Friday, May 5, 2017

Just How Economically Clueless is Ed Morrissey? Pretty Darn Clueless

     Once again, ol' Ed has written about the jobs report.  And, as usual, he complains about the "status quo" job growth that is unimpressive.  

Overall, this looks like pretty good news, but not spectacular and probably not a sign of a coming boom — yet, anyway. Excluding the big miss in March, it’s the weakest report in 2017 by a slight amount, and not a large amount over the maintenance rate for population growth (~125-150K). It’s certainly better than last month, and better than the last quarter of 2016, but it’s not gangbusters

But that's not what the averages say:



The chart above shows the average 3, 6 and 12 month rate of change in total establishment jobs.  The current pace has gone on longer than the Bush expansion (which I'm sure Ed argued was the greatest thing since sliced bread) while maintaining a similar pace.  The current expansion's levels are slightly below the pace of the previous 2 expansion.   

So, we know  (once again) that Ed really doesn't know much about economics.  But that wont' stop him from writing about.