Jobs and Unemployment Statistics Released This Morning

Based on the information above from the Labor Department, is this news a positive or negative for our country? If something else, please add your comment below.

Of course its positive. We are on the same trajectory in terms of job growth and GDP growth that we have been on for several years now and that is a good thing.

Positively positive.

I have a hard time seeing how it could be a bad thing. I'd like to see more wage growth. But I feel overall the economy has been humming along without any huge bubbles which hopefully keeps us away from another 2008 incident for a while. Of course I'd never make predictions about the economy.

But yea, it's been growing nice and steady, it's still growing nice and steady.

Josie said:

Based on the information above from the Labor Department, is this news a positive or negative for our country? If something else, please add your comment below.

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Depends on how you look at it. Obviously, job growth is always good, but we just gave out billions of dollars in tax cuts and massively increased our deficits under the claim that it was going to radically improve a struggling economy. In truth, the economy wasn't struggling at all. It was already humming along just fine before the tax cuts, and these job numbers don't give us any reason to think the economy is doing better today than it was a year ago, and they certainly don't indicate that the tax cuts are doing anything meaningful. So basically all we did was give a handout to millionaires and billionaires when we could have been using that money to pay down our deficits.

So the Job numbers are fine, but if republican tax cuts were actually working the way they claimed they would they should be much more than just fine.

Josie said:

Based on the information above from the Labor Department, is this news a positive or negative for our country? If something else, please add your comment below.

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Of course it is positive, it is a continuing Trend from even under Obama.

roughdraft274 said:

I have a hard time seeing how it could be a bad thing. I'd like to see more wage growth. But I feel overall the economy has been humming along without any huge bubbles which hopefully keeps us away from another 2008 incident for a while. Of course I'd never make predictions about the economy.

But yea, it's been growing nice and steady, it's still growing nice and steady.

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With full employment - or what we call full employment - wage pressures generally follow. Be patient.

MrWonka said:

Depends on how you look at it. Obviously, job growth is always good, but we just gave out billions of dollars in tax cuts and massively increased our deficits under the claim that it was going to radically improve a struggling economy. In truth, the economy wasn't struggling at all. It was already humming along just fine before the tax cuts, and these job numbers don't give us any reason to think the economy is doing better today than it was a year ago, and they certainly don't indicate that the tax cuts are doing anything meaningful. So basically all we did was give a handout to millionaires and billionaires when we could have been using that money to pay down our deficits.

So the Job numbers are fine, but if republican tax cuts were actually working the way they claimed they would they should be much more than just fine.

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I can't believe you guys still think an economy faltering along at 2% or less is "humming along"; and that that was just hunky-dory. Obama was the first President since WW II to never have a full year of 3% GDP growth. And that comprises "humming along".


"These numbers don't give us any reason to think the economy is doing any better . . ."? Really? Are you that blindly partisan? Record numbers of job openings, wages going up because of employer actions rather than by government fiat. Consumer confidence, and business confidence in record territory, a resilient stock market that has taken several body blows and is still within a few points of record highs. You're the Baghdad Bob of the Never Trump set.

And then, of course, there is this...

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/390179-trumps-tariffs-could-cost-26m-jobs-report

This is the conservative-leaning chamber of commerce telling us that they believe Trump's idiotic trade policies could threaten 2.6 Million American Jobs.

When you have a solid economy, and steady growth the last thing in the world you want to be doing is start a ****ing trade war. Not that it's ever a good idea, but it's a disgustingly idiotic idea right now. Furthermore, you've got businesses out there who are desperate for workers but can't fill their payroll cause the talent just isn't out there, and you got a racist idiot hell-bent on deporting all kinds of incredibly hard working people that are just looking for an opportunity.

So the trees are lovely, but let's try and focus a bit on the forest.

SouthernDemocrat said:

Of course its positive. We are on the same trajectory in terms of job growth and GDP growth that we have been on for several years now and that is a good thing.

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Love how you guys keep on giving Obama the credit for Trump's economy. If it goes on this course through all eight years of Trump's presidency you will still be saying that same mumbo jumbo, "But it was going in that direction already!"

