Return to Transcripts main page

New Day

June Jobs Report; Uvalde Families Outraged over Report; Anthony Loizzi is Interviewed about Cooper Roberts. Aired 8:30-9a ET

Aired July 08, 2022 - 08:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:32:52]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, just seconds ago, the government released the June jobs report.

CNN chief business correspondent Christine Romans is here.

Good news, but.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Look, America's job machine is firing on all cylinders here. And 372,000 jobs added back into the economy. Strongest than expected and in line with the last three months, which have also been very strong. And 3.6 percent unemployment rate. Again, this is the fourth month in a row at 3.6 percent.

When you look at job creation month by month, you guys, I want to look at that bar chart, we do have a couple of revisions. March revised down slightly. April revised down slightly. So that's a 74,000 swing. In the whole grand scheme of things, this is still a very long stretch of very strong job creation.

And 5.1 percent was the wage number. Important to watch. It's not bigger than inflation, of course, but it is showing you that paychecks are still rising, and rising at the fastest pace they have in a long time.

And it looks to me like this is pretty broad-based, the hiring we're seeing. Professional and business services, that was an increase of 74,000 in June. Leisure and hospitality adding back another 64 -- 67,000 jobs. Healthcare, transportation, manufacturing, information systems, I mean, I go down this list and I see jobs created and added all down the line.

Now, where does that leave us? Before this report we had added 7 million jobs in a year. That is a remarkable pace of job creation. That's, you know, half a million a month on average over the past year. That's something the Fed has been trying to cool down. This is part of the inflation story. At some point a very good job market is too good and it becomes an inflation factor for the Fed.

The Fed has been raising interest rates. We thought these numbers would start to slow, but just not yet, you guys.

BERMAN: All right, Christine Romans, we'll let you make your way over here.

Joining us now also, CNN business correspondents Rahel Solomon and Zain Asher.

And, Rahel, I just want to start with this bizarre dichotomy here, which is that everyone wants jobs.

RAHEL SOLOMON, CNN BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Of course.

BERMAN: I mean adding jobs is a great thing, but it's inflationary. That's the problem.

SOLOMON: It's - exactly. It's an asterisk to it. And it's also the fact that demand for workers has just been so incredibly strong. Two jobs for every one, or 1.9 jobs right now for every one person looking.

[08:35:04]

And the reason why this creates a tougher problem for the Fed, a tougher job for the Fed, as Christine rightly pointed out, is that when you have that type of imbalance in terms of demand for workers and supply of workers, companies have to raise wages to incentivize people to work for them. Which is great news for workers, except if you're making more, but you can afford less because of inflation, it's a vicious cycle.

So, the Fed is clearly trying to get ahead of inflation. It's behind the curve. It's behind the ball. And today's jobs report makes it even more hard for them to get a handle on this.

ZAIN ASHER, CNN PERSONAL FINANCE AND BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: And just to add to what Rahel was saying there, I mean when you think about what we were talking about this time last year, the Fed was sort of warning us, look, there are inflationary pressures, but nothing to worry about, nothing to see here.

Earlier this year we were told, yes, we can admit we have a problem, however, 50 basis points should do the trick. Then we got that devastating sort of CPI report last month, 8.6 percent in terms of price increases. The Fed realizes we have to raise rates even more, 75 basis points. So the Fed is under so much pressure right now to get this right, to achieve this so-called soft landing, to cool economic activity without it leading to the big "r" word, a recession.

SOLOMON: Right. And it's interesting, right, because what would a recession look like with the unemployment rate so low, with job demand so strong.

ROMANS: It's mindboggling.

SOLOMON: It's really puzzling a lot of people. ROMANS: It really is. I mean you look at a 3.6 percent unemployment

rate, but there are some who are saying, maybe we could be in a recession right now. You could be in some weird place. And I was talking to some economists about this, this morning, where you have an economy that actually shrinks, which it did in the first quarter, maybe it did in the second quarter, but you still have a raging hot jobs market. It's a very rare, weird situation.

