undercut the argument that the u.s. economy is already in recession. yes, gdp contracted in back-to-back quarters at the start of this year, but, no, economies in recession don t add half a million jobs in a single month. that doesn t mean there aren t obstacles ahead. remember, the economy doesn t have a jobs problem. it has an inflation problem, and there s nothing about the july jobs report that changes the fact that consumer prices are rising at the fastest pace in 40 years. in fact, this unexpected surge of hiring will only make it harder for the federal reserve to tame inflation. the fed has been trying to slow the jobs market down to a more sustainable pace. instead, the exact opposite has happened. all of this suggests the fed may need to aggressively raise interest rates in the months ahead. the more the fed does, the greater the risk it ee sentually slows the economy into a recession. matt egan, thanks so much. joining us right now is cnn global economic analyst who is
sentiment, it s 200,000 jobs stronger than even the modest forecaster was predicting. payrolls have now returned to their february 2020 levels. that means all jobs lost to covid have now been recovered. a the unemployment rate has dropped to below 3.5%. to get a lower figure, you have to go back to when richard nixon was in the white house. this understood cuts the argument that the u.s. economy is already in recession. economies that are in recession don t add half a million jobs in a single month. that doesn t mean there aren t obstacles ahead. remember, the economy doesn t have a jobs problem. it has an inflation problem. and there s nothing about the july jobs report. in fact, this unexpected surge of hire willing only make it harder for the federal reserve to tame inflation. the fed has been trying to slow the jobs market down to a more
number. and here is the best part. no one saw it coming. 528,000 jobs added in july, the consensus among economists was less than half of that. and there was whisper numbers on wall street for basically no growth at all. instead, we get strong hiring across the board. and this blockbuster jobs growth has lowered the unemployment rate to 3.5%. if you want a lower figure you ve got to go back to 1969 under richardnixon. so today s report should quiet the talk of a recession. gdp did contract, but economies in recession don t add half a million jobs in a single month. but remember, the american economy, it doesn t have a jobs problem. it has an inflation problem. and the federal reserve has been trying, trying pretty hard, to get inflation under control by cooling off the jobs market. they say that these kinds of numbers are just not consistent with healthy inflation.
unprecedented role out of paxlovid, we ve seen deaths drop 90% since he s been here. schools are open, businesses are open. america feels more like itself again since that, with all that work, and now we ve got coming up in less than two weeks, if all the approvals are finalized, vaccines for kids 0 to 5, we re going to finish the vaccination and be the the first major country in the world to give mrna vaccines to the youngest children among us. i think that s an important step forward. we inherited an economy that was dead in the water, 20 million americans were relying on unemployment benefits to feed their families when we got here. that s down 95%. we ve got the unemployment rate down to 3.6%, nearly a 50-year low, so we ve solved the jobs problem. look, that means we ve got this big inflation problem, and we re tackling that now, too. that s the next big economic problem after covid, after jobs. now we have to beat inflation. the president has laid out a plan to do that. we re exe