Praxas said:

Of course it is positive, it is a continuing Trend from even under Obama.

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And if it continues like this another 7 years you will still be saying the same thing.

Moderate Right said:

And if it continues like this another 7 years you will still be saying the same thing.

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Not at all, see unlike simpleton dumb Trump supporters I realize that the president has very little to do with the economy getting better. However a president can make the economy crash by starting wars, threatening other countries with wars and starting trade wars. The economy has been on an upward trend for several years. Glad you finally woke up to see that because I thought folks like you were always the ones telling us how HORRIBLE the economy was until magically Trump took office and then you change your minds.

Moderate Right said:

Love how you guys keep on giving Obama the credit for Trump's economy. If it goes on this course through all eight years of Trump's presidency you will still be saying that same mumbo jumbo, "But it was going in that direction already!"

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Turning that same hypocrisy around, why is it that you're so happy about Trump's economic numbers but heavily criticized Obama for having the exact same numbers month after month? 300k jobs in a month is "making America great again" under Trump, but those numbers and better were "oh they were probably all low quality jobs!" There is no economic metric that is substantially better than Obama's. Your interpretation is selective.

Moderate Right said:

And if it continues like this another 7 years you will still be saying the same thing.

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If it continues another 7 years like this, Trump will definitely deserve credit. However, you guys were already celebrating how amazing the economy magically became on his first day in office.

RabidAlpaca said:

Turning that same hypocrisy around, why is it that you're so happy about Trump's economic numbers but heavily criticized Obama for having the exact same numbers month after month? 300k jobs in a month is "making America great again" under Trump, but those numbers and better were "oh they were probably all low quality jobs!" There is no economic metric that is substantially better than Obama's. Your interpretation is selective.



If it continues another 7 years like this, Trump will definitely deserve credit. However, you guys were already celebrating how amazing the economy magically became on his first day in office.

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I did not criticize Obama's economy much, although the numbers are better now than they were before. I voted for Obama in 2012. If the left sing the praises of the Obama economy and then turn around and say that Trump has the economy going in the same direction that Obama did, then the left should be singing Trump's praises.

Bullseye said:

I can't believe you guys still think an economy faltering along at 2% or less is "humming along"; and that that was just hunky-dory. Obama was the first President since WW II to never have a full year of 3% GDP growth. And that comprises "humming along".

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Actually, in President Obama's first year in office he inherited a -2.8% growth, and then the following year after passing the stimulus package he turned around and got +2.5% growth. That's a net gain of 5.3% in one year, you're just not factoring in trajectory. Unfortunately, after that Republicans got enough seats in the Senate to block all of President Obama's future economic policies which is why the recovery went slower than we'd like, but that is not Obama's fault.

You need to wake up and join us in the real world friend. Economic growth is driven by population growth, not by a presidents economic policy. Presidential policy can **** up an economy, and it can give a struggling economy a brief shot in the arm, but ultimately the job of the government is to stabilize the economy. So long as our population continues to grow over time we will always have economic growth, but right now our population is currently stagnating. Young people aren't having as many children, and rather than trying to make up for it by allowing in more immigrants this dip**** president is deporting people.

Get used to having economic growth that hovers around 3% or below for the next few decades buddy. It doesn't really matter who is in the White House that's going to be a tough number to crack so long as our population continues to level off.

Bullseye said:

"These numbers don't give us any reason to think the economy is doing any better . . ."? Really? Are you that blindly partisan? Record numbers of job openings, wages going up because of employer actions rather than by government fiat. Consumer confidence, and business confidence in record territory, a resilient stock market that has taken several body blows and is still within a few points of record highs.

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These are end results, not trends. Look at the final graph from the OP.

In 2013 we had +200k job growth in 3 out of the first 5 months.
In 2014 we had +200k job growth in 3 out of the first 5 months.
In 2015 we had +200k job growth in 4 out of the first 5 months.
In 2016 we had +200k job growth in 2 out of the first 5 months.
In 2017 we had +200k job growth in 1 out of the first 5 months. (January when Obama was still in office)
In 2018 we had +200k job growth in 2 out of the first 5 months.

