U.S. job growth picks up, unemployment rate falls to 3.9 percent

A help wanted sign is posted at a taco stand in Solana Beach, California

U.S. job growth increased less than expected in April and the unemployment rate dropped to near a 17-1/2-year low of 3.9 percent as some out-of-work Americans left the labor force.
The Labor Department’s closely watched employment report on Friday also showed wages barely rose last month, which may ease concerns that inflation pressures are rapidly building up, likely keeping the Federal Reserve on a gradual path of monetary policy tightening.
“Fed officials can rest easy that there is not any wage-based inflation on the horizon,” said Chris Rupkey, chief economist at MUFG in New York. “There is no need to speed up the path of interest rates because inflation isn’t heating up in a worrisome manner.”
Nonfarm payrolls increased by 164,000 jobs last month, the Labor Department reported. Data for March was revised to show the economy adding 135,000 jobs instead of the previously reported 103,000. That was the fewest amount of jobs created in six months and followed an outsized gain of 324,000 in February.
While cold weather in March and April probably held back job growth, hiring is moderating as the labor market hits full employment. Employers, especially in the construction and manufacturing sectors, are increasingly reporting difficulties finding qualified workers.
The drop of two-tenths of a percentage point in the unemployment rate from 4.1 percent in March pushed it to a level last seen in December 2000 and within striking distance of the Fed’s forecast of 3.8 percent by the end of this year. It was the first time in six months that the jobless rate dropped.
But 236,000 people left the labor force in April, adding to the 158,000 who quit in March. The labor force participation rate, or the proportion of working-age Americans who have a job or are looking for one, fell to 62.8 percent last month from 62.9 percent in March. It was the second straight monthly drop in the participation rate.
Economists polled by Reuters had forecast payrolls rising by 192,000 jobs in April and the unemployment rate falling to 4.0 percent. Average hourly earnings rose 0.1 percent last month after a 0.2 percent gain in March. That left the annual increase in average hourly earnings at 2.6 percent.
The dollar shrugged off the employment data, rising to its highest level this year against a basket of currencies. Stocks on Wall Street rallied, with all three indexes closing more than 1.0 percent higher. U.S. Treasury yields were little changed after dropping to multi-week lows.
‘SUSTAINABLE PACE’
Sluggish wage growth and a slowdown in hiring threaten to undercut the Trump administration’s argument that its $1.5 trillion income tax cut package, which came into effect in January and is highlighted by a sharp drop in the corporate income tax rate, would boost wages and hiring.
Companies like Apple have used their tax windfall for share buybacks and dividends.
President Donald Trump cheered the drop in the unemployment rate on Friday.
“I thought the jobs report was very good. The big thing to me was cracking 4,” Trump told reporters. “That hasn’t been done in a long time … we’re at full employment. We’re doing great.”
Democrats, however, reiterated their criticism of the tax cuts, saying more than $390 billion in share buybacks had been announced since the passage of the tax bill.
“President Trump promised American families that they would see a $4,000 annual raise after the tax plan, so far, average weekly wages have increased $11.69,” Democratic Senator Martin Heinrich said.
But average hourly earnings could be understating wage inflation. The Employment Cost Index, widely viewed by policymakers and economists as one of the better measures of labor market slack, showed wages rising at their fastest pace in 11 years during the first quarter.
Inflation is flirting with the Fed’s 2 percent target.
The Fed’s preferred inflation measure, the personal consumption expenditures price index excluding food and energy, was up 1.9 percent year-on-year in March after a 1.6 percent rise in February.
The U.S. central bank on Wednesday left interest rates unchanged and said it expected annual inflation to run close to its “symmetric” 2 percent target over the medium term.
Economists interpreted symmetric to mean policymakers would not be too worried with inflation overshooting the target.
Two Fed officials who are currently voting members of the central bank’s rate-setting committee showed little concern on Friday about price pressures heating up and said they were keeping an open mind on the total number of rate increases needed this year.
The Fed hiked rates in March and has forecast at least two more increases for 2018.
Economists expect the unemployment rate will drop to 3.5 percent by the end of the year. Monthly job gains have averaged about 200,000 this year, more than the roughly 120,000 needed to keep up with growth in the working-age population.
A broader measure of unemployment, which includes people who want to work but have given up searching and those working part-time because they cannot find full-time employment, dropped to 7.8 percent last month, the lowest level since July 2001, from 8.0 percent in March.
Construction payrolls rebounded by 17,000 jobs last month after recording their first drop in eight months in March. Manufacturing employment increased by 24,000 jobs in April after a gain of 22,000 positions in March.
Payrolls for temporary help, seen as a harbinger of future permanent hiring, rose by 10,300 after falling by 2,100 in March. There was a modest gain in leisure and hospitality employment while wholesale traders laid off workers.
Government payrolls fell 4,000 in April amid a decline in education employment at state governments.
“The moderation in job gains over the past two months may mark the beginning of the slow deceleration to a sustainable pace of job gains, which we estimate to be around or a little below 100,000 per month,” said Michael Feroli, an economist at JPMorgan in New York.

