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January employment numbers point to higher GDP growth this year

Michael Busler
4 min readFeb 8, 2020

The US economy added a very impressive 225,000 jobs in January 2020. This figure far exceeded expectations and points to a strong start for 2020. While the consensus view of economists is that the economy will slow down this year, after finishing 2019 at 2.3% GDP growth, recent events indicate that GDP growth could top 3% this year, something not seen since 2005.

After the recession of 2008/2009, the prior administration failed to set economic growth as the primary policy goal. Instead, Obama concentrated on curing perceived injustices, which placed burdens on economic growth. Instead of the economy rebounding sharply in 2010 and beyond, growth was tepid.

From 2010 to 2013 economic growth averaged about 2%, even with the massive increases in the money supply, known as quantitative easing and with massive increases in government spending. Never in history has both Monetary and Fiscal Policy been so expansive. Yet the economy didn’t increase growth significantly. Why?

Causes behind Obama Administration Slow Growth

The reason for the slow growth was the Obama administration’s curing perceived injustices policy. For instance, Obama believed that it was an injustice that all Americans did not have health care coverage. He passed the Affordable Care Act (ACA) which…

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Michael Busler
Michael Busler

Written by Michael Busler

Dr. Busler is an economist and a public policy analyst. He is a Professor of Finance at Stockton University. His op-ed columns appear in Townhall, Newsmax.

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