nothing more than energy from the sun. how cool is that? it's making an historic trip across the country. it just completed the first part of a five-leg trip traveling from los angeles to phoenix. i'll see you back here at the top of the hour. thanks for watching. a recovery, yes, but is it enough for the millions of americans still reeling from the recession? i'm clps clhristine romans, welo "your money." 165,000 jobs added in april. enough to bring the unemployment rate down to 7.5% in april. that's the lowest it's been since december 2008. most months we see the unemployment rate fall because people are falling out of the labor force. not the case in april. for the first time in a long time the unemployment rate fell because people went back to work. monthly revisions reveal more than 100,000 more jobs were added in the beginning of the

year than we initially thought. put that in perspective, the unemployment rate was 4.5% before this recession. we still have a lot of work to do. one big problem many of the jobs coming back are low-wage jobs. largest gains in april were service jobs, retail trade, health care, leisure and hospitality. i'm telling you, every job in america is important but some of these jobs aren't the jobs you can send your kids to college on. the quality of the jobs we lost higher than the quality of jobs coming back and the real unemployment rate is 13.9%. that real unemployment rate that number represents the total unemployed plus part-time workers who want to be working full time but they can't find a full time position. in fact the labor department, the labor force participation rate right now the lowest since 1979. mohammed el erian, ceo of him co, and austan goolsbee, former chairman of the council of

economics adviser, and austan you've expressed concern about the forced budget cuts. does friday's job report give you any sense of optimism about whether we can sustain jobs growth into the summer? >> only a little. you know, you never want to make too much of any one month but it was a solid month. my fear is that over the summer, it's not a real magic secret here, if the growth rate of the economy is going to be only a little above 2%, the unemployment rate is not going to come down very fast. we're not going to generate this kind of job growth faster than this on a sustained basis and that's what we need to do. >> mohammed, are we stuck here, mohamed el erian with a jobless rate ticking down sometimes but not falling? >> so we've taken a big step towards a better outcome. i'm actually quite encouraged by

friday's jobs report. if you look at the last three months we've created 212,000 jobs, long-term unemployment is coming down, like you said the unemployment rate is coming down for the right reasons. so this is an important step. it's not the whole thing, and we still have the head winds coming from washington, we still have slow growth but it tells me that the underlying economy continues to heal, and that's good news. i wish it were healing quicker, but it's definitely healing. >> austan, let me ask you about the quality of the jobs coming back. i see retail jobs and leisure and hospitality, it's great consumers feel confident enough to go to the mall, to go to the strip mall, big box store, bar or restaurant, but i know not many working the jobs will be able to pay to put a kid through college so what is the quality of the jobs coming back here? >> whenever you start coming back you're going to have a mix of let's call it the skilled distribution is going to be mixed. the unemployment rate for

college graduates is quite low, 3.9% i think in this last report. if there was going to be improvement in parts of the job market you'd want it to be in places that have been hardest hit and have the high unemployment rates now, that said, overall earnings have not improved very much over the last three months and we hope to get improvement on that as well as creating more jobs so i think it's fair to keep an eye on that. >> i look at professional business services, 73,000 jobs created there and some of those could be good jobs and when you talk about computer systems engineering, software engineering, even software sales and some of the high tech kinds of jobs there are talent wars going on in some parts of the economy and mohamed el erian, desperation going on with people out of work six months or

longer. we're not seeing improvement for those long-term very much. >> it came down to 4.3 million but we have a long way to go. critically what austan says is very important. if you look at college graduates their unemployment rate is below 4%. if you look at those who left school, their unemployment is above 11% so we've got an inequality element that speaks to some of the structural issues we have to work on, better education, better labor retooling, better retaining, these are going to be key if we're going to sustain employment growth and if we're going to bring unemployment down to a more acceptable level. >> both of you keep talking about the unemployment rate for college graduates. those are for people who have already been in the labor market, a recent college graduate isn't counted in the labor market until they get in the labor market. austan, commencement season, all of the kids coming out of college, but it is going to be tough at the beginning for them to get the first foot in the

door. there are some degree categories where kids are having double-digit unemployment. >> i think that's a fair statement, though look, it doesn't take advanced degree to figure out that people that have more skills and more education are doing better and surviving better in this comeback than our people who do not. that screams out of the data, so it's commencement season, i think in some fields as you identify there, there's tremendous pent up demand for workers. in other majors that are not as practical or oriented around the sector it's a little bit of time before they get jobs. >> stick with me because i want to talk about the broader economy in a moment. coming up the fed is going to keep pumping billions into the economy every month until unemployment hits 6.5%. we're now one percentage point away. could the ending of the fed

stimulus cause economic disaster and when is the right time to do it? we talk about that next.

