From WNYC Studios, it's Brian Lair, a daily politics podcast. It's Monday, June 6th.

The United States Labor Department, if you missed it on Friday, gave good news and bad news for American workers, depending on how

you look at it. The good news, employers added 390,000 jobs in May in what is now a pattern of

17 straight monthly gains. That's 17, according to stats in the New York Times, and 390,000 jobs net plus in May was actually pretty much more than they were expecting.

Unemployment is right around a 50-year low of 3.6%.

But that good news for workers, as many of you know, is presenting a continued challenge for policymakers because they're

trying to pump the brakes on inflation at the same time. So here's President Biden delivering

remarks on the May Jobs report on Friday. The point is this. We've laid an economic foundation that's historically strong, and now we're

moving forward to a new moment, but we can build on that foundation, build a future of stable,

steady growth, so we can bring down inflation without sacrificing all the historic gains we've made.

The president on Friday. So here's a question, and let me take a shot at framing the conundrum that policymakers face,

and then we'll hear what our guest thinks.

Can't we keep wage growth going so badly needed after decades of middle class wage stagnation, really the decline of the middle

class as a result, and still tame other aspects of inflation.

Joining me now to break down the latest job numbers, the state of the economy generally,

and to address this, quote, new moment that President Biden was talking about on Friday in this conundrum

is Gina Smilak, reporter covering the Federal Reserve and the economy for the New York Times.

Hi, Gina, thanks for coming on today and starting off the week with us.

Welcome back to WNYC.

Hi, Brian. Thanks for having me.

Gina, where do you start?

What's your headline from Friday?

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