#shorts On 1/19/2023, a reporter asked White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, “So that is something, as you know, that we watch closely — anytime there are reports of Americans losing their jobs. President Biden knows firsthand the impact of losing a job and what that can have to your entire family. This is something that he knows and understands very well. I don’t have a comment on specific moves announced by particular companies. As you know, we’re — we’re very careful from here talking about private companies. But more broadly speaking, layoffs remain near record lows according to job openings data.

Reporter: Just a quick follow-up on the economy and job cuts. Amazon announced 18,000 job cuts today. Microsoft announced 10,000 job cuts today. All these thousands of job cuts are coming on top of tens of thousands of jobs being cut across the tech sector and across sectors in corporate America. Obviously, the White House and the administration, like you just pointed out a couple of minutes ago, still believes the economy’s resilient, does not expect it to slip into a recession. But as we talk about mass layoffs and as the White House continues to point to the strong economy and overall recovery in the labor market, how do you expect some of these numbers and some of these statistics to impact that recovery in the coming months?

MS. Jean-Pierre: So, let me just be clear, when you talk about recession and you talk about what we’re seeing currently with the economy, these are the data points — right? — this — the data points are showing that this is not what we see where the economy is currently to pre-recession or recession. I mean, that is what the experts are saying as well, and that’s what the data points are proving. With CPI today, the consumer — not CPI — the PPI today, we’re seeing that inflation is actually indeed moderating. And a lot of that is connected to the President’s economic policies …

Reporter: So no immediate concern from these tens of thousands of layoffs across corporate America?

MS. Jean-Pierre: What I’m saying is we’re going to closely monitor this, or, you know, we are always keeping an eye on these things. But — but these are private — these are private companies that are making decisions, and we’re just not going to comment.

other clips of this published longer video is here: https://youtu.be/OgpYoz3MBGA
Q: Amazon job cut? A: data not showing pre-recession