What the Jobs Report Is Telling Mr. Trump

http://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/10/opinion/what-the-jobs-report-is-telling-mr-trump.html

Version 0 of 1.

Wait a minute, didn’t President Trump say he had inherited a mess? Yet there he was on Friday retweeting a Twitter post about the solid February jobs report. “GREAT AGAIN:+235,000.”

He may want to take credit for the 235,000 jobs created last month, but at this early stage of his administration, the tally reflects trends established under President Obama.

Those trends are indeed positive. Job growth has averaged about 200,000 jobs a month for the past year, and the unemployment rate dipped last month to 4.7 percent. At that pace, the economy is steadily progressing toward full employment, that sweet spot where everyone who is able and willing to work can get a job.

But it is not there yet, and for Mr. Trump, that poses a challenge. Will his policies foster the trend, or derail it?

The underemployment rate, which includes part-time workers who need but cannot find full-time work, was 9.2 percent last month and would need to fall by about a point for there to be a truly robust job market.

Another troubling sign is that lower-wage jobs in home care, hotel work and food service still account for much of the hiring. If better-paying jobs were being more reliably created, or if pay was not so stubbornly stagnant for many low-wage workers, the improving conditions would already be doing more to push wages higher.

The gradual tightening in the job market has pushed up wages, but not enough to make up for years of stagnation for most workers.

What could Mr. Trump do about that? He could learn the lessons of the trend he has inherited. From 2015 to 2016, wage growth was more broadly shared than at any time since the end of the Great Recession, and in 2016, growth was actually more rapid for middle- and low-wage workers than for those at the top. There were especially significant increases in 15 states and the District of Columbia, where new minimum wages were passed. For low-wage working women in those states, wages grew 6.3 percent in 2016 compared with 2.5 percent in states without minimum wage increases. The median hourly wage increase, 3.1 percent in 2016, is harder to pin on any one cause. What is known is that middle-income wages would benefit by updating rules on overtime pay so more salaried workers were eligible.

Unfortunately, Mr. Trump has thus far shown no interest in higher minimum wages, overtime protections and other efforts to improve labor standards, even though the data is telling him these measures work.

So could fulfilling some of his promises. Federal infrastructure spending could bolster employment, wages and growth, especially at a time like the present when there is still slack in the labor market. So far, though, Mr. Trump’s pledge to pursue such projects remains all talk. The rollback of the Affordable Care Act would most likely cost jobs.

Mr. Trump has been given a leg up in delivering well-being to ordinary Americans. He needs to take advantage of it.