ECONOMY/JOBS/LABOR/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “The unemployment rate fell to its lowest level in half a century last month, capping the longest streak of job creation in modern times and dispelling recession fears that haunted Wall Street at the start of the year. The Labor Department reported Friday [5-3-19] that employers added 263,000 jobs in April, well above what analysts had forecast. The unemployment rate sank to 3.6 percent. Employment has grown for more than 100 months in a row, and the economy has created more than 20 million jobs since the Great Recession ended in 2009. Much of that upturn occurred before President Trump was elected, but the obvious strength of the economy now enables him and fellow Republicans to make it their central argument in the 2020 campaign. For all the signs that the economy is humming, the current expansion doesn’t resemble past booms. The scars of the Great Recession run deep, and even after 10 years of growth, the kind of euphoria that marked the technology sector in the late 1990s or the real estate market in the 2000s is conspicuously absent.”
–Nelson D. Schwartz, “Job Growth Underscores Economy’s Vigor; Unemployment at Half-Century Low, “ The New York Times online, May 3, 2019