The U.S. labor market is growing in strength with each passing day and based on reports by the Washington Post, the freshly released government data shows that 161,000 jobs were added last month. The unemployment for the month of October is down to 4.9 percent as opposed to 5 percent in the month of September. Based on reports by The Guardian, the current unemployment is a drastic improvement from the conditions prevalent in January 2008, when Obama first took office. At that time Obama had inherited a recession that had struck America during the Bush administration. Back then, during the first few months of Obama’s tenure, the unemployment rate was as high as 7.8 percent.
As analysts for The Washington Post and other major newspapers had predicted, both presidential candidates capitalized on varying aspects of the economic data collected to get a step ahead in the presidential race. The Clinton campaign proudly proclaimed that the reduction in job rate since the recession of 2008 was a testament to the progress made by the Obama administration and the Democratic Party. The Trump campaign, on the other hand, called the economic report disastrous by fervently stating that the report did not fully grasp the “total failure of the Obama-Clinton economy that delivers only for donors and special interests and robs working families.”
Based on further investigation by The Guardian, the Trump side of the argument over the economic reports does have a ring of truth. The current measure for estimating the unemployment rate overlooks the percentage of people that participate, that is the number of people who are employed or are looking for work. The fact that this parameter was ignored during calculations shows up as a discrepancy in the form of employment to population ratio. Irrespective of these details, the freshly elected president will inherit a legacy of a burnt out middle-class. In this section of the economy, as The Guardian reported, employment is based on the level of education of a potential job-candidate. Based on what kind of people are getting the most jobs and what educational background these people share, it is evident that there has been a drastic increase in low-paying jobs and jobs that require a high-degree of education and skill. After the Great Recession of 2016, the middle class seems to have taken the hardest hit.
Based on reports and analysis by the Economic Times and International Business Times, a recession is not yet foreseeable, if history were to repeat itself periodically. This is made all the more evident by the fact that The Federal Reserve is soon planning to increase its interest rates.
After the election on Nov. 8 the new President of the most powerful country in the world has inherited an economy with a gradually decreasing growth rate, aging population, lack of youth and low wages. The new president has inherited an economy that has not yet freed itself from the shackles of recession.