Defense Bill Includes Authorization of Military Parade in Capitol

President’s Trump’s’ plans to hold a military parade in the nation’s capital are one step closer to taking place.
According to a summary of the National Defense Authorization Act released Friday, the bill will include a provision to authorize a military parade in the nation’s capital.
The provision would also authorize Defense Secretary Mattis to prohibit the use of certain units or equipment if it would hamper readiness.
The Defense Department is aiming to conduct the parade on November 11, which is the 100th anniversary of the conclusion of the first world war.
A full version of the defense bill is set to be released next week.

Trump to host South Korean president amid planning for U.S.-North Korea summit, White House says

The White House announced Friday that President Trump will host the South Korean president in late May, as plans progress for a meeting between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
Trump and President Moon Jae-in will meet on May 22, the press release from Press Secretary Sarah Sanders' office said, marking the third summit for the pair.
The meeting “affirms the enduring strength” of the “alliance and deep friendship between our two countries,” the press release said.
It went on to say that the two leaders would “continue their close coordination of developments regarding the Korean Peninsula following the April 27 inter-Korean Summit,” referring to the recent historic meeting of North and South Korean leaders.
Trump and Moon are expected to talk about the president’s upcoming meeting with Kim, the leader of the Hermit Kingdom, the press release said.
The president on Friday shared new details about that meeting but without specifics. "We now have a date and we have a location,” Trump told reporters prior to leaving for Dallas, where he was set to speak at the National Rifle Association annual convention. “We'll be announcing it soon.”
Trump has previously said the summit with North Korea will unfold in May or early June.
A possible meeting between Trump and Kim came to light following a trip then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo took to the rogue nation over Easter weekend.
Trump later acknowledged that Pompeo, who has since been confirmed as secretary of state, had met with Kim.
“Mike Pompeo met with Kim Jong Un in North Korea last week. Meeting went very smoothly and a good relationship was formed,” Trump tweeted. “Details of the Summit are being worked out now. Denuclearization will be a great thing for World, but also for North Korea!”

FBI officials Jim Baker, Lisa Page resign from bureau

Cleaning House.

Two FBI officials who worked closely with embattled former bureau director James Comey have left the agency, Fox News has confirmed.
Jim Baker, a top FBI lawyer who was reassigned in late 2017 after being linked to a journalist who wrote about the so-called "Trump dossier," is reportedly looking to join the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.
Lisa Page, whose electronic communications with another FBI employee drew accusations of political bias, "resigned" Friday to "pursue other opportunities," an FBI spokesperson told Fox News.
Comey acknowledged Baker’s departure in a tweet, commending his former colleague’s “integrity” and “commitment to the rule of law.”
Baker had been the subject of a Justice Department investigation on suspicion of leaking classified information about the so-called “Trump dossier” – a document that supposedly contained evidence about the Trump campaign's connection to Russia.
He had been reassigned in December as an adviser to current FBI Director Christopher Wray.
“I love the FBI,” Baker told the New York Times. “I have tremendous respect for the bureau. The FBI was great, is great and will be great.”
Page, who was previously a member of Robert Mueller’s special counsel team, came under fire for allegedly sending “anti-Trump” text messages to a colleague.
She was one of Comey’s advisers in 2016 when the former director announced the bureau would not pursue criminal charges against Hillary Clinton for her handling of classified emails.
Comey has said he would have removed Page from any relevant investigations had he known of her anti-Trump bias.