a. real unemployment held at 13.9% in april. what is that number real unemployment? it represents the total unemployed and part-time workers who want to be full time and people not in the labor force but they desperately want a job. the 165,000 jobs added in april is nowhere near the 250,000 we need every month for a genuine recovery. president obama's campaign promise of creating 12 million jobs in four years, remember that promise, our economy simply isn't growing fast enough. there are some bright spots, home values are up, earlier this week the case shiller index showed home prices jumped 9.3% from a year ago, the stock market is pushing higher, friday

15,000 on the dow. mixed signals? you better believe it. for the stock market thank the federal reserve for that, its $85 billion a month bond buying program, no end in sight combined with near zero interest rates make stocks the only game in town. mohamed el erian says the fed strategy has a 50/50 chance of leading to economic growth. mohamed, how do you get to 50/50 odds? >> so we look at it and it's a gut feeling. we ask the question, is the fed using the right tools achieve its objective. the answer is no, it doesn't have perfect tools. it's using very imperfect tools and as a result of that, the benefits that come with what it's doing is associated with cost and risk and at some point the costs and risks are going to become material so think of the

fed as impacting the destination to a good outcome and it is not in control of the destination, that needs help from washington and the rest of the world. >> austan goolsbee, washington is something that the federal reserve chief announced this week or mentioned this week. the fed chief planned to keep dumping money into the market, $85 billion a month and ben bernanke blaming slow growth on washington. what is holding things back here? >> the main thing that's holding things back is we're recovering from a savage financial crisis based recession, and so the normal mechanisms of v-shaped recovery largely do not apply. now on top of that slow recovery, we're adding significant drag coming from increase in the payroll tax, coming from the sequester, and that's what bernanke was referring to. i got to tell you, i disagree a little with your premise that only reason the stock market is up is because of the fed action. i think that's confused.

on the real side of the economy, corporate profits are the highest they've ever been as a share of gdp. if corporate profits are high you'll see a strong market. that's what the valuations are based on. >> they have a lot of money in the bank and they're able to get the corporate profits at record highs without commensurate hiring and so far that has been good for their bottom line. >> yes, i agree with that. >> does that go on in perpetuity? moe head mohamed, where does that leave the middle class? >> that's the big question. first on the stock market undoubtedly corporate profits and cash buybacks and dividends have helped the stock market but the stock market has come up all the way up here. part of it is justified but what we just talked about, but another part is justified by the fed very aggressively pushing people to take more risk. and we see it every single day.

we see people being pushed into the equity market by interest rates that are artificially low. i think it's a combination of real factors and artificial factors that have resulted in the stock market. and that's why a couple of things are happening. investigators are excited, they understand they have this has an element of artificiality and you have the massive disconnect how the financial markets are doing and how poorly the real economy is doing. the key issue is to reconcile these things having the fundamentals melt up to where the financial markets are. >> what happens, mohamed, when the fed, takes the training wheels off the economy, if you will? >> depends. if it takes the training wheel off the economy because the economy has escaped velocity there will be minor disruptions in the market but overall it's not going to be a big issue. if it takes the training wheels

off because the training wheels aren't working anymore because the fed has become increasingly ineffective then we have a problem. >> here we have, i just have go to back to austan goolsbee. 15,000 on the dow jones industrial average a strong jobs report, 165,000 jobs created and measured white house action. the white house has to be careful because they don't want to sound too confident on the economy in case things go south and there are still a lot of people out of work. if you were advising the president how would you have the white house try to be encouraging but not cheerleading but acknowledge there has been progress since the president took office. >> i think that's exactly right, both of those points and i would just add, remember, we add 160,000 jobs, plus or minus 100,000. it's a noisy measure so you never want to get too worked up, positive or negative.

last month surprisingly bad, this month surprisingly good, the main thing is what is the growth rate of the economy. >> i wish we could have every month like february but i know we can't. austan and mohamed, nice to see both of you. have a night weekend. >> thank you. out of the chateaus but not exactly into the light a growing number of americans are working off the books, but not at a job you'd think. we'll reveal this shadow economy next. [ dylan ] this is one way to keep your underwear clean.