But you don't want the Fed to throw a lot of people out of work if it slows the economy down quickly because that's when recessions really hurt. They raise inequality. People at the lowest end of the income ladder just get decimated in recessions. So, the Fed has to walk this very, very carefully. And I don't know if they have the tools to do it carefully here at this point, right? They're really behind the curve. I mean Ken Rogoff, a renowned economist, this morning told me he's angry at where we are in the economy. They got it so wrong. It didn't have to be this way. And now they have fewer tools to do this. He said that he thinks they blink, actually. That they're going to have to stop these really aggressive rate hikes because you just can't hurt people that badly by throwing them into recession just to cool inflation.

KEILAR: So then - so then what does it look like?

ROMANS: It looks like maybe -

KEILAR: They just pass on doing much?

ROMANS: So if they - if they had - if they had more cautious rate increases from here on out, we would have to all deal with higher inflation for a longer period of time. You have to -- the trade-off here is, do you want to live with inflation, or do you want to live with people losing their jobs? And there is no easy way out.

ASHER: Yes, I mean, it's so important to note, though, that there are many, many factors involved when it comes to sort of looking at the potential for a recession. Obviously, the Fed is going to be squarely focused on the labor market, but they're also going to be looking at what happens with GDP. The technical definition of a recession in this country is two straight quarters of negative GDP. Obviously we saw that in the first quarter. A lot of economists believe that there is a possibility, a possibility that we could see that again. But there are other factors involved, including new factory orders, CPI that we get next week is going to be crucial for the Fed right now. Also consumer spending. Consumer confidence. So many other factors involved in terms of the Fed's ability to look at the bigger picture here.

BERMAN: The nuance, I mean there is so much nuance here, Rahel.

ROMANS: Yes. It's all nuance.

BERMAN: It is all - it's all nuance because you're in a situation where everyone is having to pay more for stuff.

SOLOMON: Yes.

BERMAN: A lot more for stuff. But more people have jobs to get part of the way there. It's just so hard to juggle.

SOLOMON: Well, and it's an interesting point because we also have a lot more in our checking and our savings accounts because we weren't spending in part during the pandemic. So that has led to increased spending, right? And what you - what you can sort of safely conclude is that as long as consumers are still spending, these companies are going to still continue to need workers, right?

And it's also just been such a tight labor market that if you're a company and you've just worked so hard to get these jobs filled, they're going to be really hesitant to let them go until you absolutely have to. So, as long as consumers continue to spend, these companies are going to hold on to their workers and perhaps even continue to hire.

ROMANS: This strong jobs report, look, there are 11 million job openings. So you saw all this job creation and they would hire more. There are 11 million job openings.

I've never seen a moment where the whole world is worried about recession, and workers have their choice of jobs essentially in this kind of a labor market. It's really interesting.

KEILAR: So, what do you do if you're sitting at home, you have a job but you're kind of strapped by inflation? So, what's the takeaway here? What's the long-term we should be hearing (INAUDIBLE)?

ASHER: I mean, you know what, it's so interesting because this time, you know, a year go the president could look at these numbers and tout them and sort of boast about them. Now that's completely changed because the name of the game is inflation. You've got ordinary Americans paying more in terms of higher gas prices, food prices, even though they've saved so much during the pandemic, they're now eating into those savings.

[08:40:06]

So, Biden is going to, obviously, be blamed for this, even though his hands are tied. It's really the Fed that can control this through monetary policy.

BERMAN: But to be clear, he doesn't want -- he wants to be blamed for a good jobs report.

ASHER: Yes.

BERMAN: You celebrate a good jobs report.

ASHER: Normally he would.

BERMAN: He would. It's just that it doesn't help the inflation issue there.

SOLOMON: Well, to your point, it's the nuance of what is a good jobs report in this environment?

ROMANS: Pre-pandemic we would have been -- this would have been banner headlines, a number like this.

ASHER: Yes.

ROMANS: This would have been, you can't believe it, it's a roaring American economy, and that is not -- we look at these numbers like this today and we're like, this needs to slow down a little bit.

BERMAN: All right. All right, Christine, Rahel, Zain, thank you all so much.

ASHER: Of course. (INAUDIBLE).

BERMAN: We're going to have much more ahead on the major breaking news this morning, the assassination of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, shot twice in broad daylight.

More of CNN's special live coverage.

KEILAR: And an eight-year-old shot in the Highland Park July 4th parade shooting now paralyzed, CNN has learned. We'll be joined by a family spokesperson on how he's doing next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:45:13]

BERMAN: A scathing report that essentially concluded that 19 children and two teachers who died in the Uvalde school massacre could have been saved has outraged families of the victims.

