Non-Farm Friday – Is America Working?

700,000 jobs.  

That’s how many they expect to have created last month.   That would be up a bit from 559,000 in May (if it isn’t revised – these numbers are wildly inaccurate) and that would leave our Unemployment Rate at 5.6% – still kind of high, actually.  According to the Congressional Budget Office, we are on track to recover all of the jobs lost during the pandemic in about 12 months – but what about the jobs that should have been created during those two years?  Usually we create 3M jobs per year to keep up with population growth – we are still woefully behind the curve.  

The forecasters expect economic growth to continue at a strong pace in 2022, hitting 5% in real terms. But they see it declining quickly in the years to follow, as the labor force grows more slowly than is typical. Budget office officials said that reflected, in part, the effects of more restrictive immigration policies adopted under Trump. By 2023, the office predicts, growth will slow to 1.1%.

After already running a $3Tn deficit in FY 2021 (15% of our GDP), Biden is currently pushing Congress to approve as much as $4Tn in spending and tax cuts meant to create jobs and aid growth by improving the productivity of workers and the broader economy, like repairing bridges and subsidizing child care costs to help more parents, particularly women, work additional hours.  Biden’s rescue plan included direct payments of $1,400 each to low- and middle-income Americans, $350 Billion to help states and municipalities patch what were expected to be budget shortfalls and hundreds of Billions of dollars to accelerate vaccines and more widespread coronavirus testing. It also extended supplemental federal payments of $300 a week to unemployed workers through September, a benefit that Republican governors across the country have ended early as business owners complain of difficulties finding workers. 

That’s where our 5% “growth” is coming from – not because the economy is actually doing great.

For instance, 370,000 restaurants applied for $75Bn in funding from the Restaurant Revitalization Fund, nearly three times what the program had available. Around 105,000 businesses were approved for grants,…

Provided courtesy of Phil’s Stock World.