Things in US aren't any weaker than before: Paul Edelstein

The US employers added fewer workers than anticipated in July as the jobless rate dropped to 7.4 percent, according to data. The 162,000 increase in payrolls last month followed a revised 188,000 increase in June that was less than initially estimated, Labor Department figures showed in Washington.

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Paul Edelstein, Director-Financial Economics at IHS Global Insight, shares his views on the implications of the jobs data and the US economy. He does not feel things are any weaker than he expected them to be.
He wants the US economy to achieve 3 percent real GDP. Below is the verbatim transcript of Paul Edelstein's interview on CNBC-TV18 Q: What do you make of today’s jobs data? Would you call it middling or would you actually be concerned?
A: I am not particularly concerned because things aren’t any weaker than I thought they were before. I didn’t think they are particularly strong to begin with and that was a split decision on a state of the labour market. The unemployment rate fell and fell for some good reasons but the payroll numbers which are estimated differently were quite a bit weaker than we thought and we have some downward revisions to the previous couple of months. In addition the participation rate fell and earnings were down as well. So, it wasn’t that good or better report. Q: The downward revision that you mentioned for the payroll data and I want to take that to the Q1 gross domestic product (GDP) number or growth number rather that was also revised downward when the Q2 number came in. So, the Q2 number comes in at 1.7 percent, the Q1 which was originally anticipated at 1.8 percent is revised downwards to 1.1 percent. Are you reading more into these downward revisions?
A: No, I think it shows that we had a brief period around the turn of the year; in the Q4 of last year and Q1 of this year, I think it has weakened substantially, it picked up and so what we are seeing is a gradual acceleration in growth. The problem is that, the expectation is it is not going to get very far. We know that this economy can achieve 2 percent real GDP growth, which it has demonstrated year after year. The question is can we get to 3 percent because that 3 percent number can really get us back to trend, it is more consistent with a strong labour market and it has been elusive year after year.