By the numbers

Despite some high-profile layoffs in the papers lately, unemployment claims among Americans dropped by 12,000 for the week ending Feb. 17—the lowest level in five weeks.

Unemployment has remained below 4 percent for the past 24 months. This is the longest period below 4 percent the country has seen since the 1960s, according to numbers released by the U.S. Department of Labor.

(Any unemployment under 5 percent is considered full employment by economists. Because anything under 5 percent can be attributed to “frictional unemployment” as people move, go back to school, or take time off.)

While Arkansas’ unemployment rate actually rose to 3.4 percent recently, it still remains below the national rate of 3.7 percent, according to the state Department of Workforce Services.

The Associated Press says weekly unemployment claims are broadly representative of the number of U.S. job cuts in a given week, and those remain at historically low levels. All of this has occurred after the Federal Reserve Board raised interest rates 11 times beginning in March 2022. While many believe the Fed could cut rates as many as four times this year, it has left its rate unchanged over the past four meetings.

Many economists feared that the previous rate increases would result in higher unemployment and a potential recession, but that has not come to pass. Jobs have abounded, and the economy has benefited.

At the heart of the good economic news is consumer spending, which unfortunately has kept inflation above the Fed’s target growth rate of 2 percent, but is still good news.

Lesson: Don’t bet against America. But fear not. Inflation will rise again one day—and so will unemployment. Then all that will reverse course. And will reverse course again, and so on from here to eternity. That’s why they call it an economic cycle. It spins.

So do partisan commentators. And their spin depends on which party is in the White House at the time.