Labor Sec’y Walsh Pushes Back Against Recession Talks — ‘If We Were in a Recession, Companies Would Be Laying People Off Rather than Hiring Them’

Labor Secretary Marty Walsh on Friday argued against talks of a recession following the U.S. economy reportedly adding 528,000 jobs in July and the unemployment rate falling to 3.5%.

Walsh told “CNN Newsroom” that if the United States were “in a recession, companies would be laying people off rather than hiring them.”

“[C]ertainly something out there today we’re hearing, if we were in a recession, companies would be laying people off rather than hiring them,” Walsh asserted. “We saw people hiring … in big numbers, obviously. I think that a lot of companies are still growing; a lot of companies are still adding people on. We have seen all the jobs that were lost pre-pandemic recovered from the pandemic. We saw the unemployment rate at 3.5% today — the day before the pandemic was 3.6%, so we’re seeing lowering numbers there, and we’re seeing people go back to work.”

“In certain areas, we’re seeing education, local education numbers going higher, we’re seeing retail up, and manufacturing, quite honestly, is probably for me one of the most exciting, biggest surprises we have because we have seen not just that industry recover since the pandemic, but we have seen that go beyond that,” he continued. “And then now, with the CHIPS bill that the president will sign into law next week, we’re going to have the opportunity to really create more opportunities for manufacturing in the United States, particularly around semiconductors.”

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