Learning Forward

Because backwards isn't an option

Hi all! I hope you had a wonderful rest of your holidays. 😁 I definitely enjoyed time with family, reflecting on what I can be thankful for. Most important to me is focusing on my faith’s teaching that a king would leave his throne, be born, and become homeless all to show humanity what love, acceptance, and justice are.

I also want to apologize.

In my last post before Christmas, I mentioned I would be back on my normal schedule of posting on Monday and sending out a Paid Subscriber update. The holidays continued to be busy, and I did not honor those commitments. Thank you all for your incredible kindness as I learn…like to give myself more time for the holidays or have posts written beforehand…😁

Photo by Todd Trapani on Unsplash

Economy

With the new jobs report (another analysis link and the original report link), we have another month of incredible strength in the American economy. We surpassed expectations again with 216,000 new jobs and prime age worker participation rate surpassing pre-pandemic levels. Worker hourly wages increased 4.1% over the past 12 months. That is significantly beating the inflation of 3.1% the past 12 months. Groceries have also only risen by 1.7% since last January, much lower than wage gains.

Also, unemployment staying at the near record low of 3.7% (link).

Back in July I talked about these record low unemployment rates (link to my previous post). If you are interested that was my first deep dive post, so there is a lot of information there about the strength of our economy and our workers. If you aren’t interested in all the details, here is the relevant part where I highlight,

• On the employment front, full employment is considered anything under 4% unemployment, and we’ve been under that mark for well over a year now. That means most of our neighbors have never known a time when unemployment was this good for this long. You’d have to go back to the 1960s, actually. And back to just after World War II to find peacetime unemployment this low for this long.

And we are now going on nearly 2 years of unemployment staying under 4% (historical unemployment data link).

Here’s a quote to summarize what we’ve been through and how well we’ve managed it (link),

• Despite enormous challenges - COVID, insurrection, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, global inflation, repeated OPEC price hikes, war in the Middle East - the performance of the American economy this past year has been remarkable. GDP growth was 4.9% last quarter, our recovery from COVID has been the strongest in the G7, the stock market is at all time highs, wage growth remains very strong and outpacing inflation. Things were hard in recent years, but they are much better now. We are getting there, together.

  

  Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash

Final Thoughts

Numbers are great and all, but what really matters are people like you and your family. Why am I excited about the numbers above? Because it means our hard work is going to be bringing some breathing room and relief to my neighbors. We have decreased prescription drug costs (link), tamped down OPEC’s price hikes (link), and increased Americans’ access to high paying jobs (link).

And my neighbors having relief and security is something I look forward to.

Thank you all again. Comment below with a comment you have or just to share how your year is started off. Feel free to click the share button if you think someone would enjoy.

Don’t forget to be awesome. 😁