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RAY SUAREZ:Overall, it was the best jobs report since 2009.
To help us look at developments big and small behind the numbers, we turn to Diane Swonk, senior managing director and chief economist for Mesirow Financial, a diversified financial services firm based in Chicago, and Daniel Gross, global business editor and a columnist for Newsweek and The Daily Beast.
Diane Swonk, what does it tell you that even amidst all the Washington crises and the deadlines and the cliffhangers, job growth remains solid?
DIANE SWONK, Mesirow Financial Holdings, Inc.: Well, it is certainly welcome news to see, particularly the private sector generating almost 250,000 jobs during the month, and, as you noted earlier, the increase in jobs in the construction sector, some fall-over on the imprint of housing there, also on manufacturing and the manufacturing sector.
Lumber production was up, employment, along with construction materials. So you are seeing that spillover of the housing market finally showing signs of healing after being dormant so long. We're also seeing some of the aftermath of superstorm Sandy in there as well.
But I think it's important that we're seeing really more broad-based gains in the private sector than we have seen in the past. And that's encouraging. The problem is, it is amidst all this uncertainty. And we have yet to see the other shoe to drop in terms of the cuts in spending, particularly in defense and health care going forward.
RAY SUAREZ:Dan Gross, again, through all these things, even through the election, even through the aftermath, job growth has remained pretty consistent.
DANIEL GROSS, Newsweek/ The Daily Beast Yes.
Well, I think the political system in the last year-and-a-half has really vastly overstated its impact on the job market and the economy at large.
People thought when we had that debt crisis in Aug. of 2011, that we were going to go into another recession. We didn't.
A lot of pundits kept saying, oh, no one is going to hire because there is an election. No one is going to hire because there is a fiscal cliff. No one is going to hire because of Obamacare. No one is going to hire because of the sequester.
None of that turns out to be true. When you get rising demand—we have had sustained growth in this economy going on almost four years now. So when more customers show up, you hire people to do the work. Our exports remain at quite high levels. They have bounced back very sharply.
And you add what Diane was talking about, the housing market, which is becoming a pretty substantial contributor to economic growth, not just through the hiring of people for construction jobs. But the higher volume of sales is more work for brokers and insurance agents and mortgage brokers and that whole industry.
And, of course, rising home prices, which we are getting, makes people feel better and in a better position to consume.
RAY SUAREZ:Diane Swonk, behind those two big aggregated numbers, 236,000 and 7.7 percent, the monthly report includes a lot of other data. What would you turn us to, to look at -- to get a bigger picture of the job market overall?
DIANE SWONK:Well, again, it gets us to this issue of good, but not good enough.
I do agree that the economy is in a recovery, and I think we could be at a turning point where we see more substantial job growth if we don't have some of the cuts that we have hanging out there. That said, I think it's really important to understand the sort of ongoing pain in the economy as well. The 7.7 percent, we got there in part by some—the wrong ways to get there, not the right ways.
