White House National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett joins 'Squawk Box' to discuss the May jobs report, state of the economy, impact on the Fed's interest rate outlook, and more.
What Kevin Hassett said
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Kevin Hassett, Director of the National Economic Council, said the May jobs report shows a job market 'hitting on all cylinders,' citing 170,000 jobs added and upward revisions of about 100,000. He attributed the strength to supply-side policies like expensing for new factories and no tax on tips or overtime, arguing this is not a Phillips curve situation, so the Fed can wait before acting. He downplayed the government jobs gain, noting it was all local, while federal employment has been cut by over 300,000. He pushed back on Cramer's suggestion he favored rate hikes, clarifying he supports rate cuts and believes the Fed has been 'behind the curve.' On oil, he said inventories are about a billion barrels short but not a problem until later. On AI, he said new college grad hiring has picked up and companies using AI are booming.
Key takeaways
Hassett said the job market is 'hitting on all cylinders' with 170,000 jobs and upward revisions of about 100,000.
He said the Fed has been 'behind the curve' and there is 'plenty of room' for rate cuts.
Federal employment has been cut by more than 300,000 workers, a permanent reduction in taxes.
3:13And I am surprised that you're not addressing those people, the people who make less than $40,000 in this country who need help, have seen SNAP benefits decline, who have the higher gasoline prices because of a war in Iran. What about them?
5:23... the like, if things continue in Iran at where they are and the rate continues to be largely closed, there does seem to be a lot of concern about inventories and the fact that we could see far higher oil prices. How are you figuring that?
Look at you. I don't see you recursively self-improving.
Let's get back to the jobs numbers. Jim says we're joined this morning with the first reaction from the White House with National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett. Kevin, happy Friday. Good to have you back.
I'll tell you what impressed a lot of people were the revisions because the prior 15 prints, 12 have been revised down. We got an up one on this. What do you think that means?
You know, I think that basically what we're seeing is an enormous amount of positive momentum in hiring. Obviously, you're right that a couple of 170 in a row, that's a great couple of months. But then having upward revisions of around 100,000 means that this is a job market that's hitting on all cylinders. And it's our belief that this is happening because of all the supply side policies that the President has put in place. We've got the big, beautiful bill with the expensing for new factories. We've got, you know, no tax on tips, no tax on overtime. So people are out there working harder. We've got quit rates down to about as low as we've ever seen. We've got layoffs about as low as we've ever seen. This is about the strongest market of my lifetime and of your lifetime. And again, I don't think it's a classic Phillips curve, here goes inflation, it's going to take off kind of jobs market. It's a supply side driven job market boom, which I think means that the Fed can watch the inflation numbers and wait a while before it does anything about it.
Not really, because if you notice, it was all local governments. And so we've cut the federal government employment by more than 300,000 workers. And that's a permanent reduction in taxes that Americans are going to have to pay for people who are at times not very much productive at all. But, you know, the state and local governments, they got a lot of stuff to do, trash removal and everything else. There's also things that happen in the summer around the end of the school year. So it's a pretty typical thing to see the, you know, a big swing in local employment around the beginning of the summer and the end of the summer.
Kevin, I'm a little surprised at you. You sound like you're part of that group which says we have to have rate hikes. And that's disappointing. And I say it's disappointing because if you're listening to the Dollar General call, you listen to the below the five below call, if you listen to the Dollar Tree call, if you listen to the Ollie's Bargain call, if you listen to the Burlington call, you're going to hear things that are quite different from what you say, which is there's a group of people in this country. If you listen to the people who make homes and try to sell them, a group of people in this country are very disenfranchised. I would have thought that you would have realized the need for a rate cut to be able to help the people at the lower part of the K, instead of joining the group of people who think we ought to have a quarter point rate cut by the end of the year. That is surprising to me.
Oh, I think you misunderstood what I was saying. What I'm saying is that this is not a Phillips curve jobs number. This is a supply side jobs number, which means you can have growth and low inflation. And so this is a kind of story that suggests that the Fed shouldn't hike rates. It shouldn't at all. And it'll have room as it watches the numbers to cut rates. Your term.
13 more exchanges in this transcript
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Hassett, K. (2026, June 5). NEC Director Kevin Hassett on May jobs report: This is a job market that's hitting on all cylinders [Interview transcript]. CNBC Television. CEOInterviews.AI. https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/963564/
MLA
Kevin Hassett. "NEC Director Kevin Hassett on May jobs report: This is a job market that's hitting on all cylinders." CNBC Television, 5 Jun. 2026. Transcript, CEOInterviews.AI, https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/963564/.
BibTeX
@misc{hassett2026_963564,
author = {Kevin Hassett},
title = {NEC Director Kevin Hassett on May jobs report: This is a job market that's hitting on all cylinders},
howpublished = {Interview transcript, CNBC Television. CEOInterviews.AI},
year = {2026},
month = {jun},
url = {https://ceointerviews.ai/interview/963564/},
note = {Speaker-attributed transcript with timestamps}
}
