Tag Archives: jobs report

economic news, national news

‘Meager’ jobs report prompts more action? Sure, but wait

By John Kanelis / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

The Labor Department produced some relatively desultory job-creation figures this morning.

The private non-farm sector generated “only” 266,000 jobs in April, said the Labor bean counters. There had been projections of a million plus such jobs.

What was the response from President Biden? He said the relatively skimpy job growth means the government must do more to stimulate an economy crushed by the COVID pandemic.

I agree with him … to a point.

The jobs figures signal a need to approve something akin to the infrastructure/family/jobs package that Biden has presented to Congress.

I am not sure that we need to receive yet another round of “stimulus checks” to boost the economy.

Don’t get me wrong. My wife and I appreciate the aid we got from the government already. The $2,400 we received during the last year of the Trump administration and the $2,800 we received shortly after Joe Biden took office both have gone a long way to easing any difficulty in our home.

However, I remain a deficit hawk. I am fearful of the enormous deficits being run up during the current federal budget year. I want there to be more economic aid, but I also want it to come in the form of boosting tax rates for mega-wealthy Americans and corporations who find a way to avoid shouldering their share of the tax burden.

As for the infrastructure portion of the Biden package, by all means let us put people to work building and rebuilding our roads, bridges, airports and seaports. President Biden has thrown out an interesting idea, to re-create the Civilian Conservation Corps established during the Franklin Roosevelt administration as a way to rid the nation of the Great Depression. Let’s have that discussion, too.

I am not panicking just because one month’s job numbers didn’t measure up to what the brainiacs had predicted. I urge our government leaders to avoid pushing the economic pedal to the metal full bore.

national news

Forecast of economic doom? Hah!

By JOHN KANELIS / johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com

Hey, wait a second!

I could swear I heard Donald John Trump make a bold prediction that if Joe Biden were elected president of the United States that the U.S. economy would collapse.

That the stock market would crater. That jobs would flee the nation. That unemployment rates would balloon beyond anything we could recognize. That the economic health of the nation required the re-election of Trump as president.

Didn’t he say that? Or words to that effect?

Well, let’s see. The March jobs report came in today. Private non-farm job growth registered a 916,000 surge. Joblessness fell to 6 percent. The U.S. Labor Department report suggested, according to economists, that our economy is showing signs of post-pandemic vitality.

Now, let me be clear. President Biden does not deserve all the credit for this performance. Vaccines are being injected into more Americans every day. I know about the increase in COVID cases and an uptick in deaths from the virus. Health officials are urging us to stay the course, to keep wearing masks, practice social distancing.

However, I want to highlight one more lie that Donald Trump justĀ  had to throw out there before he exited the White House for the final time. This formerly legendary business mogul made a prediction that has turned out — like practically everything he has said — to be patently false.

business news, economic news

These numbers are mind boggling … to be sure

I always have considered the study of economics to be a fairly precise endeavor. Experts look at hard data and make determinations based on what they see as hard evidence of trends.

I also am not an expert on these matters, so take this brief blog post with a grain or two of salt if that suits you.

Thus, when economists project a jobs report that looks toward a 20 percent unemployment rate nationally and the loss of about 9 million non-farm jobs in the past month, I tend to take those projections seriously. I mean, the pandemic has slammed the brakes on the national economy.

That didn’t happen today when the U.S. Labor Department released its latest monthly jobs report.

Labor’s bean counters said the nation added nearly 3 million jobs and the jobless rate dropped from 14 percent to 13 percent in the past month.

How in the name of data-driven study did they miss the mark so badly?

If this had been done during the administration of, say, Barack Obama, we could expect to hear accusations immediately coming from, oh, Donald Trump that the numbers were cooked up. That they were phony. That the Labor Department is being run by a cabal of partisan hacks intent on feathering the president’s political fortunes.

Donald Trump, though, is the immediate beneficiary of these stunning numbers … and this stunning misreading of the nation’s economic standing.

I won’t question the veracity of this jobs report, given my own stated belief that the Labor Department is run by professionals who know what they heck they are doing. I have defended the Labor Department when Donald Trump hurled baseless accusations about previous jobs reports.

