Expectations heading into this morning showed projections of about 170,000 new jobs having been added in the United States in August. As it turns out, according to the new report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the job market slightly exceeded that level. CNBC reported:
Nonfarm payrolls grew by a seasonally adjusted 187,000 for the month, above the Dow Jones estimate for 170,000, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday. However, the unemployment rate was 3.8%, up significantly from July and the highest since February 2022, and nonfarm payrolls estimates for previous months showed sharp downward revision.
At first blush, the fact that the unemployment rate inched higher might seem discouraging, but let’s not forget that these shifts aren’t always bad news: Amid a surprisingly strong job market, more people seek employment, which has the effect of pushing the rate higher.
As for overall job growth, with revisions from June and July factored in, we’ve now seen roughly 1.88 million jobs created so far this year — and that’s after just eight months, not the entire calendar year.
As for the politics, let’s circle back to previous coverage to put the data in perspective. Over the course of the first three years of Donald Trump’s presidency — when the Republican said the United States’ economy was the greatest in the history of the planet — the economy created roughly 6.35 million jobs, spanning all of 2017, 2018 and 2019.
According to the latest tally, the U.S. economy has created roughly 13.9 million jobs since January 2021 — more than double the combined total of Trump’s first three years.
With this in mind, President Joe Biden took a victory lap of sorts on Friday morning, boasting that the U.S. was in one of “the strongest job creating periods in our history.”
In recent months, Republicans have responded to developments like these by pretending not to notice them. GOP officials kept the trend going last week.
Postscript: For some additional context, consider job growth by year over the past decade:
2013: 2.3 million
2014: 3 million
2015: 2.7 million
2016: 2.3 million
2017: 2.1 million 2018: 2.3 million 2019: 2 million 2020: -9.3 million 2021: 7.3 million 2022: 4.8 million 2023 (so far): 1.9 million This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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