CNN's Shimon Prokupecz spoke to some of them. He joins us now.

And, Shimon, these families want the truth, but it's still - it's hard to hear.

SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It's very hard to hear. But, John, the thing that's frustrating them so much, it's the way the information is coming out. Authorities here are not even giving them any kind of meetings, direct meetings with the investigators. They're not giving them a heads up that these reports are coming out and so the families are very frustrated. They're upset. They're angry.

We spoke to the father of a little girl, Jackie Cazares. We spoke to the sister of the teacher, Irma Garcia. Her son, Irma Garcia's son, who spoke - who has spoken for the first time, and also her brother, Irma Garcia's brother, who happens to be a police officer. And, of course, their anger and frustration over the fact that police could not go in is just something that continues to fuel their anger.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

VELMA DURAN, SISTER OF ROBB ELEMENTARY VICTIM IRMA GARCIA: Just because of all the lies, the deceitfulness from the beginning, it was just like putting salt on an open wound. And it's just really hard because there's just so much suffering. And it's hard to grieve when there's no closure. PROKUPECZ: When you say there's no closure, what are you looking for?

DURAN: You know, people to be held accountable. We know that the shooter is dead. There's no one taking accountability. No one.

PROKUPECZ: Jacinto, your daughter (INAUDIBLE).

JACINTO CAZARES, FATHER OF ROBB ELEMENTARY VICTIM JACKIE CAZARES: Yes, sir.

PROKUPECZ: When you hear about some of the new information that's now come out, what are you thinking?

CAZARES: Well, they're pointing the fingers. You know, they didn't do this, they didn't do that. I mean, not being in charge. I mean whoever was there should have done their job, and they didn't. You know, whether it was cowardice or not wanting -- they didn't follow the orders. I mean, I don't know. But, all and all, they should have gone in and stopped him. I mean they're trained - that was their training to stop an active shooter. That's the first thing they're supposed to do. And it's aggravating that they didn't do that.

PROKUPECZ: Do you think that officers were cowards that day?

CAZARES: Yes, sir. I do, yes. I mean, I can't say all of them, but the ones that were in there, obviously they were because they didn't do their job.

PROKUPECZ: I can't even imagine what you're thinking, as a police officer, when you hear about these failures.

MARCUS LOZANO, BROTHER OF ROBB ELEMENTARY VICTIM IRMA GARCIA: I live in San Antonio. It took me 50 minutes to get from San Antonio to there, to come here to Uvalde. They took 77.

I love my brothers in blue, but this is like any profession, you know. This profession is not made for everybody, you know. It's fine and dandy, you know, you graduate from the academy, you get the badge. But when it's time to suit up, when, you know, stare death in the face, you know, they went weak in the knees.

CRISTIAN GARCIA, SON OF ROBB ELEMENTARY VICTIM IRMA GARCIA: One thing I do want is those officers that were in those hallways, I want them to resign.

PROKUPECZ: So you want all those officers gone that were in the hallway?

GARCIA: Yes.

DURAN: Yes.

GARCIA: The minute I heard that my mom was dead, I yelled out, I should have taken that bullet, because I'm in the military. I know what has to be done. I signed up for that. My mom protected those kids, but no one protected her. So, to hold the police department here, they're cowards.

CAZARES: My daughter was a fighter. Took a little bullet to the heart and still fought. She fought hard to stay alive. These cowards couldn't go in.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PROKUPECZ: And, John, you know, we spoke to the mayor earlier this week who said that there could be some changes here to the police department. He, of course, himself, is waiting to get more information.

And the other thing, John, you could see there in the video, we were in a room with at least 50 family members last night, relatives, survivors, family members whose kids survived.

[08:50:05]

We got a chance to talk about some of what their kids are going and it is - are dealing with, and it is just horrific. And those stories are yet to be told. What their kids were seeing, what their kids were feeling, the smells, the sounds, as police officers, some of the kids could hear the police officers outside the door and the officers never came in.

So, there's still a lot of those stories to tell. And, obviously, the accountability and the information that still needs to come, and that is, for them, is just taking too long.

