/connect to subscribe anytime. >> there are a lot of places to get political information. but only at c-span do you get it straight from the source. no matter where you are from, or where you stand on the issues, c-span is america's network. unfiltered, unbiased, word for word. it happens here, or here, or here, or anywhere that matters. america is watching on c-span. powered by cable. ues. host: on the u.s. economy, we are joined by neil irwin. take a minute and try to make some sense of friday's jobs report when forecasters are talking about potential recession. we seek 372,000 jobs added in

the month of june. 3.76 percent unemployment rate, one of the lowest numbers we have seen in a long time. do those numbers say that recession is on the way? guest: the jobs numbers do not. the jobs numbers week it looked like a robust economy doing fine. there are other pockets of data that point the other direction. we have seen the last year or so a consistently strong labor market, low unemployment. people who want a job can get a job. businesses are adding jobs by hundreds of thousands a month. it is not decelerating as much as a lot of people thought it might. wages are rising gradually. in terms of the labor market, in terms of jobs, it looks pretty good. host: we do this segments monday after the job reports come out.

it gives you a we can to read through the report. what else did you see? where there are other things that did not get as much notice on friday? guest: there were some red on what could be ahead. one is what happened with the labor force. the number of people working or wanted to work ticked down. the share of the adult population working ticked down a little bit. the numbers are volatile. you don't make much of any one month. that is a sign of maybe people returning from the pandemic into the labor force may not be happening the way we would like to see. host: what does the federal reserve see when they look at the report on friday? more importantly, what are they likely to do? guest: i think they see this is not a job market falling apart. you see reports of hiring freezes in the tech sector, crypto blowup.

overall, the jobs numbers are very good. if you are the federal reserve, you are worried about inflation and too much demand in the economy. you will raise interest rates to do that. this was a green light to do that. it is more important to focus on bringing inflation down then worry too much about jobs at this moment. they will likely do an increase at the end of july or september. that follows 75 last month. a rapid pace of interest rates. it looks like that is a green light for them to keep going in that direction. host: why is three quarters percent the new standard? why not 1/4? guest: they started in march raising rates 1/4. the last couple of cycles, that

is what they did. 25 basis points at a time. their conclusion this time is they were behind the curve on inflation and had room to stop stimulating demand at a time when there was too much inflation. that is why there is this rapid rate of increase is happening. it looks like we will be around 3% on short-term interest rates by the end of the year. we started the year at zero. it may not sound like much, but by the standards of the federal reserve, growing three percentage points in a year is a big move. host: back to the report, president biden came out to tout his administration's policies for the good in the report. here is some of what he had to say. [video clip] pres. biden: at a time when the critics said the economy was too weak, we had already added more

jobs my first year as president than any president in history. we slatted more jobs in the last three months than any administration in 40 years. i know times are tough. families are facing the cost of living crunch. but today's economic news confirms the fact that my economic plan is moving this country in a better direction. the unimportant rate is near a historic low of 3.4%. private sector jobs are at a record high. gas prices, still too high, have fallen 25 days in a row. this week, we saw the second largest single day decrease in gas prices in a decade. we still have a lot of work to do. i am suggesting we are making significant progress. the program is working. host: that was president biden friday framing these numbers. i different frame given by kevin

brady. this is his statement friday. the same report. he says this is feeling inflation, empty shelves, and hurting the economy. he says small businesses are struggling and american families have been wiping out savings to keep up with the rising isis of president biden's cool economy punctuated by slow growth. how do two people read the same report so differently? guest: take away the partisan language, and there is truth in both analyses. the president is right. there has been a robust recovery. the unemployment rate is quite low. it has been a remarkable run. where the republican argument is true is that wage gains are not keeping up with inflation. this last report, average hourly earnings up but we are at 8.6%

inflation over the last year. that is losing ground. no wonder people are unhappy with the state of the economy when average earnings are not keeping up with inflation. that said, the president is right. this has been a strong job market recovery. coming back from the pandemic, there was a lot to grow out of. at the same time, this is a strong labor market. host: are we out of the deep hole? guest: private sector numbers are back to pre-pandemic levels. one thing we don't know is how many people still out of the labor force. shares of the labor force people working is still lower than pre-pandemic. if it will catch up or is permanent we don't know yet. for the most part, people who want a job can get one.

