I’m not a fan of the tariffs that Noah criticizes in this post, or of the Iran war he absolves from blame for “sluggish hiring.” But does the jobs report really reflect sluggish hiring — or decent levels of hiring in a country with a working-age population that is growing sluggishly?
The unemployment rate fell, and the prime-age labor-force participation rate looks pretty good (higher than it was pre-pandemic). That suggests that hiring is keeping pace with the number of available workers.
I’m not saying everything about our economy is rosy. Inflation is still too high, and real wage growth has been slow. But our sense of what counts as a bad or good jobs report hasn’t kept up with population trends.