Former Trump economic official Gary Cohn says "we've seen the job market degrade," though it may be "temporary" [View all]

Source: CBS News

September 21, 2025 / 1:49 PM EDT


Washington — Gary Cohn, IBM vice chair and former National Economic Council director in President Trump's first term, said Sunday that "we've seen the job market degrade," though he noted that it may be "temporary." "The Federal Reserve itself and the board of governors admitted that we are having a declining job market. And we see that," Cohn said on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan."

Last week, the Federal Reserve lowered its benchmark interest rate by 0.25 percentage points, in the first rate cut since December, amid slower economic growth and a stalling labor market. Fed Chair Jerome Powell, who has a dual mandate to ensure that both inflation and unemployment remain low, said "what's different now is that you see a very different picture of the risks to the labor market." And though Powell noted that he didn't want to put "too much emphasis on payroll job creation," he said "it's just one of the things that suggests that the labor market is really cooling off." "That tells you that it's time to take that into account," Powell said.

Meanwhile the jobs numbers, which have shown an ongoing slowdown in the labor market, have been under scrutiny in recent weeks, as the administration has questioned the validity of the government data. Last month, President Trump fired former Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner Erika McEntarfer after a disappointing July jobs report.

Cohn pointed to job data on Sunday, saying, "over the last three or four months, we have gone from creating well over 100,000 jobs a month to creating less than 50,000 jobs a month." And he noted that "I do think that we have seen companies cut back on the amount of employees they have."

Read more: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/gary-cohn-ibm-trump-labor-market-face-the-nation-09-21-2025/