The jobs market turned in a stellar performance in November, with nonfarm payrolls surging by 266,000 and the unemployment rate falling to 3.5%, according to Labor Department numbers released Friday.
Those totals easily beat the Wall Street consensus. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been looking for solid job growth of 187,000 and saw the unemployment rate holding steady from October’s 3.6%. The decline in November’s jobless rate came amid a corresponding 0.1 percentage point drop in the labor force participation rate, to 63.2%.Health care, leisure and hospitality, business and professional services, manufacturing. Low unemployment for pretty much every demographic that gets measured.
The specter of recession in the next year has faded.
Trumpists are going to crow about this, and why wouldn't they? Compounded with the fact that Dems' narrowing field of presidential candidates is utterly unexciting, save for the trembling their wrecking-ball economic policies induces in the voting populace, and the fact that impeachment is going to fizzle once it gets to a Senate trial, it only makes sense.
But let us remember that when the economy does great it's because government got out of the way.
What we should hope for is that the likes of Larry Kudlow continue to have Trump's ear and tell him, "Yeah, chief, getting government out of the way will make you look like a winner."
We'll have to put up with the VSG being insufferable on Twitter, but that will happen in any event.
And it will take some time for the VSG's protectionist bent to reveal its full effect. Farmers, in particular, are a nervous lot these days.
And remember that material well-being is not the full picture. It does not tell us anything about how God views our having given him the middle finger. History shows that continuing down that path leads to a reckoning.
But economically, there's no denying that the outlook is vibrant.
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