Bloomberg – President Donald Trump used the first federal jobs report of his presidency to promote a narrative of an invigorated economy that may strengthen his political position as begins the drive to win passage of legislative priorities including an Obamacare replacement and a tax overhaul.
“GREAT AGAIN: +235,000,” Trump posted on his Twitter account in a retweet of a Drudge Report headline on Friday minutes after the Bureau of Labor Statistics released payrolls data for February showing the U.S. added a net 235,000 jobs during the month.
Gary Cohn, the former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. president who’s now director of the National Economic Council, used the report as validation of Trump’s approach to bolstering the economy, which has included bringing in corporate executives to the White House to press them for hiring commitments and publicly scolding companies over plans to move production abroad.
Sounds GREAT! Certainly will have all the Trumpians ecstatic and singing The Bullshitter In Chief’s praises. But wait a minute. Lets put on the thinking cap and examine this just a bit.
FiveThirtyEight – Hiring was strong and wage growth accelerated in President Trump’s first full month in office. But don’t give Trump credit, at least not yet.
The U.S. economy added 235,000 jobs in February, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said Friday. That topped economists’ expectations and marked the second consecutive month of strong hiring. The unemployment rate fell a tenth of a percentage point to 4.7 percent, reversing its January uptick. Average earnings rose six cents an hour and were up 2.8 percent from a year earlier.
Trump will probably point to the report as proof that his economic policies are working. (On Friday, he retweeted a Drudge Report tweet hailing the jobs number as “great again.”) That isn’t supported by the evidence. Hiring was essentially the same in February as it was in January, when President Obama was still in office, and represented a continuation of an existing pattern of steady job growth. The jump in wages was widely anticipated by economists following an unexpected slowdown in January, and the unemployment rate has been stuck in a narrow band just below 5 percent for most of the past year.
Even if the economy does start to change direction in coming months, it’s unlikely Trump or his policies will be the primary cause. Presidents in any case have little control over the economy, especially in the short-term. The government can (probably) help ease the impact of a recession, and bad policies can (definitely) slow down growth. And presidential policies on things like education, infrastructure and tax policy can have long-term effects, for good or ill. But presidents have little influence over the month-to-month ups and downs of hiring or inflation.
What Friday’s report does show is that the economy continues to hold in the steady-but-not-spectacular pattern that it’s been in for most of the seven and a half years since the recession ended. U.S. employers have now added jobs for 77 consecutive months, a record, and the improving job market has begun to draw more Americans into the workforce. Recent hiring has been relatively broad-based, with good-paying industries such as construction and professional services adding jobs alongside lower paying sectors such as retail and hospitality. (Retailers actually cut jobs in February, although that was probably a one-month blip.)
So, basically what we’re really seeing is the long term effects of the economic policies of the prior administration at work. Seven and a half years of policy and history is certainly more indicative the present than the one month Trump has played president. But as we all know, Trump is incapable of doing anything other than tooting his own horn and telling everyone HE is responsible for making things Great Again. Even when he has NOTHING to do with it.
Much more relevant, interesting, and truthful data BELOW THE FOLD.