BERMAN: I know you're pushing for these answers, Shimon. Thank you so much for the work that you're doing down there and please give our best to those families.

KEILAR: This morning we're learning more about one of the youngest survivors of the Highland Park shooting, eight-year-old Cooper Roberts, who was shot in the chest during the Fourth of July parade. His spinal cord was severed, leaving him paralyzed from the waist down.

Joining us now is Tony Loizzi. He is the spokesman for Cooper's family.

Tony, thank you so much for being with us.

Can you just tell us how Cooper's doing?

ANTHONY LOIZZI, SPOKESMAN FOR THE ROBERTS FAMILY: Yes. Good morning.

Cooper is still recovering from his most recent surgery, which was on Wednesday night, where they finally were able to close up his belly and then we did get the prognosis that he would be paralyzed from his waist down.

He's still on a ventilator. Last I know he was still sedated. And I think we're hoping that he'll wake up and have some consciousness today. And so to see if we can eventually next step would be to get him off the ventilator.

KEILAR: How many surgeries has he had?

LOIZZI: Offhand, I think we're at about three or four at this time. He had -- his heart was hit, his esophagus was hit, and, obviously, like you said, his spinal cord was severed. So they had to repair the heart and the esophagus first and then they went in to see what they could do about the spinal cord, but, unfortunately, there was not much they could do.

KEILAR: This is one fighter of a little boy. Can you tell us about the road to recovery that he has ahead of him?

LOIZZI: As everybody obviously knows, it's going to be a long road. A lot of therapy, a lot of treatment, potentially more surgeries, and then it's going to be a new normal for him moving forward. Obviously, he won't be able to walk. He was a very active little boy, active in soccer, baseball, loved sports, loved his little -- loves his little brother. They're just like partners in crime, best friends. And it's just going to be a new way of life for him moving forward.

KEILAR: He actually received CPR from a stranger from Texas, who was in Illinois visiting his family. I want to play what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRYANT SIVESS, PARADE ATTENDEE WHO HELPED VICTIMS: He was non- responsive. So, I just prayed over him, tried to help him the best I could.

I tried to get some chest compressions on the boy, and then someone came over and told me they're a doctor. So, I asked him if he could take over. I felt like he was more qualified and my son was missing. And, quite frankly, my mind was there. I was trying to focus -- I couldn't focus. My own son's missing. That was kind of front of mine - top -- top priority.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: He focused enough to get to be that bridge to the doctor. Has anyone in the family or have you been able to touch base with Bryant?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LOIZZI: Not yet, but we've had people reach out and say that when they're ready that they definitely want to set up that connection.

Keely and her husband Jason, the parents, are just so 100 percent focused at being at Cooper's side right now. Keely herself was shot twice in the leg, has had several surgeries, demanded to be discharged so that she could be with her son, Cooper, who was at a different hospital. So, they're just 100 percent focusing on him right now and trying to pull him through this tough time.

KEILAR: Yes. And we know his brother was hit with some shrapnel in the shooting as well. So, Tony, thank you so much for being with us. All of our best to the

family, to Cooper and to Keely as they are recovering. We certainly appreciate you being with us.

LOIZZI: Thank you so much. And any support and help, they do have a Go Fund Me page up, and any and all support would be great. Thank you for having us this morning.

KEILAR: OK. I'll make sure that we get that out on social media, Tony. Thank you, again, for being with us.

LOIZZI: Thank you. Thank you.

KEILAR: So, ahead, CNN's coverage of the assassination of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe continues. The statesman shot to death in broad daylight earlier today. Global reaction is now pouring in.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:59:05]

KEILAR: This week's CNN Heroes is using his retirement savings to feed communities struggling with high grocery prices.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

: We have turned five acres of land right here in the heart of the city into a green oasis that really impacts the quality of life of people that live around here and visits with us.

Most of the people in this neighborhood don't have access to fruits and vegetables that they can readily get.

My main goal is to make sure that marginalized and underserved communities have access to locally grown food that's free of chemicals.

We are more than just a farm. We are about justice, equity, diversity and inclusion.

[09:00:03]

We are changing the dynamics of the way people think about food, the way people use food. This work is changing people's lives.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: You can see Bobby's full story at cnnheroes.com.

And CNN's special live coverage continues right now.