The idea that Trump has an historic jobs achievement is based on the increasingly meaningless unemployment rate, which notoriously doesn't count many people who are not working. The idea that "essentially every American who wants a job could find one" is rubbish. For the anecdotal evidence, I suggest you ask any of the millions of unemployed and underemployed non-management people over the age of 50, most of whom got their walking papers in the Great Recession because they made too much money in the opinion of management. If you are looking for the hidden, nefarious, recalcitrant forces of deflation in the American economy, look there.
The federal government actually tracks everyone who wants a job but still doesn't have one. They presently number 5.1 million, well above the average low for the data series in 2000 at 4.4 million. But even this number fails to capture the real scope of current labor slack.
If we had a real jobs recovery going on, we'd have employment at pre-Great Recession levels. We don't. Total employed as a percentage of the population in April 2018 is at not quite 60.4%. Before the recession it averaged 63.2% over the previous twelve years. That latter rate would yield 162.6 million working in April 2018 instead of the 155.3 million we actually have.
It's that simple. We have the people. What we're missing is 7.3 million of them working.
Them's the facts, no matter what the cheerleaders for Trump keep shouting.
