US Job Streak Continues, Pulling People Back

81 straight months of job growth now.

Since Trump, job numbers haven't shot up -- instead, they have maintained a the steady improvement taking place since the end of the Great Recession. (But new a recession warned about by Trump critics hasn't happened either.)

However, what is interesting economists most perhaps is that while new jobs continue to be added, the numbers of people taking those jobs isn't slowing down. There was talk that everyone looking for a job (and viably employable) was going to find a job, but instead it seems people who weren't looking for jobs before are being pulled into the workforce.

That includes blacks, Latinos, and teenagers, who have seen significant reductions in their unemployment rates. For white adults, the level is more steady. People with criminal records, also, may be finding an easier time getting a job, according to anecdotal evidence.

Not all sectors are hiring, though. The health care industry is really growing. Mining (including oil and gas) is also growing (or recovering from 2015/2016). Manufacturing is flat, though. Automakers continue to cut jobs. Retail, although it added thousands of jobs in June, is also down significantly this year (people are still talking about the effects of Amazon and other online sellers).

How much room there still remains for the U.S. jobs market to grow might be partially indicated by the pre-recovery employment rate for adults age 25-54 (a demographic used by the U.S. because it factors out baby boomer effects). Before the recession, the number of people working was 80%. When economic recovery began, that number was down at 74.8. It's now at 78.5.

Since people are available to fill the new jobs, wages aren't being pushed up. The average wage rose 2.5% last year, above the 2% for inflation, but still representative of a slowdown since 2016.

$15 Minimum Wage Could Cost State 382,200 Jobs

This is according to Ben Gitis of the American Action Forum.

The current wage in Illinois is $8.25, but lawmakers are thinking about making it $15 (by 2022). There is also a tax credit for small businesses (under 50 employees) that would give them some of the money back, but that credit is planned to be phased out as the higher wage is phased in, and small businesses would only save a max of around 5% in 2022, and then the tax credit would end in 2023.

The almost 400k figure Gitis got from a study (Meer & West, 2015) that found that a 10% increase in real minimum wage is associated with a 0.3 - 0.5% decrease in net job growth, so, for example, 3 years after such a wage hike, there would be around 0.7% less employment.

Since the Illinois $15 minimum wage represents an 82% increase, employment would be almost 6% lower according to that math. Gitis measured this against projections for the state's employment from IDES, which expects around 370k jobs to be created in Illinois between 2014 and 2022, just a few less than would be negated by the wage increase. In other words, Gitis concluded, the pay raise could cost more jobs overall than the state plans to create over the coming years.

Gitis' Report on AAF