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with the 165,000 jobs added in april don't count is the growing number of americans working in the so-called shadow economy, nannies, construction workers, retail clerks and other unskilled labor often work for cash under the table and don't report their income to uncle sam. today's shadow economy has become much more than those provisions. ashley joyce has more. good morning. >> these are people with college degrees we're talking about, computer programmers, talking

about graphic artists and tax accountants. they don't always pay taxes on their income but they're still working, still making a living. they're just doing it off the books. who are the people working in america's shadow economy? it's probably not who you think. >> the shadow economy isn't necessarily comprised of people making $5 here and $10 here. it's designers, computer programmers, tax accountants making tens of thousands of dollars but who prefer to do it off the books. >> reporter: he's a professor of sociology and dedicated his career to studying criminal side of the u.s. economy. he's discovered a growing number of americans working in the shadows are not typically what come to mind when you think of a criminal. >> they may have skills and what they're doing with those skills is not applying for a job in a

formal sense but offering their services to people who may pay for cash or give them another kind of payment and won't report that money to the government. that's where it becomes a shadow economy. they don't report the wages. >> today's labor market has changed. in a bid to cut costs and stay profitable, companies increasingly rely on skilled freelance labor even in a legitimate economy. >> we see this is a huge rising trend. 42 million americans, a third of the workforce, big companies like ibm are predicting this is going to be half of the workforce in just the next 10 to 15 years. >> sara founded the freelancers union which counts more than 200,000 members across the u.s. all of whom report their income to the government and pay taxes and social security. the pressure to work off the books is there because freelancers often pay higher taxes than everyone else. >> freelancers pay two portions of social security tax.

they pay the unincorporated business tax in many cities. they are taxed so severely that they are the ones who are really providing the economic development and growth in all of the growth industries in america. they are overly taxed and not undertaxed. >> economists estimate $2 trillion worth of income goes unreported each year and that affects the legitimate economy. it's hard for business to pay by the rules if competitors aren't paying payroll taxes or compensation to employees in the event of injury. and they have no benefit or social security and no legal resource if their boss decides to stiff them. >> what we really need to do is say, okay, it's illegal absolutely but a lot of people have the ingenuity and creativity and power to innovate. if that's where they are going, we want to help them come back into the mainstream. >> something efforts say will be

difficult to do. we're talking about an extra $500 billion worth of lost tax revenue. that's a huge amount of money. when you think of what the country is going through with the sequester and spending cuts, that 500 billion could go a long way. >> very interesting. of course bringing that labor force into the mainstream would give them benefits they don't have now. even as we talk about immigration reform and shadow economy and immigration reform and bringing people into the light and into the government coffers as well. justin bieber giving his backing to a prepaid debit card but does it make sense to sign up? find out next. i'm with clemmie, who is looking to save to help make ends meet.

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prepaid debit cards, justin bieber the latest to attach his name to one. the cards are growing and consumers are signing up in droves without reading the fine print. would you trust justin bieber with your money? what about russell simmons? maybe susie orman? they are pushing prepaid debit cards. you load the card with cash and swipe away. it will cost you. >> the fees can run the gamut from a monthly service fee to an activation fee to even fees for doing things like calling customer service or having a transaction declined due to insufficient balance. sometimes even checking your balance at an atm can trigger a fee. >> reporter: all kinds of fees to use your own money. all cards charge fees for different features and the one that celebrities like justin bieber are talking about are no exception. for the card he endorses, 3.95

every month just to have it. 2.95 to put money on it from another debit or credit card. transfer once from your bank account for free each month and $1.50 for an atm withdraw and if you don't use the card for 30 days in a row, you pay $3. spend smart issues the bieber car defending fees saying it's try to help parents and teens start a conversation about reasonable spending and bieber gets that message out but greg mcbride says celebrity cards usually aren't the best value. >> consumers looking for lower fee, prepaid debit cards can find them. they're not going to be those endorsed by celebrities. >> traditional bank fees are rising too. maybe that's why consumers don't mind they are paying so much for prepaid debit cards. the amount of money put on prepaid debit cards tripled from 2008 to 2012 and expected to top $168 billion by 2015. that's a lot of money.

it's enough to buy 431 brand new airbus double-decker planes and parents use prepaid debit cards to teach kids about financial responsibility but ryan mack says there are better ways to do that. >> spending money to use your own money but they don't necessarily fix your credit and it is expensive. >> if you don't have a checking account, look for a credit union in your area and check out smarterchoice.org or go to bankon.org. if you are willing to pay for it, go for it but know the fees and know every fee and consider your other options. you don't want to pay to use your own money. you're going to have to try to do whatever you can to avoid it. i'll be back at 2:00 p.m. eastern for a new edition of "your $$$$$." what about low income children? what about seniors? how about jobless americans? i'll look at america's

experiment with ouausterity, wh is winning, who is losing and why. you can find me on twitter. @christineromans. "cnn saturday morning" continues right now. >> reporter: good morning, everyone. i'm randi kaye in boston. a windy boston this morning. it's 10:00 here on the east coast. 7:00 a.m. out west. we're glad you're with us this morning. ahead this hour, tracing the calls of the boston bombing suspects. the fbi says it is easier than you think even if their phones weren't tapped. plus, they call it the most exciting two minutes in sports. today's kentucky derby. has the boston bombings put a downer on churchill downs. 200,000 acres torched so far. firefighters race to control this california inferno.