Trump's economy 'CONTINUES TO DELIVER,' Labor chief says

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: All right, well, the U.S. economy delivered a surprisingly strong jobs report in May, adding, get this, 172,000 jobs. That's nearly double what many economists were expecting. And the mainstream media was, of course, floored. Watch. [00:00:17] Speaker 2: And the data is out. The May job, job, jobs report, 172,000. Is there any doubt that this anecdote, 11, it's about a good labor market, has been very correct. That is a really strong number. That would be the best number since 185,000 in March. These are solid numbers. [00:00:37] Speaker 3: The May jobs report just in. We're looking at the numbers, and they are good. I want to start with your top-line reaction to this jobs report, which you posted this morning as, quote, wowee, meaning, sincerely. [00:00:51] Speaker 4: The resilient economy posting its third straight month of strong job growth, smashing expectations. [00:00:58] Speaker 5: Joining us now to react and walk us through the numbers, Acting Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling. Mr. Secretary, thank you for being here. 172,000. And that also comes as we learned that the jobs revision numbers up 93,000 for April and March. Walk us through what this report means. [00:01:17] Keith Sonderling: Well, good morning. And as Trump, President Trump said last night, it's a beautiful weekend. The weather is great. But he said it's raining jobs in America. And that's exactly what's happening. And let's just talk about what our job numbers are. Yesterday's job report came out and it blew out expectations. 100 percent of the Bloomberg economists that were surveyed said, yeah, that's going to come around 85,000, 172,000. That's double. But what I'd like to talk about is the last two months, the last two months of continuing with these experts to doubt President Trump's economy. In March, it wound up being about 3.2 times higher than the experts predicted. Last month, in April, with the revisions, it's now triple, so triple, triple, double of what these experts predicted. They continue to doubt President Trump's economy. And President Trump's economy continues to deliver. [00:02:13] Speaker 1: So what do you think is the reason behind this? So I believe it's the investment, the $18 trillion of investment that's coming back to the United States. And maybe we're starting to experience what that is doing to the economy. But what else is it? [00:02:32] Keith Sonderling: It's exactly that. President Trump promised to bring industry back to the United States. He promised to bring these high-paying private sector jobs home. And that's exactly what we're seeing. Every month we continue to see billions of dollars invested into the U.S. Just this past month in May, Lockheed Martin is going to invest another $9 billion into the U.S. Toyota is expanding a $2 billion plant in Texas. So that's exactly what President Trump promised, high-paying, high-skilled U.S.-based jobs. And from the Department of Labor, it's our goal to get American workers into these high-paying jobs. And that's exactly what we're doing. But, look, people doubted that these investments would come. President Trump, the ultimate negotiator with foreign countries, with foreign companies, and convincing domestic companies to reinvest in the United States. We're seeing that investment coming in. And what's happening? It's creating jobs, but it's also creating jobs in the right places, jobs that left. Construction jobs are up this year. What happens when you build plants? Manufacturing jobs come back. So we have 25,000 new manufacturing jobs. For the last five months, the manufacturing indexes has gone up. Those have gone down every single month during the Biden administration. But in the Trump administration, they're going up. So it's exactly what we thought would happen. The investments would come. The investments are delivering. And we're building back in America. And American workers are getting these jobs and nobody else. [00:03:52] Speaker 4: So if you're a young person and you're just entering the workforce, you hear a lot of doom gloom and gloom, especially about how AI is going to wipe out all the jobs. And you hear that that the enforcement of immigration laws is going to tank the economy. When you dig down into the numbers there, how would you describe the, you know, obviously we're not talking about a bunch of government jobs that have been created here, which has been the bane of previous, the previous administration. So what we're talking about here is private sector. What kind of private sector jobs? [00:04:26] Keith Sonderling: Well, in the second Trump administration, 900,000 private sector jobs have been created. And that's exactly what the president promised. During the Biden administration, we saw so much job growth in the federal sector. The federal sector became bloated. President Trump ran and he right-sized the federal government. So now, in this second Trump administration, we have seen 300,000 less federal jobs. And in the private sector, 900,000 new jobs. The federal government right now is at its lowest levels of employment