defenders of democracy. i had a conversation with a white house official today and i asked them how tenable is it to continue to have these images and for the president to continue to say we cannot defend these civilians. and that person said the same thing essentially that president biden is saying, which is that s still world war iii and the president has the red line and the red line is he does not want to get into a war. but it shows you that there is frustration inside the democratic party but also this is a president that is trying to be realistic about what that will mean for all americans and that s why we ve also heard the president sort of once again and over and over again tell americans there is a big cost for defending freedom because obviously the domestic politics and all of the economic struggles here are part of the decision that he s making. well, look, i want to get both to the economic front and we have steve leaseman who can explain what s left in the sanctions a
the bottom who are struggling to make ends meet and fill the car with gas and get that full shop in at the grocery store. seitz difficult. however, you cannot deny this is a strong jobs report. remember, it was an economic recovery tied to a pandemic. we are coming out of the pandemic, the economy is recovering, and now we re dealing with the woes that the war as brought us. steve, how do you read this new jobs report? i like it a lot. a couple things i like. you mention it would revisions at the top and the idea that we are indeed bringing people back into the workforce. we had 400,000 come back to the workforce this month, 300,000 last month. so higher wages are bringing people back in. the hope is i guess i underscore that this is a hope, not necessarily a fact yet is that these people come back to the workforce and we ll have enough workers and we can stop bidding up wages perhaps pushing
half a percentage point at its next meeting in may. so, steve, as you know, there s the economy and the real-deal economy, which is people warrant to buy a house or if you re trying to find a place to rent. good luck. so let s just talk about one aspect of this and the decision to release a million barrels of oil a day. how much is that going to make a difference in gas prices? there seems to be a disconnect between what the white house saying and other analysts are saying and how quickly could i would happen, steve? well, it s it s a little more than the drop in a bucket, but a little less than the bucket itself, i d say. the deal is this you know, russia produces about 10 million barrels a day. it exports about 4 million or 5 million of that outside of russia, and so a million helps, and gas prices will come down slowly as a result of this, if they come down at all, because what happens is you have more
along inflation. everyone wants wages to go up but not with prices going up. then the fed has to really, you know, thrust the economy into a recession to break that cycle. we want to have enough workers for jobs that are open. we are getting people back into the workforce. the trouble is, not trouble, but they re being put to work almost immediately when they come to work so that s driving down the unemployment rate to near historic lows. two minutes into the market day. how are the markets reacting, dom? overall, and to steve s point, there is a lot of hope and hope for all of us as americans that things are getting back to normal, but hope is not an investment strategy. traders and investors are looking at numbers like today, trying to figure out if it changes the narrative in the next 6, 12, 18 months not just for the economy but the markets overall. you ve een a pullback from record highs we ve seen not just in the dow and the s&p but the
unclear. so many different points we look at, again, to the real economy, steve. i want to include in that, and i think stephanie talked about it, this disconnect. yes, people s wages are going up but they re not going up as much as inflation is going up. and so their real cost, buying power, essentially, is going down. if we look at a strong economy, if we look at a strong jobs market, when might those two things start to balance out a little more for the average american? as stephanie points out, not the wealthy american but the everyday and struggling american. yeah. a quick point, chris, on what you were talking about with energy. you re right. the natural gas side of things being pressured by the way, by the effort to send liquefied natural gas over to europe to replace russian natural gas. you re right about that, a hit from two sides, both in the gas tank and in the natural gas that s being bought. in terms of the economy and