host: compare what it says now to historic trends. are we barely below historic trends still? guest: the world is always changing. if you just look at the share of adults in the labor force, that is affected by the fact the baby boom generation is hitting retirement age. somebody in their 70's is not in the labor force, we usually do not consider that a sign of the labor force. same thing with young people in school. people are taking time out of the workforce to raise children or whatever. it is hard to know exactly where we are. i think we have seen a lot of improvement the last year or so. the question is how much further that might go. host: for people who like the actual numbers in front of them, the labor rate in june.

the number of those employed part-time for economic reasons at 3.6 million. is that good, bad? what does that show? guest: that number is coming down. that is what we want to see. you want to see people working part-time because they want a part-time job and not because their employer can only give them 20 instead of 40 hours. that number has been coming down. host: the state of the u.s. economy is what we are talking about. neil irwin is our guest. check out some of his work. you can join the conversation by calling. richard is up first for you out of lake worth, florida. independent. go ahead. caller: good morning. thank you for taking my call.

i wanted to comment on a bunch of things. i wish for your guest to comment on when donald dump was president, he kept claiming basically he was the greatest producer of the economy for the united states. what i want to know, because i cannot figure out what donald dump ever did for this country, and especially on the economy, by working against russia, or not really against russia but against china putting in all of these ridiculous sanctions and causing what i consider the major inflection in this country because products went up. by lemonade and manufacturing in this country, he did not do anything -- by eliminating manufacturing in this country, he did not do anything for the

economy. host: when does the biden economy start? who gets credit for what part of the economy? guest: no question the trump economy was good before the pandemic. very low unemployment, low inflation. people have real wage gains. wages were not rising that much but inflation was low enough that people were seeing higher wages after adjusting for inflation, especially at the lower end of the spectrum. he saw more working-class jobs were rising, at faster adjusted real wage growth then now when we have high inflation. there is a real question of how much of that is anything donald trump did and how much of that is the economic cycle. there have been studies dating back to 2009 of year-by-year

jobs added, unemployment falling. by 2017-18, you are getting the peak of the expansion. whether that is trump, that is something people can argue about. the biden economy, we are a year and a half into this presidency. they have made a number of choices that affect where things have gone, including the american rescue plan early in 2021. regulatory decisions. not that every thing about the economy is something biden controls, but politically he has to own the state of things. we have high inflation, a strong job market, and a real risk of recession in the coming months as the fed tightens policy. host: the caller mentioned

manufacturing jobs in the trump administration. i want to go back to the june report, more numbers to dig in to. 29,000 manufacturing jobs added in june compared to 74,000 service jobs added, 57,000 health care jobs added. those are all for the month of june. what sector stood out for you? guest: one area we keep seeing gains is leisure and hospitality jobs because restaurants, hotels, and that does reflect what we are seeing in the economy. airlines are canceling flights. they do not have enough pilots. if you stay in a vacation area, understaffed. trying to add people. hotels are food. service, travel and leisure related businesses are booming.

the labor supply is not big enough to accommodate them. host: that sector hit the hardest. guest: we are still rebounded. tech sector lost a lot of people -- that sector lost a lot of people to other sectors. if you were a dishwasher making $12 an hour and lost her job in the pandemic and amazon is hiring for $20 down the street, you might have gone to take the job at the amazon warehouse, the restaurant calls you back, and you are not doing it. you can imagine the shift in the workforce as people moved away from these sectors. now they are booming, they have trouble getting those people back. host: david in los angeles, california, democrat, good morning. caller: good morning. my question is, i am a commuter. i drive a lot to where i work,

more than 60 miles every morning. every single morning i go to the gas station, i see a sticker with biden pointed at as the problem with the current gas issue, inflation, all that is going on. i just want to ask. my point of view is after all this pandemic, after everybody is returning to work, everybody is now in need of gas and food. that where our real problem is or is it really on biden? guest: i think there is a lot of factors behind inflation i have to do with long-term structural issues and the post-pandemic rebound. with high gas prices, refineries that turn crude oil into gasoline are running flat out. it is not like they have spare capacity right now. they are pumping out as much

gasoline as they can. there has been a drop in refinery capacity over the last several years. during the pandemic, people thought there was less demand so we will shut down this refinery. it involves multiyear trends on energy. it is hard to put too much of that bottleneck on biden when it has been building for years and is easily controlled. other things, i think you look at the administration and biden with some responsibility. part of the story is there is a lot of demand, people trying to buy stuff. if the american rescue plan had been smaller and they had not flooded quite so much money into the economy in 2021, maybe that demand would not be as extreme bidding up the price. we can argue over how large the effect is and how much you need to attribute more structural things versus stimulus versus federal reserve actions, versus the ukraine war.

