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October Jobs Number; Lessons for Democrats at the Ballot Box. Aired 8:30-9a ET

Aired November 05, 2021 - 08:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[08:30:00]

GABE COHEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Flex the concern from doctors about these long-term neurological problems. And that's not just for patients who have left their jobs. It's also for those who may be suffering in silence at work.

Brianna.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, t\hat's not sustainable long-term and it just tells you if it may be affecting the labor market. I mean this is a huge problem.

COHEN: And these studies, they're still in their infancy, so they really don't know how many people out there are dealing with this.

KEILAR: Yes. Gabe, great report. Gabe Cohen, thank you.

COHEN: (INAUDIBLE).

KEILAR: Rudy Giuliani under oath admitting he did little to nothing to verify his debunked claims of election fraud. The video that was just obtained by CNN.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: And we just got the brand-new jobs numbers. You're going to want to hear this, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

BERMAN: And we do have breaking news. Important breaking news. And a little bit of a change. Some really good, breaking news on the status of jobs in America. The October jobs report just out.

Chief business correspondent Christine Romans here with that.

[08:35:01]

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Getting people back to work in October. This is a good number here, 531,000 net new jobs added back into the economy in October. And the jobless rate falls more than expected to 4.6 percent. Let's look at the trend here. You can see that August and September

were revised higher, John. That means a little bit better hiring than we had feared. Remember, we saw that strong summer and this is the delta variant slowing that brisk job creation, now coming back.

Some economists have been telling me they think that Hurricane Ida might have been a depressive factor in jobs creation. Also kids were just getting back to school. They've been back to school about six weeks now. Maybe that allows some people to go out there and look for work.

How does it look for the recovery? Still down about 4.2 million in the recovery. This is what we've lived through, John, every month, looking at job creation slowly, steadily digging out of this COVID hole here where millions of people were thrown out of work.

The jobless rate, important to look at this one too here, 4.6 percent. That brings us back to the best since the beginning of the pandemic. It was 4.4 percent in March 2020. It's 4.6 percent. That is a sign of progress there.

BERMAN: So, 4.6 percent is a really low unemployment rate.

ROMANS: Yes.

BERMAN: And 500,000 jobs added. That's a lot of jobs added.

ROMANS: It is.

BERMAN: And, 235,000 more were added over the summer. That was revised upward also.

ROMANS: That was revised upward also.

You know, companies have a hunger here to be hiring. That is clear. The problem has been the worker shortage. We'll have to see how, as time passes, that shakes itself out.

You were make a good point in the break. It's not economic, the worker shortage. It is lifestyle. It is the pain and suffering of a year and a half of mass death and what that has done to our daily life.

There are at least 3 million people who are not working because they're afraid of getting the virus. We know from that report we just had on the air that more than a million, according to the Mayo Clinic, are not working because they have long haul COVID. And there are a lot of people who are still worried about their kids at school. So we have -- we have these issues to work through still.

BERMAN: Participation rate, explain what that is and what happened with it?

ROMANS: So this -- so this is the percent of the -- of the population that is working and didn't really move. We did see 104,000 people, though, enter into the workforce. That's a good sign there. We saw wages rise something like 4.9 percent. So you know companies are paying more to get workers back.

And we saw the jobs added was pretty broad based. It was retail and hospitality, it was leisures, it was also in a professional business services that those tend to be higher paying jobs. So we've seen a broad-based better look in October.

BERMAN: I've got to say, the frame of reference is just so jarring when you talk about 500,000 jobs, there would have been a time in our lives that would have -- impossible.

ROMANS: I know.

BERMAN: And now we're just seeing these wild swings.

ROMANS: In normal times, 500,000 jobs added, we would be screaming from the rooftops about the engine of the American economy burning. But you can see where we've come here.

So it's all about context and perspective, isn't it.

BERMAN: All right.

Brianna.

KEILAR: All right, let's talk about this now with CNN chief White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins and CNN White House correspondent John Harwood.

It's actually Harwood's birthday today.

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes.

KEILAR: So we got you 531,000 jobs. It's a pretty good gift, right?

COLLINS: It's a very gift -- good gift.

JOHN HARWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Thank you.

KEILAR: You're very welcome.

OK, this -- I mean this is huge.

