Hello from Parts of Washington. I'm Chuck Todd and this is the Chuck Todd cast. Last

week we received some surprising economic news. The US added 2.5 million jobs and the

unemployment rate was 13.3%. Far lower than expected, but almost immediately we also learn

that there may have been errors with the survey and it may be three points higher. Meanwhile,

economists confirmed what we already knew. The US entered a recession in February marking

the end of the longest economic expansion in over 160 years. So to help make sense of this,

my guest today are Don A. Cheney and Nell Henderson. Don Tay is the director of the American

communities project and he's of course among the brains behind the meat depressive data

download. I'm also going to join by Nell Henderson, the Wall Street Journal economics editor.

Plus this Sunday we released the latest NBC News Wall Street Journal poll later in the

poll. We're going to talk with Carrie Dan from the NBC News political unit, go inside those

numbers for a bit. But first, you know, Henderson, welcome to the Todd cast. Don Tay, welcome back.

So now you're the economic editor. What should Americans make of those Friday unemployment numbers?

Well, I would just start by saying it's heartbreaking what qualifies as good news these days.

You know, the economy is still in a deep hole. It's pretty sad when we say, wow, we gave

two and a half million jobs in May. You stopped remember, oh, we lost 22 million jobs in March and

April. And it's pretty tragic to say, oh, it's great that unemployment rate fell to 13.3%

from the high of 14.7 in April. That's still way up from 3.5% in February, which was a half

century low. So it's, to me, it's a lot like the pandemic in general. It's great that the number

of new infections is down, but we still have a lot of new infections. And that's bad.

You know, I can talk you want about why there are some debates about which measure to look at.

Well, what are you looking at? I mean, I thought it was interesting that 10%

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