chairman. Yeah. Uh, and we, we really should avoid that crisis. Uh, I, you know, hopefully the

pureo, uh, investigation into the fed and Powell wraps up very quickly. Um, and, or frankly,

I think it's inappropriate for Tillis to be saying humorous, just get it done. Um, and let's,

let's avoid a crisis of who's the leader of, or nobody knows who the leader of the fed is.

Has tag free Kevin Warsh. John Carney, bright partners editor for economics and finance and

co-author of the great daily bright-barred business digest. Thank you, John. We appreciate it.

Folks, uh, quick break and informer deputy treasury secretary Michael Faulkender will be here.

I'm Cudlow. We'll be right back.