but they are clearly all in the mix and feeding into the sense that everything is too expensive. host: one of the headlines from one of your stories a week or two ago, america's incoherent approach to fighting gas prices. guest: the administration proposed a gas tax holiday. you see other states trying to give people money. california started giving people money as a gas tax rebate. the problem is is what we have is a mismatch between supply and demand, which we do, if you just give people more money, that increases demand. it makes the problem worse. it makes individuals better off. if you're struggling to pay for commuting expenses and get a gas card, it makes you better off. but if everybody gets one of those cards, your bidding up the cost of the finance apply and it does not make anybody better off. the important thing is to focus on either increasing supply, refinery capacity, or the

availability of oil and gas, or if you focus on reducing demand, maybe you make the bus or subway free. that might reduce demand for gasoline. host: up to caldwell, idaho, darrell, independent, good morning. caller: good morning. i saw a program on the electric vehicle versus gasoline. both were trucks. both carrying the same weight of trailer. the gasoline truck got easily to where they were on their way to, but the electric truck had to stop and look for a charging station. so, it is a case where the attitude that we are going to go into this green new deal, we are not set up for it. the reality is the gas truck was able to drive all the way back when they started from, paid $93 for the gas, and the other vehicle had to charge for 45

minutes just to get 75%. here is a case where we are all going for this green deal. when obama was president, gas in california was $4.50. the problem was the government said you people have to learn to dance better than fred astaire. i went to the store. it used to be $3.99. now it is $5. that is not 8%, that is 20%. there is nobody with any intelligence anymore running this nation. host: neil irwin. guest: i am not an expert in electric vehicles. range is a real issue with electric cars and trucks. if you take your gasoline powered car and run out of gas, you stop at any filling station in five minutes and go on your way. with batteries, there are range

constraints and it does take longer to charge them when that moment comes. host: on the line for democrats, audrey from south carolina, good morning. caller: thank you for taking my call. talking about the economy, i have not heard him say anything about the pandemic. when president trump shut down the economy for i think he said two months, wouldn't you think that would have an effect on the economy and supply and demand and prices for gas and food? i will take my answer off the line. guest: there is no question. that was a scarring moment for virtually every industry, every family, back in the spring and summer of 2020. we are still seeing the impact of that today. we seek part of the problem now is drilling and refining

capacity was cut in 20 because there was no demand for gas, jet fuel, energy products. capacity was pulled back. we are dealing with the problem now. demand is back but supply is not. all kinds of issues have various issues. the airline industry laid off pilots and flight attendants and call-center people. now they wish they could have those people back. it is hard to rebuild that capacity on the fly. so many industries have so much lasting damage from decisions made two years ago now. host: about 20 minutes left with neil irwin. phone lines again. talking about the state of and the future of the u.s. economy.

the line for democrats, you are up next. caller: hello. this guy was talking about all the problems with gas and everything. he did not mention the main thing, that biden shut down all of the gas wells and pipelines. that is why we are paying the high price for gas. all of our fuel is going over to china. he is even selling our reserves. i don't know what is going on. you are saying you don't know. you did not even mention that. that is like the main thing. host: talking about pipelines and reserves. guest: most drilling and environmental policy that comes out of the environmental policy process of the biden administration or any administration are not things that affect how much oil is coming out of the ground today. it is about the rules of engagement for getting new licenses to drill and explore in

the future and create future supply of oil. to the degree the biden administration has had a more restrictive stance than the trump administration, those are not things shaping the supply of oil today. that will affect the supply of domestic oil over the years ahead. you can have some complex stories of how those policies might affect behavior that affects supply today, but we are dealing with the kind of legacy effects. michelle drilling companies in the 2010's lost their shirts. investors did not do well in that. as domestic energy production soared through the roof, that drove down prices. investors and lenders in those industries lost a lot of money. they have been reluctant to invest at this time. even though there are projects that could be workable and desirable, partly because of the

risk of prices coming down and partly because they lost their shirts the last time, there has been reluctant to pour money into drilling this time around. on the one hand, because of environmental concerns, they do not want to have a long-term investment in more carbon heavy energy. on the other hand, they want her to be enough energy supply to not have prices skyrocket and make people miserable. host: one of the solutions was releasing oil from a strategic reserve. has that done anything? guest: it affects things on the margins. who knows where prices would be without that? it's not enough to change the overall equation of energy prices. oil is a global market and it's very expensive worldwide. european -- all of the problems

we have in the u.s. are worse in europe where they depend on russian and oil and gas. it's going to be a bumpy couple of years depending on what happens. secretary yellen has been out trying to bring countries to agree to allow russian oil exports with a catch price. if that works, that might create a new supply of oil at a non-crazy price. it's a very delicate row to hoe. host: kelly is on the independent line. good morning. caller: good morning. i would like to talk because the administration talked about the federal gas tax, using it for three months and then letting the administration said we can't do this because we would lose $18 billion in gas tax.