At least they know what they’re doing, um, most of the time.

However, I look forward to a thorough explanation of just how the best and the brightest economic minds in the nation missed this call by a country mile.

national news

George Floyd would be glad to see jobs report?

Yep, Donald John Trump said today that the man killed by Minneapolis cops — whose death has spawned a national protest movement against police brutality — would be happy to see the jobs report that stunned economists and politicians.

He conflated a national tragedy with a stunning increase of 2 million jobs and a reduction in the jobless rate from 14 percent to 13 percent.

Trump said, “Hopefully George is looking down right now and saying this is a great thing thatā€™s happening for our country. This is a great day for him, itā€™s a great day for everybody. This is a great day for everybody. This is a great, great day in terms of equality.”

George Floyd is still dead. The Minneapolis cops who killed him are charged with murder in his death. The nation grieves for Floyd’s memory and is demanding fundamental change in the way many police departments handle cases involving African-Americans.

And the president of the United States seeks to suggest that Floyd would be happy at the good news suggesting an economic rebound?

Is this guy for real? Well, he is … I am disheartened to say. Donald Trump simply cannot — or will not — respond appropriately to anything.

Yes, the nation got some good news economic news today. I am cheered by the prospect of businesses filling many of the jobs that were emptied because of the coronavirus pandemic. Then we have Donald Trump making outrageous predictions about the economy storming back at record levels.

What’s more, he is seeking to turn a national tragedy into a political plus for him. Absolutely bizarre!

business news

Wait for the next set of job-growth numbers

The way I figure it, the first Friday in April is going to be a doozy.

That is when the U.S. Department of Labor is scheduled to release its non-farm jobs report for March, which happens to be the first full month of the coronavirus pandemic that has sent jolting shockwaves throughout the nation’s economy.

The March figures likely won’t be nearly as rosy as the monthly reports have been for he past, oh, decade or so.

We’ve been adding millions of jobs annually since around 2010. Donald Trump, of course, pooh-poohed the Labor Department numbers prior to the time he became president. He called them “cooked up” figures; he said there was no way we were adding to payrolls so dramatically during the Obama administration.

It all changed when he took office in January 2017. Then the numbers became like The Gospels to him.

What will might happen on April 3 when the Labor Department releases its next set of numbers? They might reveal a net loss of jobs in March. Why? The reason is obvious: Businesses have been forced to shutter themselves as states, counties and cities issue directives limiting crowd sizes. The federal government response to date has been spotty ā€¦ and that’s the kindest description I can use.

How might the president react to crappy jobs numbers in March? I am guessing he’s going to find a way to blame it all on President Obama. Or on China. Or on the Deep State. Or perhaps on Martians who landed on Earth and kidnapped employees and flew them into outer space.

I am guessing, too, that Donald Trump will go ballistic. He’ll suffer a form of apoplexy not seen since, oh, when he learned that his inaugural crowd was nowhere near the size of the one that cheered the inauguration of Barack Obama.

These are troubling times. We in for more pain before it gets better. As for the president, he’ll have to deal with the bad news that is sure to arrive.

business news

Trade wars aren’t ‘good,’ really, they aren’t

I believe it was the character Gordon Gekko, portrayed by Michael Douglas, who said in the film “Wall Street” that “Greed … is good.”

That was about three decades ago. These days, we have another character, who happens to be the president of the United States, who is saying that “trade wars are good.”

Well, greed isn’t necessarily good. Trade wars aren’t good, either.

Yet the president of the United States, Donald J. Trump, has now officially gone to “war” with China, the world’s second-leading economic powerhouse.

Ladies and gents, we’re all going to pay for this.

Trump has imposed tariffs on Chinese imports. As the New York Times has reported: On Thursday, President Trump showed no signs of backing down from his fight, saying aboard Air Force One that the first wave of tariffs on $34 billion in goods would quickly be followed by levies on another $16 billion of Chinese products. And Mr. Trump continued to threaten Beijing with escalating tariffs on as much as $450 billion worth of Chinese goods.