HARWOOD: It's very good news for the Biden administration. They had a couple of bad jobs reports. We saw from the numbers today they weren't quite as bad as we thought at the time. But it signifies a turning of the corner on the pandemic, at least for the moment. They've been expecting that the -- as the delta variant fades, they were going to get better news on jobs. And they expect better news on growth in the fourth quarter. Two percent in the third quarter. We're expecting around 4 percent in the fourth quarter. And for next year.

So that presents the possibility that Joe Biden has a much brighter story to tell than he's been able to tell so far. Still have big inflation concerns. And that's something on voters' minds. But for the moment this is a good news for the Biden administration as the House is getting ready to move his program. KEILAR: Inflation concerns. Supply chain concerns. They've countered

some of this with the child tax credit and other assistance. But they really needed this good news.

KEILAR: Yes. They desperately needed this good new. I mean it has been a very rough spell for this White House. Something that Democrats, you know, had been saying privately behind the scenes after Tuesday's election, everyone was saying it publicly, and there were Democrats who were going after the president for his agenda, saying he needs to be focused on inflation and the supply chain issues and the labor shortages.

And in this jobs report, it doesn't look like the participation, the labor participation rate, changed that much. That's something, obviously, the White House is going to be watching. But the fact that this has exceeded what economists were predicting was going to happen by about 100,000 jobs is very welcome news for this White House because it comes at a time, of course, where the president has been under criticism for exactly this, the economy, and what's going to happen and how long it's going to take to get back to normal.

And so the president is set to speak this morning on this, we should note. It should be a much different tone than the last time, the last time the jobs report came out in September. And so this is also the first time since July, I think, that the jobs report has not undercut what the estimate was going to be. So that is also something that will be very welcome news for a White House that desperately needs it.

[08:40:00]

HARWOOD: And, Brianna, it underscores the centrality of COVID to the mood of the American people right now. The social disruptions, economic disruptions driven by COVID were a huge factor in those election returns that we saw earlier this week that were so bad for the Democratic Party. If they can put the COVID pandemic in the rear view mirror to a significant degree next year, and then the economy starts coming back faster -- Mark Zandi, who you had on earlier, has told me that if, in fact, we see a continued ebbing of the pandemic, we're going to get a million a month job creation for a couple of months. That would begin to create a virtuous cycle that -- the at could be welcome news for the White House and for the Democratic Party.

KEILAR: Yes, does it pay off for them politically? We'll have to see in this crucial year ahead.

Kaitlan, Harwood, again, happy birthday, friend.

COLLINS: Happy birthday.

HARWOOD: Thank you.

KEILAR: Thanks for coming on, on your birthday.

COLLINS: Where would you rather be than a NEW DAY panel on your birthday? KEILAR: Right. Yes, where would you rather be?

HARWOOD: I think of it as a grim milestone.

KEILAR: We're here to brighten it. Thanks, John.

So, coming up, is wokism to blame for Democratic losses in this week's elections?

BERMAN: And a Capitol insurrectionist bragged that she wouldn't get jail time because she's white and blonde. Well, the judge didn't quite see it that way.

Look who's here to weigh in.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:45:36]

BERMAN: All right, you're looking at live pictures of the House floor, where President Biden's legislative agenda will face key votes today. We think it really looks like it's going to happen. All this after Democrats saw a disappointing election results in Virginia and New Jersey. They won in New Jersey, but not nearly by as much as they were hoping.

Democratic strategist James Carville has a theory on what went wrong.

Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAMES CARVILLE, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: What went wrong is this stupid wokeness. All right, don't just look at Virginia and New Jersey, look at Long Island, look at Buffalo, look at Minneapolis, even look at Seattle, Washington. I mean this defund the police lunacy, this take Abraham Lincoln's name off the schools, I mean that -- people see that. And it is just really -- have a suppressive effect all across the country, the Democrats. Some of these people need to go to a woke detox center or something. They -- their -- the expression of language that people just don't use and there's a backlash and a frustration at that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Joining us now, CNN's host of "DON LEMON TONIGHT," Don Lemon. He is the author of "This is the Fire: What I Say to My Friends About Racism." And I should note also, Louisiana native, as is James Carville there.

DON LEMON, CNN HOST, "DON LEMON TONIGHT": I was just going to say, I remember the first time I saw James Carville, it was in a bookstore near College Drive at Baton Rouge, Louisiana, as I was attending. I was like, that was James Carville and his wife both there. So, yes.

