We begin with the economy.

Annual revisions from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show the U.S. jobs market was weaker than originally reported.

The bureau says employers actually added 911,000 fewer jobs betwee April 2024 and March 20th, 25.

So how many jobs did Nevada actually add, and what does this new data mean for the Federal Reserve, which could announce interest rate cuts on September 17th?

For that, we bring in Joh Restrepo, principal of Las Vegas based Rccg economics, and Andrew Woods, director of UNLV's center for Business and Economic Research.

Gentlemen, welcome back to Nevada.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Amber.

So the report that I just brought up, 911,000 fewer jobs added in the US and in Nevada, 3100 fewer jobs added.

Does that mean much to you?

What do you think of that, Andrew?

Well it means a lot in terms of what we're looking at for trend and rebasing our numbers.

You know, these revisions are common.

They always have been happening for decades.

This fiscal methods that the BLS uses, you know, have to be checked with what they d is they actually check out with unemployment data coming out of the states.

So the revisions weren't surprising.

I thin what's been more concerning over the summer is that we've seen that hiring has slowed, and then the number of job openings has started to slow down, too, as well.

Nationally in the economy.

You have seen a slight tic uptick in the unemployment rate.

Of course, the it hasn't gone up as much as maybe some have forecasted, which maybe also still points to that firm are holding onto their workers, but they're not letting go of their workers.

So we're kind of at this weird point in the economic and business cycle where the economy's chugging along, but they're not hiring, employ workers as a as much as they were in years past, which means a slowing economy, but it's still positive.

So what do you do with that information?

And where do we go from here?

Which I know it's why John and I are on here to talk about.

Yeah.

John, where do we go with this information you make of that info?

Yeah I do.

Let me add to what, Anderson, remember this correction that we just saw, this 900,000 or so.

We haven't seen anything thi major since 19, the early 1990s.

So what does that mean?

So this is a big deal in terms of the level of correction, the fact that they're correcting things with the quarterly data, correcting the monthly data with the quarterly data is is not it's not unusual but the size of the correction.

So what's causing that?

It's probably because the economy's evolved and changed over time.

And maybe the methodologies that the some of these federal agencies the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Bureau of Economic Analysis, need to be updated to 2025.

It could be the way they survey how they surveyed things like that.

So some methodological advancements in innovations need to take place now, particularly with all the advancements we have in technology to do that.

We also had in this most recent set of numbers, the impact of all of the, deportations, immigration issues that we've seen in the last 12 months.

And so that comes into play as well.

And so there's a lot of kin of noise right now in the data, but we're pretty sure and you mentioned it earlier, these are not the bells.

And BA are not political organizations.

They're statisticians.

They're numbered nerds like Andrew and I.

And so they're just trying to do the right thing.

Maybe their methodologies need to be improved, but these are not people that are cookie numbers or make any administration look bad, bad or good.

And one of the one of the issues you get there is, is since the Covid pandemic, across the board, response to surveys for government data has declined, and particularly that one is below, I think, at or below 40% response rate because before the pandemic it was at or above 60%.

Yeah.

And so you're just going to get these wild swings in these numbers because they have to go back and check.

But you're getting lower and lower response.

Rates, right?

He pointed out real quickly, just to add to that, I'm sorry, not to belabor the point is, you know, we've cut back the budgets.

Yeah, on these agencies to do the data.

So now we have fewer people with a lot of a lot of work they have to do to maintain this information, that business depend on i and all these sorts of things.

And so it's kind of funny.

You can't cut someone's budget and then expect them to the same level of of due diligence and data confirmations.

Someone said the other day yesterday on the news about this, an economist said, you know, it's like cutting your neighbor's tires on his car when they don't mov the car, blaming the neighbor.

All right.

And so you have to just be very careful.

There's a lot of this is budgetary issues and things like that too is what.

You brought up.

Immigration increased immigration enforcement and its impact on the jobs market.

Have we seen that in Nevada?

Has it had an impact?

So far for either of you?

Do you think.

We haven't seen it quite yet?

I think the, there hasn't been a lot of this, ice enforcement coming happening here in southern Nevada or in northern Nevada in agricultural.

You have a cultural timing tha we haven't seen that quite yet.

