Strong Jobs Report Will Be Sold as Bad for Biden Somehow

I swear, I can hear the scrambling in elite newsrooms from here. Somehow, there has to be a way that this is bad news for the administration. From CNBC:

Job growth accelerated in February, posting its biggest monthly gain since July as the employment picture got closer to its pre-pandemic self. Nonfarm payrolls for the month grew by 678,000 and the unemployment rate was 3.8%, the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday. That compared to estimates of 440,000 for payrolls and 3.9% for the jobless rate.

I am not an economist. Nor do I play one on this blog, except for occasionally citing the Blog’s First Law of Economics—which, by the way, the administration seems to be following in one important way: People got jobs. And, if you are of the dismal opinion that good economic news for many people is bad economics for the few and, therefore, bad news for The Economy, this report isn’t what you’re looking for, either.

In a sign that inflation could be cooling, wages barely rose for the month, up just 1 cent an hour or 0.03%, compared to estimates for a 0.5% gain. The year-over-year increase was 5.13%, well below the 5.8% Dow Jones estimate as more lower-wage workers were hired and 12-month comparisons helped mute more recent gains.

Wage stagnation seems to be the one constant in the economy, and it has been for decades, which makes happy that segment of the political and media elites which looks upon inflation as the phantom menace, to be feared and fought even when it’s not there, which was the case throughout the Obama years. Finally, the pandemic kidney-punched the economy hard enough to put some iron in the spine of the inflatophobic, and it was determined that the solution to People Got No Money was to give them some. And, glory be, it seems to have generally worked. Maybe now it’s time to try some of that dreaded government intervention to help with the wage gap. But, as I said, I’m no economist.

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