White House touts strong April 2019 jobs report
National Economic Council director Larry Kudlow says President Trump’s economic policies have led the U.S. into a tremendous prosperity cycle.
National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow denounced Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., Sunday after the 2020 White House candidate said President Trump was "taking credit for a recovery that started under [former President Barack] Obama."
"What Mr. Booker and some others are saying is simply not true factually," Kudlow told Fox News' "America's News HQ".
Kudlow spoke two days after the publication of the April jobs report, which showed that the American economy added 263,000 jobs last month while the unemployment rate fell to 3.6 percent, the lowest since 1969. Despite the rosy numbers, Booker insisted that the boom's effects were not being felt across all economic levels.
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"You have people on my block – I'm the only presidential candidate that lives in a low-income inner-city neighborhood. Talk to folks, and they'll tell you: 'I have to work two jobs just to try to keep myself in housing. And, by the way, that housing isn't reflected in any of my family,'" Booker said on CNN's "State of the Union." "Americans are struggling. Their wages are too low ... for the last four decades, I don't think they've budged that much ... We've got to make sure that this is a shared recovery, because, right now, it definitely is not."
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Kudlow emphatically begged to differ.
"I'm just gonna use the damn facts," he told Fox News' Leland Vittert. "On the wage front, [average hourly earnings are] rising 3.2 percent overall. The bottom [poorest] quarter [of workers], 4.4 percent increase, the top quarter, 3.5 percent [increase]."
"First of all, both are good and a rising tide is lifting all boats," Kudlow added. "But the point I'm making is, it's the blue collar people that have the fastest job expansion and it's the blue collar people that have the best wage growth."
Kudlow reacted to the April jobs report in a video posted on the White House's Instagram page Friday afternoon.
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"Wow! Low unemployment, high jobs, high wages, big consumer confidence, major productivity and no inflation," said an enthusiastic Kudlow while gesturing toward the camera. "It's totally awesome. We're killing it on the economy."
"I don't know how I had the energy to do that," Kudlow said Sunday. "I just walked out and, I don't know, man, let her rip. These are blowout numbers. The economy is going great guns and POTUS' [Trump's] policies, to be perfectly honest, his policies to rebuild this economy have entered us into a tremendous prosperity cycle. And I don't see any end to it right now."
Fox News' Leland Vittert contributed to this report.
