This week just keeps getting worse for Democrats as new economic numbers reveal that 2020 is off to a very strong start. Labor Department data shows that payrolls increased by 225,000, and the December numbers were revised upward to 147,000—beating predictions of economists.
The unemployment rate ticked up slightly to 3.6%, still a 50-year low, and wages were up 3.1% from the previous year. Bloomberg News notes that these jobs numbers “[defy] expectations for a step down to a slower pace of job growth” in 2020.
The labor force participation rate also reached a Trump-era high of 63.4 percent. The labor force participation rate has yet to reach pre-recession levels. It spent most of the Obama years in decline before finally starting to move back up under Trump.
“If the job market continues to perform as it is today on election day, it should be a tailwind to the president’s re-election,” Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, told Bloomberg. However, he suggests that come November, the labor market in key swing states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, which have shown weakness in manufacturing job growth, will be more important for Trump.
Nevertheless, 2020 starts off strong for Trump. Even liberal “economist” Paul Krugman, who predicted economic disaster under Trump, admitted that the economy is strong. “Donald Trump’s re-election campaign will be centered around claims that he has done great things for the economy. And let’s be honest: The U.S. economy is running pretty hot these days. Growth in G.D.P. and employment has been good, though not spectacular; the unemployment rate is near a historic low,” he wrote in the New York Times Friday ahead of the release of the report, before conceding, “it is indeed a strong economy.”
Paul Krugman may be a lousy economist, but when even he is admitting the Trump economy is strong, that tells you that Democrats are in big trouble.
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Matt Margolis is the author of Trumping Obama: How President Trump Saved Us From Barack Obama’s Legacy and the bestselling book The Worst President in History: The Legacy of Barack Obama. You can follow Matt on Twitter @MattMargolis
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