Despite the better than expected non-farm payroll reported, many are skeptical of the 255,000 “created” jobs the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported last Friday. In a CNBC interview, Dennis Gartman, Founder, Editor and Publisher of The Gartman Letter, expressed some doubt on how well these reports gauge the health of a growing US economy.
We have to remember however that there were two things that I think need to be discussed. One is that a great good deal of this increase was because of the birth/death adjustment as they call it, which added about 85,000 payroll jobs to the number.”
A new study by the Evans School of Public Policy and Governance shows Seattle’s minimum wage increase has also increased unemployment. No surprise there given what happened in Puerto Rico. Basic economics states the higher the price of something, the less that something will be purchased. In the case of Seattle’s experiment of increasing their minimum wage to $15 an hour, it seems that something was low-skilled jobs.
Admittedly, Seattle has experienced an economic boom since the city first instigated its stair-stepped wage increase. One of the city’s biggest growth sectors is in the labor market. However, according to the Seattle Times, “Much of that success, though, can be attributed to trends separate from the minimum-wage law itself, such as the growth of Seattle’s tech sector and its construction boom.”
