Jobs report details should make Trump happy — and have Dems worried
Jobs report details should make Trump happy — and have Dems worried
By John Crudele
September 10, 2018 | 9:38pm
The details of the employment report are something that should also worry Democrats and make President Trump happy. Unemployment among blacks and Hispanics is staying low — and wage growth for everyone is improving.
Blacks and Hispanics are typically Democratic supporters. The knock on the job growth we’ve seen so far this year is that wages aren’t improving enough because the jobs being created are lousy ones.
As I said, the August jobs report was pretty strong, with an increase of 201,000. That was slightly better than expected.
The unemployment rate was unchanged at 3.9 percent.
And wages grew by 10 cents an hour. Average wages are now up 2.9 percent over the last year.
Now the bad news: The Labor Department revised downward June’s job growth from 248,000 to 208,000 and July’s from 157,000 to 147,000. As I said in my last column, the revisions had been going upward all the way back to February.
What about blacks and Hispanics — two groups Trump needs to help his cause? Unemployment among blacks was 6.3 percent in August, which is much higher than the national average for all adults.
But that was better than the 6.6 percent jobless rate for blacks a year ago.
The same is true for Hispanics. In that group, overall unemployment is 4.7 percent — lower than the 5.1 percent in August 2017.
I’m going to repeat something because I know it annoys so many people. If the midterm elections are strongly influenced by the economy (and, again, I think they will be), then the Democrats will have to find something monstrously bad on Trump between now and the Nov. 6 election.
The Bob Woodward book and the anonymous op-ed piece in The New York Times are probably just the start. Be prepared, investors, for a rocky couple of months.
https://nypost.com/2018/09/10/jobs-r...-dems-worried/