Name: Trump’s Economist SHOCKS CNN Host with Historic Jobs Report (She Hated This)
Uploaded: 2026-02-12T23:05:42.000Z
Duration: 10 min 28 s
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To-infinitive

I know the CNN anchor was not happy to have to have Kevin Hassett on to share about a hugely positive jobs report coming out while the Trump administration is in power, because they usually love to come after Kevin Hassett for some questionable numbers, some lack of progress, some problems with the interest rates.

Modal verbs - A2

Now there's a real positive story and she had to report on it.

And Kevin gives us some more information about the implications of this job report.

The the AI boom, factories and manufacturing that's being set up as a result of all the tariffs that were put in place to get more jobs and manufacturing and factories back in the United States.

labor market blew past expectations to start the year, with the economy adding 130,000 jobs last month.

That is nearly twice as many as expected.

He is the director of the White House National Economic Council.

I know you were glad to be here and that you welcome the higher than expected jobs numbers.

Yeah, I think that they're, you know, the top line is that there was a lot more private sector job creation.

And one of the stories that everybody's been worried about, I mean, it's actually a legitimate thing to worry about, is that AI was going to take away people's jobs.

Well, the top line job number shows that that's not happening.

But the other thing you can see is that prime age labor force participation, which is like people's desire to go get a job, to get back into the workforce, went up to the highest level it's been since 2001.

And so I think that the AI story needs to be modified a little bit.

What's happening is AI is increasing productivity and wages and bringing people back into the labor force finally.

The interesting thing, too is this all happened while federal government employment went down a lot, about 360,000 over this year, which means that federal government employment is the lowest it's been since 1966, and

the lowest is a share of the overall labor force that it spends ever in all recorded history, which goes back to the Second World War.

And you know that the CNN anchor does not like bringing on Kevin Hassett to talk about good jobs numbers because that was one of the main sticking points they had right now was the less than desirable jobs number.

Remember Trump fired that lady who came out with a whole jobs report earlier in the year.

So she's not liking doing this interview.

I want to talk to you about that federal labor force here in a moment.

I do want to dig into some of the numbers here.

The manufacturing jobs, they increased by about 5,000.

And I know that you have touted the president's tariffs for the building of factories.

Last year, though we did see this decline of 72,000 manufacturing jobs.

Overall, there were eight consecutive months of manufacturing job losses through December.

Is it the White House's position that this 5,000 manufacturing job increase is the beginning of a turnaround?

Well, you know, what's going on is that one of the other things that we could look at, which I'm sure you like to look into the details too, that the construction employment has gone up a lot.

And we've been tracking the groundbreaking of new factories that are happening in part because of the trade deal.

With this report, the government has said no construction.

Construction was up and construction has been up really significantly since the big beautiful bill passed.

And so I think that our view is that what's happening is their groundbreaking for manufacturing buildings, which are being expensed right now because of the tax bill, and

that those jobs are coming and those manufacturing jobs are coming and surely the buildings won't be empty.

So are you expecting that then to be a turnaround?

We think that this is, this is a step in a direction that's going to accelerate.

And the reason that we're confident in that is that we can see that the new factory construction is really lifting off, as is the capital spending.

So they're not only buying the buildings, building the buildings and hiring construction workers, but

they're also buying the machines that go in the buildings.

And so once the machines are plugged in, then they'll be hiring the workers as well, which that was the whole point of doing this whole tariff policy so that more production, manufacturing could be initiated, launched and sustained in the United States.

And now we're seeming to see some of the first steps of that, which again was going to take a long time.

I don't know why some people thought that as soon as you put a tariff in now you're going to have a whole production line set up in the United States.

It takes a long time to get something set up, change your production Line change, the shipping of different materials that need to get to that production site.

Securing a production site building in the United States is not an overnight thing.

And we're starting to see glimpses of it already before we even hit.

Right after we hit the first year anniversary of Trump getting inaugurated.

I hear you touting the cuts to the federal workforce.

They were obviously significant over the last year and certainly in the numbers that we've just seen here.

Last night, though, in an interview, President Trump detailed what he called, quote, the one thing he didn't like about the Doge cuts.

Cut, 10% of your payroll cut, your costs cut.

When you cut, get rid of the people that are doing a lousy job.

In other words, take care of the people that are doing a good job.

He's saying there he wanted more targeted cuts, which is a.

Yeah, he said, he said that in the Oval to me yesterday, in fact, too, that he was worried that the cuts went too far.

But we have the budget space to hire people back.

But the other thing that we've looked into is in the counties around D.C.

where a lot of these federal workers are affected, that they're being rehired in the private sector at a really impressive rate.

If you've lost them and they had important jobs, I mean, I know you say you can rehire them, but

I mean, I'm sure maybe some of them, but some of them you can't.

That's just not going to happen across the board here.

And a lot of them don't necessarily trust the administration as an employer at this point in time because of how they were treated and the sort of whiplash that they experienced.

Experienced and how arbitrary it felt to them.

How many people would you estimate were cut?

How many would you estimate were cut by Doge.

By the Doge efforts that were actually doing a good job, that were not targeted cuts like the President says he wanted.

Yeah, that's a thing that, given that the President has asked about it, that we're definitely.

We've asked the Council of Economic Advisors to give us more precise numbers on that.

But the bottom line, I can say is that by achieving the cuts that we have, then we've permanently, perhaps, maybe not completely permanently, if some people come back, we've reduced federal workers by 360,000 people and that's like almost $30 billion a year in savings.

And so what President Trump is doing is taking a big step towards getting closer to a balanced budget.

We were in a fiscal situation that was completely out of control when he came into office.

And now we've reduced the deficit by about $600 billion this year because of high growth tariff revenue and reducing the federal workforce.

And that kind of fiscal responsibility is something that people have been asking, you know, governments of both parties to do for a long time.

That's actually a good point that the CNN anchor brought up.