Tag Archives: job creation in America

Economic Growth In America

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Yesterday Just the News posted an article about some recent comments by economist Stephen Moore.

The article reports:

As the U.S. economy rebounds following the coronavirus crisis, the last four months have produced historic levels of job creation for the U.S., economist Stephen Moore said Sunday. 

“May, June, July and August have been the four biggest months of job creation in the history of the United States. We’ve regained over 10 million jobs in four months,” Moore told John Catsimatidis’s radio program on WABC 770 AM, according to The Hill. 

The outlet noted that despite recent reporting that the unemployment rate has further declined it still remains much higher than it was in January.

It is going to take a while for the economy to recover from the coronavirus lockdown. It is also going to take a while to figure out whether or not the lockdown was actually effective or other actions would have been more appropriate. However, the economy is growing, and will continue to grow if President Trump is reelected. If former Vice-President Joe Biden is elected, taxes will go up, tariffs on China will go down, and economic growth will either stall or stop.

Elections Do Have Consequences

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In November, the American voters elected Donald Trump as President. I am not sure that the political left has yet recovered from what they would consider their worst nightmare. However, we are where we are. So where are we?

On October 7th, Wayne Allyn Root posted a story at Townhall describing the current state of the American economy.

Here are some highlights from the article:

The DOW has risen almost 25% since Election Day. That’s an increase of over 4,300 points in about 11 months. That’s the biggest increase in that period of time in the history of the stock market.

The S&P 500 has passed $20 trillion in value for the first time in history.

Because most middle-income Americans now have 401k plans because they are smart enough not to rely on Social Security, this is important to the average American.

More highlights:

As I’ve always argued, GDP is a far more important economic indicator than the stock market. GDP is hard evidence of how “mom and pop” are doing on Main Street. Under Obama, America suffered the eight worst consecutive GDP years in history. Obama’s eight-year GDP average was 1.3%- the exact same GDP number as the period of the Great Depression.

According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, U.S. GDP has now been adjusted to a remarkable 3.1% growth in the second quarter (Trump’s first full quarter as president). That’s almost THREE TIMES HIGHER than Obama’s average GDP over his two terms.

Then there is job growth:

President Trump added 1.33 million jobs from January through September versus Obama’s record of losing 4.59 million jobs in that same first nine months. Remarkable.

But the latest jobs report just came out on Friday. According to the Bureau of Labor Household Survey, the number of employed Americans increased by an amazing 906,000 for the month of September. But that’s not even the highlight.

Remember that almost every single job created in eight years under Obama was a crappy, low-wage, part-time job. Well under President Trump last month, full-time jobs (the kind we all want and need) increased by 935,000- the most in one month in the 21st century. 

You would think that this sort of economic growth would put a damper on ‘Trump derangement syndrome.’ However, it seems to have had exactly the opposite effect. I think that is the result of the fact that the Washington establishment is working very hard to make sure President Trump does not succeed. Why? He is not a globalist, and he is not a Washington insider. His success would be a threat to the Washington establishment’s ability to come to Washington as middle-class Americans and leave twenty or thirty years later as  millionaires. As President Trump begins to accomplish things that have a positive impact on average Americans, expect the Washington establishment in both parties to become louder and more shrill.

The Numbers Behind The Numbers

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The Stock Market climbed and the media rejoiced–the unemployment rate dropped to 7.5% in March–down 0.4 percentage points since January. At least it did not go up.

The New York Times reported yesterday that in spite of the fact that unemployment decreased and the economy added jobs, that since 2010 the number of Americans with jobs has stayed between 58.2 percent and 58.7 percent. Hot Air reported yesterday that the civilian workforce participation rate remained at a 34-year low of 63.3%.

Hot Air also reported:

…the number of people not in the workforce declined slightly in the Household data from March by 31,000. It’s still 632,000 higher than in February. Discouraged workers rose by 32,000 and marginally-attached workers rose by 21,000, both of which are relatively narrow shifts.

The New York Times reported:

Baby boomers are aging into retirement. Even before the recession, the government projected in 2007 that participation would decline to 65.5 percent by 2016, from 66 percent. But the April rate of 63.3 percent means the labor force has lost roughly five million additional workers.

Furthermore, the projections were wrong. Participation has actually risen among people older than 55. The decline is entirely driven by younger dropouts.

It is good that the unemployment number is down to 7.5%; however, we have a long way to go before we actually have a healthy economy. The two biggest challenges to the economy in the coming months will be the implementation of ObamaCare and the increased taxes that go with that implementation. We won’t really understand the financial impact of ObamaCare until late this year when people begin to plan for the tax rates of 2013 and when people begin to see ObamaCare directly affect their health insurance and health insurance premiums.

The article at Hot Air quotes Reuters:

Still, details of the report remained consistent with a slowdown in economic activity. Construction employment fell for the first time since May, while manufacturing payrolls were flat. The average workweek pulled off a nine-month high, but average hourly earnings rose four cents[.]

The New York Times article concludes:

There is always some unemployment. Millions of Americans are out of work at any given moment even in the best of times. But the economy is still roughly 10 million jobs short of returning to normal levels of unemployment and labor force participation. That’s a lot of missing jobs.

Some of those losses may be permanent. The number of Americans receiving disability benefits has increased by 1.8 million since the recession began, and people on disability rarely return to the work force, even if they would have preferred to keep working in the first place.

And as the economy improves, it is likely that labor force participation among older workers will finally begin to decline.

But the evidence suggests that the majority of the 10 million are just waiting for a decent chance.

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