It’s all about pay & disposable income, stupid

J OB

growth was decent in July — the fourth straight month of just-OK results on that front, which probably led to high fives at the White House.

But there’s something unusual in the numbers.

And when I tell you what it is, you’ll understand that voter dislike of Hil

lary Clinton and the Russian interference in the election had little to do with why Donald Trump became president.

The election turned on the amount of money voters had in their pockets.

The latest revised figures from the Commerce Department showed that take-home pay and disposable income in the US haven’t nearly kept up with the job growth figures — and the trend began well before Trump took office.

On Friday, the Labor Department announced that 209,000 jobs were created in July. That’s good by recent standards but nothing to do a touchdown dance over in the longer term.

That growth was larger than the experts had been predicting. The average growth over the last three months is 195,000 — again, decent but not worthy of a celebration.

Walter Williams, whose Shadow Stats newsletter picks apart Washington’s economic data, says recently revised numbers on disposable income indicate the US is close to a recession.

Officially, the government says the economy is growing very modestly — at less than 2 percent a year.

But the latest government numbers on disposable income tell a bleaker story. Income grew at just a 0.69 percent annual rate in 2016.

Previously, the government thought growth was 1.93 percent. Those figures come from the Commerce Department, which has the more pessimistic view of the economy.

“You need growth [in disposable income] over 3 percent to keep voters happy,” says Williams.

In addition to poor increases in disposable income, savers also can’t count on income from bank deposits. So that, too, is slowing spending.

Washington originally said that disposable income grew at 1.1 percent annually in the first three months of Trump’s presidency. Now it says growth was only 0.20 percent on an annual basis.

And disposable income in the second quarter, which just ended, looks like it grew at just 0.51 percent annually.

The bottom line? Go ahead and cheer the July job numbers if you want, but in no way do they square with disposable income figures.

Either the job figures or the disposable income numbers are wrong. Or — and this is what many people believe — all of the jobs being created are very poor quality and poor-paying.

With everything going on in his life, it isn’t surprising that Trump was excited about the good employment report last Friday. And as he’s apt to do, Trump tweeted about it 15 minutes after the 8:30 a.m. release of the Labor Department report.

The problem is that the Office of Management and Budget Policy Directive No. 3 says he has to wait at least one hour before weighing in.

“Employees of the Executive Branch shall not comment publicly on the data [that’s any data] until at least one hour after the official release time,” according to page 38,933 of the Federal Register dated Sept. 25, 1985. What other part of the 2016 controversial presidential election isn’t the media telling you? And why do I think this has a good chance of blowing up in the Democrats’ faces if they aren’t careful? Well … this.

Last week, the House Judiciary Committee asked the Justice Department to look into the Hillary Clinton e- mail controversy. You probably remember that 30,000 or so of her emails suddenly disappeared. And while sharply criticizing Clinton for what she did with her computers, the FBI decided to let her off the hook.

Then-FBI Director James Comey said the decision not to charge Hillary was unanimous.

This was right after former President Bill Clinton happened to bump into then-Attorney General Loretta Lynch on the tarmac of an Arizona airport. It was complete happenstance, they said, and the two only spoke about family stuff.

The Washington Post, the New York Times and ABC News — and others — apparently decided to not focus on that tarmac meeting because they wanted Hillary to get elected.

That’s not what they would admit to, but that’s what recently released emails seem to prove.

If you are an investor or just some guy walking the street, I urge you to keep a close eye on all these investigations because they could change your life and make you a lot poorer.

First, Hillary may have thought she got rid of all those e-mails, but — according to a very good source of mine — she didn’t.

While the Russians had hacked Hillary’s e-mails, my very good source says that the National Security Agency, a US intelligence source, was hacking the Russians while they were eavesdropping on Hillary. That’s what spies do to each other.

So the e-mails still exist. And the House Judiciary Committee should be able to get them without too much trouble. Second, Comey wasn’t telling the complete truth when he said the decision not to pursue criminal charges against Hillary was unanimous. As I’ve written before, my source tells me that four higher-ups in the FBI — including Comey — made the decision at a July 2016 meeting.

So, yes, that final vote might have been unanimous — but dozens of agents who worked on the case didn’t, and don’t, agree with it.

A lot of agents, I’m told, are really pissed. Still.