From the White House

This time is different

Americans have seen good economies and bad economies over the years, from the stagflation of the 1970s to the Reagan Revival and from the Great Recession to the slow, crawling “recovery” of the Obama Administration.

The Trump Economy is roaring, but it’s also different. In previous booms, fast growth often meant soaring stocks and huge returns to those at the very top—the well-connected and well-heeled who got rich off the globalized economy. The stock market continues to break records under President Donald J. Trump—good news for anyone with a 401(k)—but it’s not the upper class who’s seeing the biggest gains in this economy.

“It’s a good time not to be ‘privileged,’ to borrow the political vernacular of our progressive friends,” The Wall Street Journal editorial board wrote on Friday. “Employers added 263,000 jobs in April as the unemployment rate dropped to 3.6%, the lowest in five decades. The best news is that the biggest beneficiaries of this tight labor market are the folks who struggled during the slow-growth Obama years.”

That means blue-collar, middle-class, and working-class Americans. Today, the unemployment rate for both recent community college and vocational school graduates is actually lower than it is for grads from four-year colleges. “Less educated Americans are experiencing faster wage and job growth,” the Journal’s editors explain.

Congressional Democrats increasingly tell us that a heavy dose of socialism—think massive, government-run healthcare—is needed to give everybody a chance at the American Dream. That’s an awkward attack on President Trump’s economy when historically marginalized groups are seeing the following results, per Friday’s jobs report:

  • The unemployment rate for adult women hit 3.1 percent in April, the lowest rate since 1953.
  • Unemployment for Hispanics fell to 4.2 percent, the lowest rate ever since that statistic was first recorded in 1973.
  • Unemployment for Americans with only a high-school degree fell to 3.5 percent. That matches its lowest rate in nearly two decades.
  • Unemployment for those with a disability fell to 6.3 percent last month, the lowest rate since that statistic was first recorded in 2008.
“Believe it or not—and liberals won’t want to admit it,” The Wall Street Journal’s editors write, “the evidence is that the faster economic growth of the last two years is reducing income inequality.”