Nice recovery: What are the risks?

The solid jobs reports just keep rolling in. Friday’s report, for May, showed job gains of 223,000, well above what we were expecting, and the unemployment rate ticked down to 3.8 percent.

The African-American rate fell to 5.9 percent, by far the lowest on record. Typically, the black unemployment rate is twice the white rate. But persistently tight labor markets are especially helpful for minority workers, as they make it costlier for employers to discriminate.

Wage growth has been a soft spot in the recovery. This persisted to some degree in May, but there was a nice bump in the growth rate for middle-wage workers, which rose from 2.6 percent, year-over-year, up to 2.8 percent.

Both that wage bump and the black jobless rate result underscore the punchline from the solid report: In an economy like ours, with little union power, tremendous finance power, and thereby, far too much inequality, the best friend for people who depend on their paychecks as opposed to their stock portfolios is a tight labor market.

What is out there that could whack these favorable trends? Three candidates:

It is said the economic expansions do not die of old age; they are murdered by central banks. The Federal Reserve could raise interest rates too quickly.

President Donald Trump’s trade war could, and probably will, escalate, raising prices and slowing growth through the export channel.

The economy could bump up against the tapped out supply of labor. How likely are these? Barring a sharp acceleration in prices, which I judge to be unlikely, I think Fed Chairman Jerome Powell will be careful to keeping tapping, as opposed to slamming, the brakes on growth.

The trade war is more worrisome, but remember, relative to other countries, the United States is somewhat insulated to trade shocks as our imports as a share of the gross domestic product are only 15 percent, compared with two and three times that share in most of the other economies with whom we trade.

The third risk — the labor supply constraint — is probably the most valid concern.