Quote:
Originally Posted by Lemon Drop Husker
Hard to exceed expectations every month.
Unemployment still at a 50 year low of 3.6%.  |
Avg monthly job creation stats:
Last 4 years of Obama: 216k
Last 2 years of Obama: 210k
Trump's first 29 months in office: 195K
Trump's trailing 12 months: 212k
Source: Trump's Dept of Labor (
https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES0..._view=net_1mth)
Tom raises an important point (i.e., the late-cycle dynamic at play--more difficult to hire new workers), but it appears the economy has downshifted modestly this year, as we've anniversaried the tax cuts and the tariffs sap, modestly at this point, business and, to a lessor extent, consumer confidence (see comments from the latest Univ of Michigan consumer confidence survey--re: back half of May). Importantly, wage gains have inflected higher under Trump (in rough terms, wage gains trending at 3% vs 2% under Obama). Again, this is a normal late-cycle dynamic.
Longer term, GDP growth (and job growth by extension) is a function of productivity and population growth. Population growth is very modest at this point. If long-term immigration patterns are curbed, I suspect it falls lower. Productivity growth has stagnated over the past decade. It's shown a little bit of life over the past six to twelve months, but I'd question the sustainability.
Personally, I believe there's too much debt in the system (in the US and globally), which places downward pressure on growth (in the US and globally).
