Labor Secretary Walsh weighs in on jobs report, teacher shortage, quiet quitting

Labor Secretary Marty Walsh joins Yahoo Finance Live to discuss the August jobs report, America’s ongoing teacher shortage, the quiet quitting movement, and labor negotiations.

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- The latest jobs report showing a pullback from the prior month's revised, 526,000 jobs, however still a solid pace of growth amid a tight labor market. Joining us now with more on the labor market perspective is the US Labor Secretary Marty Walsh. We've also got for the conversation Yahoo Finance's Jennifer Schonberger. And Secretary of Labor Marty Walsh, thanks so much for joining us here this morning. First and foremost, just want to get your headline reaction to what you saw come out in the print from the Bureau of Labor statistics this morning.

MARTY WALSH: Yeah, good strong report. And also I think the number that is encouraging is the labor participation went up. So that's why we see a little uptick in unemployment, from 3.5% to 3.7%. But what we want to do, what businesses in this country need, are more people getting back into the workforce. And hopefully, that will continue, that trend will continue as we move forward. I'll take a 3.7% unemployment rate all day long if we get more people involved in the workforce.

- Mr. Secretary, always nice to see you. Do you think this jobs report, jobs in excess of 300,000, are these more normal reports? Is this what we should expect in the months ahead?

MARTY WALSH: Well, it's hard to say. I still think that there's some good reports in front of us. And then at some point, there's going to be a leveling off and having a good report will be 50,000 jobs. But I still think we're at the point where companies are still hiring at a big pace. People are still looking to get back in the workforce.

We have areas like hospitality and in some parts of education that aren't quite fully back from pre-pandemic levels. A lot of sectors are back. But I still think there's a lot more room for growth. And then on top of that, there's areas like cybersecurity and nursing and teaching that are looking for more and more employees. So I think we're going to see some growth in those areas as well.

JENNIFER SCHONBERGER: Mr. Secretary, Jennifer Schonberger here. Thanks so much for joining us. The Federal Reserve is certainly going to be paying attention to this report as it looks to how much it's going to be raising interest rates at its next meeting later this month. Taking that in conjunction with upcoming inflation data, what do you think this report means for the outlook for inflation?

MARTY WALSH: Well, as far as what the Fed does, I'm not sure what they're going to do. But I think that when you look at-- I watch the trends in inflation. I've seen the gas prices come down for I think almost eight, nine consecutive weeks right now. We see a little downturn in inflation. The numbers went down a little bit. Clearly, we want to see those numbers go down even more.

My side of the aisle, if you will, not the Fed's side, but my side of the aisle, we need to continue to make sure the supply chain is moving forward. We need to continue to make sure goods and products are coming in to the United States of America and we're getting things to the American people. And we need to continue-- the President passed the inflation Reduction Act that will help us on inflation as we move forward, not immediately today, but it's going to help us.

So we just have to continue to move along here. And whatever action the Fed takes, we'll see how that helps us as well. But I think the signs are going in the right direction. Our economy, for the most part, is strong. I mean, you take away the inflation that we're dealing with, we have a strong economy right now.

- Particularly on the education front, and we say this knowing that this is a mid-month to mid-month reading, and so perhaps not all of the education jobs may have been accounted for, at least within this reading, considering that most schools start back up mid-August into early September.

With all of that considered though, what most notably should we be keeping an eye on, especially considering the teacher shortages that we've seen some school districts reporting and then even all the way up to the re-welcoming more firmly here, at least in this school year, compared year over year to the 2021-2022 school year, that a lot of people are having going back to campus? That teacher demand is significant right now.

MARTY WALSH: Yeah. First of all, that's the biggest difference right now that we're dealing with. 2021-2022, beginning of school year, we weren't really sure-- school districts were really sure what was going to happen with the COVID-19 pandemic. Now fast forward a year, all schools are open. More places have all in-school learning, for the most part in almost every school in America.

We have a major issue with teaching. And we had a meeting at the White House with the first lady last week. We had some teachers in there. We had some private sector businesses in there. We have some major concerns. And we really have to think about the way we treat our teachers, the way we pay our teachers across the board. And also we need to recruit and retain teachers into the profession and teachers of color as well.

I mean, when you think about our economy moving forward, the way we're going to continue to strengthen our economy is by having a workforce that's educated and ready to work in that economy. If we don't have teachers to teach, the only people that are going to get hurt there are going to be our kids.

And so we, our focus here, at the Department of Labor on not for today, but we're focused on in a very short period of time, how do we get more teachers into the field? How do we get some of those teachers back? You're absolutely right. We have to address this issue.

- Mr. Secretary, as someone that has worked their tail off for many years, Mayor of Boston, now you're in the seat as the US Labor Secretary, what do you think about this generation's quiet quitting movement?

