The U.S. economy is in the midst of a wonderful — and unexpected — workforce boom. More than 3.1 million workers joined the labor force in the past year, meaning these people started looking for jobs and, largely, are getting hired. Almost no one expected this. It’s a nearly 2 percent expansion of the labor force — something that has not occurred since the tech craze of July 1999 to July 2000 and was more common in the 1970s and 1980s.
Last year, many experts predicted a recession with soaring layoffs. They argued the only way to get inflation down was massive job loss. Instead, the country is experiencing what some economists are calling “immaculate disinflation,” in which inflation has cooled substantially while companies keep hiring. A key reason this is possible is the remarkable growth in the number of job seekers. More job hunters have helped to gradually bring down wage growth as companies aren’t quite as desperate for employees as they were last summer. And as people get hired, their earnings rise and they consume more.
Women are driving this labor force boom. With rising pay and more flexibility to work from home or adjust their hours, they are surging into the workforce. Labor force participation for women ages 25 to 54 hit an all-time high this summer, far surpassing pre-pandemic levels. There are especially strong gains for mothers of young children. The sectors on hiring sprees lately — health care, social assistance and government — are also ones where women have historically found the most opportunities. The result is women now make up half of all U.S. employees. That milestone was reached only twice before in modern U.S. history: just before the pandemic, and in 2009 after the Great Recession destroyed so many “muscle jobs.”
It’s clear that Americans still want to work, contrary to narratives that took root in recent years. There’s also an important message here for employers: Workers are a lot more eager to join companies that pay more and provide some flexibility.
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End of carousel- Lawyers plead guilty in racketeering case in Fulton County, Ga.
- The Biden administration announces more than $100 million to improve maternal health.
- Wisconsin Republicans back off impeachment threat against justice.
- Bahrain’s hunger strike ends, for now, after concessions to prisoners.
- A Saudi court sentences a retired teacher to death based on tweets.
Attorneys for Donald Trump have pleaded guilty in the racketeering case led by Fulton County, Ga., District Attorney Fani T. Willis. Even those lawyers related to the deals focused on equipment-tampering in rural Coffee County are relevant to the former president — they help to establish the “criminal enterprise” of which prosecutors hope to prove Mr. Trump was the head. The news is a sign that the courts might be the place where 2020 election lies finally crash upon the rocks of reality. The Editorial Board wrote about the wide range of the indictment in August.
The Department of Health and Human Services announced more than $103 million in funding to address the maternal health crisis. The money will boost access to mental health services, help states train more maternal health providers and bolster nurse midwifery programs. These initiatives are an encouraging step toward tackling major gaps in maternal health and well-being. In August, the Editorial Board wrote about how the United States can address its maternal mortality crisis.
Wisconsin state Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R) announced Tuesday that Republicans would allow the nonpartisan Legislative Reference Bureau to draw legislative maps, a dramatic reversal after years of opposing such an approach to redistricting. A new liberal majority on the state Supreme Court is expected to throw out the current maps, which make Wisconsin the most gerrymandered state in America. Mr. Vos has been threatening to impeach Justice Janet Protasiewicz, whose election this spring flipped control of the court, in a bid to keep those maps. This led to understandable outcry. Now it seems Mr. Vos is backing off his impeachment threat and his efforts to keep the state gerrymandered. Read our editorial on the Protasiewicz election here.
Prisoners are eating again in Bahrain after the government agreed to let them spend more hours outside and expanded their access to visitors, a welcome development ahead of the crown prince’s visit to Washington this week. Activists say the monthlong hunger strike will resume on Sept. 30 if these promises aren’t kept. Read our editorial calling for the compassionate release of Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, a political prisoner since 2011 who participated in the strike.
A retired teacher in Saudi Arabia, Muhammad al-Ghamdi, has been sentenced to death by the country’s Specialized Criminal Court solely based on his tweets, retweets and YouTube activity, according to Human Rights Watch. The court’s verdict, July 10, was based on two accounts on X, formerly Twitter, which had only a handful of followers. The posts criticized the royal family. The sentence is the latest example of dictatorships imposing harsh sentences on people who use social media for free expression, highlighted in our February editorial.
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This post-pandemic readjustment of the labor force could also spur a productivity boom. Data released this week showed a sizable jump in output per hour during the second quarter. There has been a mass migration away from low-skilled, low-paying jobs into higher-skilled, higher-paying jobs. Workers also say they are the happiest they have been in decades as they are in jobs that better suit their interests and lifestyles.
While much of this good news is the result of a tight labor market and an economy normalizing from the pandemic, the large government stimulus also played a role. We were among the skeptics who believed President Biden’s $1.5 trillion American Rescue Plan was too big. And it did contribute to high inflation. But there’s a case to be made that the government spending is helping sustain the job market — and propel growth — now. State and local government hiring has rebounded significantly, and there has been surprising strength in construction (which added close to 200,000 jobs over the past year) thanks to investments in infrastructure and manufacturing. Mr. Biden’s push to increase legal immigration as much as possible has also helped. If Congress would finally act on a comprehensive immigration plan, the benefits could be even larger.