All good numbers, but 13, 14, and 15 showed us our best starts. 2013, by the way, was the first year after Obama eliminated the Bush tax cuts on the wealthy. The last few years things have been tapering off a little bit. In calculus, we would say that job numbers are increasing at a decreasing rate. Still headed in the right direction, but not accelerating, and possibly even decelerating a bit.

Not the fault of any government policy, just a natural tapering off that happens as you approach full employment. You can't grow jobs if you don't have people to fill them. We are now almost halfway through the first year of Trump's tax cuts that were supposed to stimulate the economy. There has been no spike in job growth. No change in the trajectory. Job growth is remaining at the same pace it was under Obama, possibly even a bit slower.

The difference? Under Obama, our deficits were trending downward as the economy continued to improve. Under Trump, we're increasing deficits without improving the economy.

Moderate Right said:

I did not criticize Obama's economy much, although the numbers are better now than they were before. I voted for Obama in 2012.

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Based on your previous posts and absolute disgust for Obama, I highly doubt that. And no, his numbers are better some months and worse other months. The economic trend is still linear and hasn't changed much, for better or worse. I'll grant that you feel better now, but the cold hard numbers don't really support that.

This is what I'm talking about:

MrWonka said:

In 2013 we had +200k job growth in 3 out of the first 5 months.
In 2014 we had +200k job growth in 3 out of the first 5 months.
In 2015 we had +200k job growth in 4 out of the first 5 months.
In 2016 we had +200k job growth in 2 out of the first 5 months.
In 2017 we had +200k job growth in 1 out of the first 5 months. (January when Obama was still in office)
In 2018 we had +200k job growth in 2 out of the first 5 months.

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Identical numbers are magically "better" when your guy is in office.

RabidAlpaca said:

Based on your previous posts and absolute disgust for Obama, I highly doubt that. And no, his numbers are better some months and worse other months. The economic trend is still linear and hasn't changed much, for better or worse. I'll grant that you feel better now, but the cold hard numbers don't really support that.

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I didn't have disgust for Obama. You must be thinking of someone else.

Several thoughts:

• Jobs added graph:
  • The jobs report quantifies the number of jobs added to the economy. More jobs added is certainly not a bad thing.
  • The job report figure about the quantity of jobs added does not assert or imply what I suspect a lot of people assume it does. The jobs report is silent on the quality of compensation those jobs provide.
• Unemployment graph:
  • Insofar as structural unemployment is 4% and we are below that, that's a good thing.
  • Here again, the question of the quality of employment is not addressed by the top-level unemployment rate.
• Wage growth graph:
  • Inflation is running at 2% and wage growth is at 2.7%. That means that of the $0.08/hr average wage increase, $0.059 of it is "eaten" by inflation; thus the purchasing power increase is just over two cents. Put another way, one must work one day and two hours to realize a twenty-one cents more of purchasing power, or ~$44 more per year.
    
    Abstractly, more purchasing power is more purchasing power and it's better than less purchasing power. Contextually, however, I don't think anyone jumps for joy over $44 more per year. I dare say, I can't image folks even noticing that they in fact earned $44 more in "year 2" than they did in "year 1."

So in response to the question is the report positive or negative, my response is that it has positive qualities, but, as with other jobs reports before it that came with upsides and unstated downsides, it's not a report that I'm looking at thinking "everything's coming up roses." The report is what it is, but the report hardly presents a comprehensive picture of all that is, nor does it attempt to. Accordingly, I'm not going to base my view of the economy on what's in any given jobs report.

MrWonka said:

Actually, in President Obama's first year in office he inherited a -2.8% growth, and then the following year after passing the stimulus package he turned around and got +2.5% growth. That's a net gain of 5.3% in one year, you're just not factoring in trajectory. Unfortunately, after that Republicans got enough seats in the Senate to block all of President Obama's future economic policies which is why the recovery went slower than we'd like, but that is not Obama's fault.