if we go to all electric vehicles, where is the gas tax going to come from? you people that are buying electric vehicles, somewhere they are going to put it back on you. guest: that's an interesting point. it's true that the highway fund is from gasoline taxes. as you move to electric vehicles , more fuel-efficient vehicles, that fund is depleted. people are using highways just as much as people in gasoline cars. is there a future where the tax is structured waste on miles driven as opposed to gallons purchased? it might be unpopular, there is no question the future is electric cars. host: would that mean tracking the miles that you drive every day?

there would be concerns about privacy if there is some federal tracking of the number of miles your car is going. guest: i'm not an expert in that policy, i can see people not loving the government knowing how much they've been driving. host: edward in new jersey. good morning. caller: the concern i have about this reporter is he seems to leave some things out. that concerns me. i'm not attacking you, i don't understand why clearly when biden first came in, whoever is behind him directed him to cut the xl pipeline. he was not in charge of the economy. we were clearly energy independent. what went along with that was lower inflation unavailability of the growing economy. as soon as the oil production was tightened, the transportation people just put

the cost right along to the vendors and consumers. they didn't do research on that or they didn't care. it seems like they want to get that new green deal through while biden is president. it's not fair to push that on half the population that didn't vote for him and the other half doesn't really know what's going on. you need to report the truth. we were energy and dependent. -- independent. the electric cars, there hasn't been enough research. they are so expensive. they haven't talked about what's going to happen with the batteries? it is just push it through and not tell us the truth. i'm saying tell us the truth. guest: it's just hard to draw a line between long-term energy supply decisions and regulations put in place a year ago and the

supply and demand right now. it's true that having more restrictive stance is going to mean less energy supply over time. it doesn't work that fast. it takes time for that exploration to happen. that said, it's the case that the biden team has been more skeptical and more opposed to aggressive carbon-based oil and gas billing than their predecessors. over time, you would expect that to mean less energy supply. you can't tie that long-term policy priority to the supply and demand of oil and gas right now when you have a war that is driven things up and russian supply off the market. you have elevated demand because of the economy and inflation.

you have the situation of capacity cutback during the 2020 because demand had collapsed at that time. host: larry on the line for democrats. did morning. caller: i just want to talk to the gentleman about inflation. during trump, trump had the best economics. he had the best ratings of all. we know that president obama in 2009 brought back the economy. it took four years for us to get up our economy. it took the other six years to get to the point where we had the best economy in the world. not by donald trump. anybody that knows anything

about 2009, all of us that were out of work, donald trump took over president obama's economy. we all know this. a gentleman called you and asked you about that. you did not tell him that the economy was great under president obama. host: we talked about the biden and trump economies. guest: in 2009, it was a disaster. it was the worst economic crisis in a very long time. the u.s. did claw its way out under obama. it was very gradual. we bottomed out in the summer of 2009. we started to add jobs. by 2016, things were in a much better spot. the question, and the trump

ears, we did have lower unemployment. how much of that was at the sustained expansion that obama oversaw. that is something we can argue about all you want. that's what the numbers show. we were in a deep pit in the early obama administration. we were in a much better spot in the economy improve the next three years under president trump and was quite healthy in a lot of ways. that's the brief economic history of the last 12 years. host: success has thousand fathers, but failure is an orphan.

charles back in pennsylvania. good morning. caller: i have one comment. i know gas is cheap in texas because they have refineries. gas is expensive in alaska because it has to go all the way down to valdez, go down to texas and come back up. there are two reasons why we have a gasoline problem. we can pump all the oil we want. we can have barrels and barrels. if we don't build more refineries because the oil companies don't want to build refineries and we can't refine it, we can't keep the price down. the price of oil is controlled by the market. richard nixon had price controls on everything because all the regulations were lifted, the people got out of control and started gouging all of us.

