On Friday’s broadcast of CNN’s “News Central,” Rep. James Walkinshaw (D-VA) reacted to the Bureau of Labor Statistics reporting that employers added 162,000 jobs in August by saying “it doesn‘t do a lot of good to have a job if you can‘t afford gas.”
Co-host Sara Sidner asked, “I do want to ask you about something that just came in this morning. We got the jobs report in, and despite warnings about the Trump tariffs, high gas prices due to the war in Iran, it’s more than double expectations with 160,000 jobs added. The unemployment rate staying where it was, not going up. You know, the Trump administration might say, look this is vindication of what we’ve been doing. Is that how you see it?”
Walkinshaw said, “Well, I think we‘ll wait to see for the revisions on the jobs report. But the challenge with this economy hasn‘t been jobs, it‘s been cost. It‘s the fact that costs are rising faster than wages. And I‘m glad that there are jobs being created, but it doesn‘t do a lot of good to have a job if you can‘t afford gas, you can‘t afford groceries, because those prices are skyrocketing. So we gotta get costs under control. The tariffs are driving up costs. The war in Iran is driving up costs. And that‘s the key pain point for the American people, including those I represent here in Virginia.”
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