Secretary of Labor Perez 'Impressed at the Resiliency of the Economy,' He Tells CNBC

U.S. Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez joined CNBC's "Squawk on the Street" this morning to discuss the June job report.
By Giovanni Bruno ,

NEW YORK (TheStreet) --Today's U.S. job report indicated that 287,000 positions were added to the labor force in June, substantially above the analyst expectation of 165,000. Secretary of Labor, Thomas Perez joined CNBC's "Squawk on the Street" this morning to comment on the latest report from Washington.

"The two takeaways from today's report are that number one, we are a very resilient economy and you see it in the broad-based growth across so many different sectors. Number two, is it's really important when you have a lower than expected month, as we did last month, not to jump to conclusions. We are moving in the right direction and are continuing to move in the right direction," Perez explained.

"This last month was a better than expected month, I'm heartened by that, and I'm always impressed at the continuing resiliency of the economy," Perez noted, indicating wage growth rose 2.6% in June.

Looking ahead to the year-end numbers, "what I expect to see in 2016 is as you get closer to full employment the pace of job growth goes down, but then you see wage growth going up, that's what we're seeing. It's not as high as we want it and still have unfinished business there, but that's just the trade off," Perez continued.

Moreover, "this is a resilient economy, we have withstood global headwinds. Brexit has happened, but others things have happened which we have been able to withstand and I'm confident enough to move forward in the aftermath of Brexit as well," Perez said commenting on any impact Brexit may have on hiring.

That being said, Perez does not expect similar results next month, "we can always hope but when you have a month that exceeds expectations, you never want to get too giddy. Conversely, when you have a month below expectations you don't start calamity hauling," he said.

Perez indicated that job growth has slowed and noted the importance of the increase in wage growth, which he says is a great indicator of an economy moving towards full employment.

Loading ...