The recovery is broadly on track but needs all the help it can get
 â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â â
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**DECEMBER 3, 2021**
Kuttner on TAP
Latest Jobs Report: More Ammo for Build Back Better
The recovery is broadly on track but needs all the help it can get.
The Labor Department's latest jobs report
, for November, puzzled
the forecasters. The general expectation was another month of job growth
of half a million or more, but the department's payroll survey showed
that the economy added only 210,000 new jobs.
This suggests that we are far from an overheated economy, and that it is
way premature for the Federal Reserve to pull back from its policy of
very low interest rates, despite the clamor on Wall Street for a rate
hike. The report also strengthens the case for more public investment
and for fixing the supply chain mess, which has not only raised some
prices due to bottlenecks but left employers a little more reluctant to
hire.
Our friends over at the Economic Policy Institute view the November
numbers as a temporary blip, and project that the economy is on track to
add a total of well over 6.5 million jobs by the end of 2021 and a full
recovery by the end of 2022
. That's
also a credit to the Biden program.
As even the naysayers like Larry Summers admit
,
Build Back Better deserves support because it is mostly about fixing
long-term holes in our social infrastructure. It is not about short-term
economic stimulus.
The Labor Department jobs reports often seem contradictory, because they
rely on two different surveys which sometimes produce divergent results.
The November report was even more of a puzzle than usual, with the
survey of households showing a much brighter picture of 1.1 million new
jobs (which may include gig work). Most economists view the payroll
survey of actual employment as the more accurate.
Taken together, the two reports show that the Biden recovery is on
track, that the economy still has spots of fragility, and that this is
no time to pull back on public investment.
~ ROBERT KUTTNER
Follow Robert Kuttner on Twitter
Robert Kuttner's latest book is
The Stakes: 2020 and the Survival of American Democracy
.
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