| The big news this morning is that employment rose by 2.5 million in May, the largest monthly job growth in history. CNBC called the growth "stunning," as many economists expected payroll numbers would drop even more, and that unemployment could push up close to 20%. After a couple of months of trying times and the civic unrest of the past week that engulfed many cities across the country, this is very welcome sign that the economy may be ready to truly "reopen" and that Americans will be going back to work in large numbers.
Many of you reading this will anticipate that there is a "however" coming, and here it is. The unemployment rate is still 13.3% with 21 million people looking for work. Another 10.6 million are forced to work part-time because of the lack of an available full-time job. In addition, there are 9 million people who have fallen out of the labor force who say they want a job but are not included in the official unemployment count. The labor force participation rate is well below where it was a year ago, and that number was well below what it was before the Great Recession hit.
This is isn’t to downplay the positives of the jobs report but to put the numbers into perspective. There is still a long way to go and we can’t say with any certainty what today’s very good news tell us going forward long-term –and the "expert" talking heads on television don’t know either. We are in uncharted territory and so the best course of action is to make sound policy decisions based on the best information available to us.
On the immigration front, that means implementing policies that reflect the fact that there are far too many Americans still out of work who are available and able to perform the jobs vital to our economy, despite claims by lobbyists in D.C. that there is a "worker shortage."
At NumbersUSA we are pushing for President Trump to do more in the short-term to help put Americans back to work by temporarily stopping new foreign workers from entering the United States. And pushing Congress to do more in the long-term to permanently reduce overall immigration levels.
Stay tuned for updates about what, if anything, the President does to curb guest worker programs. If you haven’t already, you can go to your Action Board and urge him to do so.
Also, this month the Supreme Court is expected to hand down its decision on whether the President can end DACA. That will certainly be big news, and just as certainly result in a new push for amnesty if the Roberts Court upholds that President Trump can end the programs, which President Obama instituted in violation of his Constitutional authority. |
