Let's talk about the economy, starting with jobs.
We had very, very strong jobs.
Numbers come out late last week.
CNBC reports job growth totals 253,000 in April, beating expectations even as the U.S.
economy slows.
From the standpoint of GDP, the simple facts are nonfarm.
Payrolls were expected at 180,000 came in at two 53,000.
That's great.
Unemployment rate was 3.4%.
The estimate was 3.6%.
This is the lowest unemployment rate since 1969 and average hourly earnings went up half
of 1% and are now up 4.4% from a year ago.
Wages growing faster than expected, both in the last month and in the last year.
A couple of other interesting things to mention here.
One is that black unemployment, much touted and discussed by Donald Trump as one of his
major accomplishments, has hit an all time low.
Do we care specifically about the racial breakdown of jobs?
Well, we care to the extent that elected officials in Washington use it as a political football.
Now, what does this say in general about how the economy is doing?
Well, we have to look at a lot of different things when we ask how is an economy doing?
An economy is not only jobs.
An economy is not only stock market, an economy is not only GDP or inflation, but in sum,
total.
We can look at a lot of these things.
For example, here is a chart of the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
This is a one month chart.
As you can see, the Dow is up over the last month.
Here is a six month chart.
The Dow is up over the last six months.
Here is a year to date chart.
The Dow is up there.
Here is a one year chart.
The Dow is up there as well.
And here is a five year chart.
And the stock markets over longer periods tend to go up and it is up then as well.
So jobs numbers, quite solid, stock market, quite solid inflation.
Inflation now for the better part of a year has been trickling down and down and down
with some blips where it goes up, our inflation numbers where we would love them to be.
No.
Are they dramatically better than when Trump left and Joe Biden came in?
Absolutely.
And then we have GDP.
GDP growth was still positive in Q1, but it did slow down.
Is this the most exciting, dynamic and explosive, electrifying economy that we have ever seen?
It is not.
Is this the near disaster that the right claims the United States economy finds itself in
because of Joe Biden's presence in the White House?
Absolutely not.
And as I've said many times before, many of these indicators only have little bits to
do with the policy from the Oval Office and the presidency.
Now, there are always reflexive people like they can't help.
They just like vomit out these talking points when they don't like conceding that the economy
is doing okay because the person they didn't vote for is in the Oval Office.
You will hear things like there's jobs created because everybody's working two jobs and that
makes the economy bad.
We have an indicator of that.
There are not a uniquely large number of people working two jobs at this point in time.
You hear about, well, the reason it's happening is because stay at home moms are having to
go back to work because the economy is so bad.
Yet you never want to talk about that dynamic when you do your labor participation rate
conspiracy theory.
So we we hear about all of these things year in and year out.
We can find the data.
There is not anything particularly alarming or different right now about the number of
people who are out of the workforce and went back in or the number of people.
Or working two jobs.
It doesn't mean we don't have problems.
Wages relative to inflation have been stagnant for a while now.
That's a long term problem.
It's bigger than Biden.
It's bigger than Trump.
It's bigger than Obama.
Okay, you get the picture.
Labor participation rate.
The country's population has been growing for a very long time.
At most times you can say we have more people than ever working and we have more people
than ever not working.
That makes it a really popular political football to throw around.
My suggestion is to zoom out.
Look at unemployment.
Job creation.
GDP.
Stocks.
Inflation.
Meaning Consumer Price index.
Wage growth.
And I could go on and a couple more and then take the general temperature of it to get
a sense of where we are.
If you do that, it is not possible to come to the conclusion some on the right have come
to, which is that Joe Biden's economy is a disaster, putting the United States on the
brink of collapse.
There is no case that can be made with data, actual data, honest data that would accurately
suggest that that is the situation right now.
Could the economy be better?
Sure.
Is the economy a disaster right now?
Not at all.
Could it become one in the future?
Of course.