Hypocrite Democrat Cartoons

Dem to resign after ethics report linked to charges against husband

Massachusetts state Sen. Stanley Rosenberg speaks in Boston, March 14, 2016.  (Associated Press)

State Sen. Stanley Rosenberg, for decades one of the most powerful Democrats in Massachusetts, announced Thursday that he will resign Friday after 31 years as a lawmaker because of a scandal involving his estranged husband.
His decision follows Wednesday’s release of an ethics report that states Rosenberg “failed to protect the Senate” from his estranged husband, who faces charges of racially and sexually harassing Senate employees.
“In light … of the disciplinary measure recommended by the ethics committee, it would not be fair to my constituents to have a representative in the Senate who lacked the authority to represent their interests fully,” Rosenberg said in a letter to the Senate clerk, the Boston Herald reported.
Rosenberg, 68, of Amherst, a former president of the Massachusetts Senate, was the first openly gay lawmaker to lead a legislative chamber in the Bay State, Boston’s Fox 25 reported.
He stepped down as president in December, after the Boston Globe reported in November that four men alleged that Rosenberg’s husband, Byron Hefner, had sexually assaulted and harassed them, and boasted of his influence in the Senate.
Hefner was indicted in March. Rosenberg claims to have been unaware of Hefner’s alleged crimes.
Rosenberg’s resignation will take effect at 5 p.m. Friday, State House News Service reported.
Following the release of the ethics report, both Republican Gov. Charlie Baker and Democratic Attorney General Maura Healey called for Rosenberg to resign, Fox 25 reported.
According to the station, the report was prepared by independent investigators hired by the Senate Ethics Committee. It said that while Rosenberg did not violate any formal Senate rules, he showed poor judgment and violated the Senate's information technology policies by granting Hefner “unfettered access” to Rosenberg's Senate email account.
That access began before Rosenberg became Senate president in 2015 and ended in March 2017, after staffers detected two instances of Hefner allegedly sending emails to public officials under Rosenberg’s name.
Rosenberg "knew or should have known Hefner had racially and sexually harassed Senate employees" and failed to address the issue adequately, the report said.
Hefner, 30, pleaded not guilty in Suffolk Superior Court in April to charges of sexual assault, criminal lewdness and distributing nude photos without consent. He was released on his own recognizance pending further court action.

Newt Gingrich, Mary Mayhew: Hope for those trapped in welfare dependency -- Thanks to Trump

Republicans and members of the Trump administration must keep up the pressure and focus on achieving welfare reform.
When President Clinton signed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, many believed that the law would indeed “end welfare as we know it.” It’s what we intended when Congress created the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program and implemented work requirements to restore welfare to its original intent as a springboard to self-sufficiency.
These policies were intended to be the beginning of welfare reform – the beginning of a nationwide policy focused on ending dependency. Instead, President Obama launched a war on the very thing we know is most successful at achieving this goal: work.
Over the past decade, too many of our fellow citizens have fallen deeper into the welfare trap, ensnared by government policies that pay people to not work. The so-called “War on Poverty” has left our nation with record-high levels of welfare enrollment – despite a 17-year record-low unemployment rate and more than 6 million open jobs across the country.

Over the past decade, too many of our fellow citizens have fallen deeper into the welfare trap, ensnared by government policies that pay people to not work.

