On Friday’s “Squawk Box” on CNBC, Chicago Board of Trade floor reporter Rick Santelli downplayed the significance of Friday’s report from the Labor Department declaring the U.S. economy added 223,000 jobs in April, which pushed the unemployment rate to 5.4 percent from 5.5 percent a month earlier.
Santelli said he did not the Fed raising interest rates because of this and that the key number is the U.S. gross domestic product number.
“I don’t think the Fed is going to raise in June no matter what the next number is. And I think we have been bait and switched. We shouldn’t pay so much attention to the job anymore. I know that sounds like heresy. But, it doesn’t matter. If we’re, if our input is on jobs and our input on productivity is low and the output keeps going down, doesn’t really matter. We need to focus on what grows the pie. And obviously, creating the jobs isn’t growing the pie.”
“If the jobs are created in an environment where we’re not productive,” he continued. “So, we have bad policy and we have decent job grow. That’s why the GDP is going to drag and drag and drag. We need to shift our focus. Just like Bernie Sanders. He is a socialist but calls himself an independent. He used to be about jobs, jobs, jobs. But now it really needs to be about growth.”
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