WASHINGTON (TNND) — The number of Americans filing for unemployment just reached a new low not seen in more than 50 years. Jobless claims dropped to an estimated 187,000 last week, a number not seen since September 1969.
That bit of good news is underscored by a strong stock market and an artificial intelligence boom, signs President Donald Trump has pointed to for his read on the economy. (TNND)
In an interview with The National News Desk on Friday, Josh Bivens, Chief Economist with the Economic Policy Institute, said,
I think what today’s numbers tell us is that so far, we still have pretty low unemployment. And we have a weird mixture of very low hiring, but very low layoffs. And it’s the layoffs which would trigger it increase in unemployment insurance applications. Those remain low.
That bit of good news is underscored by a strong stock market and an artificial intelligence boom, signs President Donald Trump has pointed to for his read on the economy.
Multiple times he has said, “We have the hottest country right now anywhere in the world.”
But there have been undeniable economic rain clouds as well.
The inability to bring the war in Iran to an end and reopen the world’s biggest shipping waterway has meant oil and gas prices are spiking once again
It’s impacted not just the cost to fill up at the pump but the price of groceries and travel and expanding the risk of increasing inflation.
” I would say I’m going to bet inflation over this whole year is going to look closer to like the 3.5% range, which is a notable jump up and which will erase a lot of real income gains for a lot of Americans,” Bivens said.
President Donald Trump also just implemented a new round of 10% to 12.5% tariffs on goods from more than 80 countries.
The new chairman of the Federal Reserve, Kevin Warsh, is under pressure from the president to lower rates at next week’s meeting. The Wall Street Journal is calling it “one of its most unpredictable meetings in years”.
I think it’s one of the few times in the past five years where you didn’t have a very good sense of which way the Fed would go, like when the economy was horribly weak in 2020 after the pandemic. Of course, they’re going to keep rate zero when inflation hit 9%. Of course they’re going to raise rates. This is one of those ones where they’ve sort of got dueling signals from unemployment and inflation. So who knows which way they’ll go,” Bivens said.
The economy is once again looming large on voters’ minds ahead of the mid-term elections.
A new Pew Research Center poll finds the economy, cost of living and affordability are the top issues they want to hear candidates running in Congressional elections talk about in their campaigns.