Even a Trumpy CNBC reporter couldn’t hide his dismay over the latest jobs report.
Rick Santelli, 69, was hyped up for the Friday morning release of the February jobs report—then quickly soured as he read the numbers, which were worse than expected in a fresh blow to 79-year-old President Donald Trump’s struggling economic agenda.
“Yes, here we go! This is the big Feb. job job jobs report!” Santelli said on CNBC’s Squawk Box. “Non-farm payrolls: minus 92,000! Minus 92,000. That is a biggie!”
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the U.S. economy shed 92,000 jobs last month while the unemployment rate rose to 4.4 percent.
The agency also revised the strong January job numbers from 130,000 to 126,000. A similar revision of the December figures revealed that the U.S. actually lost 17,000 jobs that month, and didn’t add 48,000 as initially reported. The changes mean that employment in January and December was 69,000 lower than previously reported.
The labor force participation rate was also worse than expected, shocking Santelli.
“If we look at labor force participation? Wow! A big drop!” he said. “We were expecting 62.5; 62.0 would be the weakest—and I have to really go back on this—62.0 would equal December of ‘21 to find a smaller number.”
In a later discussion about Trump’s Iran war, Santelli mulled the implications of the Middle East chaos on America’s economy.
“The war going on is not a good thing. We don’t like war, but in the end, we don’t like nukes even better,” he said. “The issue, though, is what’s going on with the war, how that’s going to affect what we perceive—at least with these numbers—is a weaker jobs number, and I’m not so sure.”
“This is weaker than expected, and it paints a certain type of deterioration that I wouldn’t have expected,” he admitted.
Just last month, Santelli was singing a different tune.
When the jobs report showed an increase of 130,000, the CNBC anchor whipped out an umbrella on-air.
“I’m gonna say that nobody’s gonna rain on my parade,” he said, later putting on a white hat marked with “DOW 50K” in a reference to the Dow reaching 50,000 points.
“I made this hat two months ago, and the reason I made it is exactly for a day like today,” Santelli continued. “All these naysayers steeped in politics continue to be negative. That’s okay, because 50K says you’ve all been wrong.”