BERMAN: What do you think about what he said? LEMON: Look, I have a lot of respect for James Carville. And I think

what he says, I understand the sentiment of what he's saying. I don't necessarily agree with all of it because, listen, us older people, you know, we may think wokism is some -- oh, my gosh, I don't understand all the language around this. Defund the police, I agree more than 100 percent with him. Defund the police was a stupid slogan and should never have been brought into the political spotlight, at least to the political realm. It was an activist term.

But as far as being woke and wanting equality for people who were in underserved communities or for minorities or for women, I don't necessarily agree with that.

I do think that it scares people. It scares older people. It scares older white people. They don't know how to react in this new environment of people with pronouns and all of that.

Yes, I do think that Democrats can go too far with some of those things. I do think that they can be preaching and they think that everyone is where they are on the spectrum when it comes to understanding what's happening in society. They're not. But I do understand the frustration of progressives when it comes to equality and wanting people to understand what it's like to be a minority in this society and wanting agency.

But, is that a bad thing? No. If you're, you know, pushy about it and if you, you know, if you -- if you don't understand where people are, you don't meet people where they are, I can understand that. But I'm not sure what the suppressive effect it had on this election, especially when you're dealing something -- with something like CRT that people use as a boogie man, that wasn't necessarily real. It was a manufactured sort of outrage about it. I can understand, you know, why people say, you know, what the heck is he talking about? CRT wasn't even a real thing.

BERMAN: It's not even -- I'm also just not sure it was necessarily decisive in the election.

LEMON: Yes.

BERMAN: It may be that people agree with him, but there's the economy, there was the pandemic, there was Biden's approval rating.

LEMON: Yes. Yes.

BERMAN: All those other things, which you could argue may have played a bigger role.

LEMON: Yes, I agree. Can you believe that?

BERMAN: I don't know. Is Brianna here?

LEMON: Brianna's in agreement? What is going on?

KEILAR: I am here. I was stunned into silences by the agreement.

OK, no, so, but this -- look, the word "woke," Don, you know, it's been --

LEMON: Yes. I don't like that term, Brianna, by the way.

KEILAR: Well, I know, I was going to say, it's been bastarized (ph), right?

BERMAN: You offended him.

KEILAR: It's been weaponized --

LEMON: Yes.

KEILAR: This idea of wokism. But it's been weaponized effectively --

LEMON: That's true.

KEILAR: Which means that there is an audience. There is an audience. There is a receptiveness and not just on the right, but in the middle, don't you think?

LEMON: Yes. Well, I think that wokism and cancel culture, those are terms that the -- that the right wing have used to define a certain group of people that they want to demonize, or a certain way of thinking that they want to demonize people who don't want to be checked on their behavior and, you know, that just -- they aren't where we are now. A society is in a completely different place. And so you -- if you do something and say something and you -- and you have behavior that is appalling, you can't say, well, cancel culture, they're coming to cancel me.

[08:50:02]

No, it's consequences.

So, I -- look, I understand that, you know, it is easy to co-opt the right wings messaging. They're very good at messaging. But I -- quite frankly, I don't -- I resent the term cancel culture. I'm sorry, as a minority, as a gay man, I resent that term cancel culture, I resent the term wokism because I -- look, there are so people who are so woke that they need a nap. I understand that. Everything is like rah, rah, rah, they're so far to the left. But that's not where every -- that's not where people are. And that's usually activists. And I think, yes, we do need to let activists be activists. The problem is when it becomes a problem for politics when it starts to -- when people can't get what they want done because people are defining them with those terms.

BERMAN: I'm not sure this is totally disconnected from this discussion. I want to talk about Jennifer Ryan, who is a convicted Capitol insurrectionist --

LEMON: Yes.

BERMAN: Who, back in March, thought she was going to get nothing.

LEMON: Yes. BERMAN: She said in March, definitely not going to jail, she wrote on Twitter. Sorry, I have blonde hair, white skin, a great job, a great future, and I'm not going to jail. Sorry to rain on your hater parade. I did nothing wrong.

Well, I think she just got convicted and sentenced to jail yesterday, right?

LEMON: Yes. She's getting 60 days. That's -- that's the maximum.

