Jobs And "The Worst Economy We Never Had"

 

No doubt this is "bad news for Biden" on the jobs front:

Initial filings for unemployment insurance dipped last week and remained close to their lowest level in more than 50 years, the Labor Department reported Thursday.  [snip]

When adjusting for weekly volatility, the four-week moving average for claims came to 199,250, the lowest level since Oct. 25, 1969.

Continuing claims, the data for which runs a week behind the headline number, dropped by 140,000 to 1.72 million, the lowest level since March 7, 2020, just before the Covid pandemic declaration.

The numbers reflect an increasingly tight labor market and come with the Federal Reserve pulling back on some of the historically accommodative policy it put in place during the crisis. The national unemployment rate has dropped to 4.2%, a far cry from the 14.8% peak in April 2020.  [snip]

Some of the decline in claims has come from the ending of benefits through programs created during the pandemic that provided enhanced and extended payments. Still, the total getting benefits is a far cry from where it was a year ago when 20.5 million were on the various programs.

The jobs market also has seen a record pace of people quitting their jobs, many for better opportunities elsewhere as average hourly earnings climb in an inflationary environment the U.S. has not seen in decades. (our emphasis)

Yes, inflation -- the fly in the economic ointment -- caused by global pandemic supply chain issues and just good, old- fashioned price gouging.

But, as Dana Milbank points out in "The worst economy we never had," the good news doesn't end there:

“America’s economy improved more in Joe Biden’s first 12 months than any president during the past 50 years notwithstanding the contrary media narrative contributing to dour public opinion,” Matthew Winkler, former editor in chief of Bloomberg News, wrote last week. Among the gains: The economy expanded an estimated 5.5 percent in 2021 (fourth-quarter growth dramatically outpaced Europe and even China). Unemployment plunged to 4.2 percent. Record-setting U.S. stock markets (the S&P 500 is up nearly 30 percent) outperformed the world. Productivity jumped. Corporate profits are the largest since 1950 and corporate debt the lowest in 30. Consumer credit expanded. Confidence among CEOs is the highest in 20 years. The American Rescue Plan cut child poverty in half.

But, as with most other inconvenient facts, none of this is penetrating the Republican cult bubble:

[A] Gallup poll out last week found that “Americans’ confidence in the economy has dropped to where it was in April 2020, when nationwide shutdowns brought on by the covid-19 pandemic plunged the nation into a recession.”

The reason is clear. As The Post’s Philip Bump explained, Republicans in April 2020 were evenly split on whether the economy was in excellent/good condition or fair/poor. Now, despite dramatic improvements, 91 percent of Republicans say the economy is in fair/poor condition. (The Democratic shift, in the opposite direction, was smaller.)

This happened — surprise! — during Fox News’s hysterical coverage of inflation, gas prices and supply chain problems. It invoked inflation roughly twice as often as CNN and MSNBC. Now, as Bump reported, three-quarters of Republicans say prices are the most important measure of the economy’s health (only one-quarter did a year ago), eclipsing unemployment, personal finances and the stock market.  (our emphasis)

The point, in the end, is that the Biden Administration will continue to do what it needs to do in order to improve peoples' lives, even those people who insist against all evidence that it's not.