How are the Chinese going to respond? That remains the open question. According to the Times: ā€œAt the moment, I donā€™t see how this ends,ā€ said Edward Alden, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. ā€œThis is very much in the presidentā€™s hands because heā€™s got advisers that seem divided, some substantively, some tactically. I just donā€™t think weā€™ve had any clear signs of the resolution he wants.ā€

Trump’s war against our traditional allies and trading partners has reached around the world. He’s imposed tariffs on Canada and Mexico, on the European Union and on Great Britain.

Tariff is another word for “tax,” meaning that the tax will add to the cost of producing the goods being shipped. If we’re going to impose these taxes on imported products, then the nation from which they come will respond with tariffs/taxes of their own on the goods that come from the United States.

Think, too, for a moment about the U.S. Labor Department’s report today that non-farm payrolls grew by 213,000 jobs in June. Good news, yes? Of course it is!

Will we continue to experience this continuing job growth if manufacturers no longer can afford to do business in this world of growing tariffs and taxes?

That’s my fear.

Trade wars aren’t good.

national news

Another presidential directive tossed aside

Donald Trump told us he would be an “unconventional” president.

Oh, man, has he ever delivered on that campaign promise.

Case in point: Trump fired off a tweet about an hour before the Labor Department announced the May jobs figures. He said he was “looking forward” to the announcement. It came and the numbers were good. They were great! Joblessness is now at 3.8 percent, the lowest in many years.

Although the president didn’t break any law with the tweet, he violated a directive handed down some years ago that counseled presidents to avoid scooping these reports. They idea is to protect the integrity of the announcement and avoid any premature reaction by big-time financial investors.

This guy, the president, just cannot control himself. Sure, the news was good. He wanted to share it. I can’t blame him for that. I can, however, question the judgment of a president who cannot exhibit any sort of discipline that all of his predecessors have shown.

His getting ahead of the jobs figures once again betrays a fundamental lack of understanding of the complexity of the office to which he was elected.

As I’ve noted before, the presidency of the United States is no place for on-the-job training.

business news

Jobs report: once cooked up, now legit?

Donald John Trump has this maddening capacity for talking out of both sides of his mouth and for avoiding accountability for it.

The U.S. Labor Department’s jobs report this week is an example of it. The bean counters at the Labor Department reported that 223,000 jobs were added to non-farm payrolls in May. Unemployment fell to 3.8 percent.

Good news? Of course it is! The president should take a victory lap on this one. He hailed the report so much that he actually sort of spilled the beans an hour before the data were released, breaking with longstanding presidential protocol. Some critics are concerned that he might have manipulated stock markets around the world by offering that hint of the good news that was about to be revealed.

But wait! He once derided those same bureaucrats’ findings when they delivered stellar jobs report numbers during the Barack Obama administration. He called them phony, cooked up. He said the actual jobless rate during President Obama’s time in office was many times greater than what the Labor Department said it was.

So, which is it? Were they cooked up then and have gained validity just because Trump is in office?

This is the kind of duplicity that Trump gets away with. It simply is astonishing in the extreme that the man’s “base” continues to cheer him on, giving him more incentive to keep lying to the nation.

Weird.

business news

Great jobs report, but what has POTUS done … exactly?

The U.S. Labor Department chimed in this morning with a stellar jobs report for July.

The nation added 209,000 payroll jobs. The unemployment rate fell from 4.4 percent to 4.3 percent. It’s good news. The economy is on the move, as it has been for some time now.

Donald J. Trump, as expected, took credit for the great jobs report. Yes, the president should be thrilled and happy with them. I welcome the good news as much as he does.

He said he’s “only just begun” to bring back more American jobs.

My question, though, is this: What, precisely, has the president done to generate the stellar jobs numbers?

Legislative accomplishment? None. We haven’t overhauled the tax system. Congress hasn’t acted on the president’s infrastructure revitalization plan. It hasn’t tossed out and replaced the Affordable Care Act.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has rolled back many of regulations enacted in prior administrations, but have those actions produced — by themselves — these big job numbers? Umm. No.

Take credit, Mr. President, if you wish. You are entitled to all the credit you deserve — which is some, but nearly as much as you seem to suggest.