Will it happen?

We don't know.

That's going to be a political decision.

Right?

What state, what cities, what metros, what states are being affected by, this this ice activity.

So no we have not seen that quite yet, but we're starting to see more though those slowly seeping in the impact of tariffs.

That one more question on the question.

There is increased immigration enforcement in California.

How does that end up impacting Nevada or does it at all.

Also UNLV's center for Business Researc we do the population forecast.

We've been doing that since 1997.

We look at not just the year ahead, but the next 60 years and a large driver of our population growth especially since the pandemic, has been immigration, which could be coming from California.

But we also know California in general.

60% of our growth comes from the population moving from California.

So there's this question that we have is if you have lower international migration in the United States, that's going to filter through to the Nevada economy because a lot of those workers backfil the jobs that domestic workers that live here in Nevada don't necessarily want to do, which is a lot these entry level jobs in leisure and hospitality or construction, which are very much kind of drivers of growth in southern Nevada.

Right.

So it's not immediat in terms of like month a month, but we're anticipating and when we go revise our numbers in February, March and April, we're expecting to see a big impact on limiting our ability to grow, because who's going to take these entry level jobs?

That's right.

And the other thing too tied into that, that Andrew makes an excellent point is that, you know, low international immigration, international visitation is an important part of the Nevada.

Or some of the experts think 1 or 15% can remember the number.

It's about 11 to 12.

11 to 12% or or foreign travelers.

And so when we're fighting with foreigners, when we threaten the Canadians to make them the 51st state, all that other stuff, and we're charging Canadian or foreign visitors an extra fee to come here and all these sorts of things and dealing with, creating kind of an anxiety among our allies.

They are not coming here as frequently so that that's all part of the immigratio discussion as well as the for.

The drop in tourism that we have covered here on this show.

But, Tara, as you mentioned, what impact have they had thus far?

It depends on the product.

It depends on the country, but it's still flowing through the system.

Right.

And so we're starting to see that, as Andrew mentioned earlier, I think I'll find a certain consumer products are going up.

I'm noticing where prices at a restaurant, for example, my wife and I were in L.A. visiting my daughter this weekend, and we noticed that the prices haven't changed dramatically.

The portions have gotten smaller.

So you have these subtl little things like this, right?

But we're starting to see the prices seep in.

We're probably not going to see the full impact of the tariffs probably till the end of thi year or early the first quarter, where we star really seeing the effects of it.

Right now, businesses are absorbing the imported or absorbing i in China and India a little bit.

You know, the prices have kept the prices down.

The American company importers have been absorbin soybeans to benefit, you know, so they don't want to scare the consumer.

But at some point they're going to start stop absorbing these things.

They're going to start passing it on.

And I think you see it in these earnings reports.

So Home Depot Walmart, Amazon have all said like we can't hold bac much longer for an all anymore.

We can't absorb this anymore.

Yeah.

And you know someone's paying them because every month you get the numbers from Treasury on how muc they're collecting in tariffs, which is somewhere between 20 and 300 billion a month.

Right.

So someone's paying that.

It's most likely the companies that.

Are.

Actually pass it on to us because it because consumers, we will pay it.

Consumers could certainly be paying much more attentio to this around Christmas time.

That's when you see it.

Yeah.

It's interesting.

I thought so weird.

Statistically, they 90% of all our toys that we buy in this country in Christmas items and things like that, you know, decorations are all Chinese.

And so what is that going to do at some point?

And this is the thing that I thin we underestimated as a policy.

Countries have national pride.

They're not going to sit back and not respond because it's the United States demanding something.

They're going to fight back in the best way they can so that we're still waiting for all of this to play out.

Okay.

Will the fed be lowering interest rates?

What do you think, Andrew?

And by how much?

I think there's a very strong possibility for a 25 basis point cut next week.

The I think the real question is will they do it again before the end of the year.

Yeah.

What do you think.

I agree totally I think they're going to increase it by 25 basis points or a quarter of a percent.

And they're going to see what to help prop up the job market which is getting we.

Increase or decrease.

Or decrease I'm sorry.

And into the prop up the job market, you know, stop the job market from going into kind of some kind of downward spin.

But they're going to watch it carefully because inflation is still there.

