The Fox Business panel was visibly shocked by a horror jobs report for President Donald Trump.
The report dropped during a live broadcast on Friday morning, with host Taylor Riggs delivering the news. “The numbers do not look good. I’m looking at 29,000 jobs added. That is well below expectations for 90,000, and our unemployment rate jumps up to 4.2 percent from 4.1 percent the previous month. A significant slowdown,” she remarked, looking taken aback.
The September report presents a headache for Trump, with the midterm elections just a month away and with Americans already souring on him over the state of his economy.
An exasperated Charles Payne sighed and said, “Well, you know, again, looking at this through two lenses, one lens is, ‘Hey, the market is like, oh boy.’ Just a couple of days ago, maybe 48 hours, 72 hours, an October rate hike was on the table.”
The panel laughed. Thomas Simons, chief U.S. economist at Jefferies, said in a note: “For the Fed, this number should be the nail in the coffin for an October hike,” CNBC reports.
“Not anymore, right?” Payne added on Friday morning’s broadcast. “The comfort that the hawks on the FOMC [Federal Open Market Committee] had been hiding behind was like, ‘Well, you know what? Labor’s OK. No problem there.’ So maybe this gives them a little bit of discomfort. That’s off the table. From a Wall Street perspective, you can see futures are moving a little bit higher. But...of course we gotta go through this and get the nuances of it all.”
Contributor E.J. Antoni, a public finance economist, tried to spin the numbers. After noting that unemployment was up by 78,000, he said, “But the fact that you have, what, over the last two months, almost a million additional Americans employed, that is great news. That is a sign that the economy, especially the labor market, is much stronger than I think a lot of folks are giving it credit for.”
Noting that private-sector jobs were up, contributor Lou Basenese also tried to lift the mood in the studio. “A lot of people make a stink about there being a lot of noise in this data, but the trends are relevant,” he said.
Riggs then hit the panel with some more concerning numbers.
“And you guys correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m seeing some maybe weakness in average earnings,” Riggs said. “Charles, I know that you were hot on this month-over-month average earnings, 0.13 percent versus the 0.3. And earnings year over year three instead of the 3.2 expectations. So sort of the earnings may be coming down?”
“Yeah,” Payne said, sounding down. “Or the rate of growth has slowed dramatically.”
“That exacerbates this inflationary situation because, you know, you go and the gasoline is up, but the rate of growth of your wages is not.”
Prosperity co-founder and former Trump economic adviser, Steve Moore, was called on to improve the mood. “Well, obviously it’s a disappointing number. I was hoping for closer to 75 to 100,000 jobs,” he declared.
U.S. stock futures climbed early Friday, signaling a higher opening on Wall Street. Futures tied to the S&P 500 rose 0.8 percent, while the Dow was set to gain 458 points, or 0.9 percent. The tech-heavy Nasdaq was up 1.2 percent.
Bond yields fell, with the yield on 10-year Treasury notes down more than five basis points to 5.176 percent.
In response to a request for comment, the White House directed the Beast to a post on X from spokesperson Taylor Rogers, who focused on private-sector growth and did not mention rising unemployment.
“More than one million private-sector jobs have now been created under President Trump. In September, the private sector added jobs, and labor participation rose, while President Trump has shrunk the federal bureaucracy to the lowest levels since the 1960s,” she said.
“The economy added 9,000 manufacturing jobs and 12,300 factory construction jobs over the month—proof that President Trump’s reindustrialization agenda is working. Wages are up over the past year, core inflation is down, and everyday Americans are reaping the rewards of the strong Trump economy.”
