Economy: More complicated than Trump portrays

President Trump likes to make a big deal out of being the architect of a strong economy with low unemployment (3.6%) and generating thousands of jobs, but there is more to the story.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, over 136 million people were employed in 2008, dropping to nearly 128 million in 2010. Since that time jobs have steadily grown to nearly 148 million in 2019.

What’s excluded from the employment figure is the increase in population, which skews the picture.

High employment numbers stem from several factors, such as more farm workers transitioning to non-farm labor and increases in women entering the workforce.

Teenage employment was 45% in 2000; now it is under 20%, with blacks and Latinos the hardest hit. There’s been a loss of 2.3 million manufacturing, mining/energy and construction jobs paying over $58,000 yearly. They’ve been replaced with 1.9 million service-industry jobs paying less than $20,000 yearly.

So when Trump touts his record-low unemployment for racial minorities, it’s only because as more people are employed in the general population, the wave sweeps across the country and carries blacks and Latinos in its wake. This is coincidental, not purposeful.

This story was originally published March 7, 2020 at 1:18 PM with the headline "Economy: More complicated than Trump portrays."