Bert Dirschell
Centertown
Dear Editor:
The latest jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics was great news. Total non-farm employment increased by 312,000 in December. In addition, the November number was raised by 21,000 jobs and the October number was raised by 37,000 jobs. Total non-farm employment increased by 725,000 over the three month period, an average of 242,000 jobs created per month.
From November 2018 to December 2018, the unemployment rate did tick up from 3.7 percent to 3.9 percent, but that was because so many people re-entered the job market. Month over month, the “civilian non-institutional population” grew by 180,000 while the “civilian labor force” (the number of people the government considers employed or looking for work) grew by 419,000. If this keeps up, we should be able to fill some of the over 7 million unfilled jobs.
From December 2017 to December 2018 the “civilian non-institutional population” grew by 2.78 million, the number of employed grew by 2.88 million while the number of unemployed dropped by 278,000. What is even better is that many of these jobs were in manufacturing. During the first 23 months of the Trump presidency the number of manufacturing jobs increased by 473,000, compared to 68,000 during the last 23 months of the Obama presidency.
The final “icing on the cake” is the growth in salaries. From December 2017 to December 2018, the average hourly earnings of private sector production and non-supervisory employees increased by 3.32 percent. Over the past two years, the annual increase averaged 2.92 percent. This compares to an average annual increase of 2.27 percent over the prior five years (December 2011-December 2016).
This is awesome news. Hopefully Trump Derangement Syndrome won’t cause the Democrats now in control of the House to derail the growth train.