CLAY: We were talking about the announcement of the new jobs report. Only 194,000 jobs newly announced. The expectation was roughly 500,000 new jobs. And, by the way, we gotta keep in mind: There are, right now, 10.9 million open jobs in this country. That is basically the largest amount of open jobs that has ever existed.
And for many of you out there, as you’re driving around in your neighborhoods or certainly if you own a small business, it’s virtually impossible to get people hired. You can go into a restaurant right now, and they can’t even seat you because they can’t find people to work at the restaurant no matter what they are paying. And I want you guys to hear.
This is the CNBC anchors live as they hear for the most part the September jobs report. Listen to this.
BECKY QUICK: Things are coming down pretty rapidly. We’ve just had this jobs report.
STEVE LIESMAN: Wow!
BECKY QUICK: Steve, what are you seeing?
STEVE LIESMAN: 194.
BECKY QUICK: Whoa!
STEVE LIESMAN: I see 194,000! That is real low.
CLAY: Reacting in real time, Buck.
BUCK: (laughing) They’re looking at it just like, “Uh, that’s not… That’s not good.” I love it. The Ron Klain thing, too. The White House chief of staff. He comes out immediately with a tweet about how it’s the most jobs created ever! Look, buddy, when you belly flop in the shallow end of the pool and you’re the guy who’s got a big sunburn — when it’s really looking rough — you don’t tell everybody how you actually just won the Olympic gold medal.
You don’t go in the other direction and pretend like you’re crushing it. And on the unemployment rate, a very important figure here is that people are dropping out. There are 11 million open jobs, and people are dropping out of the workforce at an accelerated rate. Maybe because they got used to the benefits that they’ve been getting, maybe because they’re so scared of covid, but it’s not ’cause people are thinking, “I want to get a piece of this Biden economy as soon as possible!”
CLAY: It’s such a good question. You asked what Biden is doing well, and the answer is basically nothing, which is why he has a 38% approval rating and why 70% basically of independents are saying he’s doing a disastrous job. But I am really curious: What are all these people doing that they’re not taking the 10.9 million open jobs, right, because that’s a level of open jobs that we’ve never seen before.
I just find it to be utterly fascinating to think. Partly, it’s what we’ve incentivized people. First of all, we told them, “Hey, go home; you can’t work.” Then we told them, “Hey, we’ll pay you a lot of money not to work,” all the while terrifying a huge percentage of people that were never at risk that they were going to die if they went to work. And now, suddenly, we’re telling everybody, “Hey, go back to work,” but all of the incentives that we’ve provided them has basically let people kick back on their couch, eat Cheetos, and watch Netflix.
BUCK: Yeah, nobody who was under the age of 60 and didn’t have specific health concerns should have ever been told really — maybe beyond the first couple of weeks — you should go home and not work. This was crazy.
CLAY: By the way, you and I were saying this since about April of last year and people were like, “Oh, you want everybody to die.”
BUCK: I remember this. You and I were among the very, very few.
CLAY: Yes.
BUCK: We wanted everybody to die because we’re like, “Guys, we just have to face life.” By the way, I got covid; you got covid.
CLAY: Yes.
BUCK: We did face life. That’s what ended up happening.
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