The Latest Economic Numbers

On Wednesday, CNBC posted an article about the January Jobs Report.

The article reports:

  • Nonfarm payrolls increased by 130,000 for January, above the Dow Jones consensus estimate for 55,000.
  • The unemployment rate edged lower to 4.3%. A more encompassing measure slipped to 8%, down 0.4 percentage point from December.
  • As has often been the case for the U.S. labor market, health care led job gains in December, adding 82,000 positions. Social assistance also rose, up 42,000, while construction added 33,000.
  • The BLS also released final benchmark revisions for the year prior to March 2025. Those numbers saw the initial counts revised lower by a total 898,000, about in line with expectations.

The Workforce Participation Rate eased up slightly in January to 62.5.

The article at CNBC concludes:

However, the December numbers provide some reason for optimism.

While the establishment survey showed more jobs than expected, the household survey was even stronger. Used to calculate the unemployment rate, the survey showed a gain of 528,000 workers for the month as the labor force participation rate edged higher to 62.5%.

The data likely solidifies the Federal Reserve staying on hold with interest rates.

Futures traders raised bets that the Fed would hold the line at its March meeting, though the expectation is still titled toward a cut in June, according to the CME Group’s FedWatch gauge.

PJ Media also posted an article on the Jobs Report on Wednesday, but had a slightly different angle.

PJ Media notes:

The growth is focused on the private sector, which is good news because it is the private sector that drives economic growth. In fact, federal employment is at its lowest level as a share of the workforce since 1966. While economists expected private payrolls to grow by 70,000, the actual number is 172,000 for January. Government payrolls lost 42,000 jobs at both the state and federal levels combined.

…The economy added 5,000 manufacturing jobs, which is the opposite of economists’ prediction that it would lose 5,000 jobs, according to Fox Business. Job numbers for November and December were revised down, however, for a loss of about 17,000 jobs from the original statistics over those two months.

The DOL also announced on Feb. 10, “For the first time since 1999, U.S. steel production has surpassed Japan’s.” This is very important. For too long, we have been shipping our manufacturing overseas, especially to hostile nations like Communist China, leaving ourselves dependent on the whims of foreign leaders. Boosting American manufacturing is a necessary move for our independence and national security.

We are not yet where we need to be, but we are heading in the right direction.

Thank God That The Biden Economy Will Be Over Soon

On Wednesday, Zero Hedge reported that American manufacturing jobs in November saw their biggest losses since June 2023.

The article includes the following:

The article also reports:

Worse still, wage growth starting to rise again (after unions scored huge wage increases).

    • Job-changer wage growth rose to 7.20% YoY  from 6.70%, highest since August.
    • Job-stayer wage growth 4.80%, highest since June; year-over-year pay gains for job-stayers edged up for the first time in 25 months

Although wage growth is good for workers, when wages outpace workers’ value, companies either relocate to other countries or decrease the number of workers. I was in a store yesterday that I hadn’t been in for a while and all of the check-out registers were self-serve. When wages outpace productivity, that is the result.

There are a number of ways the Trump administration can work to solve the ongoing loss of manufacturing jobs without impacting workers’ wages. Cheaper energy cuts the cost of manufacturing, deregulation cuts the cost of manufacturing, and lower taxes on corporations will also bring manufacturing back to America. Tariffs will also discourage companies from moving out of the country. We can bring manufacturing back to America, but it will take someone who understands economics to do that. I believe President Trump understands economics.

Where Did The Jobs Go?

Today Fox Business posted an article that included some comments White House trade adviser Peter Navarro made on “Sunday Morning Futures.”

The article reports:

“We lost over 70,000 factories, over 5 million manufacturing jobs, and it was because Joe Biden likes made in China,” Navarro said. “Donald Trump came along. … He said, ‘Hey, that’s not good. That’s not right. I’m going to fix that.’ And so what President Trump has been carefully doing is putting in place a wide range of policies, whether it’s lowering the corporate income tax to bring investment on-shore, steel and aluminum tariffs, or buy American.”

The U.S. lost 5 million manufacturing jobs between January 2000 and December 2014 because of “growing trade deficits in manufacturing products prior to the Great Recession and then the massive output collapse during the Great Recession,” according to a 2015 report from the Economic Policy Institute.

The article notes:

China’s state-run tabloid Global Times deemed Biden “smoother to deal with” than President Trump in August.

I don’t doubt that!

The article concludes:

“Economic security is national security. That’s one of the principles of the Trump Administration and what we learned from this China virus pandemic,” Navarro said. “If we bring those jobs back onshore as we have been doing, we will create great jobs at great wages but also protect the American people from the Chinese communist party.”

Navarro touted Trump’s stance on U.S. manufacturing, but the president has repeatedly taken criticism for manufacturing his branded products in other countries, including China.

The goal should be to make it cheaper and more practical to manufacture things in America. That goal can be achieved through lower corporate taxes, tariffs on foreign goods, and reliable and inexpensive energy. President Trump has worked in all three of these areas to bring manufacturing back to America. Because of Hunter Biden’s continuing investments in China, it is unlikely that Joe Biden would continue policies that would move jobs away from China.