You need to wake up and join us in the real world friend. Economic growth is driven by population growth, not by a presidents economic policy. Presidential policy can **** up an economy, and it can give a struggling economy a brief shot in the arm, but ultimately the job of the government is to stabilize the economy. So long as our population continues to grow over time we will always have economic growth, but right now our population is currently stagnating. Young people aren't having as many children, and rather than trying to make up for it by allowing in more immigrants this dip**** president is deporting people.

Get used to having economic growth that hovers around 3% or below for the next few decades buddy. It doesn't really matter who is in the White House that's going to be a tough number to crack so long as our population continues to level off.



These are end results, not trends. Look at the final graph from the OP.

In 2013 we had +200k job growth in 3 out of the first 5 months.
In 2014 we had +200k job growth in 3 out of the first 5 months.
In 2015 we had +200k job growth in 4 out of the first 5 months.
In 2016 we had +200k job growth in 2 out of the first 5 months.
In 2017 we had +200k job growth in 1 out of the first 5 months. (January when Obama was still in office)
In 2018 we had +200k job growth in 2 out of the first 5 months.

All good numbers, but 13, 14, and 15 showed us our best starts. 2013, by the way, was the first year after Obama eliminated the Bush tax cuts on the wealthy. The last few years things have been tapering off a little bit. In calculus, we would say that job numbers are increasing at a decreasing rate. Still headed in the right direction, but not accelerating, and possibly even decelerating a bit.

Not the fault of any government policy, just a natural tapering off that happens as you approach full employment. You can't grow jobs if you don't have people to fill them. We are now almost halfway through the first year of Trump's tax cuts that were supposed to stimulate the economy. There has been no spike in job growth. No change in the trajectory. Job growth is remaining at the same pace it was under Obama, possibly even a bit slower.

The difference? Under Obama, our deficits were trending downward as the economy continued to improve. Under Trump, we're increasing deficits without improving the economy.

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Moderate Right said:

I didn't have disgust for Obama. You must be thinking of someone else.

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Nope, it's you, you're someone who'd say things like this:

Moderate Right said:

But the economy was plugging along just fine until Obama came along. Therefore it was the Great Obama Recession.

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You call the worst recession we'd had since the Great Depression "just plugging along fine", and then big, bad ol' Obama came along and threw us into an economic catastrophe! This is what I'm talking about, you create your own little reality, identical numbers are "great" for one and a "great recession" for the other guy.

Moderate Right said:

Love how you guys keep on giving Obama the credit for Trump's economy.

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What economic policy did Donald Trump pass that could have altered the trajectory of the economy at this point in time? The tax cuts are really the only thing he's passed that could matter and they didn't take effect until January of this year. They were supposed to stimulate the economy. But the trajectory of the economy hasn't really changed at all. It's still growing at roughly the same pace it was before, maybe even slowing down a tiny bit.

When President Obama took office he passed a stimulus package within weeks of taking office. The first funds from that stimulus package hit the economy 5 months later in June of 2009. Prior to June of 2009, our economy was hemorrhaging jobs at a clip of almost -800k per month. Starting in June of 2009 our economy began to grow jobs again, and for the last 96 consecutive months, we've grown jobs at an average of around 190k per month.

Presidents do not grow economies. The private sector does that. A President can **** up an economy with dumb policy, and he can give it a short-term shot in the arm to try and get it going in the right direction, but government policy in and of itself cannot forcibly grow an economy over time. So when talking about Presidential policy what's important to look are the trends. How do they change over time based on policy decisions?

President Obama passed a stimulus package to change the trajectory of the economy. As soon as it took effect the trends changed. We went from losing jobs to creating them. Trump passed a tax cut to stimulate the economy. It took effect in January. The trajectory of our economy is the same as it was, maybe even a bit slower.