BERMAN: And now this is what she said outside the court yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JENNIFER RYAN, PLEADED GUILTY TO ALLEGEDLY DEMONSTRATING INSIDE THE CAPITOL: I think that that is a travesty. I think that everybody should be able to treat -- tweet without being persecuted and treated like crap. So, it's -- you know, watch what you tweet because if you tweet, you can go to jail.

I regret ever tweeting. But, you know, it's a free country and I'm allowed to say, you know -- I'm allowed -- it's free speech.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: I guess she's saying -- suggesting somehow that her tweet about being blonde and white, you know, added to her sentence of some kind. But, generally speaking, what do you think of all this?

LEMON: What is the wokism version of that? That's what we should be concerned about. That sort of pervasive attitude in society, that it's not what I did, it's not that I broke into the Capitol or went into the Capitol when I wasn't supposed to, it's not that I participated in an insurrection, it is that it is my right to be able to tweet whatever I want, to be able to act the way I want, to be able to do that and go into the Capitol, to be able to be, quite frankly, a racist, because the whole idea about wokism and cancel culture is that people don't want to be called what they are.

And so if you call someone what they are, obvious from her reaction there and from what she tweeted and what she did, that she's a racist. Oh, my gosh, you're so woke. We're not racists. You're trying to cancel us because of -- we -- because we want our freedom.

So what is the definition of the version of that when you're coming up with terms like wokism and cancel culture? That woman is, quite frankly, flat out delusional if she doesn't understand what she did and she doesn't think that what she did was bad and if she doesn't think that she should be -- have to go to jail for doing something that is illegal because she is white and blonde and she has money.

By the way, she flew there on a private plane to go to an insurrection. So, what is that? Entitlement? Oh, I can't say that because I'm too woke.

BERMAN: It's a -- LEMON: Look, give me a damn -- give me a -- sorry, it's not 10:00 at night. Give me a gosh darn break, for the morning crowd.

BERMAN: Mercy.

KEILAR: Ah, I will say --

LEMON: Yes.

KEILAR: Let me try it this -- this time, Berman.

Don --

LEMON: Figure out the woke version of what that is. That's what we need to be dealing with. That's what we need to be concerned about. Not people wanting equality and trying to, you know, patrol people's language about how they feel about what's happening in the culture. That sort of attitude is what we need to be fighting against. The racists, the entitled people, that's what it is. And that's not being a liberal lefty. That's just living in reality.

Let's figure out where we are in society and where we're going to go and stop worrying about some terms that the right wing coined and they have been great at delivering the message. Worry about the racists and the bigots.

KEILAR: I was -- and if this is you at 8:53 a.m., Don, I just can't wait to see how on fire you are tonight at 10:00.

But, look, I will say this to you, Don, thank you for --

LEMON: 11:00, Jake Tapper.

KEILAR: And I know this will land, Berman, thank you for waking up for us, Don.

LEMON: I woke up for you.

But, listen, Jake Tapper stole my hour at 10:00 tonight. And they didn't tell you that with this tea and crumpets that they -- they delivered him this morning.

BERMAN: All right. Well, Don, we appreciate you being here.

KEILAR: It's a good special, though.

BERMAN: You can almost always watch Don Lemon at 10:00 at night.

LEMON: I'll be on at 11:00. I'll be on at 11:00.

KEILAR: Not tonight, tomorrow.

BERMAN: Tonight at 11:00.

Here's what else to watch today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ON SCREEN TEXT: 10:15 a.m. ET, President Biden speaks.

11:00 a.m. ET, Funeral of Gen. Colin Powell.

2:30 p.m. ET, White House press briefing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[08:55:04]

BERMAN: Today, the former secretary of state, General Colin Powell, will be laid to rest. President Biden, Obama, and Bush all expected to attend.

Stay tuned for CNN's special coverage.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: One of our former CNN Heroes is making an impact right in the epicenter of homelessness in L.A. on skid row.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SHIRLEY RAINES, CNN HERO: (INAUDIBLE) is just being seen, being touched, being cared for.

You want a face mask?

It plants a little bit of self-esteem in them so they feel like, OK, maybe no one knows I'm homeless because I have a fresh cut.

[09:00:01]

Good to see y'all. Happy Saturday, team.

I address them as kings and queens, because that is who they are. We want to make them feel beautiful.

What you want?