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APRIL 13, 2023

Meyerson on TAP

Are Good Jobs Good News?

At many media outlets, however belatedly, they are. But not at The Wall
Street Journal.

File this news under "What's not to like?": Inflation is subsiding
while hiring continues apace.

Applause, though absolutely merited, is not universal. By the evidence
of the polls, much of the public is still wary about rising prices, even
though many of those prices have stabilized or even declined. Mainstream
media's appreciation of Bidenomics, and its trillion-dollar-plus
anti-recession American Rescue Plan of 2021, remains sketchy.

Belatedly, though, some of that media is coming around. In a Tuesday
editorial
<[link removed]>,
The Washington Post acknowledged that

While we have been critical about the hefty amount of pandemic aid
Congress pumped into the economy, especially the American Rescue Plan
that President Biden and Democrats enacted in 2021, one clear benefit of
the multiple aid packages was a quick bounce back in labor demand.

Noting that unemployment has fallen to 3.5 percent (the lowest level
since 1969) and Black unemployment to an all-time low of 5 percent, the

**Post** took particular note of the fact that the rate of labor force
participation for "prime age workers" (25 to 54) is the highest
it's been since 2001. The unprecedented speed of the current recovery
also came in for

**Post** praise. "It took nearly 13 years for this ratio [of the
employed to the unemployed] to recover after the Great Recession" of
2008, the editorialists wrote. "It took only three years for this to
occur after the pandemic."

The speed and scope of the recovery is due to many factors, but chiefly
to the stimulus Biden and Democrats in Congress pushed through in the
spring of 2021. Progressive economists at the Economic Policy Institute
and elsewhere had warned during Obama's first term that the 2009
stimulus was woefully inadequate to the task of restoring the economy.
Fortunately, a critical mass of President Biden's economic advisers,
unlike Obama's, came from those very same progressive circles that had
predicted the molasses-slow pace of the post-Great Recession recovery.

What finally triggered the

**Post**'s belated acknowledgment of the success of Bidenomics was
last Friday's release of the monthly employment figures, which showed
the economy adding another nearly quarter-million jobs even as inflation
was subsiding. Over at The New York Times, Paul Krugman (who's
decidedly not a latecomer to understanding the Biden achievements)
hailed
<[link removed]>
"the awesomeness, the historic nature of last Friday's employment
report." The

**Los Angeles Times** headlined
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its story "U.S. Adds a Healthy 236,000 Jobs Despite Fed's Rate
Hikes."

I mention that headline because its tone was not shared by all the
nation's headline writers. The banner headline atop

**The Wall Street Journal**'s front page on the morning after
Friday's release of employment data read, "Jobs, Wages Show Signs of
Easing," and when that story continued on page 2, the headline there
read "Job Growth Eased a Bit Last Month."

Webster's Unabridged Dictionary's definition of the verb "ease"
is: "to free from something that pains, disquiets, or burdens."
Evidently, both job growth and wage growth are viewed at the

**Journal**-and not just in the editorial pages but atop its news
pages-as painful, disquieting, and burdensome. And much as I loathe
the Murdochs for their all-too-successful efforts to stoke millions of
our compatriots with quasi-fascist rage, I'm confident that this is a
headline the

**Journal** could and would have run in its pre-Murdoch days. It conveys
the particular perspective that the paper's very name reveals: that of
Wall Street. To the class of investor that believes that higher wages
diminish the cash available for dividends and buybacks, and fears full
employment because it gives workers the leverage to demand higher wages,
nothing is so troubling as the thought (much less the fact) that more
Americans are getting jobs.

It should come as no surprise, then, that the slowness of the Obama
recovery and the Clinton-era deregulations that led to the 2008 crash
were the products of administrations whose economic policies were shaped
by such Wall Street denizens as Robert Rubin and Timothy Geithner. And
that the achievements of the Biden administration are due in no small
measure to the relative dearth of economic advisers from Wall Street and
the salutary presence of economic advisers-such as Jared Bernstein and
Heather Boushey-who made their reputations with work that privileged
the claims of Main Street over Wall.

~ HAROLD MEYERSON

Follow Harold Meyerson on Twitter <[link removed]>

[link removed]

The Forgotten Left Economics Tradition
<[link removed]>
In the Progressive and New Deal eras, there was a markedly different
response to rising prices, and a different usage of economic theory. BY
MEG JACOBS

Republicans' Self-Inflicted Budget Impasse
<[link removed]>
The GOP discovers that shouting lies on television is not a good way to
figure out how to tax and spend. BY RYAN COOPER

Tennessee Republicans Step Up Attacks on Democratic Cities
<[link removed]>
GOP lawmakers have used state preemption tactics to prevent localities
from passing laws that don't align with their ideological beliefs, or
even to reduce the size of local councils. BY GABRIELLE GURLEY

What
<[link removed]>'
<[link removed]>s
Going on in Tennessee?
<[link removed]>

Nashville city council member Sean Parker explains recent events. BY
PROSPECT STAFF

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