Labor Secretary Marty Walsh on Friday pushed back against recession talk after the U.S. economy reportedly added 528,000 jobs in July and the unemployment rate fell to 3.5 percent.
Walsh told CNN Newsroom that if the United States were “in a recession, companies would be firing people instead of hiring them.”
“[C]”Definitely something out there we’re hearing today, if we were in a recession, companies would be firing people instead of hiring them,” Walsh argued. “We saw people hiring … in large numbers, obviously. I think a lot of companies are still growing. Many companies are still adding people. We have seen all the jobs that were lost before the pandemic regained from the pandemic. We saw the unemployment rate at 3.5% today — the day before the pandemic it was 3.6%, so we’re seeing the numbers come down there and we’re seeing people going back to work.”
“In some areas, we’re seeing education, local education numbers going up, we’re seeing retail going up, and manufacturing, frankly, is probably for me one of the most exciting, biggest surprises that we’ve got because we’ve seen not only that the industry is recovering from the pandemic, but we’ve seen it go beyond that,” he continued. “And now, with the CHIPS bill that the president will sign into law next week, we’ll have an opportunity to really create more opportunities for manufacturing in the United States, particularly around semiconductors.”
Follow Trent Baker on Twitter @MagnifiTrent