Many of these new enrollees are able-bodied adults with no disabilities keeping them from working. They are not the individuals our welfare system is designed to aid – the disabled, the elderly, and others who are truly in need.
There are now nearly 21 million able-bodied adults dependent on food stamps – three times as many as in 2000. Some 28 million able-bodied adults are now dependent on Medicaid, quadrupling the number of those enrolled in 2000.
This is not what we envisioned in Congress – on either side of the political aisle – when we passed welfare reform in 1996 with bipartisan support. We included work requirements in the legislation because we knew the power of work. The reforms were compassionate – they gave people the opportunity to build better lives and create their own American dreams.
We know this not only because the research has proven it, time and time again, but because we’ve seen the transformational power of promoting work firsthand.
When Maine enforced time limits on its TANF program and refocused the program on employment and job training, it drew criticism from those on the left who called the reforms uncompassionate.
But the results spoke for themselves: Over the four-year period after the reforms, enrollees with records of prior earnings saw their wages increase by 237 percent on average. Throughout the duration of the evaluation period, these people dramatically increased their total earnings from $2.6 million to $8.6 million.
In October 2014, Maine began requiring able-bodied and childless adults who were receiving food stamps to work, train, or volunteer – at least part-time – in order to receive their benefits.
The reform drew criticism from the Obama administration – but once again, the power of work emerged. Those who left the program saw their incomes, on average, more than double within the first year, offsetting any lost welfare benefits. And the number of able-bodied adults receiving food stamp benefits fell from approximately 16,000 to 1,500.
But Maine was unfortunately the exception. Instead of empowering able-bodied adults to work to lift themselves out of dependency, most states implemented work requirement waivers, allowing adults to collect taxpayer-funded benefits without being required to work at all.
Loopholes have been exploited by federal and state bureaucrats who have robbed these able-bodied Americans of the opportunity to escape welfare and create better lives for themselves and their families.
Rather than viewing welfare as a temporary safety net, many government leaders have instead implemented policies that have turned welfare into a permanent trap.
Thankfully, President Trump’s recent executive order – Reducing Poverty in America by Promoting Opportunity and Economic Mobility – delivers a welcome policy change that offers hope to those trapped in welfare dependency.
The executive order lays the groundwork for federal agencies that administer welfare to prioritize work and encourage economic mobility, particularly for able-bodied adults. It reiterates the principle that those of us who have worked within the government know all too well: Government assistance is not the answer to ending poverty and dependency. Work is.
If Congress and agency leaders deliver on President Trump’s initiative, our welfare system can return to the truly compassionate policies of its past. Its success should once again be wholly measured by the number of people moved off the welfare rolls, not the number of people trapped on them. Only then will state successes like Maine’s become the norm rather than the exception.
Mary Mayhew served for six years commissioner of the Maine Department of Health and Human Services, where she spearheaded transformational welfare reform. She currently serves as a senior fellow with the Opportunity Solutions Project.
Newt Gingrich is a Fox News contributor. A Republican, he was speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 1995 to 1999. Follow him on Twitter @NewtGingrich. His latest book is "Understanding Trump."

Kanye West banned from radio station over recent comments

A Detroit radio station said it will ban Kanye West's music over controversial comments the rapper made earlier this week that slavery “was a choice.”
Hosts Shay Shay and BiGG of 105.1 the Morning Bounce made the announcement Thursday on Facebook with the hashtag “Mute Kanye.”
“Kanye has gone too far” with his latest comments, they said. They wrote that they are refusing to give him a platform,” according to New York Post.
"We don't want to hear Kanye's music, we don't want to play Kanye on our show, we don't want to talk about Kanye anymore,” the post read. “So we are taking a stand and we aren't playing his music anymore; we just are refusing to give him a platform."
The ban will be for the entire hip-hop station and will include tracks that West produced or is featured in as well, the Detroit Free Press reported.
West faced swift backlash following an interview with TMZ on Tuesday, where he said "when you hear about slavery for 400 years. For 400 years?! That sounds like a choice."
The music mogul took to Twitter shortly after to try and walk back his comments and compared himself to both Nat Turner and Harriet Tubman.

"when you hear about slavery for 400 years. For 400 years?! That sounds like a choice."

“If this was 148 years ago I would have been more like Harriet or Nat," West tweeted, before clarifying the reason he “brought up the 400 years point is because we can’t be mentally imprisoned for another 400 years. We need free thought now. Even the statement was an example of free thought…It was just an idea.”
The two morning DJs didn’t announce how long the ban will last, and left it open to a “gut feeling.”
“That’s what it is right now. We need a break,” Shay Shay, told the paper. “I think it’s a gut feeling of when we’ll be able to feel comfortable playing it again, when we’ll want to hear it again, and more importantly, when will our listeners want to hear it again.”
West was banned from a Hot 103.5 in Sacramento in 2016 after he attacked radio stations and fellow artists during a concert for his Saint Pablo Tour, USA Today reported.