Acting US Secretary of Labor Julie Su joins Yahoo Finance's Jennifer Schonberger following Friday morning's jobs report to weigh in on the print, calling it "exactly what President Biden's vision for the country is" as unemployment consistently remains under 4% for the longest stretch in decades.
Secretary Su specifically attributes recent immigration statistics to sustainable job growth amid inflation: "I would say that this is an example of how a strong economy overall is just good for everybody. This labor market has pulled in everyone. And so we're seeing certainly growth for immigrants... We're a nation in which growth has often included the contributions of immigrants. But it's not just for the immigrant community. Just like the sectors in which we have seen growth are broad-based, the benefits across different communities have also been really broad-based."
JENIFFER SCHONBERGER: Welcome back to Yahoo Finance, I'm Jennifer Schonberger. A Goldilocks jobs report for the month of March, the economy adding a whopping 303,000 jobs last month. While wage growth remained in check and the unemployment rate held steady at 3.8%.
For more insight on this morning's jobs report I want to welcome into the program, acting labor secretary Julie Su. Secretary Su, always great to see you. Thank you so much for joining me.
JULIE SU: Thank you.
JENIFFER SCHONBERGER: Another strong jobs report, we keep getting these month after month and widespread across different sectors. How much of this is because of the president's policies, whether it's been the CHIPS Act, the Infrastructure Act, or the IRA?
JULIE SU: Yeah. This is 100% exactly what President Biden's vision for the country is. When we invest in America, especially when we invest in America's workers, build an economy from the middle out and the bottom up, we can see sustained and broad based growth across the board. So this was a very strong-- another labor market report that demonstrates stable steady growth.
Not just the 303,000 jobs created but as you said, the unemployment rate has remained under 4% now for over two years, that's the longest stretch since the 1970s. Real wages are up as you already mentioned and labor force participation rate remains strong.
So it's not just because this is very much a continued labor market in which people are coming into the labor force, looking for jobs, finding jobs, and getting that piece of the American dream that we want for every family.
JENIFFER SCHONBERGER: To your point, we learned that the immigration numbers last year were higher than previously thought. How much of that do you think helps explain this strong job growth month after month? While inflation actually hasn't been accelerating. It's been slowly coming down and we've had a bit of a discrepancy also in that household survey.
JULIE SU: Exactly. So the prices have been coming down slowly from their peak, another high priority for the president. And I would say that this is an example of how a strong economy overall is just good for everybody. This labor market has pulled in everyone. And so we're seeing certainly growth for immigrants, so that includes immigrants that we're a nation in which growth has often included the contributions of immigrants.
But it's not just for the immigrant community, just like the sectors in which we've seen growth are broad based, the benefits across different communities have also been really broad based. This last month the growth for labor force participation rate among primate workers remains steady but the overall participation rate went up. And some of that was attributable to more young workers in the labor market.
JENIFFER SCHONBERGER: On immigration though, how much of that do you think could explain the outperformance we've seen in the economy? And do you expect immigration to continue at this rate and what will that mean for the outlook for the job market and the economy?
JULIE SU: So we have certainly seen immigrants in the labor market help contributing to this growth. We've also seen, for example, the lowest level of gap between the black-white unemployment rate. 2023 the black unemployment rate was also historically low.
And so again, when the president says we're going to leave no one behind, he means it. And we're serious about setting up programs in communities all across the country so that everybody can see themselves and participate in this moment of real job growth and opportunity.
JENIFFER SCHONBERGER: With so much real job growth to your point, if this continues, what does that mean for the outlook for the economy this year? Because so many economists have thought that we'd see a bit of a downshift in growth this year from last year but looking at these jobs numbers what could that spell?
JULIE SU: That's right. People have been betting against this economy. We come here every month and talk about how none of what we're talking about here today, the 15.2 million jobs have been created since the president came into office. All of these other indicators, none of them were promised or even predicted.
In fact, most people said that was not going to be possible, that if you wanted to raise wages you were going to see continued runaway inflation, that has not been the case. Or if you were going to really build up the number of jobs, you're going to have to increase the unemployment rate.
None of those things has happened. And to your first question, that's because the president's policies have really been about let's not just build back from the pandemic. But let's create a stronger economy in which there's widely shared growth, this idea that when there is prosperity it should only go to those at the top, to the few.
That is not the president's vision and so that's what we're seeing now. Is that when you invest in working people, that has a virtuous cycle of creating more growth and more opportunity.
JENIFFER SCHONBERGER: So you do expect stronger growth this year real quick?
JULIE SU: I mean, let's-- just looking back, three years ago, when the president came into office, we were-- the pandemic was raging. We were seeing record highs skyrocketing unemployment. We were-- people were not sure if when they went to the store if they would find toilet paper or baby formula. Look at how far we've come just in those three years. And so the numbers don't lie and each month.
If you don't take any one month 303,000 is a terrific number. But if you look at the three month average over the last three months, it's 276,000 and so this has been-- just again very steady, very stable growth. It is that coveted, soft landing that people also said was not possible.
And I would just say the president had a vision. He brought it with his experience and his knowledge and we're going to continue to keep on doing what we're doing to build it and to spread it.
