The U.S. economy added a disappointing 157,000 jobs in July, and the unemployment rate fell to 3.9%. This is the slowest job growth in five years, as the numbers fell shot of expectations.
Economists predicted 190,000 jobs, instead the number is 157,000. 157,000 is not good, according to Donald Trump grading President Obama back in December of 2012.
Today's job report is not a good sign & we could be facing another recession. No real job growth. We need over 300K new jobs a month.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 7, 2012
Spot the trend:
OBAMA 2013: 111,000 jobs
OBAMA 2014: 196,000 jobs
OBAMA 2015: 256,000 jobs
OBAMA 2016: 325,000 jobs
TRUMP 2017: 190,000 jobs
TRUMP 2018: 157,000 jobs
Factcheck.Org determined in fact that employment growth under Trump has slowed by 12%, and this was in January of 2018: “Employment growth slowed by 12 percent. Nevertheless, the unemployment rate kept dropping, reaching a 17-year low. The number of job vacancies rose, also to a nearly 17-year record.”
It would be great if Donald Trump could have delivered on his populist promise, but instead he got into office and along with many in his scandal-ridden administration, set about plundering the taxpayers for his personal enrichment, using the office for personal and business gain, and giving tax cuts to the wealthy which now need to be paid for — you can guess who is going to pay for them. The tax cuts did not raise wages overall, contrary to promises and claims by the Trump administration, their seeming PR firm of Fox News and many Republicans, according to a Bloomberg analysis wages actually dropped.
Fox has found a way to make this all rosy, of course, by using a Rasmussen poll (leans Republican and is unreliable) to compare Trump’s job approval numbers to Obama’s — ahead of the actual jobs report. Everyone is all smiles, because the numbers that Republicans refused to believe under Obama are not only suddenly real under Trump, but now worse numbers are consistently cheerleaded as better.
President Trump’s approval rating on the rise ahead of the July #JobsReport release pic.twitter.com/VkEW8V3kLm
— FOX & friends (@foxandfriends) August 3, 2018
These numbers are always preliminary, but there would have to be a huge adjustment for this to qualify as good under Trump’s Obama grading scale. The economy is being battered by Trump’s tariffs, trade wars, unpaid for tax cuts and will ultimately be impacted by his undermining of Obamacare as well.
While the media will tell you none of this matters to Trump’s base, and from all appearances it doesn’t, I live in Trump country and hear Trump supporters complain about his failure to bring the jobs he promised. They might still support him, but he isn’t the Teflon god he thinks he is.
Obama was the private sector jobs growth president. He made history month after month, and year after year, for historic job growth. This fact runs counter to the Republican claim that they are the masters of the economy. Republicans are the masters of handouts for the rich, which everyone else always ends up paying for in one way or another.
Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.
Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
Connect with Sarah on Post, Mastodon @PoliticusSarah@Journa.Host, & Twitter.
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