TEXT OF INTERVIEW

STEVE CHIOTAKIS: Word from the government that more jobs
were lost in September. The economy shed 95,000 jobs last month, but mainly because of laid-off Census workers. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate held steady at 9.6 percent. Jill Schlesinger is editor-at-large at CBS MoneyWatch. She’s with us live from New York, as she is every Friday. Good morning, Jill.

JILL SCHLESINGER: Good morning.

CHIOTAKIS: All right, so I look at the headline number of the report and I see minus 95,000 — and I’m thinking, geeze, where’s the recovery?

SCHLESINGER: Yeah, and you would be wise to be thinking that. However, the private payroll number was not bad — 64,000 jobs created, about 75,000 was the expectation. As you said, we had a big bunch of census workers laid off. We also had local government workers laid off, and so I think that was the part that was somewhat unexpected. I think the reality is everyone knows we are in a long slog here.

CHIOTAKIS: A long slog, but I think of all those months we were creating 2, 3, 400,000 jobs. What was going on there?

SCHLESINGER: You know, I think that if we think back to the bubble, we say that was a little bit of a false economy. It was juiced up with low interest rates, easy credit. And so all those jobs that popped up really came as a result of a false premise to some extent.

CHIOTAKIS: So what’s the next to juice the economy, Jill? What’s going to create more jobs?

SCHLESINGER: I would hope nothing as a matter of fact. I mean, I want more jobs, but we don’t want it based on some steroid that is injected into a really good athlete. And this economy — the U.S. economy — is really a wonderful athlete, the best economy in the world. But we don’t need steroids to juice us up. What we need is a little rest. We need to do a little bit of work and we will get out of us this. But not with steroids, just doing it the old-fashioned way.

CHIOTAKIS: The only juice, maybe a little orange juice this morning.

SCHLESINGER: Very nice.

CHIOTAKIS: Jill Schlesinger from CBS MoneyWatch, thanks.

SCHLESINGER: Take care.