We were told that Republicans were going to implement all these pro-business policies that were going to give our economy a shot in the arm? So far we're not seeing any noticeable improvement over the job growth numbers of 2013, '14 and '15. What was the point? We could be reducing our deficits, and we could have kept the regulations that were protecting our workers, and our environment while still achieving these same growth numbers.

MrWonka said:

Actually, in President Obama's first year in office he inherited a -2.8% growth, and then the following year after passing the stimulus package he turned around and got +2.5% growth. That's a net gain of 5.3% in one year, you're just not factoring in trajectory. Unfortunately, after that Republicans got enough seats in the Senate to block all of President Obama's future economic policies which is why the recovery went slower than we'd like, but that is not Obama's fault.

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LOL, that's the most amusingly creative Obama excuse I can ever remember hearing.

MrWonka said:

You need to wake up and join us in the real world friend. Economic growth is driven by population growth, not by a presidents economic policy. Presidential policy can **** up an economy, and it can give a struggling economy a brief shot in the arm, but ultimately the job of the government is to stabilize the economy. So long as our population continues to grow over time we will always have economic growth, but right now our population is currently stagnating. Young people aren't having as many children, and rather than trying to make up for it by allowing in more immigrants this dip**** president is deporting people.

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Economic growth depends on a lot more than just population growth; it that WERE the case we'd never have a recession because population grows constantly. It depends on the personal decisions of consumers, investors, business people, entrepreneurs and more. When the see opportunity the act and the economy grows, when they seen a hostile government in DC they hesitate. Obama from the start made clear he favored ideology over economic success; and it showed for the eight years he was in office.

MrWonka said:

Get used to having economic growth that hovers around 3% or below for the next few decades buddy. It doesn't really matter who is in the White House that's going to be a tough number to crack so long as our population continues to level off.

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I'd be fine with a 3% growth or even 2.5% That would still be 25%-50% better than Obama's,

MrWonka said:

These are end results, not trends. Look at the final graph from the OP.

In 2013 we had +200k job growth in 3 out of the first 5 months.
In 2014 we had +200k job growth in 3 out of the first 5 months.
In 2015 we had +200k job growth in 4 out of the first 5 months.
In 2016 we had +200k job growth in 2 out of the first 5 months.
In 2017 we had +200k job growth in 1 out of the first 5 months. (January when Obama was still in office)
In 2018 we had +200k job growth in 2 out of the first 5 months.

All good numbers, but 13, 14, and 15 showed us our best starts. 2013, by the way, was the first year after Obama eliminated the Bush tax cuts on the wealthy. The last few years things have been tapering off a little bit. In calculus, we would say that job numbers are increasing at a decreasing rate. Still headed in the right direction, but not accelerating, and possibly even decelerating a bit.

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Not sure what your point is.

MrWonka said:

Not the fault of any government policy, just a natural tapering off that happens as you approach full employment. You can't grow jobs if you don't have people to fill them. We are now almost halfway through the first year of Trump's tax cuts that were supposed to stimulate the economy. There has been no spike in job growth. No change in the trajectory. Job growth is remaining at the same pace it was under Obama, possibly even a bit slower.

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We've hit record numbers for JOB OPENINGS and more discouraged workers are coming back into the work for - this morning's jobs report shows that.

MrWonka said:

The difference? Under Obama, our deficits were trending downward as the economy continued to improve. Under Trump, we're increasing deficits without improving the economy.

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A lot of words to make excuses for Obama. And all the classic "he inherited" the bad stuff coupled with the "his brilliance" caused all the good stuff. Just to be clear he was President for 3/4s of 2009 and unless you're claiming he and his unstoppable majority in Congress did nothing during time - the results are on him. Oh and those deficits "trending down" where mostly because he'd ballooned the deficit into the trillion dollar range for his first three years. He still hold the 5-6 highest deficits ever.

Moderate Right said:

Love how you guys keep on giving Obama the credit for Trump's economy. If it goes on this course through all eight years of Trump's presidency you will still be saying that same mumbo jumbo, "But it was going in that direction already!"

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If only regular unhinged twitter rants were tied to economic growth...

RabidAlpaca said:

Identical numbers are magically "better" when your guy is in office.

