It must be pointed out that employment is a lagging indicator of the economic cycle and, in any case, it is too soon to determine if the embryonic economic policies of President Trump will create or destroy jobs in the US economy. However, that hasn’t stopped the President from bombastic claims that he will be the greatest job creating President in history, pledging to create some 25 million new jobs over the next ten years (never mind the fact that his maximum tenure in the White House is two terms of four years). Over the course of his predecessor’s term, the US economy created 11.25 million jobs (2009 – 2017).
The latest data from the US Department of Labour suggests that the US economy created 227000 jobs in January. This figure is up strongly on the (revised) December figure of 157000 and significantly above expectations of a rise of 175000 for the month. The areas of the economy to see the greatest share of the new job creation were financial activities, construction and the retail sector.
In the usual contradictions that one finds in “official” statistics, the number of those unemployed was essentially static at 7.6 million people, edging upwards from 4.8% from 4.7% in December. Part of this is due to the fact that in a more buoyant jobs market, some people register as job seekers (i.e. unemployed) as they are actively looking for work whereas before, they were not included in the count and the size of the US workforce continues to grow.
On the negative side of the balance sheet, the data suggests that the average pay rate was only marginally higher which tends to suggest that employers do not need to compete to attract workers much. More people in part-time work (and therefore not unemployed!) are looking to secure full time positions. US employment is considered to be near “full employment”, so if that is true then there ought to be upwards pressure on wages and the President will struggle to find 25 million extra people looking for work who are currently without work – so perhaps the projection has more to do with growth of the workforce as the US population expands.