Thursday, January 09, 2020

The booming Trump economy creates a labor shortage

So many Democrats believe Trump's economy talk and tweets are "spin." They whine, post stupid memes, and have no respect for people trying to get ahead after Obama's 8 years of slow growth (except for the rich--they did well after 2009). That's because Washington Post, NYT, CNN and MSNBC mislead the sheeple, or just lie.

From today's Wall Street Journal:

"The remarkable jobs rally at U.S. small businesses continued in December. That’s according to the latest National Federation of Independent Business monthly employment survey, due out later today.

NFIB’s Chief Economist William Dunkelberg reports:
Job creation did not change from November, with an average addition of 0.29 workers per firm, the highest level since May. Net job creation had faded from February’s 0.52 workers per firm to September’s 0.10, but is back in strong territory. Finding qualified workers remains the top issue for 23 percent reporting this as their number one problem, 4 points below August’s record high.

The desire to hire among the owners of small firms remained robust. According Mr. Dunkelberg, “The 2019 small business labor market ended in much the same way as it began with strong hiring, elevated levels of open positions, and higher employee compensation.” Speaking of rising wages, the NFIB economist notes: “Attempting to fill open positions, historically high percentages of owners plan to raise worker compensation.”
In some industries, the competition for labor is especially fierce.

NFIB reports:
Sixty-two percent of construction firms reported few or no qualified applicants and 46 percent cited the shortage of qualified labor as their top business problem. Comparable figures for manufacturing were 63 percent and 24 percent respectively. Growth is clearly constrained in these important sectors by a shortage of workers."

The Washington Post today got it half right--reported on the booming job growth, but then attributed it to rising minimum wage! How dumb does a business columnist need to be (or who is threatening him) to write that? Minimum wage is a huge deterrent to a healthy economy. Wages are going up because of labor shortage--workers are promoted and new ones hired at good salaries if they can walk and chew gum. It's not rocket science, except for MSM. A very small number of workers even in recession made minimum wage, most made more.

In 1980, when the federal minimum wage was $3.10 ($9.41 in 2018 dollars), 13% of hourly workers earned the federal minimum wage or less. Today, only 2% of workers do. The number of federal minimum wage workers has decreased from 7.7 million in 1980 to 1.7 million today. This is partly due to states establishing higher minimum wages than the federal level. I guess Democrats want more people to be earning minimum instead of less?  I don’t get it!

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