Americans Are Spending Lots — But They Still Don't Feel Good About The Economy

The NPR Politics Podcast

NPR

Politics, Daily News, News

4.5 • 24.9K Ratings

🗓️ 3 June 2022

⏱️ 24 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Labor Department said Friday that U.S. businesses added 390,000 jobs in May, as the unemployment rate held steady at a very low 3.6 percent and, despite rising prices, American continue to spend. Nevertheless, voters remain concerned about the economy and the White House is scrambling to find a convincing message.

This episode: White House correspondent Tamara Keith, White House correspondent Asma Khalid, chief economics correspondent Scott Horsley, demographics and culture correspondent Danielle Kurtzleben, and education correspondent Anya Kamenetz.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, this is Amy in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where I'm about to teach my last ever law school class
0:06.6	on the same day that my daughter turns 21. Wow. This podcast was recorded at 109 pm on Friday,
0:14.3	June 3rd, 2022. Things may have changed by the time you hear it, but hopefully we won't be too
0:19.6	hungover from all the celebrating. Okay, here's the show. That was a nice shout out. You know, I have
0:28.3	such a fond memory of Cambridge. We used to live there, very nostalgic of it all the time.
0:33.7	No hangover though. No, no hangover though. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics podcast. I'm Tamer Keat.
0:40.7	I cover the White House. I must m'holy it. I also cover the White House. And Scott Horsley is here
0:46.2	with us. He covers the economy. Hey Scott. Good to be with you. Great to have you back. And this time
0:52.3	it's not necessarily bad economic news. So let's jump right into it. People are worried about
1:00.1	inflation and gas prices and all of those things and we will get to that later. But today there was
1:06.3	a jobs report. It was jobs Friday. And this was not bad economic news. No, this was another strong
1:13.5	jobs report. 390,000 jobs added in the month of May. That's a little bit of a downshift from the
1:20.4	pace that we'd been on in the first four months of the year. But that's to be expected when
1:24.3	unemployment is as low as it is. Just 3.6%. The job gains were pretty evenly spread across the economy.
1:32.8	One weakness was in the retail sector where we actually saw loss of jobs. But that probably signals.
1:39.5	People are as expected shifting a little bit away from buying stuff and spending more on services
1:45.4	like amusement parks and travel. You know one thing I was struck by when we heard the president
1:51.2	give remarks today about these monthly job numbers was a sense that he described these as being
1:56.0	excellent referred to the historic level of low unemployment. But then also seemed to acknowledge
2:01.6	that a lot of Americans are anxious and talked about inflation. We've laid an economic foundation
2:06.5	that's historically strong. And now we're moving forward to a new moment where we can build on that
2:12.8	foundation. Build a future of stable steady growth so we can bring down inflation without
	...

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