Our jobs and Washington’s job

It is, of course, very good news that the U.S. economy produced 164,000 jobs in April, a solid number, driving the unemployment rate down to a 20-year low of 3.9%. Let us, however, recall the caveats often underscored by Republicans when the jobless rate dipped repeatedly during the seven-plus years of recovery that were Barack Obama’s presidency.

Foremost, the fact that the workforce participation rate, which slid during Obama, is dropping again now; 236,000 people left the labor force in April, on top of 158,000 who quit it in March.

The proportion of working-age Americans who have a job or are looking for one is down to 62.8%, nearly a point below where it was in September 2012, when a man named Donald Trump tweeted the complaint that, “Unemployment rate only dropped because more people are out of labor force & have stopped looking for work,” blurting, for emphasis, “phony numbers.”

And wage growth, the sluggishness of which has bedeviled the economy for decades, in April remained at 2.6% for the third straight month.

While far better than nothing, one would hope a tighter labor market will fuel growing gains in workers’ real earnings.

That’s what Trump and Republicans promised their massive, skewed tax cut would help deliver. No less a skeptic than GOP Sen. Marco Rubio last week said “there’s no evidence whatsoever that the money’s been massively poured back into the American worker.”

Wait, see and hope he’s wrong.