since 1966. And we're still offering the same exact services to taxpayers, to constituents. And with the savings of having less federal government employees, with the number I just gave you, that costs the taxpayers around $47 billion in savings. That is the same budget as the Marine Corps. So, as you can see, we've right-sized the federal government. And the jobs that are leaving the federal government, going right into the private sector, they're higher paid and they require a higher skill. And the Department of Labor is working every day to make sure that American workers have those skills to take these high-paying jobs, working with these companies, working with the Department of Commerce, and then also working with the Department of Education, so our students can get these jobs, start learning while they're in high school on the exact type of equipment. And that's what's so great about this administration. We're relying on industry to help us learn that curriculum. So, what happens before, they go to school, they don't have any of the skills, they have debt. We're doing the opposite. We're working with companies, getting the exact skills, going back to the registered apprenticeship models for students to earn while they learn. [00:06:01] Speaker 5: Right, right. Mr. Secretary, though, let me press you a little bit on this, because as you laid out so perfectly, the private sector high-paying jobs, there is some cautionary information in this jobs report, and that is wages are not keeping up with inflation. You have got 3.4 percent wage growth against 3.8 percent inflation. How do you square that? [00:06:20] Keith Sonderling: Well, wages continue to rise, and year over year, it's up over 3.4 percent. And we're going to see that continue to come, as the jobs that are coming back to the United States are higher paid. And the most important part that we look at is the working family tax cuts that President Trump promised and was delivered on with the help of Republicans in Congress. And that's allowing workers to have more take-home pay, no tax on overtime, no tax on tips. Americans are seeing those benefits now. They have more take-home pay. They're getting more from their tax returns. And that is allowing them to spend more. It's also allowing employers to take that depreciation, to offer more overtime. And that's what we're seeing in the increases in productivity. And ultimately, that's putting more money in workers' pockets. [00:07:05] Speaker 1: Yeah. Secretary, one of the numbers that was interesting was the huge increase in construction workers. I thought that these were jobs that Americans wouldn't do. [00:07:14] Keith Sonderling: These are jobs that Americans will do. And from the Department of Labor, we are working hard to make sure they have the skills to do that. The Registered Apprenticeship Program, which is the pathway for a lot of these students to get into these skilled trade jobs, the average salary for a registered apprenticeship is $86,000 for these jobs that are so in demand. That's almost $20,000 more than a regular college graduate without the debt. So, we are seeing an excitement for these jobs. In the second -- in President Trump's second administration, we have already created 400,000 new registered apprenticeships. So, the demand is there. People see the construction coming back. They're excited about the manufacturing coming back. And we just are doing everything we can to skill them so they can get these jobs immediately and that U.S. workers can rely on a U.S. workforce. And that's exactly what we want. [00:08:05] Speaker 4: So, before we let you go, I've got to ask you about this. While the economy is going gangbusters here, out in Chicago, things aren't going so well. In fact, the economic environment is so bad that the Chicago Bears are moving to Indiana. Here is Governor Mike Braun talking about that. [00:08:24] Speaker 7: That is what happens when you are -- have a deaf ear, Pritzker, their legislature. Yeah. Three years they've been trying to get them to actually weigh in on it. Six months, they came and saw we move at the speed of business, not government. We've got a triple A credit rating. Where would you want to be the next 50 years? When they do come to Hammond, Indiana, they're going to get a lot more stadium for the money they spend. They're going to be in a place that's got a triple A credit rating with the hottest economy in the Midwest. [00:08:57] Keith Sonderling: So, the Bears are leaving. Well, and they're going to a state that has less regulation and higher wages. And, you know, that's what you look at there. And obviously, this is an employment issue. I can take everything back to our world. And those are going to be high-paying jobs, not only for constructing a stadium in Indiana under Governor Braun's leadership there, leaving Illinois. So, as we continue to see the Democrat states over-regulate, have more taxes, have employment laws that are impossible to comply with, it's just going to continue to drive those workers out of the states. [00:09:32] Speaker 5: Right, Dignal Labor Secretary Keith Sunderling. Mr. Secretary, thank you for your time and great insight into those numbers.