that's why we are in the problem we have now. all the people who run the oil companies are greedy. the gas companies -- the gas pump guys are told what to sell the oil for. if they fight it, they boost the stock of oil. oil companies control the world. we don't control it. what they want to set the price that is what we've got to eat. guest: the problem is a lack of refinery capacity. if you drill oil and you -- the bottleneck is the refineries that's your bottleneck. that's where we are right now. one of the policies that would include more refinery capacity. the part i disagree with is price controls would solve this.

the situation right now, it's not the case. we have more demand than we have supply. if you set up price caps, you are just going to shortage it. we had gas lines in the 70's. you are paying more for gas, standing in line and having restrictions on when you can get it. i think the idea that somehow setting a price cap below where the market clears is going to have everybody feel great about things. that doesn't stand up to history. host: one of your other recent stories i want it to get to was back on the issue of inflation. officials worried about inflation becoming entrenched. what does entrenched inflation mean? guest: their job is to maintain price stability. they've not done a great job of

that in the last year and a half. they are trying to catch up and raise interest rates to bring inflation down. what they really worry about is because of the high inflation, people will start to think that high inflation is the norm. if you are deciding what to charge for whatever's on the shelves, i can crank the price of that up and ob is going to say anything. if you ask for a bigger raise than you otherwise would, employers are willing to give it to you because they know inflation is high. it becomes self-fulfilling. you can go from 8% -- becoming a one time thing, it can be built into a lot of processes in ways the fed is trying to prevent. they are willing to be

aggressive, watch the stock market selloff and they are willing to accept that pain to prevent that entrenchment of inflation. host: what sector is most likely to see that happening first? we focus so much on gas prices. i can't imagine it's there when people suddenly say i accept five dollars. food prices get talked about overtime. what is the sector were the fed is looking for the canary in the inflation:? guest: gas is a very competitive market. oil prices move up and down for all kinds of reason. a lot of it is geopolitics and what we've been talking about today. the thing to look for becoming entrenched and affecting future inflation, things are more labor-intensive.

anything that involves workers. if you are a company that employs hundreds of people to offer whatever service and they want a 10% raise, you might raise the prices 10 or 12%. when that happens, we get that sustained inflation like we had in the 1970's. that's what the fed is trying to prevent. host: what brings that down? is it individual businesses saying maybe more people will buy the product? i will pick up the money that way? guest: one of the channels is if companies are saying we might be on the verge of recession and my stock is down 30% and i'm a little worried about the outlook, i'm not going to crank up prices. i don't think i can get away

with it. i'm not going to give you a big raise. that psychology of business can be a powerful thing. there are mechanical ways that these filter through the economy and work against inflation. one is higher mortgage rates. a lot of things that come into play, lower stock values. people have less money. they are willing to spend less money. these are ways that this filters through the economy and slows things down. i'm not so sure inflation is going to remain high, i'm ready for it to come down. host: these last two calls have been waiting for a while. frank is in delaware. go ahead. caller: i go all the way back to john f. kennedy. i've seen all of these

presidents. they've all been good and bad. some have just been horrible. carter was horrible. this guy we've got an office now, there is nobody but nobody as bad as this guy. this guy has got an agenda. he is following through on it. he don't care how many people he hurts. they've got people in positions in the administration that don't know what the hell they are doing. he don't care about that. they just have an agenda. whatever it takes, they going to follow through with that. we've got to get these more runs out of there. host: let me try to get james in as well. go ahead. caller: billionaires pay --

don't pay nothing in tax. host: we are running out of time. that me give him both of those. guest: the billionaires tax, the idea that they don't pay tax, most leaners get that way by owning a huge chunk of the company. they have unrealized capital gains. the stock goes up, they become richer, but they don't have to pay taxes on that increased wealth. that is the issue of them

playing -- paint low taxes. is it fair to convert that into cash? that's a wise policy to make. host: you can see his work at axios.com, follow him on twitter. announcer: a senate panel considers the legal implications of the supreme court's decision overturning abortion rights. live coverage of the senate judiciary committee hearing starts at 10:00 a.m. eastern on c-span. you can watch on our free mobile video app on c-span now or online at c-span.org. the january 6 committee returns for its seventh hearing. watch as they examine the role extremist groups played in the attack on the u.s. capitol, and their relationship with the trump white house. watched a hearing live tuesday at 1:00 p.m. eastern on c-span

three, c-span now, or online at c-span.org. you can also visit our website at c-span.org/january 6, two watch previous hearings and other videos related to that day. c-span, your unfiltered view of government. former trump administration immigration and homeland security officials spoke about challenging the biden administration's policies in court. from the center for immigration studies, this is about one hour, 10 minutes. >>