“Trump touts ‘strongest economy in the world’ after disappointing jobs report,” ran a recent headline that managed to capture both the official line of the Trump administration and the contrasting reality portrayed by many recent underlying economic data points.
The February 2019 jobs report, released in early March, was expected to show a gain of 190,000 jobs, but instead reflected a gain of only 20,000. That’s a big miss in anybody’s book.
Now one could argue that President Trump’s statement is not negated by the disappointing jobs report. The US could indeed have the strongest economy in the world – depending on how one defines “strong” – and still do a face plant when it comes to the production of new jobs. All that is required for these two ideas to be true at the same time is for the rest of the world to be in a bigger mess than the US.
It is the contention, however, of this author that, in spite of all the talk of a booming economy coming from the Administration and from various sources on Wall Street and in the media, the US economy is not doing well and, in fact, is very likely headed into recession. It may actually be in recession as of this writing. Below are thirteen reasons why this author thinks so.
