The labor market is showing resiliency with the September jobs report coming in stronger than expected. Gary Cohn, the IBM vice chairman, and former US National Economic Council director in the Trump administration, sits down with Seana Smith and Madison Mills to discuss his expectations for the economy and the Federal Reserve’s next move

Cohn tells Yahoo Finance, “I always remind people when we get the jobs report, this is probably the least scientific data that the US government puts out. This is actually polling data. They call people's houses and that's how they come up with this information. And that's why we see relatively big revisions to employment data month over month. So I always say always take these reports with a grain of salt. But the trend is important… We're at a good, really neutral place where the jobs are being created and the people entering the workforce. They're balancing each other out, which is a which is a good place to be. So we're seeing a real normalization of what I would call the US economy.”

“Everything about what we're going through, I think, is normalization. Now, in that respect, we all forgot what normal is. We have not lived in a normal economy in the last decade-plus… Now we're starting to get back into what is a normal economy. And I think we have to remind ourselves what a normal economy is. A normal economy with like 2% inflation, 4% unemployment, a positively shaped yield curve, all of those things...if you look at the long-term history, you would find to be the normal reality of what our economy looks like,” Cohn says.

He adds, “This is exactly what a soft landing looks like. I think the Fed has orchestrated a soft landing. I think we will continue to see the Fed lower interest rates. Although today's print gives them the ability to do what I think they were going to do anyway, which is continue to lower rates but lower them slowly [and] methodically.” Cohn expects the Fed will deliver two more 25 basis point cuts to cut a total of 100 basis points in 2024.

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This post was written by Naomi Buchanan.