Posted on 01/06/2017 10:20:09 AM PST by Puppage
In December, President Obama’s final full month in office, the U.S. economy added a slightly disappointing 156,000 jobs. It marked the 75th consecutive month of job gains, the best on record. For all of 2016, the U.S. added over 2 million new jobs.
“Today was a positive close to the eight years of the Obama administration,” says Andrew Chamberlain, chief economist at career website Glassdoor.
Wages grew a solid 2.9% in December, the best pace since 2009. Wage growth has been one of the last measures to gain momentum during Obama’s tenure. Job gains in November revised up significantly, adding 19,000 more jobs than first reported.
America’s job market has made progress under Obama’s watch. U.S. unemployment hit a high of 10% in October 2009 and is now at less than half that level. In December, the unemployment rate rose just a tad to 4.7% from 4.6% in November, the lowest rate since 2007.
The underemployment rate, which includes part-time workers who would like to work full time, also fell to 9.2%, its lowest point since 2008.
“By just about any measure, 2016 was a banner year for the job market,” says Ian Siegel, co-founder of ZipRecruiter, a job recruitment site.
In total, the economy has added 11.3 million jobs during Obama’s presidency.
Experts and pundits often debate how much credit a president deserves for job growth. Some believe the Federal Reserve helped buoy the job market by keeping borrowing costs low in order to revive the housing market. Others criticize the Fed’s decisions.
In any case, the American economy still has problems. Growth remains sluggish. The U.S. central bank expects growth to be a mere 2.1% this year.
Over 5 million Americans have part-time jobs but want to work full time. And many blue collar workers feel left behind in the economic recovery from the Great Recession — a major factory that played into President-elect Donald Trump’s election victory.
Trump promises to bring back manufacturing jobs from other countries and boost job growth overall. In December, America added 17,000 manufacturing jobs but for the year overall lost 45,000 jobs.
One major challenge Trump will face is that many manufacturing workers who lost jobs don’t have the advanced skills required for the new jobs.
“Those without higher skills and advanced training are out on the struggling end,” says Fred Goff, founder of Jobcase, a job-search site.
Other industries also may pose a challenge, for other reasons. Health care led the job gains in December, adding 43,000 new jobs last month. America also added 20,000 social assistance workers, many of whom care for elderly Americans. Trump has promised to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which some industry experts say could cost jobs.
Restaurants and bars added 30,000 jobs in December. Warehouses added 15,000 workers too. Construction and mining saw no meaningful gains.
Despite an uneven recovery, the U.S. job market kept up its overall momentum right up until the end of the year.
“The economy hit some headwinds and it continued to move forward,” in 2016, says Robert Murphy, an economics professor at Boston College and former White House economist during the Clinton administration.
More fake news with a misleading headline.
Top Ex-White House Economist Admits 94% Of All New Jobs Under Obama Were Part-Time
Obama has been a disaster.
With his growth i would be about 4” tall after 8 years.
It doesn’t matter how many people are unemployed. What matters is who counts them.
In that headline they forgot to put....obama gives unicorns with rainbows shooting out of their butts to all.
What a steamy pile of ........(fill in the blank).
Government employees are the only ones that can be counted.
I suggest that the Trump administration begin reporting both the “massaged-Obama-lie” unemployment numbers and the actual unemployment numbers. That way we can see what’s really going on without having it seem like things have suddenly gotten worse under Trump.
Similar to how some weather forecasters provide both Centigrade and Fahrenheit temperatures.
A house of cards waiting to fall down. Smoke and Mirrors.
I feel like I live in Potemkin Village; where its fake news and lies all time, crime, poverty, and illness have all been erased in the last 8 years.
A short order cook creates an actual product that people will buy for their own nutrition.
Unlike the Federal government!
With all this growth why are real interest rates virtually 0 percent?
> slightly disappointing 156,000 jobs
Before Obama we needed to add 250,000 jobs/month to keep up with population growth. (that’s not counting recovering the lost jobs in the recession which Obama loves to blame).
Now that Obama has increased food stamp usage and Pelosi passed Obamacare so “people don’t have to work if they want to be artists or ...”, 100,000 of those 250,000 don’t need jobs and 156,000 is just “slightly disappointing”.
That’s a big success in some circles. But a vote for Trump by anyone who values work.
obamath:
1 full time job exchanged for 1.5 part time jobs = 50% job growth.
2 unemployed /100 people looking = 8% unemployment
6 unemployed /98 people looking (2 give up) = 6% unemployment
See how things get better?
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