- I guess you could say a good jobs report is all in the eye of the beholder
- And when it comes to President Trump’s eyes, he is now beholding an excellent jobs report
- Whereas a candidate, similar reports were described by Trump as phony, a hoax
- I have a lot more sympathy for Candidate Trump than I do for President Trump
- Now President Trump is trying to pretend that the jobs numbers that he used to be so critical of
- Are now reflecting what a great job he is doing as President
- When there’s really no difference between the metrics of this job report and the ones we got under Obama
- With probably one exception
- And that is in the number we got is better than expected, though not as good as some had hoped, given the very strong ADP number we got earlier
- We got a surge in manufacturing jobs there was also a bump in construction jobs
- But I am very suspicious of the manufacturing jobs
- I know a lot of American manufacturers are really trying to curry favor with Donald Trump early in his Presidency
- And this could all be some Trump-related window dressing
- This is a long trend of hemorrhaging manufacturing jobs
- And I don’t think this one blip necessarily means that trend has changed
- I wouldn’t get too excited; it is a good thing to be creating goods-producing jobs, manufacturing jobs
- I’m not criticizing that
- But the question is, is it sustainable, is it real, or is it simply some smoke and mirrors
- Orchestrated selectively to make Trump look better early on
- So certain companies can get what they want from Trump when it comes to tax reform, or other issues where these companies may have a vested interest
- Let me go over the actual February Non-Farm Payroll numbers:
- The consensus was 200,000 jobs; 227,000 was the number created in January
- Most of that was prior to Trump becoming President, though subsequent to his election
- So we did 227,000 jobs in January and they actually revised that up to 238,000 jobs
- We did 235,000 in February, so actually slightly less, at least based on the initial estimate of jobs created in the prior month
- Unemployment rate did fall slightly from 4.8% to 4.7% and labor force participation inched up from 62.9% to 63% as more Americans re-enter the labor force
- Average hourly earnings, though, which were expected to rise .3% only rose .2%
- But they did revise the prior month from .1% .2%
- So I guess that was about a push
- .2% is not much of an increase in wages, especially when prices are rising 2-3 times as fast
- Remember January CPI was up .6 – triple the rate that wages are up
- The average work week remained the same at 34.4%
- As I said, what was a little bit different, though was the complexion of the jobs
- We did create jobs in manufacturing, for a change