So they have to be careful, not create too much demand.

Right.

Because they have to tame inflation.

So it's kind of a two, you know two conflicting set of metrics that are being looked at.

But yeah, they will definitely decrease it.

At the end of next week for sure.

And the president has argue that had they done this earlier, that could have, you know, helped with allowing for more, borrowing and then allowing employers to hire more people.

Perhaps the jobs report wouldn't be as bad as it is if the fed had lowered interest rates already.

What do you think of that argument?

I think that's assuming that the fed is in the driver' seat of the economy right now.

I don't think the fed is in the driver's seat of the economy right now.

It's the policies out of Washington, D.C. are driving the economy and affecting business decisions.

It certainly can help or hinder what the fed does.

Right.

But they're no longer in the driver's seat.

And so that's that's how I would frame it.

What presidential policie have had some positive impacts, perhaps the, maintenance of the tax cuts that were already in plac from his first administration.

He implemented them.

And and those are staying at the rate that they are.

Yeah.

I mean, that's work.

The other thing, that's nothing.

It's it's you.

Okay.

You want to do you don't want to do it broad based, but it can work in certain situations.

Tariffs can work when it's strategic.

Things like computer chip and rare earth metals and things that that you need for national defense, things that they in a targeted way limited tariffs can work.

I think the president did this his first term.

President Biden continue them.

But when you have these broad based, you know, tariffs everything including, you know, coffee from Brazil, whatever it is, it just makes no sense.

But to towns in and of themselves in a limited way can work the continuation of the tax cuts, from the the Forget the Jobs Act, the Tax Economy and Jobs Act, whatever the tax bill, that, bill that the president passed a number of years ago, in Congress, I think it continued was probably best in that we also have to understand that they were concentrated in certain groups to.

And so let's make sure consumers are also benefiting from these tax cuts.

And it's just not the large corporations in the super wealthy.

So that's that.

But in general I think that it's a good thing.

I think to for workers here in Southern Nevada, the, you know, as part of the one big beautiful Bill act, you know, the no tax on tips and the break on over time.

You know, we estimated last year when there's all this discussion on the campaign trail, right, around 18% of the workforce here in Nevada would benefit from those kind of policies because they're dependent on tips, or there's the overtime as part of their job.

So assuming that actuall it occurs in the way that it's we all assumed it's going to now.

And John brought up when we were talking before this is that, you know, there's these time periods.

This is not a permanent thing.

And of course, we know that there are in DC, though, just because it's temporary, it ends up kind of sometimes being permanent as well.

So it'll be interesting how this evolves with when they go back and do more tax changes, another reconciliation bill, the budget process right now.

But I do think that does help benefit our workers here in Southern Nevada, because we have our economy largely driven with a done service work, surface service work, or you have a lot of workers who are get overtime as well.

The only footnote I would add to what Andrew and I are saying, you have to adjust spending.

Yeah.

So with these tax cuts at the one big beautiful bill in the previous tax, the one let's talk about the one big beautiful.

You also have to have companion spending cuts.

And that's what no one wants to deal with.

And that's what's causing, the deficit and what's causing the, the, the issues that we're having right now.

What's the latest is, where are we on the debt and a deficit.

North of, what, 23 trillion?

Yeah, something like this.

Yeah.

So and I want to.

Say so you have to have both.

And no one wants to have a cut.

That's the problem.

You need.

To raise.

Revenue.

Yeah.

You need to raise revenue or cut spending.

But I would also say going back to the fed conversation about interest rate cuts, it won't really matter if no one has, if we don't have the credibility that we have our debt under control, because a lot of interest rates that we pay, whether it's on a new home or a car, for example, a lot of those are actually mor determined by the bond market, which is dependen on the confidence of Americans, our ability to pay our debt.

And and in a lot of foreign countries and, and investors are buyers of our bonds.

Own and own.

Yeah.

Americans.

You saw that going into the jobs report last week, that there was this unwinding between short term and long term interest rates, because the bond market is really queasy about all of this debt that we keep selling.

John, I think the ahead of this off camera you described it as messy.

Yeah.

And that's what it is.

So we'll leave it there.

Thank you both for joining.

Thank you and thank you.