The Economy Looks Healthy, With A Few Small Asterisks
Commentary
It is an undeniable fact that the gears of the glorious machine that is the American economy continue to spin with nary a glitch.
Under President Trump, unemployment has fallen to what is now its lowest level since 1969. That headline number, of 3.7%, means that millions of people seeking work are gainfully employed, and very few are not. This is real cause for celebration, as is a faster-growing gross domestic product.
It is also true that in a labor market this tight, companies are struggling to find skilled workers, an inconvenient fact given that Trump and his Republican allies would slash in half the number of legal immigrants admitted to America.
And it bears noting that the monthly job-creation average these last 12 months is 201,000, almost identical the average under the record 75-month job creation streak under President Obama's watch.
Republicans apt to credit the massive, lopsided, deficit-exploding tax cut should admit that we are witnessing the continuation of a trend, not its acceleration.
Average hourly earnings rose 0.3%, for a year-over-year increase of 2.8%. That's about the same as the better-than-nothing but still-too-sluggish pace they were recording by the end of the Obama administration.
Finally, it bears noting that Captain Trump's great white whale, a trade deficit that he bizarrely characterizes as draining money from our people and businesses, is growing -- because it is, in many ways, a sign of a healthy consumer economy. Commerce Department figures released Friday show it jumping 6.4% between July and August.
It also didn't help that food exports took a $1.2 billion hit, largely because of retaliatory Chinese tariffs on soybeans. If the trade war continues or escalates, watch that grow.
Twenty-one months into his administration, Trump has earned the right to crow on Twitter about the state of the economy. But let's all be clear what's happening here.
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