The Patriot Post® · Another Month, Another Great Jobs Report
Friday’s monthly jobs report, while too late to help President Donald Trump win reelection, was once again unequivocally positive. The report showed a gain of 906,000 private-sector jobs in October, a jobless rate that fell to 6.9% last month from 7.9% in September, and a remarkably resilient economy that not only beat expectations, but beat them for all the right reasons.
As The Wall Street Journal reports, “Keynesians at the Federal Reserve and on Wall Street have continued to predict the economy would fall off a demand cliff without trillions in new government spending. But their forecasts keep missing. The Fed June jobless rate prediction for the end of the year was 9.3%, which it cut to 7.6% in September, but the rate is already 6.9%. Too many people are still out of work, but progress has been remarkable since the government-induced recession. The economy will continue to grow as long as the U.S. avoids policy mistakes, including another lockdown.”
About those lockdowns: Europe is in the midst of another round of them, and the continent’s economic pain will be considerable. More than that, however, is the physical and emotional misery that these lockdowns will undoubtedly impose on flesh-and-blood Europeans. Some countries, it seems, are doomed to let history repeat itself.
“Panic and herd mentality drove policy making in March,” writes Texas Tech University Economics Professor Benjamin Powell, “and frightened populations ceded their personal, economic, and religious liberties on a scale unprecedented even during wartimes. With eight months of hindsight, it seems obvious that the lockdowns did more harm than good on a number of accounts. Not only did they throw tens of millions worldwide out of work, decimating entire industries (think restaurants and bars, travel, tourism, airlines and aerospace), but they also triggered waves of secondary medical problems, including anxiety and depression, increased substance abuse and domestic violence, and other adverse health outcomes as many surgeries and screenings were delayed or missed.”
President Trump has long recognized these under-the-radar effects of large-scale lockdowns, and he vowed back in May not to impose them again. As we noted recently, he’s since doubled down on that promise despite the considerable spike in COVID cases nationwide. “We’re never gonna lock down again,” he said. “We locked down, we understood the disease, and now we’re open for business.”
When we compare our nation’s economic performance to those of our G7 trading partners, the numbers back up the president’s position: Our forecasted GDP drop of 3.6% pales in comparison to Germany’s 6%, Canada’s 7.1%, France’s 9.8%, the UK’s 9.8%, and Italy’s atrocious 10.6%.
Here at home, one of the hallmarks of the Trump economy has been its consistent distribution of benefits across demographic groups. This report was no different. The unemployment rate for blacks declined 1.3% to 10.8%, the rate for Hispanics declined 1.5% to 8.8%; and the rate for Asian Americans declined 1.3% to 7.6%.
President John F. Kennedy was fond of saying that a rising tide lifts all boats. Nowhere is there a better expression of this aphorism than in last Tuesday’s exit polling, which showed that 26% of Trump’s voting share came from nonwhite voters — the highest percentage for a Republican presidential candidate since 1960.
Win or lose, this president has delivered on the economy. In spades. If Joe Biden does indeed become our nation’s 46th president, we can only hope that his handlers have been taking copious notes.