Quote of the Day:

Judging from last week’s debate, Democrats running for President see America as a Dickensian nightmare of inequality. It’s the best of times for millionaires and billionaires, and the worst of times for everybody else.

–the Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal

Just today the new jobs report indicates that some 2020 contenders might—just might—be living in a fantasy. But it’s a bleak fantasy about how bad things are.

Here are the high points of today’s jobs report that shows new jobs rising well above expectations and indicating that the economy is growing.

Here are some highlights from CNBC:

  • Nonfarm payrolls rose 224,000 in June, well above market expectations of 165,000, according to the Labor Department.
  • The unemployment rate hedged higher to 3.7% but was still near 50-year lows.
  • Wage growth was 3.1% year over year, one-tenth of a point below market expectations.

   People are getting jobs and the country feels more optimistic (at least with regard to economic matters) than it did during the Obama administration. That might have occurred to you, too, if you watched the Democratic presidential debates.

The Wall Street Journal has an excellent editorial this morning (“A Tale of Two Economies”), pointing out that our current economy helps workers far more than the Obama economy.  

The charts accompanying the editorial make the gains unavoidably clear: One chart shows the dramatically rising incomes in nine states. Average hourly wages increased for workers engaged in mining (Obama tried to put coal mining out of business), construction, hospitality, manufacturing, retail, transportation and warehousing, and private services.

The Wall Street Journal notes:

Nearly one million more blacks and two million more Hispanics are employed than when Barack Obama left office, and minorities account for more than half of all new jobs created during the Trump Presidency. Unemployment among black women has hovered near 5% for the last six months, the lowest since 1972, and a mere 3.5% of high school graduates are unemployed.

But what about Senator Harris’s assertion that folks are stringing together jobs to make ends meet? About 5% of Americans hold more than one job, and this rate has held relatively constant since 2010. Yet there are now 1.3 million fewer Americans working part-time for economic reasons than at the end of the Obama Presidency.

Interestingly, the better than expected jobs report, while great news for workers, might mean that the Fed will not cut rates, which is what the investor class wants.  

But there are a lot of people who have a vested interest in a bleak economy.

I was in church the other day and the Prayers of the People included a petition that the recession would end and people would find jobs!

It was one of those times I wanted to stand up and correct the record (I didn’t—but I’d love to know what religious bureaucrat wrote the petition).

I urge you to read the entire Wall Street Journal editorial.