Brian Laird on WNYC, we'll talk about the U.S. economy now and connected to the presidential

election year. The economy in most elections is issue number one, and in case you missed it, the

jobs report for March came out on Friday and once again exceeded economists' expectations

with a net gain of more than 303,000 jobs. So we have headlines like these. From the AP,

another month of robust U.S. job growth points to continued economic strength from Axios.

The March jobs report was as good as it gets. Here's why. And the first reason that they gave

is that unemployment has remained below 4% for 26 months from NPR. Construction hiring booms

in overall strong jobs report.

The lead line in the Wall Street Journal story was,

the U.S. economy is rapidly adding jobs, but not in a very inflationary way.

And from ABC, hinting at the political connection,

Blockbuster Jobs Report flexes economic strength defying

Americans' lukewarm attitudes. So those are some representative headlines from Friday. Of course,

those lukewarm attitudes tend to be connected to inflation and interest rates, even as people

have jobs, get paid and are spending quite a bit, according to stats from the government.

So let's try to figure out what it all means, economically and politically, with Megan Cassella, CNBC correspondent covering the intersection of Wall Street and Washington.

She's also covering Treasury Secretary Yellen's trip to China, and we'll talk about that too. Megan, thanks for coming on. Welcome to WNMRC today.

Thanks so much for having me. Happy to be here. Can you start with more about the jobs report? I saw expectations were for about 200,000 net new jobs in March, and it came in at more than 300,000. Where were the biggest

surprises? Yeah, there were a lot of surprises here. I mean, more than a 50% increase above what

economists had expected. It's really good. I liked in that headline roundup, the one that said

this is as good as it gets, because I do think you could argue that for March. It's about as good

as it gets. Huge number of people could argue that for March. It's about as good as it gets.

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