Below, EPI president Heidi Shierholz shares her insights on the jobs report released this morning, which showed 187,000 jobs added in July. Read the full Twitter thread here. 

This cannot be said enough: the soft landing isn’t guaranteed, and the key threat to it is over-hiking by the Fed. It’s time for the Fed to pause. 2/

— Heidi Shierholz (@hshierholz) August 4, 2023

More details from today’s numbers: We added 187,000 jobs in July. This is down from the blistering pace earlier in the recovery, but still strong. 4/

— Heidi Shierholz (@hshierholz) August 4, 2023

The Black unemployment rate ticked down to 5.8% in July, partially undoing the increase of the prior two months. This is a good reminder of how much noise there is in these numbers month-to-month. 6/

— Heidi Shierholz (@hshierholz) August 4, 2023

To be clear: macro policy and tight labor markets can blunt the malign effect of racial disparities, and can even contribute to narrowing them. But even when we’re at full employment, it will require other complementary policies to fully close them. 8/ https://t.co/MPwZ0Etxhq

— Heidi Shierholz (@hshierholz) August 4, 2023

It’s in large part because, unlike with the Great Recession, Congress did what was needed to spur a robust recovery this time around (e.g. CARES and ARPA). The weak recovery from the Great Recession was a massive policy failure. This time, policymakers did it right. 10/

— Heidi Shierholz (@hshierholz) August 4, 2023