Thanks, Republicans, for the hottest job market in 50 years
The job market doesn’t get any better than this. It’s working for women, for Hispanics, for blacks, for the disabled, and for those with criminal records.
It’s not working for Democrats’ 2020 election hopes, which is why we hear so little about jobs and the economy from Democratic politicians and the media.
Jobs have increased for 100 consecutive months starting with the sluggish Obama recovery. In March, 196,000 new jobs were added. Unemployment recently matched its lowest level in 49 years.
Obama deserves little credit for lowering the unemployment rate. Millions of workers were unable to find jobs and gave up. Those who stop looking are not counted as unemployed, making his unemployment rates artificially low.
After trending downward during the Obama years, the labor participation rate started climbing in the last two years. Previously discouraged workers are being lured back into the job market by burgeoning opportunities and higher wages.
In just the past six months, the number of people outside the labor force has fallen by 1 million, the largest decline on record. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell stated, “The performance of labor-force participation has been an upside surprise that most people didn’t see coming.”
Among the best news: America’s factories are hiring again. After shedding workers for years, production and non-supervisory manufacturing employment has risen for 18 straight months, the best streak since the 1990s. Once again, notice when the good news started.
Women, most in their late 20s and early 30s, account for the majority of new workers. The percentage of women in the labor pool rose to 75.8 percent in the last quarter of 2018 from 73.8 percent three years earlier.
There’s even better news for people who’ve typically had trouble finding work. Minorities and the less educated have the lowest unemployment rates they’ve ever experienced. Workers with disabilities and those with criminal records are finding jobs where none existed for them in years past.
The Census Bureau reported great news for Hispanics: “The poverty rate declined overall in 2017 but the rate among Hispanics had one of the largest year-to-year drops across demographic groups and was the lowest since poverty estimates for Hispanics were first published in 1972.”
Today’s low unemployment rates have caused employers to look for workers in new demographic groups and to become more willing to train less qualified applicants.
Average wages across the country grew at a 3.3 percent pace last year. On Utah’s Wasatch Front, sparked by high tech industry, they grew about 4 percent. Nonetheless, southern Utah lagged behind the Wasatch Front and the country, primarily due to our heavy reliance on tourism, leisure services, and retail jobs — historically low-paying industries nationwide.
The U.S. Department of Labor expects that four of the six fastest growing job sectors in the next eight years will be in low-skilled services, jobs that require at most a high school diploma. Among these fast growing sectors are elderly care aide, food preparation, and janitors, jobs likely to be in high demand in southern Utah.
Many of these low-skill workers are seeing pay increases in part because there are fewer people seeking these jobs.
Our economy and the jobs that go with it are doing better than they have in a long time. The economy grew 2.9 percent last year, double the 1 to 1.5 percent Hillary Clinton told us to expect for the foreseeable future.
The very things Democrats opposed — tax cuts and regulatory relief — have paid off in ways leftist economists have said were impossible. Yet Democrats are pretending none of this has happened.
When will they learn?
The viewpoints expressed above are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of The Independent.
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Stop buying into and feeding the false left vs right paradigm Howie. Jobs are not created by politicians. In the economic system we live in, a decrease in unemployment is directly tied to the amount of currency in circulation. And because currency is loaned into existence, a decrease in unemployment is always accompanied by an increase in debt. And an increase in debt always leads to the next economic collapse when the mathematical compounding of the interest reaches critical mass. And this always happens because when the currency is loaned into existence, they only create the principle and not the interest. It’s a cheap parlor trick Howie, but you don’t see it because you are too busy being a “useful idiot” spreading misinformation and propaganda for the very people that are running the scam.
The Federal Reserve Bank sold a significant portion of its holdings of both public and private bonds during 2018. As a result, hundreds of billions of dollars of currency were taken OUT of circulation as individuals and institutions bought the securities. By your reasoning, reducing the amount of currency in circulation should have decreased employment…but it didn’t. Instead, employment grew at a record pace in 2018.
Inflation, not employment, is directly related to the amount of currency in circulation. Read Nobel prize winner Milton Friedman if you don’t believe me; he’s the father of modern monetary theory and few argue with him on this subject.
As for jobs, you are certainly correct that politicians don’t create jobs. But Republicans did create the circumstances–lower tax rates– that encouraged private industry job creators to add jobs at a record pace.
The vast majority of currency is created by private banks, not The Fed. The Fed buying back billions when the banks are loaning trillions is insignificant. Besides, while The Fed is selling securities publicly, neither you or anyone else has any idea what they’re doing in private. The last and only time there was a partial audit done on The Fed in 2011, they found over $16 trillion had been loaned to foreign and domestic banks and corporations behind closed doors.
While I do admire parts of Friedman’s work, like many other economists, he only focused on the manipulation of currency AFTER it was created and never looked at where it comes from in the first place. It’s kind of like being a master at the game of musical chairs, but having no idea about how furniture is made. You just assume that the chairs always existed.
And if you think taxes have gone down, then you obviously haven’t done yours yet for last year.
As for job creation, folks might want to check out the Bureau of Labor Statistics info regarding job creation and even read this Forbes article: http://fortune.com/2017/03/29/president-trump-job-claims-fact-check/. The BLS shows that in the years Jan 2014-Jan 2016 Obama’s administration had 5 months with over 300 jobs created. During a similar length period Jan 2017-Jan 2019 Trump’s administration had only 2 months with over 300 jobs created. From Jan 2014 to Dec 2015 Obama’s admin created about 5,735,000 jobs. From Jan 2017-Dec 2018 Trump’s administration created about 4,832,000 jobs. And, half of Jan 2017’s job were actually Obama’s since Trump didn’t take office until Jan 20, but I’m giving him credit for those to help his numbers. Make of it what you will and I won’t even go into the debt situation. That’s for another day.
When I said, “I’m giving him credit for those to help his numbers” I was talking about giving Trump credit for half of Jan 2017 job creation to help his numbers, not Obama’s. Sorry if that was unclear in my original post.