MARTY WALSH: You know, I'm just learning about what the quiet quitting movement is. And in my travels in the last couple of weeks, you know, Chicago, Detroit, San Antonio, all over the place, that issue hasn't come up. But certainly, it's something that if it raises to our level, I will have to address it.

Certainly as the City of Boston Mayor, if I had a situation where I had people taking a step back in working for me, I would address it as an employer. I'd go over and talk to them and find out what the issue is, what the situations are, and have those conversations. And I think that that's how-- if I'm explaining it right, that's what I would do.

Quiet quitting was presented to me about two weeks ago. And what I thought it was, I thought it was people quitting their job. And then I found out it's not that. It's people kind of stepping back a little bit in their job. And certainly, that can be dealt with between management, the company, and the worker.

- Mr. Secretary, let me just let me just stay on that. Would you fire these workers? Do they just need to be dealt with just as cold as possible? If you're going to pull back on work while your employer is sending you a check, do you need to be dealt with?

MARTY WALSH: It shouldn't get to that point where you're firing somebody. You should-- if you're an employer, if you're a manager, you should catch on right early enough that your employees aren't satisfied, aren't happy, there needs to be a dialogue, a conversation. And if your employee is just doing it because of the fact they don't want to work, that's a whole different situation. But I honestly believe in having the dialogue and conversation with your employees and your employer working together collectively with managers and finding out what the situation is.

So for example, if that happened here at the Department of Labor and I heard there was quiet quitting going on in a particular agency, I would go down and talk to them and say, listen, what's the deal, and try and find out, identify what the problem is. Do they have a problem with the boss? Do they have a problem with the work? What's going on? Are you being overworked, not in your job description? That's what you have to do when it comes to quiet quitting. I don't think it should become a thing. But I think companies should be paying attention to it because there's something going on with your employees.

JENNIFER SCHONBERGER: Mr. Secretary, we've got Labor Day around the corner. Unionization efforts are picking up around the country, gaining steam. Are we at an inflection point for unions gaining ground in this country? And what is your and the Biden administration's approach to strengthening unions?

MARTY WALSH: Yeah, well, there's no question that the labor movement is at an inflection point. We're seeing for the first time since 1965, 71% of Americans are looking favorably upon organized labor. You've seen some ballot initiatives around the country go down, which is amazing to see. You have other ballot initiatives in the country looking to strengthen workers' rights in organizing.

The President has been very clear on the issue of supporting people's rights to collectively bargain and encouraging companies for free and fair elections and letting workers decide. But I think companies and unions-- I think organizing is a great thing to see. I would love to see more conversation between major corporations and the AFL-CIO as we move forward here to find out-- there's a lot more in common than that separates them. I'd love to see those conversations move forward in the future here, in the end of 2022 into 2023.

- Just to briefly follow--

MARTY WALSH: If I were in that role, that's what I'd be doing.

- Just to briefly follow up on that, Labor Secretary, we did have Sarah Nelson, who is the President of the Association of Flight Attendants join us earlier and lay out the scenario, the reality for us, that there are flight attendants, there are labor force participants, rather, in the airline sector that literally can't make ends meet right now and that it's more expensive to come to work than stay home for them.

What do you hope is the resolution in some of the union negotiations, especially for one of the most active portions of these services segment, if you will, especially over the course of this summer? And demand doesn't seem to be slowing down.

MARTY WALSH: Well, listen, I didn't hear all Sarah's interview there. But I think that you can't-- I'm not saying you said-- you didn't say this, and I'm not saying this. Organized labor is not adding to the cost of doing business. What it does, it's representing the respect and the rights of workers.

And I think that there's an opportunity. I think what's happening in the airline industry, a lot to do with the pandemic, a lot to do with worker shortages, a lot to do with what's been going on in this country for the last two years, I think the pandemic threw that industry through a loop and also through the hotel industry and retail industry to a loop and also through the train industry.

The only industry that seems to have come back from that completely without having any disruption is retail. And I think that a lot of the business practices that these companies are having, they need to look at their business practices and try and figure out how to get back on track. And we need to get workers back into the workplace. That's quite honestly the bottom line.

The airlines, I mean, I think a lot of these flights that are being canceled or delayed is because-- and I've been in plenty of airports waiting for the flight crew to come in from one place to another plane. What we need to do is continue to invest in workforce development and job training and get more people trained up for these jobs moving forward. And then organizing is a separate piece of that.

- US Labor Secretary Marty Walsh, thanks so much for taking the time and joining us here for this discussion this morning on the back of the jobs report that we have been continuing to watch the markets digest, appreciate the time once again, and to our own Jen Schonberger, who's joining us as well for the conversation. We appreciate it.