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No, they're the same, but we were told that Republican pro-business policies and tax cuts would be better for the economy. They haven't been. They're roughly the same as they were before. So we're just running up a deficit for nothing. Destroying our environment for nothing.

For eight long years, we were told by Republicans that President Obama's economic numbers were abso-****ing-lutely horrendous. They pointed to the current unemployment rates to prove it while ignoring the good downward trends. When the unemployment numbers started looking too good, they changed the unemployment numbers and pointed to the U-6 rate(which by the way is still up at 7.6%).

By your own admission after almost a year and a half of Republican control, and 5 good months of tax cuts the job growth numbers are "Identical." So how did this benefit us? Why did we need this? We have a rising deficit, and an environment going to hell in a handbasket. We were told it was worth it to improve the economy, but economic growth is virtually identical.

The only positive thing we can say about Trump here is that he hasn't destroyed our economy yet. But the thing about eliminating regulations and tax cuts is that they only increase the likelihood of a crash. They're not the direct cause. They just improve the odds. Bush's bad policy took 5-6 years to ruin us. We'll see how long we last under Trump.

Bullseye said:

LOL, that's the most amusingly creative Obama excuse I can ever remember hearing.

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Really? Name the significant economic legislation that President Obama tried to pass after 2010 that wasn't filibustered? You can't complain about polices when you're not allowing him to enact them. The stimulus package and the auto bailout were the only significant pieces of economic legislation Obama was able to pass. They both in the first two years of his term. During that time we went from -2.8% growth to +2.5% growth. These are facts.

Bullseye said:

Economic growth depends on a lot more than just population growth; it that WERE the case we'd never have a recession because population grows constantly.

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False. Recessions happen because the economy is artificially getting itself ahead of population growth. During the 2000s we were building more houses than we had people to fill them. In the late 90's there was a ton of money being invested in start-up dot-coms, but when the demand ultimately wasn't there for the services those websites they were building it blew up.

That's what makes supply-side policy so dangerous. It throws a bunch of money at billionaires to create jobs. With all this extra money in their pocket, they make risky investments which for a brief time can create jobs, but when reality sets in and in turn they don't have customers to buy the products they are making it all blows up in their faces.

Bullseye said:

When they see the opportunity the act and the economy grows,

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But that opportunity has to come from demand. If they build a house just because they have the money to do so, but then can't find anybody to buy it that blows up in their face. When a whole bunch of millionaires and billionaires have a ton of extra money laying around they don't know what to do with they tend to make more bad investments like those. Then they all blow up in their faces at the same time.

Bullseye said:

We've hit record numbers for JOB OPENINGS

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We had record numbers of job openings in 2015.

Job Openings In July Jumped To A Record High, JOLTS Report Shows | Fortune

Bullseye said:

and more discouraged workers are coming back into the work for - this morning's jobs report shows that.

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So did the Jobs report from may of 2015. The question isn't whether there are more people coming back, the question is whether it's more people per month. The answer to that is no. It's about the same as before.

Bullseye said:

Just to be clear he was President for 3/4s of 2009

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Umm.... first he was president for 11/12ths of it. (not exactly making yourself look like a math genius here)

Second, trying to change the trajectory of an economy ass massive as the United States of America when it's in free fall is like trying to stop a freight train and getting it headed in the other direction. Even for Superman, that's hard to do. Anybody who believes the mir election of a new president can radically change the trajectory of the U.S. economy on the day he takes office is a delusional moron that has absolutely no understanding of how economies work.

Bullseye said:

Oh and those deficits "trending down" where mostly because he'd ballooned the deficit into the trillion-dollar range for his first three years.

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No, actually HE didn't.

View attachment 67233743

The three biggest causes of the deficit during President Obama's first term in office were 1.) The Bush Tax Cuts. 2.) The Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan which were started by Bush. and 3.) The actual recession itself which again started under Bush cost billions in tax revenue.

All three things were caused by Bush and fixed by Obama. That is why deficits trended downward towards the end of his presidency.