No matter how many times that Donald Trump and his close buddies complain to high heaven about the supposedly dire straits in which the U.S. has found itself, they’re wrong.
A new report produced by the federal Labor Department has revealed a high level of job growth across the U.S. economy in May, reaching 339,000 new jobs in a category known as nonfarm payroll employment. This level of growth in the job market has been widely identified as substantially above expectations. Industries identified in the federal report as seeing a particularly high level of growth in the numbers of jobs available include professional and business services, government, health care, construction, transportation and warehousing, and social assistance.
In the widely seen leisure and hospitality industry, the latest report identified the number of jobs as still below the level in February 2020, right before COVID-19 really upended the economy. Despite the persistent slump, there has still been some growth. That industry as a whole posted 48,000 new jobs in May.
In between yelling about how much he hates Ron DeSantis (the GOP governor in Florida who is now running against Trump for Republicans’ nomination for president for 2024), Trump keeps hammering away at his message of the supposedly unfolding decay of the United States. Citing gun violence that his own party has helped ensure remains a problem across the U.S., Trump complained in one post: “A travesty, as the World is watching the United States disintegrate.”
Back in the real world, Biden and Democratic leaders have been helping secure economic wins. In negotiations around the development of a deal to raise the country’s debt limit, which ensures the federal government can legally accommodate expenses to which it was obliged, Biden helped secure new exemptions from work requirements associated with certain federal benefit programs for groups including veterans and those without homes. Biden and his team also kept the expansion to work requirements that Republicans demanded much smaller than they wanted, adding several years onto the general age range in which able-bodied adults without dependents must adhere — without any new Medicaid requirements.
