The latest Breaking Battlegrounds episode dives into one of the most important economic indicators of the month — the U.S. jobs report — and what it reveals about where we’re really headed. Hosts Chuck Warren and Sam Stone are joined by Gary Gigi, seasoned financial expert, former mayor, and president of Gigi Capital Management, to break down what the numbers mean for everyday Americans.
This month’s report was a surprise — and not the good kind. Economists were expecting around 75,000 new jobs, but the report showed only 22,000. Even more troubling, previous months were revised downward, with June turning negative. Unemployment ticked up from 4.2% to 4.3%, signaling a slowing labor market.
Gary explains why this report is so critical: it could give the Federal Reserve the “green light” to finally lower interest rates later this month. But the question is, will they cut by a quarter-point or a half-point — and what signal will that send to the markets?
The conversation goes far beyond the headlines. Chuck, Sam, and Gary challenge the conventional wisdom that job creation drives inflation, arguing instead that government overspending and money printing are the true culprits. They point to the late 1980s and 1990s as proof: the U.S. experienced years of explosive job growth without runaway inflation.
They also dig into the quality of jobs being created under the Biden administration — noting that most new positions have been in government, health care, and leisure, not in the private sector industries that build long-term prosperity. With 1.4 million government jobs added under Biden, taxpayers are footing the bill for a growing bureaucracy, while manufacturing and higher-paying sectors lag behind.
This is an episode that cuts through the noise to explain where the economy is really going, what’s working, and what needs to change if we want a strong, sustainable recovery.
Transcript
**Sam Stone: **Welcome to the podcast portion of Breaking Battlegrounds. Here's Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone. Joining us as he frequently does now pretty much most weeks, we've got Gary Gigi, seasoned financial expert, former mayor and president of Gigi Capital Management. Gary, we love having you on because we get to talk about all this nerdy economic stuff that nobody else seems to understand. So we appreciate your perspective. Talking a little bit, tell us a little bit about the monthly jobs report from this morning. What what that indication means and where it says the economy is going.
**Gary Gigi: **Yeah, I think that this report is so widely watched. It's so very important, guys. And so there is some controversy in terms of the data. And we'll get into that in a minute. But today's report was supposed to show a gain of around 75,000 jobs created. Turned out to be 22,000 jobs created. But then when you actually look at the last couple of months revisions, June was revised to a negative 13. July was revised up 6,000.
So it was a poor showing. Now, you have to dig into the data a little bit to get some, I guess, more opinions on this. So the unemployment rate ticked up from 4.2 to 4.3 percent. So that shows a little bit more of unemployed people. All of this needs to be looked through the lens of how is the Federal Reserve going to view this report? And does it give them a green light now in order to lower interest rates this month.
And I think the answer to that is yes, it does. Just because it clearly is showing a labor market that is slowing. And I think I mentioned last time, in my opinion, the Fed should have already moved using their own language. They say that they're tight, which means that they're holding money too tight. And the reason for that was that they think that in tariffs could create inflation.
Well, I don't believe the Fed is supposed to make policy based on what could happen. They're supposed to make policy on what is happening. And so today's jobs report, I think it does give the Fed the opportunity and probably they will lower interest rates later this month. It's just a question of are they going to do it by a quarter of a point or are they going to do it by a half of a point? I think the market would really embrace either.
But a half a point may actually spook it a little bit because that may tell the market, are behind here and we're trying to catch up. And the market doesn't like to hear that. It likes to hear stability and the market would have preferred that the Fed lowered earlier, but they have not.
**Chuck Warren: **So I think the one bright spot I see in this is since Trump fired the former commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics and appointed the new person, I think if the numbers had been large, people would have thought that they're lying about the numbers, right? So I know that just sounds weird to think, but I think the markets can say, okay, I can trust this
**Sam Stone: **If there's an underlying order there, would assume it's make sure that the jobs numbers go up after they're revised.
**Chuck Warren: **So it tells me this is an accurate trail, which I think if they had been like 100,000 people would said Trump's making up numbers. Does that make sense? So now today it's just, now he's just crashing the economy. So, I do think people can trust the numbers coming out of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That's one. Two, isn't this basically what Trump, I'm not Trump, excuse me, what Biden and Powell wanted to happen is to have this basically non-job growth to lower inflation? I mean, isn't this what they've basically been trying to do for three years?
**Gary Gigi: **It is. think that their interpretation of what creates inflation was completely wrong though.
**Chuck Warren: **Right.
**Gary Gigi: **In my opinion, I agree with Milton Friedman, which is that inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon, which means it's created by the Fed printing too much money. And, and, and so I, my opinion, whatever it's worth is that Biden and his team were misinterpreting how to view inflation and they were thinking that it's created by the number of jobs created or not created. I think most economists think that it's a monetary phenomenon and it comes from the government creating too much money, printing up too much money, spending too much money, all of that.
**Sam Stone: **If it was a jobs growth related thing, wouldn't the period from say 1984 to 2000, 1998 I guess I would say, 2000 that era, that was an area of extraordinary jobs growth for 15, 20 years, that would have then been an inflationary event, right? I mean, if you're saying that causing inflation, 15, 20 years of steady job growth would clearly have caused inflation.
**Gary Gigi: **Sam, you're singing my song. That is exactly right. Is that we had probably the best economic environment in our lifetime back in the late 90s and early and late 80s and all the way up to the dot com bubble. So many jobs were created. So much great economic activity happened. I don't remember much of a whiff about inflation at that point at all. fact, inflation was really low. This just goes back to the point where think where inflation is created by government spending too much too much money and and that happened during the Biden era.
**Chuck Warren: **Yeah and frankly the job reports Sam and I have talked a lot of we've been on this show four years now and we've been talking about the job reports a lot. I mean the primary the three categories of jobs created under the Biden years were government jobs health care and Like travel and leisure right. Travel and leisure jobs are not going to buy a home. Okay, most those health care jobs are not going to buy a home.
The problem with government jobs is that all of us talking have to pay taxes to afford those government jobs. And under Biden, there are 1.4 million government jobs created in his first three years. So the job reports have been basically what this report was this month, if you're being honest about it. And plus they also overestimated like 900,000 jobs. I will submit to you, today's job report is an accurate reflection of what's been going on the last two years.
**Gary Gigi:**Yeah, and one thing that's really interesting, is Chuck, you just mentioned hospitality, which has created jobs. Basically, they were recovering from all the jobs lost during COVID. It isn't like it was a net gain. They were just trying to gain back what they lost. But there was a lot of government jobs that were created. This month, interestingly, guys, 15,000 government jobs were lost.
We need to see more manufacturing jobs created. But at the same time, having government jobs shrink, private sector jobs be created, that is a good phenomenon. That's what we want to see is the private sector not necessarily crowding out, but having a much larger share of the employed people, the government having a much smaller share of the employed group of people as well.
**Sam Stone: **I would love to see a law both at the state and federal level that limits the growth of government job to a number, a multiple of the population growth. So you have to have like 80 people or 100 people to create a new government job, right?
**Chuck Warren: **Right.
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